This seems to be a good year for Nintendo Switch owners that love the Resident Evil franchise from Capcom, not only have we got Resident Evil 1 Remastered, Resident Evil Zero and Resident Evil 4, soon we shall be getting Resident Evil 5 and 6, only one missing now is Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 2.
Again Resident Evil 4 is a third person action horror, which was originally released way back in 2005 on the GameCube. In this outing, you play as Leon S. Kennedy who must fight to survive against mind-controlled villagers in a rural part of Europe aka Spain, village name unknown, with his main mission to rescue the president’s daughter Ashley Graham who has been kidnapped.
Resident Evil 4 steps away from the survival aspects of the original games and goes for a more action-packed, blast the shit out of everything gameplay mechanics. The game even offers us more freedom in the way we take on the enemy, gone are the days of up and down shooting, which was rather limited, we now get to experience a more open world shooter. This means you can now shoot enemies in the limbs and watch them limp around or stumble if shot in the foot, shoot them in the arm and watch them flounder to pick up their weapon or you can simply go for the headshot. There is simply more freedom of choice and freedom of movement. There are a few things I dislike, like Quick Time Events (QTE) when you need to press a specific button at a specific time to execute a specific action, they look good, but I feel they take away from the player experience.
To store weapons, ammo, medical gear, etc we have the good old faithful, a grid-based system, represented by a briefcase, you are limited to the number of slots available at all times, though you can upgrade to grab more slots. While playing the game you will meet up at some point with a merchant, that will allow you to upgrade your gear, purchase healing sprays, purchase new weapons, and sell treasure that you find along the way.
Now I am unsure if I really enjoy this type of Resident Evil, all action with the camera placed behind your lead character, after playing Res 1,2 and 3 originals, it just feels that the creative mind of Shinji Mikami took it a bit to far off base. That’s not to say its a bad game as I did enjoy the experience and the story. The game plays rather well in handheld mode and docked, though I did find the controls require a little getting used to as third-person action games have evolved a lot of late. There is nothing new coming to the Switch Either it is a direct port of the HD rework done in 2011, so you are going to get unlockable achievements, leaderboards and a few other odds and ends. What’s lacking is joy con motion control like we have in Breath of the Wild as aiming is a bitch when it comes to using the analog stick. This is now the third game to make it to the Nintendo Switch and none of them have this feature, please Capcom add it with an update all the game god damn you.
The game has not aged that well either when playing on an Ultra HD widescreen you really see how old the texture look, but playing the game in handheld mode, it feels much better with around 60fps with a slight wobble here and there.
If you have never played Resident Evil 4 then I would say this game is a must, grab yourself a Gamecube Controller and its even more fun. If you have a Wii the motion controls make the experience even more thrilling. The idea of being able to play this game anywhere at any time just does it for me and I would not live without this game. Yes its a leap in a different direction from the originals, but the action is thrilling and enjoyable. You can not fault the story, its compelling and keeps you plodding on, right to the very end as you watch an island go…. well you will find out that for yourself if you play.
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