Leon even comments “He’s not a zombie…” if you examine the corpse of the first enemy you come across. The base enemies (called Ganados) are humans infected with an alien parasite, turning them hostile towards Leon Kennedy.
#Resident evil 4 best weapons series#
Not only did Capcom entirely change the player’s perspective, but they threw out all of the established rules the series had gone with for its previous entries. REinventing the Wheel Forget zombies, guys with bags on their head are what all the kids are scared of (back in 2005). It creates white knuckle tension that is still effective to this day. Enemies are slower than in other horror titles to compensate for Leon’s deliberate aiming, and they often have specific moments of vulnerability the player must exploit to exterminate them. It might take some adjusting for someone who hasn’t played the game before and are used to more fluid gunplay in newer games, but the game is balanced around this fact. Every shot you take still feels significant since you immediately make yourself vulnerable by aiming your gun. It’s still a conscious decision on the player’s part. Since you’re always up against some ungodly threat, the player must make a decision about when they’re safe enough to fire back at the enemy hordes. The fact that you can’t move and aim not only lends Leon a sense of vulnerability, but it also does the exact same thing that aiming in the old games did. A very common complaint I’ve seen with the game, though, is the fact that you can’t move and aim at the same time (a problem they would soon rectify). Aiming in Resident Evil 4 is rather quick, meaning that Leon will ready his weapon almost instantaneously. You couldn’t aim at different body parts, and aiming too slowly could result in a zombie chowing down on whatever character you’re playing as. Even aiming your gun took a specific amount of time, meaning that every time you aim, it is a conscious decision on your part. In the early titles, there was a huge emphasis on animations and timing. You might argue that this takes away a lot of the tension from the early installments, but Capcom thought of a way around that. Players could now aim their gun at different, specific body parts of enemies in the game, and they had a clear view of where they were looking.
No more aiming at an enemy off screen, hoping you’re hitting them and not wasting precious bullets. 3D gaming in 2005 was still a relatively new thing, just a little over a decade old, and developers struggled to figure out their cameras sometimes (I admit that I used to have rose tinted glasses with this, but after having beaten Super Mario Sunshine on the Super Mario 3D All Stars collection, it’s shocking just how much developers struggled with cameras back in the early 2000s).Ĭapcom instead thought, “Let’s let the player see directly what’s in front of them.” Bam.
RE4 did away with all that, instead shifting to a behind-the-shoulder perspective that was so simple it’s a wonder more games hadn’t done it before. While, yeah, that style is certainly dated, I’m of the opinion that done right, it can still be effective in the modern day. Most seem to think that this method was a way of making the player feel like they have less than complete control. Up to this point, the Resident Evil franchise was known for its fixed cameras and tank style controls. We’re taking a look at the best and worst parts of this classic horror shooter, and examining its staying power.ĭoing the Same Thing, Except Not REally RE4 flipped players’ preconceived notions about the series on their heads. Of course I’m going to dive in to what makes it so great even to this day, but I’m also going to turn a critical eye to what it did to its own series and the gaming industry. What more can possibly be said about it that hasn’t already been said? Why bother with this article at all when the world knows how big of an impact this game made when it landed?Īside from the fact that we’re currently in the middle of a Resident Evil retrospective series, I want to take a different approach to the usual discussion of this game. I know that Resident Evil 4 is a masterpiece. You know that Resident Evil 4 is a masterpiece. It’s also a shockingly popular entry, with it having been ported to pretty much every platform imaginable. Not only did it completely change the series’ core gameplay, but it ushered in an era of titles that tried (and failed) to capture its success. Resident Evil 4 was the very definition of a game changer, both for its series, and the gaming industry as a whole.
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