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July 11, 2005
Living or dead, shooting at folks is a fun thing to do
Faithful readers of this weblog know that I like to let my geek flag fly from time to time. Still, I don't often show my uber-geeky gamer underbelly unless it's for something really special. Well listen up, people: Resident Evil 4 is really special.
For the life of me, I can't figure out how Capcom made a game this beautiful with the Gamecube hardware. Just try not to be a little breathless when you realize that every single minor enemy you encounter in this game is rendered with as many polygons as the main character in Metal Gear Solid 3. The game really does look as good as anything we've yet seen for the next-generation consoles, but on a platform with a literal fraction of the computing muscle.
For Christ's sake, the cutscenes are all rendered in the game's own engine instead of being CG (as is the case with most heavily story-oriented games). Once you play the game, you'll see how impressive that is. This also has the benefit of allowing the developers to make some of the cutscenes interactive (it's really never safe to put down the controller), all of which makes for totally immersive gameplay.
Truth be told, I've hated all of the other entries in the RE series that I've played. The awkward control scheme and the awful camera system took all of the fun out of killing zombies--and you have to try really, really hard to make me not enjoy killing zombies. However, in RE4 almost all of those issues have been completely resolved. The result is a gorgeous game with a gripping story that handles like a dream.
As uncomfortable as I feel saying this, I really think that I like RE4 as much as any installment of the Metal Gear Solid series. That's fucking huge. Honestly, if you don't have a Gamecube, it's worth buying one just for this game. It is being ported (with a handfull of extras) to the PS2 later this year, but all of the shots i've seen so far of the new version seem to have some issues with aliasing and jagged edges.
Some people are quibbling about the faked (non-anamorphic) widescreen. Those people are dorks.
Find some way to play it. At the very least, you need to check out some video of it online, but you should definitely try to play it.
Posted by matt at July 11, 2005 09:16 AM
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