Retro Views: Resident Evil 4

Resident Evil 4 is a game all about two things: action and tone. And in both of those categories, this game is consistently uneven. When RE4 is firing on all cylinders, it's amongst the most successful (and therefore scariest) games ever made, but when it's not, it's not.

Let's shift gears for a second, though, and talk about the fascinating development history behind Resident Evil 4. When I first played this game back in 2005, I had no idea that people who I would eventually consider to be some of my favourite game creators were behind it. All the way back in 2000, Shinji Mikami (the creator of the Resident Evil series) asked his friend and co-worker Hideki Kamiya to direct a new Resident Evil game that would stir up the somewhat-dormant franchise, long-known for B-movie plotting, shock horror thrills and plodding, slow-paced gameplay. The modus operandi was to make everything "cool," and before long, Kamiya had a new storyline, new characters, new mechanics – in short, it hardly resembled the Resident Evil games of old at all. Capcom and Mikami were afraid that this new direction was too action oriented and not in line with the expectations that customers were going to have of a game with "Resident Evil" in the title, and development was halted. Kamiya left the Resident Evil team, but was allowed to keep his ideas, which, incidentally, turned into a completely separate series: Devil May Cry.

Mikami then hired new directors to take over, and the idea was switched from a "cool badass" character to one more intimately familiar to Resident Evil fans: Leon Kennedy. As well, the locale was changed from America to Europe, meaning the team had to do extensive research in the area to capture the mood that the game was to require. In 2003, a trailer for this Resident Evil 4 was shown at E3, and… was also scrapped.

Finally, attempting to bridge the gap between a completely new, un-Resident Evil game and one that was a little too beholden to the chronicles of the Umbrella corporation, Mikami himself finally decided to direct Resident Evil 4, changing the bad guys to a new religious sect, and finally releasing the Resident Evil 4 that everyone has played, famously as part of the "Capcom 5" (five games that were intended to be Gamecube exclusives, though only one of them ever actually was).

I bring up this long, tortured development cycle not only because it's interesting (or at least I think it is, anyways), but because the strains of that development cycle are more apparent now than they ever were, and demonstrate a company at a bit of a loss at how to take their franchise into three true dimensions. When Resident Evil 4 launched to widespread critical accolades in 2005, people were dazzled (myself included) by the level of craft on display. For a sixth-generation game, Resident Evil 4's technical achievements in terms of atmosphere, level design and character design were unparalleled. This was, and continues to be, a gorgeous game with a lot of clear artistic design. This isn't merely a technical showpiece, mind you; Resident Evil 4 puts its graphics to great use in creating a mood of sheer, unadulterated terror.

Indeed, though the perspective changed to a (now-standard) "over the shoulder" third-person perspective, everything that was a Resident Evil hallmark up until this point made it intact into Resident Evil 4, though now with a shot of adrenaline thrown into the mix. The feeling of being trapped in an unwinnable situation, surrounded on all sides by lumbering, soulless enemies, is done as well here as its ever been, and the new enemies (racial caricatures as they often were, unfortunately, though by no means is RE4 anywhere close to Uncle Tom's Cab-… erm, I mean, Resident Evil 5) are completely unnerving in their shuffling, odd movements and insistence on overwhelming and then killing you.

Resident Evil 4 is by no means a balls-out action fest, and that's something that's enjoyable about the game even to this day. There's a certain level of strategy and methodicalness to the proceedings, and this aspect is played up in every aspect of the game design. Shooting isn't about cover and strafing (as in most third-person shooters), but about precision shots and getting your back up against a defendable position. Ammo is plentiful (and scattered in random places) in the early goings, but by the end of the game, conserving your ammo plays a key role in your survival, requiring you to make perfect shots and get up close and personal to finish the job – something that's never played for "action game awesomeness," but always feels completely nerve-shattering. And, as always in Resident Evil games, item placement and careful consideration of your inventory is a must. This is the one aspect of the game that everyone complains about, but it's totally brilliant and makes Resident Evil 4 much more of a cerebral affair than its action-oriented gameplay could have led to.

Like I said before: when RE4 is doing all of these things right, it's an unqualified horror success. So many modern games aim to shock or offend with no real purpose, with founts of blood signifying their "maturity" with all the subtlety of a hammer to the skull, but Resident Evil 4 is much more concerned with the foundational building blocks of horror: an emotional catharsis from dealing with dark, abnormal, overwhelming things. For those more equipped to deal with this than I am, Resident Evil 4 sustains that level of intensity throughout its playtime, but since I can hardly deal even with the cheesy horror films that play throughout the year (I'm perhaps the only person on the entire planet who is still scared of The Ring, for instance, even though I realize how silly it is), playing Resident Evil 4 is a draining experience that I can really only do for about half an hour at a time. That's probably why, even though I've owned this game for six years now, I'm still playing through my original playthrough to this day. It's not exactly a happy-go-lucky, "I want to play this game nonstop" kind of game for me – I'm still pretty against gunplay in games, you know – but I recognize the solid gameplay design on display, and Mikami is often masterful at sustaining a tone.

Well, kind of, anyways. See, the problem that I think I was too scared to acknowledge when I first started playing Resident Evil 4, is that the narrative framework around which all of these brilliantly atmospheric and frightening setpieces are built is really shitty. Indeed, the game has no qualms about switching from seemingly-unending terror to pithy one-liners from its too-voice-actor-y voice cast. This has been a staple of Resident Evil games, of course, and fans of the series not only have grown accustomed to this narrative style, but actually like it. But RE4 is so masterful at maintaining tension that it feels kind of cheap and B-movie-esque when it doesn't. Indeed, on this playthrough, I found myself cursing those broadly comedic moments for cheapening my terror-filled experiences. If the gameplay is ultimately as or more successful at scaring the pants off of you in reasonably intelligent ways as any Hollywood film, the story is, well, about the quality of the Resident Evil films if we're being brutally honest.

Dropping you into a rural Spanish area that's filled with ominous rust tones and murderous villagers? That part's totally brilliant for building tension. But the reason why you're there – to save the President's daughter – is pretty stupid, and plays out in pretty sexist ways. Ashley, your counterpart for a good portion of the game, is a twig-thin automaton incapable of doing anything with agency. Instead, she follows you like a lost puppy in a short skirt (or unlockable halter top), needing to be "saved" all the time. The setup borders on the cliche, but the execution is a little insulting.

So the game's uneven. In fact, to truly enjoy Resident Evil 4, you almost have to put on blinders to its less than perfect elements. Because, indeed, there is a lot of good here – good game design, good atmosphere, good horror fundamentals. In fact, it's that last point that makes all of the other cruft a little more palatable, because as much as I hate that the game relies on such a cliched setup to get into the game world, the overwhelming terror is so well done here that Resident Evil 4 stands as one of the most successful attempts at horror in any medium. Dropping the player right into the thick of it demands a certain level of attachment, and even if the player never really is the "cool badass" character in real life, in those life or death moments, you'd swear you were right there.

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