When Capcom released Resident Evil 4 for the Nintendo GameCube earlier this year, it revived, fittingly enough, the once noteworthy franchise. Gone were the usual Resident Evil pitfallsâstatic backgrounds, miserable controls, atrocious voiceover actingâand in their place were brilliant graphics, surprisingly deep level design, and... well, marginally better voiceover work. Also on hand was enough gore to launch a congressional investigationâor at the very least a flurry of furious e-mails from the likes of Concerned Mothers for America. And while the game's storyline was, as usual, utterly ridiculous (nutshelled: The President's daughter is kidnapped, a single government agent is dispatched to a grimy Eastern European country to track her down), the game's inventive gameplay and dedication to frights kept you glued to the very end. It was arguably the best game of the year.
Except for the fact that few people have been given the chance to play it up until now. GameCube owners, while rabid in their enthusiasm for the cutesy console, are vastly outnumbered by PlayStation and Xbox owners. Enter this port from Nintendo's breadbox to Sony's now ancient gaming console, bringing Resident Evil 4 to the conglomerate owning the bulk of the market share, and finally reuniting the franchise with the system that birthed it. It could've easily been a disaster; porting between consoles after the fact is not as breezy an enterprise as you'd expect, especially since the PlayStation 2's firepower is now a positively geriatric five years old. But Capcom, happily, has managed to do right by the game. RE4 arrives only slightly less prettyâa little fuzzier in the graphics, a little slower in the loading, but entirely intact in the brutal glee department.
That brutal glee is derived from the countless "zombies" (quotes used because, unlike in previous incarnations, the villains in RE4 aren't really zombies) who find themselves within your sights during the course of the game. The Resident Evil series has always been built around gunning down slow-treading, reanimated brain munchers, but in RE4 the emphasis has been heavily tilted toward fighting back hordes of creatures. They don't just lumber toward you this time around, they arrive in an onslaught, working to surround you and evenâin a couple startling sequencesâtrap you within a building. It's during these confined moments where the game truly shines, as you're forced to block windows and doors with whatever furniture is around, then steel yourself, usually with just a paltry amount of ammo, as the creatures work their way inside. The result is a game that rises above your standard shooter, a game that not only thrills but may also cause you to squirt in your shorts on a number of occasions. Add in some of the greatest boss battles in years and you have a game worthy of every penny you drop on it.
