Resident Evil 4 - Gamecube

I have played many games thoroughout my life. Nurmourous Final Fantasy realeases, traveling through the wonderful world of Magic Crafter's/Beast Makers, etc in Spyro; The Dragon on Playstation; to the wonderful world of Hyrule with Link in: Ocarina of Time on the N64.Now ever since the Gamecube had come out, I had explored new games and new horizons in the gaming/entertainment world. Spyro immediantly went downhill with it's releases of Enter the Dragonfly/Hero's Tail/ and the (somewhat fun but too short and chessy) A New Beggining. Spyro, the cool purple dragon we used to know in Ripto's Rage and The Year of the Dragon had died.While the newest release of: The Legend of Zelda is fun, but doesn't pack that extra punch that Ocarina held. Yes, it was enjoyable. While riding Epona and slashing with a sword then just the old fairie bow made killing enemies fantastic and brilliantly enjoyable, the bosses were far too easy and the game was boring from one part to another. Link seemed a little cheesy, and it just wasn't the same Hyrule we had grown up with in older T.L.O.Z releases.Then there was Soul Calibur II, Hitman II, and more that were fun (also the remastered Super Smash Brothers Melee) were nice. But they just weren't the same, something was missing.I had just picked up Resident Evil 4 a week ago, and couldn't stop playing it ever since. While Twilight Princess was agonizing and boring at parts, having to run around in no-enemy zones, you were constantly kept on your toes to shoot down enemies with the gun-with-nifty-laser, blowing guts, blood, and gore everywhere. The game has kept me playing.While with Hitman II you have to use the stick to constantly move him about, turning him left and right to fix the angle of the screen while shooting down enemies, and picking up consoles, ammo, etc. The game was nice, but having to sneakly come up from behind an annoying person and strangle them silently and drag them into a hidden location just got tiring after a while, plus if you were discovered you were pretty much screwed...But Resident Evil 4 you can freely move about while blasting enimies away with a shotgun, dodging D.NO.MITE, knocking down ladders and commanding Ashley to hide in a dumster while Leon goes ahead and clears the shrounding area of any danger, never get's tiring for me. The nice laser aiming makes it easier to bring down enemies, while in earlier games you had to blindly shoot and hope not to miss. You have to pretty much kill ever enemy you come up against, to claim more ammo, herbs, and money. You no longer freely find weapons lying about to extend your're weapon supply, you now have to buy them from a vieled merchant, whom shows up in frequent parts of the game. And while everbody may say that Ashley get's annoying protecting after a while, I found it easy to keep her safe while Leon kills away with a Riffle or Handgun.Later on you get out of the gloomy forest into the castle area, where you constantly face creepy followers of the strange religion of Straddeler. The only thing that get's boring is having Ashley one minute, then having her suddenly swept away by a monster or getting locked in a trap, to going through long areas that seem to be never ending, facing nermourous bosses, etc... There seems to be no end in sight, and that's what pretty much sums up the entire game.The game is probably the longest I've ever played, but the graphics are astounding and the role playing is fantastic! Leon's cool American voice to Luis's Sera's Spaniard heart-melting accent really catches the ear. Ashley also has a great voice, but it can get annoying when she's screaming for Leon's help. The bad guys, especially the chanting: "Mony es-o dee, Mony es-o dee" will get stuck in your head when you venture into the castle and face the religious freaks of Saddler's dream.Overall, the game is fun and I'm rather enjoying it! Leon has got to be the coolest character I've played yet on any game console. So if you haven't yet played Resident Evil 4, and had just went out and picked up a Wii, do so now, and get the updated, more action packed version! You will have a 'Hell', of a time!

Wow, completely impressed at the condition the game is in! I think I am going to frame it since it is my favorite game of all time but I am in love with the care that was taken in it after 20 years! Thank you!

As described

Having never played Resident Evil before, I didn't really know what it was all about. I knew about the zombies; that was basically it. I was sure I'd never want one of these games. But I what I *did* want was some more games for my Gamecube, so I searched here on Amazon, and this was one that popped up. I read some of the reviews, and since they all were half a page long and all good, I went and checked out some gameplay videos; this is what did it for me. It looked so fun! So I ordered it for my birthday, and was amazed. The graphics, first of all, are as good as most Xbox games, and the game is very attractive. The environments are very well done, and make the whole world you are wandering through feel immensely creepy. The music is perfect. The entire game was just designed to get your heart-pumping; never have I had a game that's done that before. Though it feels weird at first, the controls really are awesome, though you can't run very fast or move while you are firing your weapon. Minor setbacks, and both can be explained. If you could run too fast, much of the scariness of the game would be lost, for it would be far to easy to escape enemies and dangerous situations. As for the moving while shooting, I think it would be pretty hard to fire with your laser sight if you were moving around; not moving while aiming is to allow precision aim. So those one-star reviews where those people are whining about it? Ignore them. Buy the game. It's one of the best Gamecube games you can get.

A friend constantly pestered me once to get a Wii because he said I worked too much and did nothing to relax. After a while I caved in and bought a used Wii and a couple of games. Which was when my friend started to pester me to get Resident Evil 4 showing me some cutscenes from the game. I put it off for a while but I started to get bored of the games I already had so I went ahead and bought Resident Evil 4.Note that I bought the Gamecube version; that was a deliberate choice and it did cost me a little more money, but having played Metroid Prime 3 and Twilight Princess for the Wii, both of which use the Wii remote to aim with the camera angles freezing when the remote beam went even slightly off-screen, I decided to go with the Gamecube version so I could use a traditional controller because this game is a survival-horror game; you die as soon as you can't shoot back. And because I'm trying to stop swearing.In this particular game you are Leon Kennedy, a former police officer who got tangled up in the Raccoon City disaster on his first day. Two years after that incident Leon is working as a government agent somewhere in rural Southwestern Europe. The motive for this particular mission is the disappearance of the US President's daughter; she was kidnapped in the States, but a rumor of a sighting in Europe causes the President himself to dispatch Kennedy. When you first get there, it's obvious that something is very wrong, because the first person you meet tries to kill you with a hatchet and the commotion you cause by shooting him down brings lots of other angry villagers, all members of a cult (hence their distrust of outsiders) and all of whom are, of course, out to get you.That's the main emotional premise of the game--the player is meant to feel like he or she is never safe. And in many ways you aren't because you can't just sit tight anywhere. You have enemies aplenty to kill, but even when you have secured a particular area there are still traps hidden in certain areas; even when you take care of them you have to move on to find the girl, meaning that you're going to find more and more psychopaths who are not afraid of you and your guns. If you let your guard down for even a second you will be in for an unpleasant surprise that will probably do a lot of damage, all the while you are either trying to track down the President's daughter or escorting her after you have found her. To add to the tension this game isn't like most survival horror games where the player is the only target for the enemies; in this game they'll go for the girl, too. When that happens, you have to aim carefully because one stray shot will be all it takes to kill her.That's one of the true achievements of the game--the AI does not create some mass of brainless enemies just waiting to have their heads blown off. In fact, if the player sits out with his rifle long enough the AI takes notice and enemies will try to find cover while approaching; then it'll attack before you can get your rifle aimed properly, making you panic and forcing you to take out your pistol instead and lose your precious one-hit sniper kill-shot. If an enemy can't find one way to get to you, it will find another way, either by breaking down any barricades or by climbing over them with ladders. Most dangerous, however, is when you find yourself with only a couple of enemies; it's easy to let your guard down, which is usually when you find yourself surrounded by more enemies.One example comes from my own playing. At one point in the game you are in a laboratory which the cultists are using for some sort of research on reanimating corpses via parasitic possession. They succeed in creating some very durable enemies called Regenerators which will simply keep rebuilding themselves no matter how much you shoot and no matter what you shoot them with unless you can take out the parasites in their bodies that hold them together. After I had found an IR scope for my rifle that let me see where those parasites were killing them was suddenly very easy, and I let my guard down. After finding one in a hallway in the lab I took it out with the rifle, but felt that it just seemed too easy for some reason. That was when I turned around, and there was another Regenerator right there behind me, with its creepy permanent smile and nose-less face standing right next to me, getting ready to attack. After letting out a discreet expletive I put some distance between us and shot it down. Only after this did I remember that this particular encounter was one that my friend had shown me in a video. But I got so engrossed with the situation that I completely forgot about the second Regenerator in that hallway.Like every game, though, there are some flaws, and sadly these ones keep the fame from getting full marks. The first I will mention is Gamecube specific. Because the game has to aim for you the programmers thought it would be perfectly logical to make Leon's aim (shown via a laser on the gun) move around a bit to make it more challenging. Sounds good but in practice for the sake of realism, but it feels like the programmers went overboard; any time you go for accuracy and postpone your shots to save ammunition the laser simply starts wobbling around almost uncontrollably. That would not be there in the Wii version, in which your own movement would influence the aim and would let you work through your own aiming problems.That problem is a minor one; the main serious problem with this game is the control scheme. Again this is more Gamecube specific but in principle it applies cross-platform. This game does not use the traditional shooter aiming system even though dual-analog joysticks are available on the Cube controllers. What this means is that you cannot move and aim at the same time, which in turn means that you cannot shoot and move at the same time; the justification here is that this is not a traditional shooter and that the killing aspect is not the most important one. True enough, but when you are surrounded by masses of enemies, all of whom are very, very close to you you are not going to want to stand still to shoot, you're going to want to move and shoot, knowing that in a crowd stray fire usually finds a target. But as you aren't allowed to move and shoot at the same time then you're pretty much screwed whenever you're surrounded. Which is when, if you are anything at all like me, you start releasing indiscreet expletives.The control problem also pours over into what the bosses do; the programmers took the limited motion of the player into account, so the bosses, while very strong, are predictable in movement. After figuring out their basic movements getting rid of them is just a matter of having enough ammo. It's sad, because dynamic bosses would have been absolutely perfect for this genre; imagine being chased around by mutated giants and zombies! In all fairness to the programmers they did make the bosses always try to attack you instead of moving around a particular course; they follow you, they never take their eyes off you and so on. But, you can figure out how to avoid their attacks every single time.Still, I died several times (all while swearing) fighting most bosses before figuring there movements.The last problem is the fact that the game is a little linear; this is going to seriously reduce replay value. Yes there are different weapons that you can use and upgrade, yes there are little side quests and shooting ranges with collectible prizes, but because you can't go straight to the ranges and because there will always be enemies that respond more favorably to a particular set of weapons you most likely will find yourself using the same ones over and over. There are different difficulty settings depending on whether or not you beat the game once, but replay value is best enhanced by having many different ways to play the same game. It's just too linear for that.Still, all in all the game delivers what it's supposed to deliver. You are constantly on edge trying to avoid attack. You are constantly trying to find as much treasure as you can because you desperately want to power up your favorite gun. And once you have powered it up, you find that the gun merchant has a brand new gun that is much better than your favorite gun and you kick yourself for having dropped as much money as you have into something that you're just going to replace anyways. And best of all, you spend hours and hours being engrossed in this game. During my first session I kept telling myself that I would stop at the next save station. It took six hours for that particular save station to finally materialize, i.e. I kept putting it off. You get caught up in the missions, you get caught up in the atmosphere, and you get caught up noticing all the little details in the environments and in the character's behavior. There are noticeable problems, of course, but you do get so caught up in the game that they don't kill your desire to play.