craig588
03-17-2005, 03:29 AM
I got it a few days ago and started playing it a few hours ago. The amount of detail put in is very high, there are scripted even areas that are so numerous that they appear as if they are something you are just doing (such as jumping out of windows or over fences) not a scripted event. You get rewarded for exploring all over the place with extra and stonger weapons through the games buy/sell system. In the hidden areas you will find things that you can sell that are worth about 10 times the amount of money that you normally get from klling a random enemy. This money can be used to purchase various upgrades to your stats or weapons. The action works out very well too, the difficulty is initially ridiculously easy, but it ramps up well. The ammo system seems pretty poor at first, but after you play for a little while it fixes itself. Telling the exact issue would kind of ruin the difficulty later on for you though, so I'll leave it at the ammo system gets better after a little while.
The AI is cool, it is as revolutionary to console games as Half Lifes AI was to PC games. The enemies appear to think inteligently, they will run away from you and circle around corners to surround you. There are at least 5 or 6 distinct AI patterns. There are kamakasi guys who just run at you and try to attack you head on. There are smarter ones who will hang back a litttle bit and wait untill you look the other way or reload and then will swing in and hit you then run back. There are guys who have weapons (At the point I am in they are only melee) that you can shoot out of their hands those guys will go pick up the weapon again if they feel it is advantageous to their situation, but sometimes they just rush at you or attack inteligently without a weapon. There are guys who throw knives and geneades at you and stay at a distance, but sometimes they decide to light a grenade and charge at you while holding it. There are guys who carry chainsaws around that have incredible effects when they raise it for a strike they rev it up and it keeps ramping up depending on the length of the strike, then they will drop it back down to idle and you can hear each individual cylinder fire in rapid succession.
There are minigames that fit right into the game, they don't appear out of place at all. When I talk about them here they sound very out of place, but that is how well the game is made, something ridiculous sounding makes sense as you play. The first one I found was "redneck fishing" (My own name for it, in the game they are not named) in it you take your laser sighted pistol and shoot at fish, you can then pick up those fish and use them to restore life, depending on the size of the fish the more life you get back. There is also bird shooting, any time you see a crow flying around and manage to hit it you will get about half of the money you get from a normal enemy kill, but there are usually groups of crows so you end up getting 3-4 times as much. The last one I played was one where you ride in a boat you use a harpoon gun to shoot at a boss. (I'm trying not to spoil it so I won't go into much detail) You become tethered to the boss and as it swims you swing around in the back with "physics like" effects (Such as swinging out really wide as he makes a turn) the effects are implimented really well, they are nice looking, but not distracting.
Like any Resident Evil game, horror is a part of the game. Like any good horror movie the fear of what might happen is always much more terrifiying than what acctually does. Anyone can jump out and yell, it takes careful crafting to design something that causes terror from nothing. You will hold onto your controller as if it is the only thing that is keeping you alive. There are scenes that are so tense that any noise in your house will cause you to jump. In one scene I even started screaming as a chair fell over in the other room in my house. This game makes you very perceptive, I asked the other people in my house if they noticed any peculiar noises that day and they didn't, but I was hearing them every 20 minutes.
So, play Resident Evil 4, have a blast and highten you perception.
There are a few problems, such as annoying button tapping during cut scenes that causes you to die if you don't enter the combo displayed on the screen fast enough. There are some texture flickering and clipping issues. It is probably just me, but I could not figure out how to get the game to go into full screen mode, I was forced to play it in letter box, but because the game is so good I didn't even notice it untill I paused the game to write this post.
This post is rife with spelling and grammatical errors, I'll fix them later, or maybe I won't, it depends on how numerous and bad they are.
The AI is cool, it is as revolutionary to console games as Half Lifes AI was to PC games. The enemies appear to think inteligently, they will run away from you and circle around corners to surround you. There are at least 5 or 6 distinct AI patterns. There are kamakasi guys who just run at you and try to attack you head on. There are smarter ones who will hang back a litttle bit and wait untill you look the other way or reload and then will swing in and hit you then run back. There are guys who have weapons (At the point I am in they are only melee) that you can shoot out of their hands those guys will go pick up the weapon again if they feel it is advantageous to their situation, but sometimes they just rush at you or attack inteligently without a weapon. There are guys who throw knives and geneades at you and stay at a distance, but sometimes they decide to light a grenade and charge at you while holding it. There are guys who carry chainsaws around that have incredible effects when they raise it for a strike they rev it up and it keeps ramping up depending on the length of the strike, then they will drop it back down to idle and you can hear each individual cylinder fire in rapid succession.
There are minigames that fit right into the game, they don't appear out of place at all. When I talk about them here they sound very out of place, but that is how well the game is made, something ridiculous sounding makes sense as you play. The first one I found was "redneck fishing" (My own name for it, in the game they are not named) in it you take your laser sighted pistol and shoot at fish, you can then pick up those fish and use them to restore life, depending on the size of the fish the more life you get back. There is also bird shooting, any time you see a crow flying around and manage to hit it you will get about half of the money you get from a normal enemy kill, but there are usually groups of crows so you end up getting 3-4 times as much. The last one I played was one where you ride in a boat you use a harpoon gun to shoot at a boss. (I'm trying not to spoil it so I won't go into much detail) You become tethered to the boss and as it swims you swing around in the back with "physics like" effects (Such as swinging out really wide as he makes a turn) the effects are implimented really well, they are nice looking, but not distracting.
Like any Resident Evil game, horror is a part of the game. Like any good horror movie the fear of what might happen is always much more terrifiying than what acctually does. Anyone can jump out and yell, it takes careful crafting to design something that causes terror from nothing. You will hold onto your controller as if it is the only thing that is keeping you alive. There are scenes that are so tense that any noise in your house will cause you to jump. In one scene I even started screaming as a chair fell over in the other room in my house. This game makes you very perceptive, I asked the other people in my house if they noticed any peculiar noises that day and they didn't, but I was hearing them every 20 minutes.
So, play Resident Evil 4, have a blast and highten you perception.
There are a few problems, such as annoying button tapping during cut scenes that causes you to die if you don't enter the combo displayed on the screen fast enough. There are some texture flickering and clipping issues. It is probably just me, but I could not figure out how to get the game to go into full screen mode, I was forced to play it in letter box, but because the game is so good I didn't even notice it untill I paused the game to write this post.
This post is rife with spelling and grammatical errors, I'll fix them later, or maybe I won't, it depends on how numerous and bad they are.