RE4/THE BITTER END: A Survival Horror and Gaming Community

RESIDENT EVIL 4

By Trent
This review is for the gamecube version of Resident Evil 4.

Gameplay

The gameplay is amazing. Capcom has finally made sense of the way in which you carry items, by giving you a grid in which you can move and reposition your items so that they fit. A shotgun, for instance, will now take up about 10 spaces. Sometimes, you may have to flip it upside down to make it fit into the few slots that you may have. And you can also do things such as increase your health, tell Ashley what to do ( such as "hide"), jump out of windows, and other things. And there is also no auto-aim. You must now rely on a laser attached to your gun.
As far as your weapons go, you must now buy most of your weapons from a merchant. To get the money (pesetas) to buy it, you must kill Ganados, which are brain-washed villagers youcan survive a lot of punishment, and who aren't always defeated because of a decapitation. After a long time, though, the gameplay gets rather repetitive as you solve the very few puzzles that the game has, and try to protect the ever-so-kidnappable Ashley Graham, the President's daughter. And as a little heads-up, when she's with you, she can be kidnapped by enemies. But if you want to see it, don't worry. It happens as part of the storyline throughout the whole game.
Oh, and your enemies can now throw things at you, use chainsaws, climb ladder, speak, strategize, throw you around like garbage, and, of course, kill you with no mercy. But don't worry. To add on to the roundhouse kicks and other martial arts moves, you now have the power of flash, incendiary, and regular grenades at your disposal. Your knife is also no longer in your inventory, which is something that we RE fans have been waiting for for awhile. You can also do roundhouse kicks and other martial arts moves to show your enemies that you mean business. And you must also know how to spin an analog stick and press buttons at an insane rate to dodge certain doom, or else you're -well -doomed.

Voice acting

Wow, the voice acting is actually worth rating the time around, as the RE games are known for horrible voice actors, making rating the voice-acting just a waste of time. But now, there are no teenage macho-men proving that they are going through puberty by screaming like a dying squirrel (Steve), captains telling you not to go through that door!! (Wesker), partners telling you that they've got THIS (Barry), or people squealing their name out in girlish screeches of delight (Alfred). Except for the script----which is a line, coincidentally, that will be overused during a one-minute-long cutscene----which sometimes gets a little shaky and repetitive, Capcom has outdone itself with the dialogue.

Camera Angle

Remember how people would complain until they turned blue about Resident Evil's horrible camera angles? Well now, the camera angles are amazing. For example, when you do a roundhouse kick, the camera will back up and swerve/shake a little, giving you that sense of action. Your view, when fighting, is also over the shoulder.

Scare Factor

This is where everything begins to fall apart. You see, if you?re already a Resident Evil fan, this game won't scare you very much. But otherwise, you may freak out sometimes. I'm afraid (funny that I should use that word) that you will have to turn off the light's close the door and blinds, and tell yourself that this isn't an action game to truly be afraid.

Storyline

Well, the storyline this time is quite different from the other RE games. For one, Umbrella is dead. For two, this game takes place 6 years after the others. 3, there are no zombies. And 4, a religious cult, seemingly one that follows God, is involved. I say that it probably follows God because there is a portrait of Jesus Christ in part of the game. But this cult seems to be money and power-crazed, making up most of the storyline.

Graphics

The graphics are amazing, but there is one problem. Because part of the horror-element has been left out, the graphics don't seem as good when compared to the Remake or RE: Zero. Everything seems bigger, most likely because your character is always so darn close to the screen. It seems that Capcom couldn't afford to make the graphics too much better since they knew that you would be jumping on top of your enemies for much of the game, which could have caused a few glitches because of the programming.

Replay Value

There are a few costumes to be unlocked, and two cool minigames as well, one of them tying directly into the storyline. Once you do the right things, you can go back through the game and blast away your enemies with different weapons. But besides that, there isn't much replay value thrown into the main game.

Overall
Gameplay: 9.8
Voice acting: 9.8 (Surprised?)
Camera Angle: 10
Scare Factor: 7.5
Storyline: 9.5
Graphics: 9.7
Replay Value: 9
Overall: 9.8

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