OK, cool. So it’s an action game? Maybe that’s the problem. My wife and I were expecting survival horror. We wanted a Halloween game, and this just isn’t it. Playing it like an action game might change everything, so I’ll try that.
I think it’s more like ‘you know how everyone has a friend whose girlfriend thinks the Godfather is bad?’.
Yes, it being a Resident Evil game is something of a misnomer. Now, as an action game it can frustrate you because it’s still got a very RE-like controls cheme. But that’s what the game is. Your ammo will wax and wane but it won’t ever be like the earlier games in the series where every bullet is precious (ammo for a given gun drops more frequently as the amount you have lowers). The tension comes from facing more enemies, from the set pieces (which ranged from lame to interesting, IMO), and as others have said learning what tactics to use and when.
Its kind of like Dead Rising on guided rails. The plot didnt do much for me, but shooting zombies heads off and those leather face dudes with the chainsaw was just pure mayhem fun. A few gun upgrades were cool
RE4 is action-horror, not survival-horror. If you’re looking for something to compete with Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, etc., look elsewhere.
I’ll pipe in to disagree - I tried this game out on the Wii and it was damned near unplayable.
Back during the early Playstation days, poor controls in games like this were forgivable. But that was over ten years ago - there is absolutely no reason for a game to have such awful controls, on any platform.
95% genius 5% retarded
Was this game fucked up by over zealous producers?
The story was half decent, but ruined by some scripting that felt completely over the top and designed to hammer home the message that was more subtly given in the rest of the story. The worst culprit were the videophone dialogs between Leon and his enemy’s, which served little purpose other than to taunt him and lead him by the nose through certain story elements.
The gameplay was similar. The core gameplay of shooting zombies was fantastic. Apart from a clumsy interface, the game worked near perfectly for 95% of its 20 hours. There was a constant feeling of stress generated by the music, sound effects, and the closeness of the action. There were few instances of “monster in the closet” cheating, like in Doom 3, but the whole experience was very satisfying.
The weapons were finely balanced, so that they all felt distinctly different, and I was constantly switching between them during battles against different enemies. They all upgraded, giving me a nice sense of progression. It would have been nicer if the interface had been better, and my progression through the different levels of weapons would have been easier than having to sell my current gun, buy another similar gun, and then check how much I need to upgrade to get it up to the same level.
The enemies were great. Varied, and requiring different skills and tools to overcome, and placed with enough variance in difficulty, intensity and skill sets that I was constantly on my toes and enjoying the challenge.
Where the game fell down was in the often annoying scripted special action moments, especially forcing gameplay into unskippable cut scenes. Three particularly bad offenders came towards the end:
- The Bulldozer Scene
After killing zombies for a few minutes, a truck barrels down the road towards you. The last time this happened, I had to take out the driver through the windscreen, but oh no! different rules this time. The truck’s windscreen was armored. I had two seconds to try and work out what the solution was before I was hit and had to start the entire section again. I repeated that section several times until I worked out the solution.
- The Krauser Scene
Ooh! I walk in and start to watch a cut scene. Suddenly “PRESS RANDOM BUTTONS!” is displayed. Oh, I spam these difficult to access buttons but fuck it up. So I have to watch that part of the cut scene again! I fuck up several times during the scene, to pointlessly have to watch it ALL OVER AGAIN. Can there be anything more irritating? The only tension in this scene was not the action, but the fear that I would make one small mistake and be forced to watch the entire five minute scene again and again like some kind of hell.
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The U3 monster on a hanging crate. You have 30 seconds to work out what the fuck was in the mind of the designer when he wrote “find the exit!” Oh, didn’t work it out? You are dead! Try again.
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Worst of all was the final Krauser scene. I couldn’t bring myself to face the final boss monster after this evil.
The trick, it turned out after hours of trying to beat the shit, was that I had to blast away his legs with a shotgun, and then smash his unprotected head with the most powerful weapon I had.
The fuck up was that shooting at his knees only worked 1 out of 3 times. If he happened to be moving rapidly left as you fire: Nothing happens. If he happens to be throwing a special move as you fire: Nothing happens. Even if the fire goes straight through his knees: Nothing happens. Even sometimes he is just walking towards you, and you shoot his knees, and nothing happens.
You are supposed to work out this rule from a rule that is constantly being broken by the AI. Rule breaking is about as bad as game design gets. Expecting a player to learn a rule from one that is constantly being broken is fatalistically retarded.
This is compounded by the fact that you need shotgun shells to defeat him, and you are drained of these before the battle by his robot minions. The only ammo you get before the final battle is 3 lousy magnum shots. Just pray you bought this weapon, because otherwise you are never going to complete this.
With all the missing in spite of being on target, the limited ammo is a killer and a source of endless frustration.
Worst of all, and the final nail in this game’s coffin: When finally defeating this interminable boss, I wasn’t reminded of the fact that I only had 30 seconds to escape the tower before it blew up. No warning, no telling me what I had to do, but I guessed it was run like hell out of the tower.
So I climb down the ladder, and ran out the way I came in. But oh no! The little tricksters blocked the door I came in through, and put a secret door that I couldn’t see when I came down the ladder because it was behind me. What a laugh! By the time I’d run at, punched, and shot the door I came in through in the vain hope it would open: it was too late!
Haha! You’ll have to fight the boss again with 10 shotgun shells and 3 magnum bullets. Ahahahahahaha!
No. I just fucking won’t.
Absolutely agree with you on this. People have argued with me that the controls had to be like this to make the game tense. I think it’s just lazy design.
I heard it was something about Japanese gamers not being as used to the second analog stick, so games designed there try to avoid it in twitch use. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s an interesting hypothesis.
You’re in the wrong thread. Both of you are referring to RE games prior to 4, or possibly the Silent Hill series. There is nothing lazy or artificially tension raising about RE4 in a structural sense; at worst, it has some less than stellar moments in an overall excellent design.
As LK said this has nothing to do with RE4, but just on this point…
The fact that a device as over-engineered as the PSP has only one analogue nub seems to bear out that hypothesis. The Japanese designers evidently didn’t realize or mind that this makes the PSP basically useless for shooters.
I have nothing of relevance to add to this thread, but I see what you did there.
Maybe you dont like it because is ‘too action focused’ ?
I didnt like too, but i can see why people like it so much.
Oh and the last boss and last cutscenes are the lamest on any Resident Evil.
I was really mad at the lack of ‘awesomesauce’ on the final battle.
The pacing for much of the game is a little weird. It feels like it’s about to end for the entire second half. Then it does end and it’s like, oh … that’s it?
I’d just like to point out that the trick here was that it wasn’t a gunfight. It was a knife fight. The knife was easily the best weapon to use against Krauser. It took me a bit to get the timing down, but he goes down quickly once you have it.
Leave it to Tim to bring a gun to a knife fight.
Make that four different occasions and three different platforms. I felt I had to give it one more chance before RE5, the PS2 isn’t hooked up any more, and I’d rather sit on the couch than at the PC, so I bought the Wii version.
I don’t even remember how I got as far as I did the last time, though I’m sure the WIi controls being my least favorite of the three isn’t helping.
Anyway, I still hate RE4.
So someone talk sense into me before I get all caught up in the Qt3hype and the appeal of co-op and pretty graphics: If I hate RE4, will I ultimately hate RE5?
Probably. But I also think you’re insane for not appreciating the awesome of RE4.
Yes. I can’t imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth this is going to inspire after the Wii’s instant aim accessibility opened up the game to more players.
I’m really going to try to make it through this time. And it’s partly my own fault that I’m already frustrated again, because it was lazy and foolish of me to buy it again on the Wii instead of just getting the PC version going again. Now I’ve got my basic frustrations with the game coupled with having to learn a new controller setup. It’s terrible that a game I’ve gotten about 4 hours into on four separate occasions still leaves me confused and dying again and again for about an hour at the very first village scene. I think I’m going to compromise and use a walkthrough, which will probably minimize both frustrations and any fun surprises, but it’s the only way I think I can make it through unless the game just seriously takes off at the five hour mark or something.
But if I still feel like this at the end of the game, I guess I’ll pass on RE5.