Resident Evil 4

Today I'm going to be looking at a game that I'm willing to bet the vast majority of you have heard of even if you haven't gotten around to playing it.

Resident Evil is one of those series that seems to have been around forever and therefore must be working off a tried and tested formula, except for one thing: They're terrible. As a lover of the series I say this with respect in the same way I would say that I don't like The Beatles but I respect what they have done for the music world or Jesus was pretty influential for a fictional character and now I've raised the controversy bar up a couple of notches I'll swiftly move on.

You play Leon Kennedy, a former police officer from Racoon City and all round sarcastic self aware arse with inexplicably good hair, and you're tasked with rescuing the presidents daughter, Ashley, who has been captured by a mysterious cult called Los Illuminados. Leon must travel to a vague rural Spanish village to find Ashley but the trouble starts as soon as he obliviously wanders into the first typically eerie and deserted little hamlet.

From there on out Leon is set upon by infect citizens of wherever-the-hell-we-are-

ville, which are different from zombies because as we find out these villages have been infected with a mind controlling parasite known as Las Plagas willingly rather than trying to escape from a flesh hungry hoard or the undead before becoming a more screamy rack of ribs.
Whilst on this rescue mission Leon gets captured and is injected with Las Plagas but escapes with the help of another captee, Luis, an ex Los Illuminados researcher.

Leon must battle against the growing parasite inside of him and the masses of infect Spaniards that want to murder him to take back the presidents daughter and save the world from a mass introduction to freaky worm things growing out of people's faces.

I said earlier about the Resident Evil series being terrible; terrible writing, below average gameplay with lots of needless fetch quests and repetitive boss battles, inelegant shooting mechanics with the inability to shoot from the hip or while moving, but RE 4 is the stand out of the series. Yes, it still have a lot of those thing but it refines, it making the fetch quests a bit shorter from point to point enabling less forgetting where you were going and having fewer boss battles so when they do repeat it doesn't feel so arduous. You still can't shoot from the hip or while moving but that's a staple at this point so you can forgive it, and the enemies aren't exactly fast so it makes it less of a miasma of bodies and snarls.

The story is fine, it's not stellar but its wacky and funny, I mean you're saving the presidents daughter, you're essentially Liam Neeson with a blonde emo fringe. The good points of the story outweigh the bad in a sense, all the meetings between Leon and the cult leader is a back and forth made up by over-elaborate threats and quippy one liners taken right out of a cheesy 80s action film. It does shine when squeaky voiced midget Napoleon gets introduced warping the typical feel of being overrun by ravenous villagers and adding an over the top comedy element to it which I like.

Overall, I like Resident Evil 4. It doesn't take itself too seriously which in a world consisting of realistic shooters far as the eye can see is a great thing to have to wind down and have fun.
Earlier I mentioned the bad points and one glaring annoyance is Ashley. To start with, she's your typical stock damsel in distress whimpering, screaming and running away at everything little thing, which in the middle of an onslaught of infected making there way to the Leon buffet, makes her a liability. You will shoot her and if she dies you have to start from your last save point lending itself to your increasing level of fucked off, you can tell her what to do but she interprets those as suggestions more than orders and it does little to help. The saving grace is that you can send her to hide in dumpsters and let you do all the hard work without a flailing mini skirt running around that takes your bullets as well as a pain if glass takes a sledgehammer. You have to play as her as well as escorting her which is painful, she has no defensive abilities and therefore her playable parts are just lengthened find open door button puzzles for Leon to progress.

In my opinion RE 4 is one of the best shooters of all time which might be a bit confusing. What I mean is it feels like the developers cared about it, it achieves what it sets out to do which is make you laugh and provide a good background to an ever increasing challenge and, while it might not hit every beat without fail, it feels more organic that your run of the mill shooters like CoD or Gears Of War railroading you through scenery to get to the next shorting gallery. Resident Evil 4 is the game I recommend to everyone and is on my "games you must play" list because it stands out and above all is fun, a lot of fun. Challenging yes but that's the point, you don't want a movie otherwise you would have watched a movie, you want an interactive story that unfolds in interesting ways and that's what you have here.

I urge you to pick up Resident Evil 4 which is easy because it's on pretty much every platform. Until then however, keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.