Video Game Assessment: Resident Evil 4 (2005)

Resident Evil 4 is a wonderful horror game that came out in 2005 for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and eventually the Nintendo Wii systems. A lot has been said about this game and I'm going to try to keep this short. I love this game. I really do. I know I've been reviewing a lot of things I like, but horror is my favorite genre and this is one of my favorite horror games. The funny thing is that I really dislike every other Resident Evil game besides this one, which I find very funny.

Seriously though, this is far and away the best of the Resident Evil games. I've played some of the others and haven't finished any of them because they're just not as good and not as fun. I like how this game really went away from the whole zombie thing and took the entire series into a new and fantastic direction (or at least it did until Resident Evil 5 came out... don't even get me started on that game...). I liked how the zombies weren't zombies in this game. They were Spanish villagers infected with some sort of terrible mind-controlling parasite kind of thing. It was a neat thing to try and it worked out amazingly well.

The gameplay of this game is fantastic as well and spawned a ton of other games (Silent Hill: Homecoming, Deadly Premonition, Resident Evil 5, and others) to use the same over the shoulder third person perspective which worked so well. The inventory of this game and its management is fantastic as well.

Where this game really shines for me is the action rather than the horror. This game focuses pretty strongly on Leon Kennedy (the protagonist and player character) being more of an action hero than a horror protagonist. That's not saying that this game isn't horror, but it does stress the action parts of the game in some places pretty heavily. I really like the first [part of the game the most when Leon is stuck in the Spanish village and has to kill all the villagers since they are attacking him. I felt that that part was the most effective of the entire game and I really enjoyed it. The next four sections of the game are quite a bit shorter and not nearly as terrifying, but I think they're still good, just not as good as that first part which was fantastic.

Strangely enough, I felt that the first part was the entire game when I played it. I thought that if that was the whole game, it was kind of short, but really well done. I would have been happy walking away form it there and would have had much of the same praises for the game and many fewer complaints. I just didn't like the rest of the game as much. I felt it was too padded and went much deeper into the Resident Evil continuity from other games than I was comfortable with.

Altogether though it is a solid game with fantastic gameplay and a fun story. The enemies are cool looking, the bosses are mostly very fun, and I was happy I had the chance to play this game.