4/5 ★ – FarnySeals's review of Resident Evil 4.

Honestly, I have quite a few problems with Resident Evil 4, like a bloated final act, a lacklustre final boss, and terrible quick time events, but the risk they took in approaching the series in a completely different and fresh direction, curtesy of the original game’s director, is something that really paid off for the series and opened the doors for Capcom to take the series in different directions instead of beating the same horse over and over (like with Resident Evil 7 or the Resident Evil 2 Remake which also helped bring new life to the series). Resident Evil 4 quite possibly has the best art direction in the entire series. Moving from a big American city and it’s surroundings to a creepy little archaic Spanish village overrun by an ancient plague and it’s worshipers is wild, but it works incredibly well as an entry point for the series, especially considering it’s a self-contained story too. Resident Evil 2 had some great body horror with William Birkin’s many forms and transformations, but the Las Plagas mutations step up the body horror game to another level. For example, my favourite boss in the game, Chief Mendez, starts by his torso splitting in half and his spine turning into a centipede esc thing, which just continues to get more disgusting as the fight goes on. Even the regular enemies have gross mutations as the parasites burst out of their heads or hop out of their bodies. It’s just so cool and makes the majority of the enemy encounters a ton of fun. Speaking of the combat, it’s not your usual modern third person shooter, it actually feels quite arcade-like, with tank controls, a super satisfying laser sight aim mechanic, and weak points that allow you to do kicks and suplexes, and elevating the rookie cop Leon to a badass government agent who knows his way around pistols, shotguns, machine guns, and more. Upgrading guns and buying them feels great, and overall the game is just a ton of fun thank you to the level designs and arenas feeling dynamic and tense. Like I said, the final act feels bloated and fairly repetitive with industrial backdrops and tons of explosions, but it still has some solid and tense combat scenarios. Generally, the more linear game structure feels like the natural progression from RE3: Nemesis, and while I’m not a big fan of the whole chapter and act thing, it definitely works as much as I have a personal preference for the good old backtracking of the first two games. I’m sort of on and off with the narrative, it has the iconic campiness that defined the original trilogy, but past the incredible concept of Las Plagas and Las Illuminados, there’s some depth lacking, especially in the main antagonist, Saddler, who’s name I forget because he’s just generically evil. There’s little to the history of the Los Illuminados and many of the side antagonists like Salazar and Chief Mendez, despite having specific, memorable moments, don’t feel fleshed out enough to make me truly care about what they’re capable of past constantly stealing Ashley, who has basically no character besides having boobs, I guess. This is not to say all the characters suck, Leon is fun, Ada is a fun returning character, and Krauser is pretty interesting, but really I’m not playing this game for the story. People often dunk on Resident Evil’s stories, but there’s quite a bit of depth to Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3, especially as they help elevate each others contexts. For these reasons, I can’t rate this game. It’s almost to a point where the game’s history and important exceeds its objective quality. There are things about this game that I absolutely fucking adore, that build up and exceed the series past it’s original PS1 run, but then there are things that just totally suck in comparison to that same run. At its core though, it’s still a great game. Tons of fun, aesthetically pleasing in every way possible, and so incredibly creative. Edit: Okay, I’ve decided in a high 4/5.