Back in Febuary, I wrote that I would be stepping down from my post as the St. Louis Video Game Console Examiner. Well, it's been a long time and I've had plenty of months off from writing to cause me to get that craving back. Along with a slew of exciting video game news, I've been playing a good amount of games. That being said, I'm looking to going back to what this page first started out as, a site for video game reviews.
Now I can't promise to post a review a day, but I do intend to post (at least) one review a week. I will do as many new games, or slightly new (depending on when Red Box gets them in) and some older games that are getting re-released (plus any others I find good enough to review). I hope that you all enjoy the reviews and keep coming back.
Resident Evil 4, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed by Capcom Production Studio 4 and published by multiple publishers, including Capcom, Ubisoft, Nintendo Australia, Red Ant Enterprises and THQ Asia Pacific. Originally released for the Nintendo GameCube in 2005, the game has been ported to the Sony Playstation 2, the PC, the Nintendo Wii, Sony's Playstation 3, and the Xbox 360.
Originally I reviewed Resident Evil 4 on July 15th, 2010, and while my first review stands for the game on the Wii, PS2 and GameCube, this time around we're looking at the Xbox 360 port, and why you should/shouldn't, pick it up.
A small rundown of the game for those who haven't played it. You play as Leon Kennedy, sent to a small village in Europe to rescue the President's daughter who's been taken hostage by a cult. This is after the events of Racoon City, with Umbrella being gone (?).
The port of Resident Evil 4 showed up for the Xbox 360 the same day that Gears of War 3 did, which was the first mistake they made when putting the game out. Why in the world would they think going up against Gears of War 3 was a good idea? It's baffling considering how many fans of the game would come back, and how many new gamers they could attract with the game.
Bad release date aside, the game is still extremely solid. While you do loose the accuracy of the Wii port (which I loved), you still have very good controls once you get used to them. However, there's still some issues here.
Capcom could have greatly improved on the controls by just fixing the button setup. Aiming with the left analog stick feels uncomfortable considering all the FPS games we've played over the years. Also, for some God awful reason, they mapped the Map button to "Y", and your inventory button to "Start". Because you'll use your inventory far more then the map, it makes more sense to have the inventory mapped to a face button, for easy quick access.
Some buttons aren't even used in the game, like the B and RB buttons. Why couldn't they have been utilized for a quick stabbing or slicing motion? Why not tight the controls up a bit for this re-release? Simple answer, because they really didn't care enough.
There's nothing extra here, so unless you haven't played or are just a big fan (like myself) there's really no reason to buy this. Now there are achievement points, which (people like me) will attract some people. But it's really the game itself that'll draw players in and back.
The graphics have received an upgrade, but there's still slowdown in spots, and Leon still does the head dance when you're in the cellar and surrounded by bats. I couldn't honestly say the graphics are crisp and look great, as everything looks exactly like I remember it.
The game does something that few games can do anymore, and that is even after six years, Resident Evil 4 still delivers genuine scares and great gameplay. Fighting off hordes of the Los Illuminois is still nerve racking and fun at the same time. The quicktime events are still here, and easy to deal with.
The achievements are a mixed bag really. Even though the game is downloadable only (via games on demand), there's a thousand achievement points to earn, far higher then the Xbox Live Arcade's standard two hundred points. The problem is, there's only twelve achievements. Now I'm a fan of cheevos, and I love this game, but there's plenty of achievements that could have been slipped into the game. I think they planned for two hundred points, but got the okay to expand to a thousand and didn't add any in. I call it lazy, considering how much could have been done. Achievement hunters will find the bulk of the game dry when it comes to unlocking things. The payoff however, is that when you get an achievements, it's never less then fifty points, so that's satisfying. The achievements range from story driven, to easter egg, to why in the world did they pick that? The average gamer will get all but two, the pros will easily unlock them all.
With a price of twenty bucks, which is high considering how cheap a used copy on an older system can go, some people are turning their nose up, saying it's too expensive. I say, for a trip down memory lane and just a downright great game, it's twenty bucks well spent. Sure they could have fixed the controls, added a new side-quest and better cheevos, but overall it's still a great game.
Overall rating: 4/5
