Resident Evil 4 - PlayStation 2

This is without a doubt the best Resident Evil game since RE2. It's got a creative and different setting, it brings back RE's best hero (Leon!), it manages to be spooky while still playable.There's no questions this game has some difficult sections when you play through the first time. As with all survival horror, you start barely armed, have to hoard ammo and use it carefully (no first-person shooter, this, you need to be clever). As the game goes on you gradually get better weapons, but the enemies get stronger.On a re-play, of course, you start with a full boat of weapons, so the game is MUCH easier on successive plays; but here's one of the strengths of RE4. The plot and graphic design make it a pleasure to re-play, and the money element lets you play (in effect) for score, gathering up as much as you can without wasting it on things you don't need. You also have the choice of keeping lesser weapons to challenge yourself (I'm now playing it with the knife as much as I can, just to prove I can beat lower enemies with no gun).This game has something we've never had in RE; the ability to buy and upgrade weapons. Where other games were all about getting away from the enemies in many scenes, this one encourages more fighting because enemies drop items (money or supplies). While this takes away an element that's fun and creepy (run away! run away!), it trades this for a better fighting game where you HAVE TO kill enemies in many cases. The weapons available are all entertaining, and you have choices, selling ones you don't like as much for ones you like better. This lets you choose one of several very good weapons as you main side arm, and lets you change the game on re-plays by working with different sets of weapons. You can also sell a weapon and then buy it back later, so things that are gone are not gone for good. There's a *lot* of shooting in this game, and lots of changes to try out different weapons to find what works best.Gone are the 'magic boxes' that let you stash weapons in one room and get them from another. This is different, but not really better or worse; as you play you can upgrade your carry capacity with bigger cases. So there's a bit more thought required to make sure you have only what you need, but you also can have all your weapons to hand and never have to run back to swap a shotgun for a sniper rifle.One of the main things I like about this game is that it actually has a coherent plot. Many of these games wind up with mystery story lines so convoluted that it makes following them more effort that it's worth. This one plays like an action film, and you could pretty much convert it to a movie with no re-work. It makes watching someone else play the game entertaining, which I find unusual.That the graphics are great goes without saying. Graphics in video games are so sophisticated these days that I don't even notice any more. But what stands out here is some really fabulous graphic design. Some of the settings - castles, mansions, caves, tombs, mines - are brilliantly designed and I find myself stopping in many scenes simply to admire the way a scene looks.All in all it's a great game. If you like RE, this is a must-have.There are down sides of course.If you're a huge puzzle fan, the puzzles are mostly pretty easy. Puzzles are my least-favorite part of survival horror games, so this isn't a big issue for me, but still, they're easy.More annoying to me is that they pulled the game-designer cheat in some scenes of making you character (Leon) slower and clumsier in boss fights. Lots of games do this, but it's cheating as far as I'm concerned. There are several fights against 'El Gigante' bosses where Leon's run speed goes down, and they box you into a small area where it doesn't make sense to fight, and the reaction speed on the controls decreases slightly. It makes the fight harder, but not in a fun way because you can't spin and juke and fire the way you would normally, you wind up under the monster's feet when you mean to be pulling a grenade and then popping a few rounds into him (though these fights get incredibly easy on re-play if you have a big weapon). I've seen a number of games where they do this, making a fight harder by changing your character's behavior or control response time, and it is, IMO, cheating by the game designers.My objections are trivial though. Of all the survival horror games I've played, this is very close to the most fun.

I bought this game a few months ago, but I've been playing a rental of it for a couple of years!I really love the resident evil series, such a moving, terrifying, action-packed storyline with awesome characters~!although, it is pretty different from the other games (1, 2, 3, outbreak 1 & 2, code veronica).the fighting style is different-you get a handgun, a knife, some bullets and a first-aid spray at the beginning, not much.not only that...It's VERY HARD to get a plentiful load of bullets and health items. it's hard to find them, and if you alreadyhave too much in your inventory, you may not even be able to carry it! O_o;also, in this game for the first time...you only get HALF of your health (what?!) at the start of the game. to get morehealth in your health bar, you need to gather yellow herbs and mix them with green herbs. BUT, don't just eat the herbsright away...you HAVE TO SAVE THEM! when you run out of health, THEN eat the mix. you just can't afford to waste herbs....another thing...this RE game doesn't have zombies, just villagers with a mind-control parasite that makes them crazy.however, they it DOES have pretty creepy/violent and hard-to-beat monsters! (chainsaw guy, Verdugo, lake monster, ect.)for me...this game is pretty hard, even on the EASY level. X_X (yeah yeah, I KNOW people have mastered the harder levels, so?)this is more of a action-packed, survival (lack of health/ammo), strategy game...it's not like the other RE games.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*this game really makes you think, what can you do? where will you go? how much supplies do you have left?!?!not only that...although some people think that this game isn't very scary, believe it or not. IT IS! O_O;in this game, you really have to LOOK at your surroundings...you can SEE THE HORROR, but you have to find it.like for example, in the beginning-when you're in the villagers house, you can see some skulls in a box. out by the farms,you can find bodies in a haystack cart, CREEPY!at night, the villagers' eyes glow RED!Capcom was pretty smart to not allow all the horrors and gimmicks show up so easily like in the other RE games.but...it's pretty hard, and you may get frustrated ALOT.Leon is definitely one of my most favorite characters, to see him in action (a new, better look than in RE 2) in his owngame and personal storyline, I wish they'd make another game with him in it.the scenery, music, sound effects and visuals are amazing!this is definitely a great buy for anyone who is a fan of resident evil (I'm working on completing my RE game collection)however, I reccomend that ANYONE WHO HASN'T played the resident evil games before...should play them now, first.because this game kinda requires that you know SOME experiance from the other games' gameplay.this was the first RE game I've played (then came code veronica, then 3, then 2...), so when I played RE 4 for the first timeit was almost IMPOSSIBLE!it's a near-perfect game, and it's hard to stop playing once you start!