Reviews// Resident Evil 4 (GameCube)

The boss fights are also superlatively fantastic. There’s a considerable amount of variety, an enormous amount of tension and so many nice little touches to each element of the design that even the most cynical observer could not fail to be impressed. These stages are effectively puzzles solved through the subtleties of extreme violence and it often requires an approach quite distinct from the mindless trigger mashing one might expect. They all look amazing too, and the cut scenes intersect the action seamlessly, often involving quick-reaction button presses during the events themselves. Again, it’s another example of the superb design: as the player is constantly involved in what’s going on.

The actual choice of guns now affects the gameplay too. You can buy, sell, upgrade (and find) weapons and the strategy behind this is surprisingly important to how you progress. Depending on how long you look for hidden gold etc, you’ll have a limited amount of cash to spend, and you are also limited by the size of your attaché case. This means that you can’t sensibly carry every gun if you want room for health replenishing herbs and the like. There are handguns, shotguns, machine guns, rifles, rocket-launchers and loads in-between. You can upgrade their stats, whack on scopes and butts: it really is rather sophisticated.

All this goodness goes on for ages as well (especially if, like this reviewer, you skim read the instructions and didn’t realise there was a run button until a few hours in!) offering at least 25 hours of sheer entertainment. And it begs to be re-played too. Even when you think you’ve done rather splendidly, the end of level stats will profess otherwise, and if you want to train up on every single gun and dispose of every single enemy; you’ll most likely have to play this twice... at least!

It’s difficult to think of anything sensible to say that might balance this review out a bit. It would be easy to slate the fundamentally stupid story, cheap script and doofus voice acting, but in truth, it’s much better that way. There’s no room for a self-conscious push for artistic credibility in a game like this, because it’s so bloody good at being a video game. Killing stuff has rarely been offered in such a well thought out, well-refined package, so there’s no way you can really take offence at the usually satisfying cheesy moments.