The world seems to have place for at least two kinds of gamers: PC gamers and console gamers. I'm certainly a PC gamer, but I dabble in console games from time to time. For this reason I have a PS2 (and a PSone). I tend to play racing games and fighting games on the console because the console controller is vastly superior to any equivalent on the PC, despite the usual graphic and audio advantages of the PC platform.
With that piece of history in place, I decided I needed a bit of a change from the same old FPS or RTS games. In a brainwave, and based in good part on the glowing reviews from Gamespot, I picked up Resident Evil 4 for the PS2.
I was concerned, at first, because I'm not good with horror, especially not supernatural horror; it gives me nightmares, I just seem to be wired that way. Still, being brave
)) I figured I'd give it a try in daylight hours.
Where to start? Some of what follows reveals stuff you experience in the first 5 to 10 minutes of the game, but is really only introductory not spoilers unless you're extremely paranoid.
The game's blurb makes the setup obvious from the start. You play Leon, a government agent (Secret Service?) who has been sent to rescue Ashley, the daughter of the President of the United States, who has been kidnapped. Through various sources prior to the game starting the group responsible for the kidnapping has been traced to Europe... the names used throughout the game are certainly Spanish in style, though I'm not clear whether the game is set in Spain or Portugal. The actual location doesn't seem to matter except that you're out there, by yourself, and it's pretty creepy.
Two local police officers drive you to this village down some long disused track, over a rickety bridge, to be dropped on the edges of some village in a creepy woods on an overcast day... hell, I thought, at least it's daytime! The game gives you chance to start figuring out the controls and you start armed with a trusty handgun (possibly a Glock or Ruger, but it's left unnamed). Not a lot of bullets, mind you... it'd not be a survival horror if you had piles of ammunition!
My first tip to people who haven't played a lot of these games before: search everywhere, open everything, look at everything, break boxes. There may be monsters in the cellar but there's probably also ammunition or cash or something to make up for it. I'm such a scaredy-cat when it comes to creeping down blind alleys to get the box at the far end, but do it anyway! Besides, if you don't, you'll start to get really desparate for ammunition. Things you can pick up have a little "glint" to them, though sometimes you've got to break in to get them. Fortunately I'm a vandal.
Resident Evil is famous for its zombies so I was pretty much expecting to be mobbed within moments of starting. Without getting into the details, because the details are fundamental to the story of RE4, the "zombies" have a neat twist to them though somehow I felt that made them less frightening. Still, when these guys n gals are coming at you in droves and you're counting down the rounds you'll not find it any less tense! You've got a knife and Leon is pretty handy with his hammering kicks when you can get the bad guys off balance (try shooting them in the legs) but they use a variety of weapons (pitchforks, pickaxes, knives... the pitchforks are the worst because of their reach). Mostly they're close ranged baddies giving you a little time to put a few rounds into them as they approach, but sometimes they'll rush you and sometimes they'll lob stuff at you.
Aiming, on the PS2, is slow. Turning isn't overly quick either, but aiming is very slow to give you the fine control. The keyboard-mouse combo clearly gives you a definition that an analog stick cannot compare to and I found myself missing that fine control, especially when the analog stick just seemed fractionally too twitchy when I was trying to aim for the bad guy's arm or something. Still, remember your zombie movie ethic: aim for the head!
The colours are lots of greys and browns: mud and rust and dirty linen. Leon doesn't help wearing that utilitarian military grey. After a while you may get to wishing there were a few more bright colours, but perhaps that works in the game's favour... it's a depressing outlook and survival horror probably shouldn't be bright and colourful. Still, Ashley, when you eventually (inevitably?) catch up to her is colourful enough and that does make up for it some.
There's a few notable NPCs that show up, both for the good guys and on the bad guys side, and they are all memorable. I get the impression I should have played one or more previous games in the series because I believe this isn't Leon's first Resident Evil outing; he mentions the "Racoon City" incident a few times. Suffice to say that I was always pleased to see the good guys and I was suitably pissed at the bad guys throughout that it was pleasing to put them down in the most brutal way I could think of.
Which brings me to guns. Guns and more guns. At some point you'll meet up with this mysterious trenchcoat-wearing guy who will sell you guns, upgrade your guns and buy treasures (gems, items, etc that you find as you search around) off you. He does not sell ammunition, though! However, if you buy a magazine size upgrade for a weapon he seems to just "fill her up" for you so this can be a handy way to get a full mag when you need it most.
He sells better handguns, shotties, rifles, and even a trusty single-shot RPG. There's a TMP (with or without stock), a mine launcher (which is neat but weird), and various heavy handguns (ala the Magnum .44). All have their uses but, of all the weapons, the shottie and the rifle were the ones I needed most. In fact, there are portions of the game that pretty much require you use the rifle so you best get good with it. Oh, and there are grenades but don't expect to get Battlefield 2 throw ranges out of them... they're pretty short ranged, though powerful! He doesn't sell grenades, though... they're found too.
The game has a few "special monsters" it wants to throw at you, even excluding the boss mobs. Some of these were more interesting than others. To be honest, the most fun I had in the game was holed up in a building with one of the good guys as the bad guys smashed in the windows and swarmed up; somehow the specials just didn't live up to those scenes. Don't get me wrong, they weren't crap, it was just that the basics were so beautifully built that you almost didn't need the specials. Still, if you thought you had plenty of ammunition at any point you can be sure that a special is about to show and eat up your reserves...!
One of the things I love about console games is that they often make it hard for you to have a controller spaz and fall off a cliff. Jumping from one thing to another was sometimes based on timing, but even if you screwed up you'd not take any damage from the fall. You can't slip off ladders or trip into the water without that being part of the script for the game. RE4 continues this trend, making the game more accessible for less experienced players.
Probably my least favourite part of the game was Leon's radio contact. She's some girl sat somewhere who seems to exist only to state the obvious. Say Leon comes to a locked door, the radio might beep and Leon would end up talking to this woman who'd say something like, "But Leon, you've got to get through that door!" and you'd be thinking, "Well, duh!" She was useless. In fact, she was worse than useless... if I'd been Leon I'd just have turned my radio off and taken my chances on the ground.
There's some puzzling to be done to get through this or that gate but it's pretty basic switch pulling and/or killing the bad guys before they grab Ashley. That's a pretty neat part of the game, actually. Once you do meet up with Ashley and are working on getting her out of there she has a health bar, she can be told to wait or follow, and she can be grabbed by the bad guys who will try to carry her off. If they get her to a level exit then you lose. If she dies, you lose. If you're smart about it, though, she isn't a massive liability. She keeps up, she ducks when you level your gun in her direction (though that can mean she stays next to something that's going to kill her) and generally she stays close but out of your way. Still, when they're all around you trying to beat your head in and you can hear "Help! Leon help me!" as Ashley is being carried off it can get fraught.
The voices are good even if the bad guy's gloating is somewhat predictable. A lot of the dialog feels quite light hearted as Leon takes most things in his stride. Whatever happened at Racoon City must have beaten him into a tough cookie.
There are some minigames to be played. There's some shooting range games linked to the weapons dealer, which are optional. There's a few puzzle locks, which are not. There's also a couple of fight sequences that take place during scripted scenes that require hitting the right buttons at the right time; the buttons flash up, but you need to be quick and know your controller well or you'll often die there and then. Oh, don't sit back and relax in the video sequences as you're not safe; you're never safe in this game.
There are a number of memorable scenes, some of which I'd happily play repeatedly as minigames of their own: defend the house, fight on the mine trolleys, even one of the boss fights was tough-but-interesting (I'm generally not a fan of boss-fights).
Resident Evil 4 goes on the list as one of the few games I've ever found sufficiently interesting to complete, up there with Max Payne (1 and 2). Story-lead, survival thriller (not horror, quite), it gave me just under 30 hours of gameplay that really gave a high to my two weeks off work. And once you've completed the game a bunch of minigames, shorter story sequences as the other characters, and a "hard" play mode are all opened up for future amusement... though I've not played with any of them yet.
From me, 9 out of 10. Excellent, one of the best I've played.
With that piece of history in place, I decided I needed a bit of a change from the same old FPS or RTS games. In a brainwave, and based in good part on the glowing reviews from Gamespot, I picked up Resident Evil 4 for the PS2.
I was concerned, at first, because I'm not good with horror, especially not supernatural horror; it gives me nightmares, I just seem to be wired that way. Still, being brave
)) I figured I'd give it a try in daylight hours.Where to start? Some of what follows reveals stuff you experience in the first 5 to 10 minutes of the game, but is really only introductory not spoilers unless you're extremely paranoid.
The game's blurb makes the setup obvious from the start. You play Leon, a government agent (Secret Service?) who has been sent to rescue Ashley, the daughter of the President of the United States, who has been kidnapped. Through various sources prior to the game starting the group responsible for the kidnapping has been traced to Europe... the names used throughout the game are certainly Spanish in style, though I'm not clear whether the game is set in Spain or Portugal. The actual location doesn't seem to matter except that you're out there, by yourself, and it's pretty creepy.
Two local police officers drive you to this village down some long disused track, over a rickety bridge, to be dropped on the edges of some village in a creepy woods on an overcast day... hell, I thought, at least it's daytime! The game gives you chance to start figuring out the controls and you start armed with a trusty handgun (possibly a Glock or Ruger, but it's left unnamed). Not a lot of bullets, mind you... it'd not be a survival horror if you had piles of ammunition!
My first tip to people who haven't played a lot of these games before: search everywhere, open everything, look at everything, break boxes. There may be monsters in the cellar but there's probably also ammunition or cash or something to make up for it. I'm such a scaredy-cat when it comes to creeping down blind alleys to get the box at the far end, but do it anyway! Besides, if you don't, you'll start to get really desparate for ammunition. Things you can pick up have a little "glint" to them, though sometimes you've got to break in to get them. Fortunately I'm a vandal.
Resident Evil is famous for its zombies so I was pretty much expecting to be mobbed within moments of starting. Without getting into the details, because the details are fundamental to the story of RE4, the "zombies" have a neat twist to them though somehow I felt that made them less frightening. Still, when these guys n gals are coming at you in droves and you're counting down the rounds you'll not find it any less tense! You've got a knife and Leon is pretty handy with his hammering kicks when you can get the bad guys off balance (try shooting them in the legs) but they use a variety of weapons (pitchforks, pickaxes, knives... the pitchforks are the worst because of their reach). Mostly they're close ranged baddies giving you a little time to put a few rounds into them as they approach, but sometimes they'll rush you and sometimes they'll lob stuff at you.
Aiming, on the PS2, is slow. Turning isn't overly quick either, but aiming is very slow to give you the fine control. The keyboard-mouse combo clearly gives you a definition that an analog stick cannot compare to and I found myself missing that fine control, especially when the analog stick just seemed fractionally too twitchy when I was trying to aim for the bad guy's arm or something. Still, remember your zombie movie ethic: aim for the head!
Oh, but don't get too used to headshots because you'll be up for a surprise later on...
The colours are lots of greys and browns: mud and rust and dirty linen. Leon doesn't help wearing that utilitarian military grey. After a while you may get to wishing there were a few more bright colours, but perhaps that works in the game's favour... it's a depressing outlook and survival horror probably shouldn't be bright and colourful. Still, Ashley, when you eventually (inevitably?) catch up to her is colourful enough and that does make up for it some.
There's a few notable NPCs that show up, both for the good guys and on the bad guys side, and they are all memorable. I get the impression I should have played one or more previous games in the series because I believe this isn't Leon's first Resident Evil outing; he mentions the "Racoon City" incident a few times. Suffice to say that I was always pleased to see the good guys and I was suitably pissed at the bad guys throughout that it was pleasing to put them down in the most brutal way I could think of.
Which brings me to guns. Guns and more guns. At some point you'll meet up with this mysterious trenchcoat-wearing guy who will sell you guns, upgrade your guns and buy treasures (gems, items, etc that you find as you search around) off you. He does not sell ammunition, though! However, if you buy a magazine size upgrade for a weapon he seems to just "fill her up" for you so this can be a handy way to get a full mag when you need it most.
He sells better handguns, shotties, rifles, and even a trusty single-shot RPG. There's a TMP (with or without stock), a mine launcher (which is neat but weird), and various heavy handguns (ala the Magnum .44). All have their uses but, of all the weapons, the shottie and the rifle were the ones I needed most. In fact, there are portions of the game that pretty much require you use the rifle so you best get good with it. Oh, and there are grenades but don't expect to get Battlefield 2 throw ranges out of them... they're pretty short ranged, though powerful! He doesn't sell grenades, though... they're found too.
The game has a few "special monsters" it wants to throw at you, even excluding the boss mobs. Some of these were more interesting than others. To be honest, the most fun I had in the game was holed up in a building with one of the good guys as the bad guys smashed in the windows and swarmed up; somehow the specials just didn't live up to those scenes. Don't get me wrong, they weren't crap, it was just that the basics were so beautifully built that you almost didn't need the specials. Still, if you thought you had plenty of ammunition at any point you can be sure that a special is about to show and eat up your reserves...!
One of the things I love about console games is that they often make it hard for you to have a controller spaz and fall off a cliff. Jumping from one thing to another was sometimes based on timing, but even if you screwed up you'd not take any damage from the fall. You can't slip off ladders or trip into the water without that being part of the script for the game. RE4 continues this trend, making the game more accessible for less experienced players.
Probably my least favourite part of the game was Leon's radio contact. She's some girl sat somewhere who seems to exist only to state the obvious. Say Leon comes to a locked door, the radio might beep and Leon would end up talking to this woman who'd say something like, "But Leon, you've got to get through that door!" and you'd be thinking, "Well, duh!" She was useless. In fact, she was worse than useless... if I'd been Leon I'd just have turned my radio off and taken my chances on the ground.
There's some puzzling to be done to get through this or that gate but it's pretty basic switch pulling and/or killing the bad guys before they grab Ashley. That's a pretty neat part of the game, actually. Once you do meet up with Ashley and are working on getting her out of there she has a health bar, she can be told to wait or follow, and she can be grabbed by the bad guys who will try to carry her off. If they get her to a level exit then you lose. If she dies, you lose. If you're smart about it, though, she isn't a massive liability. She keeps up, she ducks when you level your gun in her direction (though that can mean she stays next to something that's going to kill her) and generally she stays close but out of your way. Still, when they're all around you trying to beat your head in and you can hear "Help! Leon help me!" as Ashley is being carried off it can get fraught.
The voices are good even if the bad guy's gloating is somewhat predictable. A lot of the dialog feels quite light hearted as Leon takes most things in his stride. Whatever happened at Racoon City must have beaten him into a tough cookie.
There are some minigames to be played. There's some shooting range games linked to the weapons dealer, which are optional. There's a few puzzle locks, which are not. There's also a couple of fight sequences that take place during scripted scenes that require hitting the right buttons at the right time; the buttons flash up, but you need to be quick and know your controller well or you'll often die there and then. Oh, don't sit back and relax in the video sequences as you're not safe; you're never safe in this game.
There are a number of memorable scenes, some of which I'd happily play repeatedly as minigames of their own: defend the house, fight on the mine trolleys, even one of the boss fights was tough-but-interesting (I'm generally not a fan of boss-fights).
Resident Evil 4 goes on the list as one of the few games I've ever found sufficiently interesting to complete, up there with Max Payne (1 and 2). Story-lead, survival thriller (not horror, quite), it gave me just under 30 hours of gameplay that really gave a high to my two weeks off work. And once you've completed the game a bunch of minigames, shorter story sequences as the other characters, and a "hard" play mode are all opened up for future amusement... though I've not played with any of them yet.
From me, 9 out of 10. Excellent, one of the best I've played.
