Any time I discuss something, I try to be fair in my assessment of whatever it is I'm talking about. With Bioshock 2, I made it very clear that I didn't enjoy the game, but I pointed out that someone who had never played the first game might enjoy it more as it would be a completely new experience. When talking about Divergent, I said that since it's part of a trilogy, I can't judge it without reading the other two books as there's still room for improvement and the rest of the trilogy will expand on the original story. I rarely ever just come out and say, "This is BAD."
I feel like I've explained my stance on Resident Evil 4 so many times, but I've never put all of my thoughts into one post. I usually comment on one thing, leave it alone, come back later, comment on something else, etc. So I'm going to explain why I dislike this game so much.
In all fairness, there's a difference between a bad game and a boring game. A bad game is a game with a terrible story, terrible controls, and gamebreaking glitches that make it so incredibly frustrating you want to throw the controller through the TV. (I'm looking at you, Calling.) In my opinion, Resident Evil 4 has a terrible story and terrible controls, but it's not actually unplayable. It's just boring as hell to play. But to my knowledge, there are no glitches that break the game, and so it's not BAD.
Let's start with the main issue I think a lot of people have with this game. (Clearly not all people, because a lot of people loved Resident Evil 4.) By Resident Evil standards, this game is a failure. The survival horror elements are gone. And I think that's why so many fans of the series had such a hard time accepting it when it was released. We played this series because we loved how scary it was. And we loved knowing that we had to run from most of the enemies, because if we killed them, we wouldn't have enough ammo to survive later on.
With Resident Evil 4, you never really had to worry about running out of ammo or healing supplies, especially since enemies started dropping ammo. And there were weapon upgrades, so you could make your guns even stronger, which meant that you didn't have to use as much ammo. There was no need to run from enemies, you could just shoot down everything you came across. Goodbye survival horror, hello third person shooter. Add in the fact that you no longer had just eight item slots to carry your inventory in, you had an entire attache case for it, and it really takes out the apprehension you felt when you had to decide whether or not to bring a certain gun with you or leave it in favor of something like a key. "Can I survive without this gun? Maybe not, but I need a way through that door."
Leon's character is very different compared to how he was in Resident Evil 2. All he does during the game is throw out a bunch of corny one-liners. And sure, I'll admit, the Resident Evil series was never known for its amazing scripts, but I feel like this one was particularly bad.
The story itself is very dull. Rescue the president's daughter from a bunch of people with parasites for heads. The enemies were unimaginative and not scary at all. Some of them were downright ridiculous. (Salazar, anyone? He looks like a gnome.) To get back to your objective, rescuing Ashley...It's REALLY difficult to play a game where that's your goal when most of the time, you want to kill her yourself. Babysitting her is so incredibly annoying, especially since she tends to get in the way. What's really infuriating is that she can take several hits from an enemy before she dies, but if you accidentally hit her once with your knife, it's game over. Better luck next time. Why is friendly fire on? Don't tell me it's to make the game realistic, because like I said...She only dies in one hit if Leon's the one slashing at her.
My last major issue with the game is the control scheme. The controls for the Resident Evil series were never great, but they worked for the type of game it was. The minute they decided to turn Resident Evil 4 into a third person shooter, they should have updated the controls accordingly. I've noticed that people LOVE to use the excuse that the game is supposed to be scary, and that's why you can't move and aim at the same time. No...I'm pretty sure Capcom is just lazy, because even though you can't move and aim, it's STILL not scary. And even if it was, that's a poor way of going about it. Create a creepy atmosphere, actually make your game scary, stop relying on poor controls to do it for you.
Continuing with the controls...Aiming with the left stick? Really? I know the default control scheme (PS2/PS3) has you shooting with the square button, so aiming with the right stick would be difficult, but...Why does that control scheme even exist? Did someone close their eyes and point to random buttons to decide their function? There's an alternate control scheme that changes the button you shoot with to R1, but you still have to aim with the left stick. And even though you get used to it after fifteen minutes or so, it's so counterintuitive that I don't understand why they would even force it upon us to begin with.
I will say that once you get your hands on the Chicago Typewriter and the armor for Ashley, the game does become enjoyable. You can just keep shooting her and she'll never die. It's a good way to get all your built up aggression towards her out.
Again, this is all just my opinion. I understand that other people like it, and that's absolutely fine. Just like it's fine that I don't. Hopefully people can understand that as well.
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