Resident Evil 4 Review

This game is still survival-horror. It is difficult, but not in a cheap way. Enemies don’t take unrealistically large amounts of gunfire to die. They don’t respawn. Rather, the game is difficult because your foes are fast and smart. It is difficult because there is so much stuff you have to do to avoid being killed. It presents a fair challenge. You won’t die because the developers created an unfair shortage of health pick-ups or because you couldn’t fend off enemies due to a lack of ammo. When you die, it will be your fault, not that of an unfair design.

And this is where the game makes you feel extremely in-control. The controls don’t work against you. The environment doesn’t work against you. The level of items doesn’t work against you. The playing field is level. Your intelligence and skill is the only factor.

On a technical level, Resident Evil 4 is virtually perfect. There is no noticeable slowdown. There is no real choppiness or pop-up. There are no problems with hit detection. There are no longer any significant in-game load times. Clipping is present here, but you’d be really pressed to notice or care–it’s barely worth noting. There are no significant (much less gameplay-hindering) technical issues in this game whatsoever.

The only real criticism against the gameplay is this: the interactivity of the environments is slightly inconsistent. Why is it possible to blow up barred windows with grenades but a thousand blasts from a shotgun can’t budge a dining table chair? Why can I push a bookcase across a room but can’t push a hay wagon out of my way?

This sounds like a fairly significant issue, but the key word here is context. The game design lets you know, through environment-based puzzles, exactly what is and isn’t interactive. And since the progression is fairly linear and there are few moments where you aren’t making progress through the game, in the context of the design, you won’t think about shooting a dining room table chair because you’re always doing something else. The game doesn’t give you any opportunities to screw around. You don’t get to take a break.

The gameplay is near perfect. It offers enemy encounters that have tons of depth and complexity (in terms of using your environment), a complex strategic element that makes you think about combat, a very cool context-sensitive action button system, great controls, and some of the best boss battles of all time. And it’s scary as hell. Make no mistake about it: this is some of the most fun you’ll have in a videogame for some time to come.

Gameplay/Entertainment Score: 10 out of 10.

AUDIO/VISUAL QUALITY:

The brilliance doesn’t end with gameplay. Resident Evil 4 easily follows suit in the technical department.

Words simply cannot convey just how amazing this game looks in motion. You have to play it for yourself to get a full grasp of the beauty of the graphics. The consistency, the quality, the overall excellence of the graphics in this game permeate every single inch of the experience

From an artistic standpoint, what’s here doesn’t disappoint. Enemy designs are fresh and compelling. The various settings of the game are original, and have a style unlike anything seen before in a Resident Evil game. They are still dark, atmospheric, and gritty, while maintaining a sense of originality that is refreshing after the now-somewhat-generic art direction of the older games.

But this is really an understatement. Here you will find some of the best art in any game of this generation. Truly spectacular stuff. From the character designs to the environment details to everything in between, the art in this game is stunning.

This level of perfection carries over into the technical department. The detail in this game is through the roof. Capcom cut no corners here.