As I touched on in my post regarding RE7, my experience with this gaming franchise has been spotty at best. When I grabbed RE4 off my shelf the other day I was reminded that I grabbed this game from Target on clearance for $9.98 some time ago. How much time has passed since I purchased, who knows, but I grabbed it despite owning it for the GameCube as well.
I installed RE4 on my Xbox One over the weekend, knowing I was ready to tackle the game finally. It would be a few days later before I'd actually find the time to sit down and play however. Once I did I was ready to experience a "new" Resident Evil experience. Going into the game I still knew very little, which was mostly intentional. I let the cut scenes play, setting up the story and once I got control of Leon Kennedy I immediately was reminded of how old this game was. Veteran RE fans by this time were used to the "tank" controls, but coming off of playing RE7 this game and it's controls were obviously a step back so to speak. While I have gotten used to the controls for the most part after about 5 hours of game play, I still don't like them. I will go on record and say I haven't tried to remap the buttons...if that is even possible. I've gotten down the combat mechanics, but I still hate having to press & hold the left bumper to wield the knife.
I remember people saying that RE4 was a different style of RE game and it didn't take long to realize that. Gone is the familiar setting. No cities, no police stations, replacing these with a setting somewhere in Europe. You're not evening fighting zombies...at least I think. The enemies, Ganados, seem to function like normal humans judging from what you find in the first village. They even communicate, though I don't know what language they are speaking. Since I'm still in the middle of the game I'm trying to figure out what's going on, but from best I can tell from the cut scenes and what not there is some sort of mind control going on.
At first I wasn't all that impressed with this game if I'm being completely honest. I found the controls to be very cumbersome and Leon to move very slugglish. Of course after I realized I could make him run and got used to the controls my opinion started to change. I also made the game harder than I needed to as I was trying to conserve as much ammo as possible and just use my knife to attack the Ganados. I had often heard of how scare ammo was in RE games, but much to my surprise I didn't find this to as big of an issue as I thought going in. I've learned that I can't go blazing in and shooting everything, but I also don't have to be as stingy. This made the game more fun for me. It didn't take long before I was fully immersed into this game, so much so that I opted to play over watching the recent UNC vs. Duke men's basketball showdown at the other night!
So far I haven't found the game to be overly difficult, but this boss, El Gigante did give me a pretty good run for my money. While the game isn't open world and more linear, I have found that backtracking and re-visiting previous areas has it's rewards...and dangers. I may have cheated a little and used a guide at times in my early play of the game so I knew this boss fight was coming up. I tried backtracking a little to see if I could find some more health since I was running low of reserves, however I was caught off guard by several Ganados. Eventually I figured it wasn't worth the time (or ammo) and turned around to face the giant himself.
By the way, I hope you freed the dog caught in the bear trap at the very beginning of the game! I instinctively knew setting the dog free was the right thing to do, but I didn't necessarily expect the dog to come to my aid in the battle w/ El Gigante.
I continued playing after taking down the giant and proceeded back to the church to rescue Ashley, the president's daughter. Shortly after the cut scenes that helped advance the story I saved my game and quit for the night. While I did know I was on a rescue mission, I failed to really think about having to escort her to safety. Why? Because I friggin' hate escort missions! I hated escorting survivors to safety in the Williamette Parkview Mall (Dead Rising) so much that I didn't even want to attempt unlocking the "Frank the Pimp" achievement!
There are two things in modern games I simply cannot stand. Escorting survivors and quick time events. Well if you've played this game then you know that's two strikes against the game for me already. I wasn't ready to tackle having to keep Ashley safe as we had to go back through the village so and it was late so I called it a night. However I've read up a little on what's to come next in the game and it appears that commanding her and keeping her safe isn't as bad as I thought it would. No matter because I'm fully vested in this game and seeing how the story plays out.
For me that is the sign of how truly good a game is. That despite my frustrations with the controls, or difficulty level or whatever, that I'm determined to see the game to it's end regardless. Growing up the games I played didn't have this level of story telling, so the game play had to be the thing that hooked me. Now with modern games the story has to keep me intrigued to keep on playing. I have a huge backlog of games to be played. More games than I do time. If the game doesn't captivate me early on then my mindset is why waste what valuable time I have playing a game that I don't like? Thankfully this 4th installment of the RE franchise has done a good job at grabbing my attention. Now my only regret is it taking me nearly 14 years to actually play this game since it's release in 2005.
