One Avocadoan’s journey delving into the realm of survival horror.

I apologize in advance.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, as discussed last time, had something of an unusual development cycle. Despite that, it was still a relatively smooth process when compared to the development of Resident Evil 4, which went through multiple major overhauls before release. The first attempt at making an RE4 actually started after the launch of Resident Evil 2 in 1998 as a planned third installment in the series with an intended release on the PS2. Delays in both progress on the game and the launch of Sony’s second console led Capcom to boost an in-the-works PS1 spinoff game into the official ‘RE3’ spot. This naturally forced the planned PS2 game to shift from ‘RE3’ to ‘RE4’, but even that proved short-lived; concern over the game’s focus on action over horror ultimately led to it being excised entirely from the franchise and reworked into Devil May Cry. Two more builds of RE4 were attempted – both focusing on Leon Kennedy from RE2, one involving taking down Umbrella Corporation and the other centered on exploring a haunted house – but rejected by Capcom. By this point a deal had been inked with Nintendo to bring the franchise to the GameCube, a move that prompted the creation of the now-iconic Resident Evil Remake and a change in console for the in-development Resident Evil 0 (originally meant for the Nintendo 64) and RE4. Desperate for results after the repeated setbacks, Capcom brought back Shinji Mikami (director of both RE1 and REmake) to direct one final build of RE4. Wanting to shake things up, Mikami decided that the game would have more of an action focus than its predecessors (but presumably not as much as the earlier version that became DMC) and eschew the use of fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds. The game released to critical acclaim in 2005 and sold well on the GameCube (but was somewhat hamstrung by the console’s relatively low player base) before a number of ports (including for PS2) brought it greater financial success. RE4 has since frequently been called one of the best games in the RE franchise and one the best video games ever made and has had an influence across many action games and franchises.

It also dramatically altered the trajectory of the RE series, leading to an abandonment of the games’ survival horror roots and tracing a path directly to Resident Evil 6, what many consider to be the nadir of the franchise.

Rather than bury the lede any further, let’s start with what will likely be the most controversial part of this review – I was not a fan of this game. I’m not going to call RE4 a bad game, because I don’t think it is, but I found playing it to be an underwhelming and frustrating experience. Partly I think this is due to the game being the victim of its own hype. Any two-decade-old game held up as one of the greatest of all time is going to struggle to meet the expectations of new first-time players. Some such games that I’ve played for the first time in the past year have managed the feat – Half-Life 2, Portal, and Portal 2 – but others like RE4 didn’t have the same success for me.

Beyond just the effects of hype, though, there were some big issues I had with the game. One was the sudden shift straight into action territory. This change in direction for the series wasn’t totally out of left field; as discussed previously, RE3 took some steps toward a greater focus on action with the addition of the dodge mechanic and larger groups of more aggressive enemies. But RE3 still managed to retain much of the gameplay and design choices of its predecessors. RE4, by contrast, represents much more of a sharp break with the series’ survival horror roots. Puzzles are a lot farther and fewer between, and the atmosphere as a whole feels a lot less creepy. Instead, you are constantly forced to face down wave after wave of running, yelling enemies, and it gets exhausting very quick. 

Part of the issue was definitely misinformed expectations. Prior to playing I had repeatedly seen the game described as a transition between the survival horror of the original trilogy and the action horror of RE5 and RE6, which sounded fine with me. But it really falls much further on the action end of the spectrum than I was led to think, and that is something I’m much less interested in. I’ve played very few ‘action shooter’ types of games, and of those the only one I really loved was Half-Life 2 (and that likely comes down more to Valve’s design wizardry than anything else). There’s a reason I never had the intention to play RE5 or RE6 for this review series, but I was hoping RE4 would retain more of what I liked about the earlier games in the series (and their remakes) than it did.

Even when taking the shift in direction for what it is, there were some gameplay elements that felt weirdly dated or just kind of annoying to me. The combination of tank controls and an over-the-shoulder camera is one such example. Tank controls are fine with fixed camera angles, but utilizing them with a more mobile camera just feels odd and makes the camera awkward to control. I will also note that I am very much not a fan of escort missions in games, so having the majority of the game taken up by one such mission is definitely annoying. Looking after Ashley isn’t too bad in the beginning, when the game gives you places to hide her until you’ve cleared all the enemies, but once it starts requiring you to send her on her own to solve puzzles or traps you and her in small areas with swarms of enemies, it becomes increasingly frustrating.

Another component of the switch to an action focus, and perhaps my least favorite element of the game, is the heavy use of quick time events (QTEs). Man, the use of QTEs in this game just straight-up sucks most of the time. You’ll be watching a moderately lengthy cutscene, and then all of a sudden it will throw a button prompt up on screen and you’ll have pretty much two seconds to press them or you’ll instantly die. And even when you know a QTE is coming, the randomness of the prompt and the lack of time to complete it can still kill you. I died six times to the QTE before the battle with the village chief because it wouldn’t recognize my input in time. Other QTEs are just solely button-mashing, which is frankly kind of baffling. Why couldn’t this just have been a cutscene? Why do I need to break my keyboard smashing the ‘X’ button over and over just so that Leon gets back in his boat? And then you’ll have QTEs (particularly the boulder ones) that start out as button-mashing and then at the very last second switch up the prompt and give you almost no time to respond. It’s just such an aggravating design choice that does nothing to endear me to the game. I’ve heard it said that the original point of QTEs was to keep the player engaged during cutscenes, but that gets lost when you spend the whole cutscene staring at the bottom of the screen and waiting for a prompt.

The visual design of a game can make up for a lot for me. Unfortunately, the environmental design of RE4 just feels so boring much of the time. In REmake, RE2make, and even the original Resident Evil 3, the developers were able to fit so much interesting visual detail into just a single area. Resident Evil 4 lacks on this front. The entire first part of the game takes place in a rugged mountainous region where everything is just muddy textures of brown and gray. The surrounding ridges? Brown and gray. The houses and other buildings? Brown and gray. The clothing of the antagonistic villagers? You guessed it, brown and gray. This does improve for a while once you get to the castle (more on that later), but the final area regresses to generic browns and grays again. You can look at a moment from any of the first three games (or their remakes) and instantly say, “That looks like Resident Evil.” RE4, by contrast, could be pretty easily mistaken for a lot of generic 2000s shooter games. Frankly, I’d go so far as to say that this is my least favorite of the games I’ve played so far for this column series when it comes to the visuals.

Continuing on that trend, the main bulk of the enemy designs also feel dull compared to previous games. The vast majority of the enemies look like normal humans, either wearing the aforementioned brown and gray clothing or the black robes of cultists. And it seems like there are only a few character models that are copied over and over again. This isn’t quite as noticeable or annoying with the zombies of previous games, but it’s hard to ignore when the enemies are so mundane. Some of the other enemy types have more interesting designs (more on one in particular later), but they are drowned out by the sheer volume of the villagers and cultists.

I also find Saddler something of a boring villain. He does get a few fun quips in at Leon’s expense, but otherwise he just feels like a generic cult leader bent on world domination without much motivation or personality quirks beyond that. His underlings, particularly Salazar, are a lot more fun to deal with. And while I’m not saying that Umbrella needed to be the antagonist of this one, it is disappointing that they have Umbrella collapse offscreen in the first two minutes. After all that build-up with Leon and Jill vowing to go after the corporation near the ends of their respective games, Capcom pulls a ‘Umbrella died on the way to their home planet.’ It’s just anticlimactic.

Contrary to how it may seem, I did not hate RE4. There were certainly things that I liked. Salazar’s castle (which takes up the middle third of the game), for example, was a big step up over what came before and after. The environments, with their soaring architecture and trappings of nobility, were significantly more interesting to look at. Puzzles, while still sparser than in previous games, were more prevalent than in the other areas. And, as mentioned previously, I quite enjoyed Salazar as an antagonist with his petulance and unearned grandiosity. Outside of the constant waves of enemies and some annoying QTEs, it feels a lot more like what I associate with ‘Resident Evil’ than the rest of the game.

Similarly, while I ragged quite a bit on the game’s enemy variety there is actually one enemy that I thought was particularly well-designed. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is the scariest enemy I have encountered in a survival horror game so far. I am talking, of course, about the Regeneradores. Tall, lanky gray zombies may be par for the course for Resident Evil, but these guys are so much more unsettling. The unnaturally wide toothy grins, the almost casual way they walk toward you…and, oh yeah, the fact that they can very quickly regenerate any body part you damage. Even shooting off their legs won’t stop them – in the moments before the legs regrow, they will aggressively flop at you like the world’s most bloodthirsty Magikarp. Killing them takes a lot of work and specialized strategies, especially if you (like me) missed picking up the thermal scope that can uncover their weak points. And don’t even get me started on their disturbing breathing, one of the best pieces of video game sound design I’ve encountered in recent memory. There are only around ten of these monsters total (including the spiky Iron Maiden variant), but they make a lasting impression. 

I also enjoyed some of the characters. The Merchant is definitely a highlight, with his weird Cockney-esque accent, mysterious cloaked appearance, and unexplained ability to somehow always get to where Leon is going ahead of him. I also liked how his wares and tune-up service give you many opportunities to customize your arsenal. I developed a fondness for Leon while playing RE2make, and that still largely holds here. He may be a bit of an over-the-top action hero now complete with cheesy one-liners (which, I mean, there’s always been elements of camp to Resident Evil), but it’s fun seeing his evolution from naive rookie. Ada is Ada. Ashley has flashes of being an interesting character, but too often falls into the damsel in distress archetype.

Anyway, I’m really sorry to say it – given how beloved this game is here and elsewhere – but overall I was disappointed in Resident Evil 4. Despite some fun characters, one of the best monsters in the series, and one cool location, there was too much bland environmental and enemy design, frustrating QTEs, and constant waves of enemies that got old quick. Again, I’m not trying to say this is a bad game, but it just was not a style of game I’m inclined to enjoy (especially in comparison to the first three RE games I played). With that, I will be taking a break from the RE series for a little while to focus on other survival horror games and series (such as a couple more Silent Hill entries), but I will get to RE7 eventually.

Survival horror and adjacent games I hope to cover (in no particular order) – Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Resident Evil: Village, Silent Hill 2 Remake, Silent Hill 4: The Room, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Amnesia: Rebirth, Amnesia: The Bunker, Tormented Souls, Alien Isolation, Yomawari: Midnight Shadows, The Evil Within, The Evil Within 2, Alisa, Dead Space (2008), Alone in the Dark 1, Alone in the Dark 2, Alone in the Dark 3, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, Curse: Eye of Isis, Dino Crisis, Darkwood, ObsCure, Cold Fear, Lempo, Stasis, Stasis Bone Totem, System Shock 1 and 2, Metro 2033, Look Outside, Fear the Spotlight, Heartworm, Little Goody Two-Shoes, SOMA, Empty Shell, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Clock Tower: Rewind, White Day: A Labyrinth Called School, Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Sorry We’re Closed, Fragile Reflection, Bioshock 1, Bioshock 2, You Will Die Here Tonight

My Current Survival Horror Ranking:

1. Resident Evil (HD Remaster) (9.5/10)
2. Signalis (9/10)
3. Resident Evil 2 Remake (9/10)
4. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (8.5/10)
5. Crow Country (8.5/10)
6. Silent Hill f (8/10)
7. Resident Evil 4 (7/10)

Up Next: Silent Hill 2 Remake

Header image courtesy GamingBolt.