Resident Evil 4: Ultimate HD Edition (PC) - Part 2

Good news, this week's Super Adventures has been extended with bonus content, as my quick look at Resident Evil 4 has turned out to be a little less quick than I expected. This is definitely the final part now though, and you can click this link to check out PART ONE.

Despite the title, Resident Evil 4 is actually the sixth mainline Resident Evil game... I think. The first three RE games started off on the PlayStation, then there was Code: Veronica, which launched on the Dreamcast first, and Resident Evil 0, which was a GameCube exclusive. So if you were an impatient RE fan who wanted to follow the story you needed a Sony console, a Sega console and a Nintendo console. Resident Evil 4 was announced as GameCube exclusive too but fortunately it went multiplatform with a PS2 release later that year, and I'm sure all the fans who bought a GameCube because of it eventually got over it. Especially as the GameCube original is apparently the better version.

The game did something else to annoy fans: switching genre to a third-person shooter. RE4 has a much more modern gameplay style and made a lot of people feel like the series would never return to the awkward survival horror gameplay they loved it for. Fortunately Capcom did eventually return to Resident Evil 2 and 3 and gave them big-budget remakes... to make them more like Resident Evil 4. Someone must have liked them though as they sold enough for Capcom to start working on Resident Evil 4's remake! Wait, hang on, what happened to the Code: Veronica remake?

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GameCube

Previously, in Resident Evil 4:

Super-agent Leon S. Kennedy is in a rural part of Spain trying to hunt down the US president's kidnapped daughter Ashley. Unfortunately it turns out that the locals are crazy cultists and they all want to kill him. Leon's better at killing them though and he was able to hold his own during a fierce battle in the village square until they were called away by the sound of a bell. Now he's free to continue on through a mysterious giant door in his search for Ashley.

And now, the continuation:

PlayStation 2

Alright I went through a door and now I'm at a farm. The game does the same thing as Metal Gear Solid 3, splitting the world up into small areas, and I'm guessing that's due to memory limitations more than anything.

This third area looks a lot quieter that the village square, though I can see one guy roaming near the barn on the left who apparently didn't hear the bell. I can also see two shiny blue medallions hanging up, just begging to be shot down. Not easy with a shaky half-invisible laser sight from this distance... unless I'm using a Wiimote or a mouse, then I have a fighting chance. I also have a fighting chance to get a headshot on that guy. It's not a guaranteed kill, but sometimes their heads explode and that usually halts their aggression. Usually.

You know, I've been playing the Sourcenext port just as long as the other versions and it really isn't so bad, even without the patch to fix the graphics or the mod to add in mouse control. The controls are awkward whatever you play it on so it doesn't feel like that much of a downgrade playing on keyboard, and it supports controllers too. Plus it's just as slick really.

Wait, did it just bluescreen my PC? The son of a bitch game just bluescreened my PC! I guess I'm not playing the unpatched Sourcenext port any further then.

Hmm, I've found some shiny treasure dangling over a gross pit, where I can't reach it. Why are there so many gems just lying around in this game? Why am I even questioning this?

If I could get that lid to fall down there'd be something for the jewellery to land on, but the thing won't budge! Okay I'm going to look this up online, because I'm impatient and I want my shiny thing.

Ah. One of those pieces of wood in the background isn't actually in the background, and it's propping the lid up. I shot the wood, dropped the lid, then pressed the action button. This was a mistake.

What I should've done is shoot the pendant after closing the lid, but I'm an idiot and now the game is punishing me for my mistake. The action button opened the lid again and now Leon refuses to close it. It's fine, I just saved. I'm gonna let Leon get eaten to punish him for being unhelpful, then I'm going to get my damn pendant.

Okay this area was actually pretty empty, with only a few enemies to kill. I've got all the medallions marked on the map now so I'm ready to move on to the next area.

OH SHIT IT'S A BOULDER!

Man, I hate QTEs and I'm pretty sure I always have. I hated them before they were even called quick time events, after struggling with games like Dragon's Lair and other interactive cartoons I found on PC demo CDs, but I especially hated them after they started infesting games I otherwise liked. Shenmue deserves a lot of the blame for that, I mean it introduced the term, but I feel like Resident Evil 4 is what made them horrifically ubiquitous for a long while.

Anyway, once I'd come to terms with the fact that immediate action was needed here it took me another second to process what the game was actually asking me to do. 'I need to press X. Wait, is that the X button on the controller or the X key? I don't even have X mapped to anything.'

Hammering the X key did the trick in the end.

It wants both mouse buttons now? But I'm not even holding the mouse, I'm using my mouse hand to tap X! It could've been worse I suppose. The original PC port tells you the controller's button numbers to press.

The next area wasn't so bad, once I cleared out the tripwires and the floor traps. Though I did find myself in a room with a guy carelessly lobbing sticks of dynamite around. Turns out explosions hurt enemies as much as they hurt me, so that's one problem solved, but now I've got like zero health.

I'm mean seriously, that health gauge reads 'empty', there's absolutely nothing left in the tank. Seems like a good time for me to look up what these herbs actually do! I mean I know that green is good and green mixed with green is double good, but what does red do? Or yellow?

Ah, it says here that combining yellow with green permanently raises the overall health of the user. Wait, a permanent max health upgrade? Hell yeah, I'll have some of that. I'll even throw in a red herb and make it green+red+yellow to give me a full heal as well.

This is Resident Evil 4's famous inventory by the way! It does the Deus Ex/Diablo thing of having items take up multiple inventory slots, so you have to choose between holding 8 herbs or one shotgun. I don't remember those games letting you rotate items though, so they don't give you the full Inventory Tetris experience like this does.

Thankfully gems and money don't take up room in the inventory, which means I can load up on treasure without concern... unlike in the earlier games, which hate you carrying things.

Resident Evil Zero (GameCube)

I mean look at this! Six inventory spaces and you need to carry ink ribbons to save. To be fair though, they do have storage boxes everywhere connected to each other through some kind of alternate storage dimension. There's no storage boxes in Resident Evil 4 and if you discard an item to make room it's just gone; you'll never get to pick it up again.

Speaking of the earlier games, I played a bit of them before putting this on in order to refresh my memory, and they do not have good combat. They're mostly about tapping the 'target nearest zombie' button and then tapping the fire button, and if an enemy actually appears on camera while you're shooting them you may be too close.

Resident Evil - Code: Veronica X (PS2)

Code: Veronica brought the series into full 3D in 2000, four years after the original, but it kept the forced camera angles which make it hard to tell where you can even go to avoid the zombies.

The zombies in these earlier games just mindlessly shamble closer to you and there's no rewards for killing them as far as I can tell. Plus the aiming is still 'forward, up or down', which doesn't exactly help you go for headshots.

Resident Evil Zero (GameCube)

The series couldn't actually make up its mind if it wanted real time graphics or pre-rendered backgrounds at this point, as two years after Code: Veronica the Resident Evil remake and Resident Evil Zero both went back to the classic style. Zero's visuals are clearly way more realistic than Code: Veronica, or even Resident Evil 4, but the gameplay hadn't moved on from 1996.

I've heard the argument that making the player wrestle with the controls and struggle to see anything with the fixed camera angles really amps up the fear, but I don't buy it. Resident Evil 4 proves that you can do better.

Anyway, back in Resident Evil 4, Leon went into a house, heard a banging sound, let a guy out of a wardrobe, then got picked up and thrown away by someone he calls 'The Big Cheese'.

Next time I think Leon should try using guns instead of his foot. I mean you can't kick the other not-zombies before they've been stunned, so why did he think this was going to work?
 

I did it! Chapter 1-1 is complete and it only took me... an undisclosed amount of time.

If you're wondering how I got that death in this version of the game, it was when I failed to get the pendant hanging over the gross pit and got Leon killed to restart. I didn't see the harm in it at the time, I didn't know I'd get a death marked down on my permanent record! And it doesn't seem like I can replay the chapter for a better score; there's no Resident Evil 5-style chapter select here.

I feel like this would be a good place to quit, but I haven't fought a boss yet or found Ashley. I haven't even met the merchant yet!

CHAPTER 1-2

Wait, what? I was just watching a cutscene of Leon chatting to his new friend Luis (the guy from the wardrobe) when suddenly another QTE appears! What kind of monster puts a QTE at the end of a long cutscene?

Well I messed that up.

Congrats game, you've exposed the fact that I wasn't giving the cutscene 100% of my attention, now guess how much attention I'll be giving it the second time around. Actually I was able to just skip the cutscene and get straight back to the QTE, thankfully. But then it tricked me by giving me a different pair of buttons to press!

You know what else sucks? Leon's lost his jacket now. I really liked that jacket, and the way it moved around like a piece of clothing instead of just being a solid part of his character model.

A FEW SECONDS LATER

Hey, look who I just ran into! It's the mysterious Merchant, showing off what Leon probably should look like right now with all those guns, grenades and ammo boxes he's carrying. I love the Merchant, he's so cheerful! Plus he gives me useful cash in exchange for all this useless treasure I've been collecting. Can't shoot enemies with gems.

The funny thing about the Merchant is that he's got the same voice actor as Leon, so I'm just going to assume he's his long lost twin brother, who was hiking in Europe when he got caught up in this mayhem by accident. Or maybe he's Old Leon from the future!

Damn, I'm just short of enough money to buy the next inventory box upgrade. Though I haven't sold any treasures yet, so who knows how rich I really am.

I also want that rifle, and that treasure map, and there's an option here to upgrade my guns as well! Look at how many notches there are to increase firepower; the game really knows how to torment me with things I want but maybe shouldn't buy yet. I don't think I can even grind for cash in this, so I have to be very careful with my money.

Weirdly there's no way to buy ammo. I guess the game's just that serious about resource management and ammo conservation.

Wait a minute, I kill enemies for money and then I use it to level up my stuff at certain places, which are also generally save points... this is the Dark Souls of Resident Evil games! Except there's checkpoints and you don't lose anything when you die and there's no stamina and you can't dodge roll etc. But you can go wandering around interconnected paths at least! Plus it's a bit difficult at times.

I bought the rifle! It's good if you want to zoom right in and take a not-zombie's head off in one shot. Assuming you're skilled enough to use the mouse wheel to zoom while also holding right mouse to aim (or you could just use a controller). I wasted two shots trying to zoom in because my finger accidentally hit the left mouse button! And people said that mouse control would make the game too easy...

This is an interesting location I've ended up in by the way. It looks like a quarry maybe, covered in wooden walkways.

Well I cleared out the place from a distance as best I could, then bravely headed in to take on the last few I missed. Turns out that sniping a few of them while it was quiet didn't make a whole lot of difference in the end as it got plenty crowded very quickly and I needed to switch guns.

It hasn't gotten any less awkward that I can't just cycle through weapons without bringing up the inventory screen, though it is nice having a chance to pause and think about what weapon I want to select.

Resident Evil 5 (PC)

In Resident Evil 5 you get this overlay to pick your guns with and manage your items, and the action doesn't stop while you're doing it. It's a lot more frantic, though you can access things quickly with the D-pad if you can remember which tiles you put them on.

Anyway, I was soon running around again like in the village, stopping occasionally to shoot a few of them, before backing away again to get more space. Leon's movement abilities are limited, he can't climb onto roofs or jump, so wherever I go, the not-zombies can catch me. Fortunately enemies announce their presence by yelling, they're very vocal, so even though my field of view is limited while aiming, I'm still generally aware when I'm about to be attacked.

LATER

 

One thing that's certain about Resident Evil 4, it is not a cover shooter... except for when I'm standing in this one bit of this room for some reason. Leon just really wants to automatically duck behind this thing when I'm not holding the aim button. This feature was actually still fairly unusual in games at this point, as RE4 came out a year after Kill Switch and two years before Gears of War.

Sadly I killed all the enemies over by the sandbags with my first shot, as one of them was holding dynamite. It's so satisfying to shoot dynamite, as it just wipes out anyone next to it, but it does mean you have to be bloody quick with your screenshot key if you want to capture the moment. So right now I'm using this cover to hide from some nasty looking floor traps instead.

I eventually came out of hiding and leapt over those sandbags, only to find that the enemies had hidden mantraps there as well! Fortunately I managed to accidentally land in the safe spot between them all so the joke's on them.

This path led me back to the heart of the village again, and I got a sudden sense of déjà vu as I found myself running around the houses fighting an overwhelming swarm of not-zombies again.

I've picked up the Insignia Key so I can unlock a door here and carry on towards the plot, but I also bought a map showing all the treasures and now I have a chance to grab anything I missed so I'm going to do that first. I took the north exit leading to the farm area and found it still deserted; I guess the not-zombies only respawn in an area if the player's been given a reason to go back there, otherwise they remain depopulated. No grinding allowed.

CHAPTER 1-3

I used Insignia Key to unlock the door that all the villagers disappeared through when they heard the sound of a church bell, and I think I've just identified the church and the bell responsible. Not a whole lot of people wandering around in this graveyard though. The game switches gears between high stress areas like the village centre and low stress areas where I can soak in the ambience without it turning into Serious Sam again.

The Merchant's hanging out nearby and he's still as cheerful as ever, somehow. I had a bit of money after selling some treasures I'd picked up from the ceiling, so I upgraded my pistol's ammo capacity and damage per shot. Then I immediately won a better pistol by shooting a few more blue medallions, just in time to make me feel like an idiot for spending my money.

Ashley's apparently inside that church, but I can't get in and rescue her yet, not without an emblem to stick on the front door. You'd think a hand grenade might get the job done against an old wooden door, but nope.

I've found a puzzle behind the church, but it seems to be optional and unrelated to the door. I have to go check the gravestones for the correct symbols, then spin the dial a few times to light them all up. The tricky part is that it can only move in increments of 3 or 4, so I'm going to have to hit a wrong symbol at some point, then turn it off again later.

Anyway I got my reward without much trouble, but I can't actually sell it because it attaches to another piece of treasure to make it more valuable. At some point in the game I'll get this treasure fully loaded with gems and sell it for a high price, but right now it's best that I keep hold of it. It doesn't take up any inventory space, it's fine.

Aww dammit, not the boulder again! At least I'm ready to quickly move my hand back to the mouse at the end this time when it wants me to hit the mouse buttons.

Oh it wanted me to press X and C instead. Well there's another pointless death to add to my count.

Oh damn, I know where this is. It's the lake: the furthest I've ever gotten in the game, or close to it. I can't recall what exactly drove me to quit here, though the game probably didn't have to try too hard by this point to be honest. I wasn't entirely gripped by the gameplay on that earlier playthrough.

Fun fact: you can shoot the water here for a surprise!

Okay I'm going to give the lake another try. Hopefully I've grown enough as a person to not throw my toys out of the pram this time just because the game's put up a little bit of a challenge.

ONE SHORT CUTSCENE LATER

Alright I'm in a boat, hooked onto a monster, getting dragged around a lake. I have infinite harpoons and a very visible crosshair to replace my rubbish laser sight. Now what?

So do I just throw these things at the monster? Do I wait for a weak point to appear? Do I throw it at that branch he's dragging me towards?

Crap, the monster slammed the boat into the branch! That cost me a chunk of health and I got knocked into water! Which means more button mashing. HIT 'X' TO SWIM!!!

I got back into the boat and this time he came at me with his mouth opened, so I held my harpoon steady and I waited for my moment to strike. I waited too long, he knocked me into the water, I lost health, and then I had to swim back.

Third time around I threw the harpoons at him without hesitation, but it didn't make any difference. I still got knocked into the water. Only this time I apparently wasn't hammering 'X' fast enough and Leon got eaten.

You know, I wasn't angry when Leon got his head chainsawed off out of nowhere, or when I got killed by those QTEs, but this genuinely pisses me off. Man, it's no wonder I quit here first time around. If you're on the fence about this game like I was and you reach this lake, you're just going to put the controller down and walk away.

I wonder what it is about this that bothers me so much. It might be the feeling that I've been forced into a different game without knowing the rules, so all I can do is keep throwing myself back in until I work them out through trial and error. There's something here I didn't intuit and until I figure out what it is I'm doomed to get clowned on by this fish over and over again.

Right, I'm going to have to grit my teeth, get back in the boat... and check a walkthrough.

I CAN STEER THE DAMN BOAT!

That's what I was missing! This makes so much more sense now. With that little bit of information I was able to dodge the obstacles and beat the fish on my second try. It wasn't a flawless run, I still got knocked into the water a couple of times, but I got my win and finished another chapter.

Man, there's something about games that give me tunnel vision when it comes to problem solving. If I was in a real boat in real life I would've tried steering immediately, even though I was getting dragged around, but I was in aim mode so I just assumed movement was impossible.

CHAPTER 2-1

This is a nice little area, with boxes hanging above a river that need to be shot down to form stepping stones across the river. It's a little bit like the puzzles you'd find in Tomb Raider 2013. In fact the modern Tomb Raider games are a lot like this game, now that I think about it. They even copied the bloody QTEs.

Right, I've got the emblem from behind the waterfall. Time to head back to the church, use it to get the door open, and then rescue Ashley.

A SHORT WALK FROM THE WATERFALL

Oh balls, another boss fight so soon?

It's just me and this giant tree-wielding mutant trapped in an area right now, and he doesn't even want to acknowledge all these bullets I'm firing into him. I upgraded my submachine gun right before the fight and there's ammo for it lying around so I'm fairly sure it's hurting him, but he just won't flinch!

There's a few shacks in here I can hide in as well, but that's probably not a smart idea seeing as he can demolish them with one swing of his tree. It's not too hard to dodge, once you know there's a QTE coming up, but I don't have my hand on the mouse while I'm running around so when it says 'press both mouse buttons' it takes me a second to get there.

It's that dog from the start of the game! He's come to rescue me! Or at least distract the monster for a bit.

With the dog's help I was able to take the creature down and a gross tentacle thing came out of his back. So I shot that for a bit and... the creature got back up again for round two.

I eventually got him though, and I claimed a ton of money for it. Though not as much as I spent on the gun upgrades. The door opened automatically, for some reason, and I was able to carry on to the church to save Ashley! No idea what happened to to the dog, but I hope they escaped okay. They're a good dog.

It's another puzzle!

The puzzles in this really haven't been roadblocks for me so far, or even speed bumps. I got on with solving this one so quickly that it was only after I was basically done that I realised how easy it is to spot the shape of the white emblem in the blue and green colours and use that as a guide.

I've done it, I've rescued Ashley! Well, I've met Ashley at least.

A message popped up explaining that I can tell her to stop or follow me, and that I can give her my precious healing items when she's in trouble! I can't really complain too much about sharing my herbs with my AI sidekick, seeing as I said it was fine in my Resident Evil 5 review, but I'm not looking forward to getting punished for her mistakes.

On the plus side, Ashley is very good at getting out of my line of fire, as she generally stands behind me and ducks when I aim, and I can just leave her some place safe before the shooting starts. This is still an escort mission, she's not Alyx from Half-Life 2 or Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite, but she certainly seems more fun to have around than Natalya from GoldenEye.

Anyway, we ended up back at that town square again for the third time. It's a lot quieter at night though and they'd put in new boxes to keep my ammo stocks up, so I just sniped the enemies, set off a few sneaky traps, and carried on through familiar areas until I took a new exit and reached a house... which was soon under siege by a horde of not-zombies.

CHAPTER 2-2

This time I'm stuck in one place, unable to leap out of the window and run around.

I thought I was doing really well here, shooting everyone who came up to the window. It didn't even occur to me that there'd be more windows I'd have to cover, because it takes my full attention just killing these guys! So I was very surprised when Leon got killed by a horde that'd crept in behind me. And annoyed.

I checked a walkthrough (because I'm a big baby who doesn't like figuring out the rules through trial and error), and discovered that there are bookcases to push in front of the other windows, and the game gives you just enough time to do it. I also learned that there's another set of windows upstairs and the not-zombies pour in through them as well! There's apparently 30-40 of these guys that need killing in total before it's over. Joy.

The weird thing is though, I didn't quit here in frustration. In fact once I'd survived the siege and saved, I was ready to keep going. I've fought a boss, I've found Ashley and I've got more than enough screenshots so I can turn the game off now. Though I don't really want to.


CONCLUSION

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Sometimes I'll play a game and think 'man, they had some interesting ideas here, why did no one else ever do this?' Never happened when I was playing Resident Evil 4 though, not because its ideas aren't interesting, but because there isn't a concept or feature in this that didn't make its way into some other game. I can see bits of RE4 in Tomb Raider 2013 and The Last of Us for sure, and apparently enough of it got into System Shock 3 that it actually turned into Dead Space. The game had such an impact on the genre that over-the-shoulder aiming is just how third-person shooters work now and the third-person camera was basically a solved problem by this point.

Fortunately the developers had the talent and resources to do the ideas justice, as this is a really slick and polished game for its time, with top-tier production values. It was designed to show off what the GameCube could do and it does the job. It does less well at showing off what the PlayStation 2 can do, as it's missing some of the effects, but it's not really all that different. It's gritty and brown whatever you play it on.

It's hard for me to really judge the story, because I've barely seen any of it, but it definitely seems to have a much better cutscene-to-gameplay ratio than Metal Gear Solid 3. Also Leon's a great main character... in this anyway. He got very dour in RE6 and the CGI movies, but here he never takes anything too seriously. Plus he's got a habit of saying things that are just very slightly off from what a normal person would say, and he's fantastic at jumping out of windows. I haven't found a roof or ladder yet too high for him to leap from, and he always nails the landing.

Some Resident Evil fans at the time were less impressed by all the window-jumping as it was a real change of pace for the series. There's still plenty of survival horror resource management and even a few puzzles, but you don't have to worry about what key items you're bringing out, only what guns, grenades and healing items. The shift in camera perspective changes everything as you can take a far more active role in fights; combat's not just about getting some distance and then shooting until the moaning stops anymore. Well, okay it is, but this time you get to aim the gun, and target body parts to tactically disable enemies. Plus you can actually see the enemies, they're not just lurking somewhere off-screen, hidden by the awkward camera angles! Dodging them has become easier too I found, though escaping them is a bit trickier. They're persistent little bastards, able to come at you through doors and windows and swarm you up close, or throw weapons and explosives at a distance (and there's a lot more distance now with all the outdoor areas). They're also more intelligent and quicker than zombies, and they like to spread out to make you split your attention.

I get why fans were annoyed at the time, no one likes it when a developer declares their subgenre obsolete, especially if they've been following a story and characters through the games, but for me this plays so much better. They've taken a lot of the deliberate limitations and frustrations out and replaced them with gameplay.

Plus it gets 5 million points for dropping the slow transition animations whenever you use a door. I get that it's supposed to be tense, but it doesn't help the atmosphere any if I want to yell at the screen 'Just hurry up already!'

I can't help but compare the game to my beloved Resident Evil 5 though and it falls short in a lot of ways. No seriously, it does. I'm a big fan of RE5's co-op and the way it lets you replay any chapter to earn a better score. On the other hand, RE4's combat seems a bit less frantic, which gives you time to think about what the enemies are doing. Plus you can actually pause and take a moment in the heat of battle here to browse through your iconic inventory box, maybe even shuffle things around a little to make room to pick up one extra herb.

But RE4 has one big downside compared to the later games and that's the archaic tank controls right out of 1996. I don't mind being stuck in one spot when aiming, RE5 does that too, but RE5 lets you sidestep, switch weapons outside of the inventory, swing the knife with a single button, use one analogue stick to turn while the using the other to move... tons of things, and it's less awkward to play as a result. It makes you feel like you're fighting the zombies instead of the controls and I don't think it's any less scary as a result, just less horrifying. The HD Edition doesn't resolve any of RE4's control frustrations and even adds a few of its own on the PC version if you want to use mouse and keys.

On the plus side, RE4 has been designed to make third-person shooting work on a gamepad without auto-aim or lock on, with enemies that give you just enough time to get that laser sight pointed where you want it without making it easy for you. However, playing it on a port that supports a more precise controller like a Wiimote or a mouse messes with the intended experience, making it more fun.

Getting 80%+ accuracy might make ammo conservation a little easier than the devs planned (I don't know what a typical accuracy score is), but lining up headshot after headshot doesn't break the game, at least I don't think it did; it just sparks joy. Every now and again a head will explode, but you're not going to be racking up one-hit kills with a standard pistol no matter how skilled you are.

Plus death can come very swiftly on any version if you become complacent, and I actually had more trouble with the village square fight when I got around to the Wii game just because I'd been through it so many times by then that I'd started to take my success for granted (the adaptive difficulty might have also been a factor). Meanwhile I was playing it fine with the broken Sourcenext port with just a keyboard. The game's so polished that even the bad PC port is slick and fun to play...until it crashes. Fortunately there's plenty of save points around, they don't need ink ribbons, and the game even has checkpoints so you're never forced to replay too much.

I'm not sure how often you're supposed to be dying though. I got Leon killed about six times in five hours on 'Normal' in the HD Edition: the first death because I sacrificed Leon for not picking up that pendant hanging over the pit, one because of the lake monster, the last two in that bloody house siege, and the rest because of QTEs. Have I mentioned how much I hate QTEs? The fact you can't turn them off even in the HD Edition is one of my biggest issues with this game, bigger than the controls, even bigger than the laser sight... because that laser sight is tiny. They should've added a cat that chases it around, something, just to give you an idea where it is on screen. The Wii version gets it right by just replacing it with a nice visible crosshair. Oh also the puzzles have been fine so far but I know that there's a sliding block puzzle coming up eventually, so I'm deducting points for that as well.

Surprisingly escorting Ashley hasn't been an issue so far, though I can see that changing later on, and the boss fights... add variety. I've never been keen on boss fights in general, but that's more of a 'me' problem, and I appreciate how the game keeps mixing up the pace and the gameplay to keep things from becoming repetitive. Plus it lets you backtrack for missed treasures and medallions if you feel like getting away from all the stress for a while, and the inventory management's good for that too. Another thing that helps with stress is upgrading your guns and health and effortlessly cutting through the enemies that were chasing you around a few hours earlier. Until parasites explode out of their heads and starting whipping their spiky tails around that is. Beware the ones with red eyes.

The game's also pretty long, even longer than this article in fact and much longer than the previous games. It apparently takes around 16 hours to get through the story, and beating the game unlocks even more game modes to play. You got Assignment: Ada and The Mercenaries in the GameCube original, and they added Separate Ways in the versions that came after it.

I have to be honest, I've been putting off writing about Resident Evil 4 because I've never enjoyed it much and I don't like hating on games people like. But in a surprise twist ending I found myself won over by it this time! So far anyway. Like I said I haven't reached the sliding block puzzle yet. The game has a ton of personality and charm, it's definitely not a run of the mill third-person shooter, and if you can get past the tank controls there's a lot to appreciate about the combat. I suppose it makes sense that it turned out so well, considering that it's actually something like the fifth version of RE4 to enter development. Capcom just kept starting new RE4 projects and scrapping them when it became obvious they weren't meeting expectations. Well, except for the one that was turned into Devil May Cry.

But what's the best version to play? Any of the HD Versions I suppose, the PC game in particular if you like aiming with the mouse. Plus the Wii version is great if you like aiming with the Wiimote, and the GameCube version's still pretty good. Probably best to avoid the mobile game though I've heard.

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Thanks for reading! If you want to share your thoughts on Resident Evil 4 or the Resident Evil franchise in general then drop a comment into the box below. If you just want to take a guess at what the next game is, you can do that too!