Ok, I bought the Gamecube more or less only to play this game. Every magazine rated it very high and it was chosen Game of the Year in several categories by several different juries. I expected nothing less than one of the best gaming experiences I would have ever had. My expectations were not met. I'm not gonna tell you about the good aspects of this game (like graphics, sound, atmosphere, etc.). Why? Because everybody else should have done that more than enough already by now. I'm gonna tell you about things that hinder the game from being one of the greatest of all time.
And more or less all these bad things result in a level of difficulty which I have seen in few other games. You are asked to choose between "Easy" "and "Normal" at the beginning. After having beaten all kinds of harcore games (e.g. Otogi or DMC in Dante Must Die Mode) I considered myself a skilled player. Well, either I was wrong or the game is just way too hard. The enemies are damn clever and that isn't a bad thing because I appreciate a great AI of course. But that thing combined with the sheer speed and number of them makes it almost impossible to stay alive in some situations. And the controls make it even harder. Has one of the game developers ever played his own game??? Didn't they notice that Leon moves like a handicapped person? He can't do a simple sidestep! He can't do anything to directly dodge enemy attacks. And believe me, there will be lots of enemies attacking you in this game. The only way to evade is smash the buttons rapidly or press two of them at the right moment but you don't have that option when fighting most of the standard enemies. It is more or less limited to boss battles. Ah, the boss battles, great topic. Basically, a boss is a good boss if you have to try a few times before beating him. A boss that is easily beaten is no real boss. BUT: I remember bosses in this game which I had to try for roughly 30 times! Come on, 30 times!! There is nothing fun about dieing, loading, dieing again, loading again, and so on. Sometimes it will even take you longer to load and start the boss fight than you will actually fight the boss. Maybe he will kill you after 5 seconds or so. During the first fights you have mostly no idea how to even harm or kill them. After dieing a few times you should have made out his weak spot and thought of a basic strategy, but putting that strategy in action is just soo hard in most cases because the bosses are just too damn strong and fast for a handicapped main character who has no idea of how to strafe left or right. Usually you have some quicktime events during these boss battles which are mostly the only way to survive. The idea is great. But they often occur, when you don't expect them at all e.g. during cutscenes. Ok, this is surprising, which is a good thing. But the amount of time you have to react correctly varies too much. Sometimes it is so long and easy that you ask yourself why it is named "QUICK time event" but sometimes you can't even react properly, you have to know or guess what buttons you are supposed to press and when. To wrap it up: RE4 is a great game, no doubt about that. Maybe it was revolutionary when it came out in early 2005. But don't expect it to be revolutionary in 2006 any longer. Maybe my expectations were just too high so I ended up being disappointed. The looks were astonishing when it was first released but they have worn out a little and now what counts is gameplay because good gameplay never gets old. Difficulty is part of that. And the difficulty level is generally just way too high, which is bad game design in my opinion. Rating this game higher than most milestones in gaming history (e.g. Half-Life or MGS) is therefore just not appropriate.
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