Resident Evil 4 Review

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Resident Evil 4 was first released in 2006 for Gamecube as an exclusive but was later released 9 months later for the PS2. It was the first game in the series to introduce the more modern faster zombies and an over-the-shoulder 3rd person shooter view that popularized this style of play for other franchises. This type of change reinvented the type of game that the Resident Evil series was. No longer was it the traditional 3rd person shooter that people have grown to love, but something different entirely. The Resident Evil 4 remastered versions of this game came out in 2016 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The game is a complete 1080p HD remaster with all the in-game textures redone in HD. I am reviewing the PS4 version of the game.

For a 10-year-old game, the graphics look amazing and the sound is still as good as ever. If you have played any of the previous Resident Evil 4's such as the Gamecube, PS2, or the old Wii remaster, you will definitely notice a difference in this version. The story takes place six years after what happened in Resident Evil 2. You Play as the former Raccoon City police officer Leon S. Kennedy and you are sent on a mission to save the U.S President's daughter, Ashley Graham, from a mysterious cult called the Los Illuminados that kidnapped her. You travel to an unnamed rural village in an unspecified area of Spain. While there you encounter a group of hostile villagers, who are infected with a parasite that turns the hosts into zombie-like creatures and must try to survive while finding out what happened to Ashley.

The controls take a minute to get used to. You aim your gun with L2 and shoot with R2 while aiming your knife with L1 and swinging it with R2. Unlike the older games in the series where you could shoot either up, down, or straight ahead from the hip, this game lets you point your gun anywhere and shoot at whatever your laser is pointed at. You can move back and forth and turn with the left joystick while moving your camera angle with the right joystick. There is even a quick turn that you can do by pressing down on the left joystick and X, which is useful to quickly turn around and shoot behind you. You can get to the map with triangle, the inventory menu with the big rectangle-shaped button in the middle of your controller, reload with square, and run with X. The square button also serves as your action button that opens doors, picks up items, presses buttons or levers, and jumps across platforms as well as climb. The inventory menu is a lot like the older games, where you start out with a small rectangle with little blocks and can eventually upgrade it a few times to hold more items. Each item you get has a certain number of blocks it takes up and you have to try to rotate items like Tetris to maximize your space. This includes ammo, guns, grenades, first aid sprays, and herbs, and other healing items. Every other item goes into a key item slot or treasure slot that is unlimited in size. Besides the money you pick up as currency, there are different types of valuable treasure that can be fitted with 3 or more jewels and gems to increase the value when they are sold to the merchant. An in-game merchant appears throughout the game which can offer rare items to buy or upgrade your guns as you progress through the story. He even has a special quest that involves shooting blue medallions around the maps in order to get a reward of a free handgun. If you shoot 10 you will get the reward, but if u wait until you shoot all 15 out of 15 and then talk to the merchant you will get a free level 2 upgraded version of it.

This game has 3 extra game modes and even costumes for Leon and Ashley which are all brought over from the Gamecube and PS2 versions of the game. Separate Ways is a mode that follows Ada Wong's perspective during the story and you see what she has to do in order to help Leon and fulfill her own goals. She starts with a pistol, shotgun, and grappling hook that she can use to grapple to high locations. Ada can eventually buy other weapons from the same merchant Leon can, but they are already are fully upgraded when purchased. Assignment Ada is a short mode about an hour or so where her mission is to collect 5 Los Plagas samples and get to the extraction point. You can't buy or upgrade anything and all items must be found. Mercenaries is a game mode where it lets you play on 4 different levels as either Leon, Ada, Jack Krauser, Hunk, or Albert Wesker. Each character has a certain skill set and a different set of guns and items. You have a timer and can pick up items, timer increases, combo points bonus', and must survive until the timer runs out and an evac helicopter comes to pick you up. The point of this game is to just see how long you can survive while chaining together zombie kills for points. Based on how many points you get at the end, you get a star grade with 5 stars being the highest. All three of the extra game modes have a reward you can purchase in the story mode, in one of the other modes after beating them, or getting all 5-star ranks on all levels with every character in Mercenaries. Rewards include items such as the Typewriter Machine Gun, Hand Cannon Magnum, or Rocket Launcher all with infinite ammo once fully upgraded. This adds to some intense replay value!

With all the content from the previous games, this game offers a lot of replay value. You can try to unlock all the hidden items and replay each mode with the overpowered items or just sell all your upgraded guns and try new guns this time around. The nice thing about a replay is that all your money and acquired items carry over, as long as you play over the same file for that mode! Overall I think this game still lives up to its standard of being known as the best game ever when it was originally released and deserves a look at. Pick up a copy and see for yourself. For the $19.99 price tag, you can't go wrong.