Even with his unpleasant omnipresence and troubling nonchalance at the wild, wild stuff going on around him, the merchant is pretty well your only friend in Resident Evil 4. He’s not actively trying to murder you, anyway. Seeing the blue flames that festoon his makeshift shops is always a comfort, one that stands in for the feeling of revisiting this game for me in general.
RE4 is one of the best and most memorable games I’ve ever played. I feel like even the most banal moments of my experience with it are memorable by association. I was 15 when it came out. I went to the EB Games right near my place to pick it up. They only had one copy of the game left by the time I got there, a “gutted” copy they take the discs out of so they can have a display case. (EB is still around in Canada, and they still do this today.) They “sealed” the case with sticker and I took it home. Turned out they forgot to put the discs in the case. I went back.
This inconvenience was just one more step on what felt like a long, tension-building road to buying the game. I read and re-read any previews of the game I had in my stack o’ magazines for what must have been a year, re-absorbing all the hype that was following it. It was palpable even for me — someone who had, for example, never played any Resident Evil before (I’ve since tried more). Or any horror game for that matter.
By the time I had finally gotten it into my Gamecube, the surrounding mood was downright intimidating. I remember resting on the title screen a few moments to soak up its ominous drones, watched its figures slide into focus, studied them. And then that voice:
The game beyond that title screen did little to put me more at ease. It was scary and brutal, lengthy and tough. Each new area and encounter raised the stakes just a bit more, and before I knew it those stakes were fully realized. It was the first time I remember feeling palpable adrenaline while playing a game. It was the best, and few games since have made that sort of mark on me.
The game has been released every couple years since then, and I think that semi-constant resurfacing is why RE4 doesn’t feel almost twelve years old to me. It is though, and the PS4 release that went up for sale this week seems like a good bet if you’d like to re-experience it again. Or hey, maybe for the first time? It runs at a solid sixty frames and has been substantially sharpened from its last console release. (Taking decent video isn't an option for me right now, so let this official peek do the talking.) Excepting that ambitious fan remastering of the recent PC version — and those with relatively good PCs to boot— this is probably the best way to play RE4.
And it’s still worth playing. I’m struck by what a challenging, confidently designed game it is over a decade after release. As Greg Kasavin put it in his review all those years ago, RE4 “tightens the leash” on you masterfully. I struggle to drum up many other games that teach you something new and test your limits with each and every moment, and that entertain in ways as endless. The moment you feel like you’re getting a handle on your foes, along comes another complication: tentacles that scrape away at you long range, maybe. Scary monk guys with big chunky shields. Or who could forget the parasites you need to precision target with a thermal scope? Each new piece introduced requires its own careful approach, and you’ll have to remember and juggle several at once before long.
The areas you’re pushing through employ a similar philosophy: at first they’re fairly large, with lots of open areas to herd villagers into and side paths to get yourself out of harm’s way. Sight lines are plentiful and let you check up on other parts of the area easily. The enemies within them aren’t to be underestimated, but the lay of the land is an asset, and that’s a huge comfort. Little by little, those spacious oases start to disappear. The hallways connecting them narrow - the ultimate manifestation of this is, to me, the fight with "It".
Ugh. Meanwhile, you’re running lower on ammo. You’ve got a defenceless partner to check up on, lest you get that most demoralizing of Game Overs.
This started out as a two-sentence PSA that, unlike the recent RE5 re-release, this port one is just fine. The best games give me the best opportunities to ramble, though! I just had my first kid — more on that in the next blog — so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to play through Resident Evil 4 again. But I’m having as much fun as ever chipping through this latest version, and hopefully some of you are too.
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