Resident Evil 4

 

    As you might've already read, I didn't like Red Steel much, but truth be told, I've never been that into shooters at any point. There have been exceptions, but I can never quite get used to how much around you that you need to keep track of, not to mention that very few of them keep my interest in terms of aesthetics either. Far more than that, though, I'm especially not into horror. The closest I've gotten to enjoying anything of the sort is if it has a comedic or parodic side to it, as pure horror is completely out of my usual wheelhouse. So when I say that Resident Evil 4, a third-person shooter and survival horror game, is one of the best games I've ever played, that's how you know there's something truly special going on here.
    Of course, I say that it's a horror game, when most of the time the game is moreso just horror-themed. You play as Leon S. Kennedy, a guy with one of the most 2000's haircuts I've ever seen, asked to locate Ashley Graham, the president's daughter, after she gets kidnapped. He stumbles into a small remote farmland somewhere in Europe, where he's immediately chased down by angry locals, all infected with a mind control parasite that makes them loyal to an evil cult. After that, the mission becomes simple: are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president's daughter? It's by no means a complex plot, but it makes it so things are easy to understand even for someone unfamiliar with the series like myself, and it's the presentation that really sells it, going for the deliberate feel of a campy B movie.
    See, there's something of an art to being deliberately camp, one that most attempting it fail to register. Most just go for the sarcastic and eye-rolling dialogue approach, which just ends up feeling incredibly patronizing and boring. Resident Evil 4, by contrast, shows the correct approach in leaning into its own silliness as hard as you possibly could. Everything from Ashley and her scream queen antics, to the merchant that seemingly exists everywhere and laughs at you for almost no reason, to a tiny Napoleon that rules over a fortress; no matter how crazy it gets, it's all held together with complete emotional sincerity. It actively revels in throwing you strange curveballs and quotable lines that make for something instantly memorable, and I guarantee you'll hear at least something you'll want to repeat to your friends to the point of their aggravation.
    What truly makes this game one of the best I've experienced, however, is how refined the core gameplay loop is, to the point it almost feels unreal. It takes on a level-by-level structure, each having you go through phases of either killing enemies, collecting and purchasing items, and eventually fighting bosses, with the occasional very light puzzle solving sprinkled in. The game utilizes an over-the-shoulder perspective, zooming in and locking you in place whenever you aim, thus letting you aim at specific body parts. Not being able to move while aiming sounds like a negative, but the game is very much designed around it, and the sheer depth of variety in combat options is insane. You can go for headshots that have a chance of killing them instantly, or you can kneecap enemies to stagger them, or you can go up and karate kick a group of enemies; I haven't even listed all the options just on a control level, and that combined with the sheer amount of weapon variety is utterly staggering. It makes it so you'll be able to find a combination of tactics that works for you, while still keeping the game's challenge level consistent.
    On that note, the level design in the game is absolutely fantastic. The environments remind me a lot of the first Quake game, with lots of winding caves, murky forests and giant castle interiors with impossible architecture. It manages to feel grand in scope while still keeping a tight linear structure, with just the right escalation of enemy difficulty and resource management. Almost every level has its own unique set piece to call its own, whether it be one of the many boss fights that almost all feel like they could have been the final boss, or something that changes up the gameplay entirely without ever losing its action focus. There's one fight early on where you're being dragged along on a boat by a sea monster and have to throw giant hooks at it, with the sea monster never being brought up before or after, and it somehow feels totally in line with everything else. Heck, even the inventory management is fun, having you play a miniature puzzle game to make sure everything fits within the case you carry around, with every item taking up a different amount of space.
    Of course, the game does have issues, but I have to emphasize that absolutely none of them are dealbreakers and don't take away from the game as a whole. It's mostly small annoyances, like the occasional quick-time event that jumps out from nowhere, Ashley's AI occasionally being lacking when it comes to getting out of harm's way, and some of the later enemies being on the health sponge side of things. They're troublesome in the moment, but are more often than not trivialized by the game's generous checkpoint system, so it's nothing that bad. Also, compared to the sheer creativity of the levels in most of the chapters, the final chapter mostly being set in a laboratory and military base does feel a bit lacking, and I think could have been trimmed down a tad.
    Overall, however, Resident Evil 4 is an exemplar in pure game design mastery, and I can easily see how it's gone down as an all-time classic. The fact that most seventh-gen games outside the Wii were dead set on copying this game's design choices, and that the over-the-shoulder camera perspective is still the standard for action games to this day, goes to show how far reaching this game's influence was. However, none of its copycats can quite capture the sheer polish of its mechanics, nor have the guts to mimic its overtly silly and campy vibe. Just go play it if you haven't already; it's been ported to seemingly everything by this point, so you really have no excuse not to give it a try by now if you haven't.