The PC version is reviled across the board by fans of the game, fwiw, so I think you made the right decision. The Wii controls, on the other hand, make it the best game I’ve played on that console, and along with House of the Dead/Overkill one of the few that I wouldn’t really care to see on any other platform afterwards.
Walkthroughs are fine and not particularly damaging to the gameplay. Most of it is just knowing where to find stuff, which adds nothing to the game’s fun for me if I do it on my own. The real turning point is when and if the controls become natural to you, and you start dropping suplexes and precision fire without thinking twice.
Dude that section is one of the many highlights of the game! The idea is to think of that village as a total playground. Just be creative and lure zombies to their death, escape through windows and find safety in a different house when things get rough. It all ends when you kill something like 14-ish zambies, but once it clicks, you’ll wish you were taking on 1400.
And yes, the game does a pretty tremendous job of introducing all sorts of wacky scenarios and variety that lasts upwards 15-20 hours right to the end.
If you are having trouble taking out typical zombies, you can always put a bullet in the leg and then run up for a suplex/kick while they are hobbled over. Pretty useful trick that saves ammo and works for much of the game.
If you have a Classic Controller or even an old Gamecube controller, you can plug those in and RE4 Wii will instantly, automatically give you classic dual-stick controls.
But in my opinion, the Wii remote works really well in RE4. Far preferable.
If the PC version had only had proper mouse controls. If only.
I imagine the Wii version to provide something more or less comparable, but as I don’t own a Wii and have been less than whelmed by the game selection for it so far (or the Wiimote and nunchuk as controls for most games I’ve played with them), it doesn’t do me much good.
Wouldn’t that just kill all the tension? At least that’s the argument I get when I call for better console controls.
People gushing over the RE4 Wii controls is what made me realize that a waggle future is not for me. I just couldn’t get to grip with them in that game, and much prefer a standard dual analogue controller for these kinds of games.
My only problem with the Wii version was that the aiming reticle doesn’t move the camera when you hit the edge of the screen. It’s a bit counter intuitive to use the nunchuk for that.
That’s why I keep stopping and starting this game. I play it for an hour and end up getting frustrated with the control scheme. Then, a few months later, I remember we own a copy and I pop it back in determined to overcome whatever it was that pushed me away last time. The player movement + camera + aiming just never quite clicks for me and my adventures always end in frustration because I feel like I’m fighting the controls more than the zombies.
I wonder if I’d have a better time if I used the Classic controller?
It’d be just like it was on Gamecube, which was pretty awesome. I haven’t spent enough time with RE4 on Wii to say that I can’t get used to the motion control, but it seems like a weird design choice to tie the camera movement to the left stick instead of just having the Wiimote control the view entirely.
I’m playing the PC version right now, using a PS2 controller, and I’m having
no trouble controlling Leon. It seems very MGS, with the codec messages, and, yes, it’s hard to aim, but that makes it kind of frantic and fun.
I will say the Simon Sez/ Indigo Prophecy styled action sequences (hit buttons X & Y now!) kind of suck, mainly because the PC version displays the buttons as letters instead of the PS2 symbols. It would be easier with a 360 gamepad.
And there are infinite mods that put the Gamecube’s textures into the PC version. I didn’t bother to download any, because they’re around 1.5 gb, but I did download a high-res jacket for Leon, which is what I’m looking at most of the time, and I’m fine with it.
Update: I got the mods here. Get the laser sight-mod, too.
Update 2: I am SO getting this high-res mod tonight and reinstalling RE4.
I have played this game over and over again on the Cube, the PS2 and the Wii and the stick controls are just too programmed into my brain for me to try and re-learn things.
There is definitely a state of mind and rhythm to this game that you have to learn and accept. I distinctly remember realizing this after continually failing at the mercenaries mini-game and then suddenly figuring out how it should work.
I couldn’t get past that siege in a house, shortly after rescuing the girly. Tried for an hour, and then quit out of frustration and because the creepyness was getting to me.
You’ve got that right. I’m currently replaying MGS2, and yeah, those controls take a bit of brain power to keep it all together. And I love how they use the ‘circle’ button to fire, as opposed to the ‘X’ button like every other PS2 game in the world. I think Kitsune once wrote that it had to do with the X symbol meaning something negative in Japan.
No, because that’s essentially what the Wii provided and the game was just fine with absolutely no tweaking. Add some more tangible benefits for headshots and crippling injuries and you would really have something great. The control/tension thing has a lot more to do with your field of vision, the trade off between shooting and moving, etc, than with being able to have supernatural accuracy.
People gushing over the RE4 Wii controls is what made me realize that a waggle future is not for me. I just couldn’t get to grip with them in that game, and much prefer a standard dual analogue controller for these kinds of games.
The only “waggle” in that game is almost entirely optional, and you retain the exact same “attack position and stab with a button press” option the other console versions offered (you can shake the wiimote to do a quick stab, and it works remarkably well). Other than that, there are a few QTE segments that require shaking to make Leon run fast enough (which is about equally annoying when compared to the “mashing x button rapidly” action it replaced).
What the Wii brings to the table is point and kill, and because of the way the game’s designed (with a character onscreen whose arms guide your eyes) it sidesteps the pointing vs aiming problem that Wii FPS games can have (Metroid 3 dealt with it successfully by having your weird floating arm onscreen).
Whatever your problems are with the waggle future thing, this is not the windmill you want to be tilting at.
I’m about as far as I’ve ever been, which isn’t far. Starting on Chapter 1-3, which I never finished on my other playthrough.
I get the whole moving vs. shooting thing. I like that fine, I understand that as a tension/gameplay choice. What I still hate is that when it’s time to move, I still move like an idiot. It sucks when I want to run past someone, which involves running in this goofy half circle wide arc completely around them, during which I have to completely look away from them. I understand some of the field of view limitations working for stuff sneaking up on you, but it’s just infuriating that I can’t move like a normal human. It sucks that the game wants to reward and encourage stunning/crippling with a gunshot then running in for the kick kill, but the transition between the two is so awkward. Half the time I let go of the wrong thing first and instead of running in during that split second, I look straight up helplessly for just long enough for someone to get a pitchfork in me. It sucks that if I see someone slightly around the corner in the distances waving a stick of dynamite and I’m at the wrong angle, I have to turn completely away from them, run in that direction, then turn back at them to aim again, during which time I am exploding.
Fight vs. flight, interesting gameplay. RE4 so far, terrible technical execution of it. Some of this will keep getting better as the controls get more familiar, but it’s stupid that the controls are so clunky in the first place, and some of my complaints are just how Leon moves.
If you stick with it, you might end up seeing the logic in it. Or you’ll just continue to be convinced that everyone that liked it was simply delusional about obvious technical issues.
The transition between shooting and QTEing is difficult to get the hang of at first, but you’ll probably get the hang of it with time, particularly when it comes to crowd control. The siege scene later on is a great showcase for those moments. Footage of people absolutely destroying mercenaries mode really showed me how relatively limited my application of the RE4 tool set is, much like Godhand youtubes did for me back in the day.
