Resident Evil 4

"I think this is what they call a 'return to form'."

It's been a while since a game inspired me to write a review telling all and sundry how much I like it, but certainly not as long since everyone and his dog played Resident Evil 4, with ample time left for readers of IGN to proclaim it the best game in history. However, as things are, I'm the sort of character who likes to wait a year or two until these games are slightly more affordable, and once I saw this title available for a ridiculously cheap £11.99 at a well-reputed vendor, coupled with the hype that accompanied its initial release, I simply jumped at the chance. What else could I do? Play Vagrant Story the seventh time over? Do something constructive with my spare time? Yeah, right. “Why, ‘Tis A Bargain! Sleepless nights be cursed, I shall purchase this game posthaste!”, I exclaimed while thunder roared and the children of the night screamed with delight, or something like that. The rest, as they always say (you know a cliche is well and truly exhausted when you have to point out its nature with an ironic italicised oh-so-postmodern disclaimer), is history.

Still, my expectations for RE4 were somewhat mixed, and this is not primarily undue to the (IMO) unmitigated disaster that was Code Veronica, to all intents and purposes the second-worst game I've ever played, after Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness. Yes, the old 8-bit and 16-bit systems of yore doubtlessly attracted worse stinkers (as this 80s child can very well testify), but given the resources, manpower and finances stuck into modern games, you simply cannot compare them to some throwaway product from the days when video games were still in their infancy. It's like comparing a contemporary Hollywood film to an Ed Wood flick or any given silent film (most of which are actually vastly superior to the crud Hollywood dares to release these days, but nevermind). Yet the hype and critical acclaim had me intrigued, leading me to turn back to a series I had presumed dead and buried.

Furthermore, my scepticism stemmed from another very simple question: what else could they possibly do with this series? Racoon City was destroyed, and with it the Umbrella Corporation. The narrative hath been told. Besides, the storylines were reaching heights of cheesiness that would have made Uwe Boll blush. Don't take my word for it, try playing Code Veronica and show me one glimmer of originality. Just one. Yes, the first three were cheesy as well, but they had a charm about them. Besides, they had gameplay to make up for it. No longer, it seemed. It was time to move on, yet there was apparently little left for the series to go on. Anything now could surely only be a rehash of something that had been before, and not to much better effect? Surely?

However, it seems RE creator Shinji Mikami took heed of this. Legend has it that he played Resident Evil 0 one dark and dreary evening and found it so unoriginal that he felt something needed to be done with his brainchild. Something different. Say, more action-orientated gameplay? No static camera shots? A proper aiming system? Slightly more difficult, but also more exhilirating gameplay? A more involving storyline? Fear not (well, not in this regard at least), for Resident Evil 4 has all of these. In fact, it's more than that. It's an absolute revelation.

Given the end result, it's fairly clear what Mikami has done here. He looked at RE's rivals, saw what they did differently, and learned from them, the consequence being that, with RE4, I felt that I wasn't so much playing yet another Resident Evil game as a mixture of Resident Evil, Silent Hill (especially some of the atmospheric, eerie sounds, which definitely took their cue from Yamaoka's genius), Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider, Half Life, heck, I even recognised bits of Grand Theft Auto in there. RE4 is not so much a straightforward continuation of the series as an amalgamation of the good and great of recent video gaming history; and yet, at the same time, it feels sparkingly original, as opposed to a rehash of tired old concepts.

Equally, the story has been given a new lease of life, and the genius here has been not to do what has been done before with the three previous instalments (or five, counting Code Veronia and Zero, and I'm not even mentioning the 1st and 3rd player shoot-em-up spin offs like RE Survivor) and basically go along with the tired old formula of using ye olde zombies of Roger Corman-inspired fame, but instead create a whole new type of zombie, one by which you cannot say for sure until much later in the game whether they are human or not (hence the game's tagline, "Are they human, or...?").

These zombies aren't wild beasts that groan and lunge at you. They shout, they talk, and they have intelligence that goes way beyond your token zombie. They avoid gunshots, run at you, aim, jump, climb ladders, you name it. Some of them even have -gulp- chainsaws. As a consequence, these mongrels are vehemently scarier than their cousins in Racoon City. Frightening is the keyword here, since this is easily the most disturbing Resident Evil so far, and by the time you've faced a quasi-Satanic cult (whose monotonous chanting is up there with the invisible “Ritual”-monster in Silent Hill 2 as one of the eeriest things I've ever heard in a video game) alongside the virtually indestructable Regenerators (remember - these things were human once), you will have seen and heard things that will either give you sleepless nights or some of the worst dreams you can imagine, or both, and I am speaking purely from experience here.

The monsters themselves are not necessarily zombies of the jump and run variety, but manifestations of different concepts within horror - the hordes of barbaric villagers who are isolated from civilisation and more than unwelcoming towards “outsiders” (a concept previously explored in cinema in Cannibal Holocaust (1980) as well as The Wicker Man (1973), albeit with the latter it was from a somewhat different angle - the villagers there are “civilised”, yet also rather unappreciative of any outside interference), as well as the manic cultists are both archetypes previously explored in the Horror genre, yet they also represent a breath of fresh air for a series which had hitherto depended solely on one single blueprint (ie. zombies) to keep it going, and as such this variety is more than welcome, and quite possibly it is that which constitutes RE4's biggest lease of life.

Nonetheless, Resident Evil 4 falls just short of being a masterpiece for two reasons; it's a bit too difficult at times, and secondly, it still, on occasions, fails to avoid the sheer and almost unapologetically cheesy nature of its predecessors, the Luis character being a case in point. Upon hearing Leon's voice, Luis's immediate response is “Ah, Americano!”. Say what? What is this? An episode from MacGuyver? Next he'll be saying “In my country, my people…”. Besides, I thought we were in Spain/Europe, not Mexico. At least try to get your stereotypes right, Mikami. And I'm not even going into the whole saga of where in Europe this is supposed to take place - the zombies/bad guys speak with a quasi-Spanish accent, yet according to the synopsis in the manual it's set “somewhere in central Europe” (Germany?). Equally, the climate and backdrop does look decidedly central European. But then I really needn't be so pedantic, since the scenery does lend itself to the atmosphere in ways which were possibly missing from the previous instalments. Europe has castles. Castles are spooky. Realism be damned, it works.

In other words, any flaws are merely cosmetic. If I had to give Resident Evil 4 a score out of 10 (I don't have to, but I'll do so anyway), I would award it a 9. Maybe a 9.5. Not quite a masterpiece, but then there are only four games in history which deserve that title in my opinion (namely FF7, FFX, and the first two Silent Hill games). It's certainly the best game I've played in a long time, and one I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, providing you have nerves of steel. And a Playstation 2 or a Gamecube, of course.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/17/08

Game Release: Resident Evil 4 (EU, 11/05/05)