Resident Evil 4

If you knew anything about the Resident Evil video game series—past inclusions, especially—it’s time to unlearn what you have learned, because the old has been ousted and the new ushered in.

In 1996, acclaimed gaming company CAPCOM released Resident Evil for the Playstation, Sony’s burgeoning new entry into the console market. It was a third-person survival horror game featuring zombies and other horrific creatures created through a bioengineered virus. It boasted three-dimensional characters and an intriguing storyline, played against static, pre-rendered backgrounds, a la point-and-click adventure games.

This formula was so successful that CAPCOM passed it on to over half a dozen more games, each new entry into the series usually upping the ante, adding new and interesting content, and generally furthering the deepening storyline of the Umbrella Corporation and its devious experiments. They could get away with it, in the early days, simply because it worked, and because the techniques allowed them to provide a certain sense of atmosphere, detail, and clarity to their blood-splattered little world.

As time passed, and new systems came out, and technology advanced, the standards of video games grew and changed, and mutiny broke out in the ranks. Why was the series still mired in the mainstays of the past? Sure, it worked, but couldn’t they improve on the formula? There were complaints hither and yon: the controls were archaic and clumsy; the pre-rendered backgrounds were annoying and constraining; the zombies were getting old. Overall, the naysayers had this to say: either let the series die, or do something new.

So CAPCOM did.

Resident Evil 4 was long in the making, but when it finally got out of production and into GameCubes, it made such a huge splash that it was instantly one of the biggest and most popular titles on the system. Clearly, the company had done its job and delivered, but how?

Nothing short of three failed attempts and several years of work led up to the final release of the game in early January of 2004. The troubles getting the game started were reminiscent of those between Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2, when a version of the latter managed to get sixty-percent completed before being totally scrapped. In RE4’s case, it went through two cancelled concepts and one version that was revamped and released as a totally different, unrelated game (Devil May Cry).

It wasn’t until the series’ original director, Shinji Mikami, took over the project that the wheels got a’rollin’, and when they did, good things happened.

The most freeing change was in the environments. While attempts had been made to include fully three-dimensional areas into the series, they had either been abysmal failures (Resident Evil: Survivor), or uneven successes (Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Resident Evil 4 showed that not only had CAPCOM learned from its mistakes, but it had also learned from its pre-rendered successes.

Before 4, there had been two previous Resident Evil releases for the GameCube. One was a remake of the first Resident Evil, commonly called the REmake. It was a ramped-up version of the original, featuring immensely improved graphics, altered puzzles and storyline, and improved gameplay. The other was Resident Evil 0, a prequel made in the same visual vein as the REmake, albeit less effective.

These two titles had served to give players higher expectations for the atmosphere and appearance for entries into the series. Thus, it was only appropriate that Resident Evil 4 not only maintain it, but do something new with it.

This is why the final version of the game featured environments that were rich in detail and yet totally three-dimensional, only deepening the game’s overall sense of visual realism. When it rained, the splatters made by the impact of the drops were visible. When fire was present, it looked fantastically realistic, right down to the heat haze. When blood was let loose, it sprayed and splattered and dripped to the ground. When a window was shot, cracks spiderwebbed across it.

It is possibly CAPCOM’s finest visual achievement. Areas were sometimes developed and crafted down to the individual slats of wood in a fence or house, or the food and remains left on people’s tables. Characters were modeled and textured from the hair on their heads to the soles of their shoes—and the little buttons on their pants. No stone was unturned, no minor detail unembellished. It borders on a work of art.

And not just in its look, either. A game is nothing but “pretty” if it’s all graphics and poor gameplay (an unpleasant and unsatisfying trend in some games today). Fortunately, 4 delivered the goods in its shining new fighting engine, which borrowed minimally (but crucially) from the other games.

The old Resident Evils had featured a drastically simple fighting system. Pressing one button auto-aimed your character and put them into attack mode, and pressing another while the first was held down fired your weapon. You could aim up, down, or in the middle.

The company could’ve stuck with this for 4, but instead innovated like mad. The system of hold one button, press the other to shoot, was kept, but auto-aiming was done away with. Instead, every last weapon in Resident Evil 4 (except the knife, and grenades) has a laser sight on it. This was opted for because of the behind-the-shoulder view implemented in the game (with the “camera” placed a little to the right of the character on-screen, and zooming in to over-the-shoulder when in attack mode). The combination allows the player to aim with great precision, using the laser to pinpoint exactly where they’ll shoot.

This precision was necessary to cater to the needs of another new feature: key hit zones. Every enemy in the game has them, and all of them can be exploited to a player’s advantage. Essentially, they allow enemies to react more realistically to a projectile onslaught. If an enemy is shot in the face, he screams and clutches at it. If he’s shot in the thigh, he claps his hands to it and howls. If he’s shot in the foot or ankle, he drops to the ground. If he’s shot in the arm or the hand, he drops his weapon. The list goes on, and the result is that a player can do much more to defend him- or herself than ever before.

Including result to physical attacks. Hitting certain hit zones—the face and the knees, specifically—opens up enemies to minimal martial arts moves from the character. By moving closer to the wounded enemy, the player activates Action Button options that allow them to kick the enemy and anyone nearby away, or to grab the enemy and drag them into a head-splitting suplex.

This same button can also be used in the massive environments, providing dramatically increased interactivity. It can be used to open doors, leap over fences and other obstacles, climb ladders, leap out of windows, and activate switches and devices. The ease and versatility of its use provides the player with even more choices in how to conquer the massive challenges the game lays out for them.

These challenges come primarily in the form of enemies and bosses (puzzles, a previous mainstay and mindbuster, have been greatly toned down in this installment). These come in three types: numerous and overwhelming, enormous and overwhelming, and deadly and overwhelming. There are no “easy” enemies in this game.

There are also no zombies and no creepy, man-made viruses in this game, either, a huge change in the old formula. Every other game—every last one of them—had featured a mixture of the two. Zombies and viruses were the prevalent, binding factor between all Resident Evil games until 4 came out and broke the mold.

The replacement for the zombies are the Ganados. They are villagers, dressed in simple clothes and armed with basic farm tools (although they graduate to bigger and nastier weaponry later in the game). For the most part they look normal. In fact, as you approach their village, you can see them doing farmwork: taking care of cows, moving hay, feeding chickens, getting water. Only the Spanish police officer burning at the stake in the middle of the plaza gives away their true demeanor.

Walk far enough into the village, though, and eventually someone will notice you’re there—you’ll know they have when you hear a surprised and angry voice yell in Spanish, and the sudden change of the music to heart-pounding percussion. Then you start running and shooting for your life.

The problem is that the Ganados are in no way normal. They are, in fact, infected by an ancient, controlling parasite called Las Plagas, which are further controlled by the head religious figure of the village. They are vicious, bloodthirsty, and intelligent, calling on their comrades when they spot you, setting bear traps and plastique explosives, using weapons and communicating to one another in guttural Spanish. They swarm up on you by the dozen, armed with scythes, knives, pitchforks, and axes—and the occasional chainsaw. And, unfortunately, their infestation has caused them to be more durable than any zombie or human could ever be: a bullet to the head just fazes them, and it may take a whole clip to bring them down completely.

The challenge of keeping alive and beating off the horde brings real truth to the name of “survival horror.” It’s frightening, it’s tough, it’s scary, and it’s brutal to you when you lose. Fighting to survive is at its most intimidating and fun in Resident Evil 4. The ante has been upped.

Keep in mind that the Ganados are the most basic enemies in the whole game. Bosses—like the appropriately named El Gigante, and the Del Lago, and the Verdugo—are on a level all their own. The first one in the whole game, the aforementioned Del Lago, a three-hundred foot long mutated fish that you must battle while it drags you across a lake in a rickety rowboat, sets the standard for the rest.

The mid-tier monsters are no better, and unfortunately are more numerous than any one of the bosses. Chainsaw-wielding maniacs wearing burlap sacks on their heads join the Ganados in their hunt to kill you, and are somehow even more impervious to weaponry than their unmasked compatriots. Their attacks are one-hit kills: there’s not much you can do after you’ve been graphically decapitated with a gas-powered farm tool, after all.

It’s the game’s massive intimidation and challenge factor that really makes it appealing to so many video game aficionados. The fact that it was combined with beautiful graphics and featured what is possibly the series’ most popular character was just the icing on the cake. The only way CAPCOM could’ve done a better job is if they’d included a better story, and if they’d done more with the lackluster puzzles. These two downsides don’t keep the game from being the best in its class, though, and the next installment is slated to improve even further on all that has been done. It certainly doesn’t look like the Resident Evil series is going to go anywhere but up from here on out.