Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube not only reinvented a popular franchise but also took the gaming world by storm with its incredibly polished gameplay and presentation. It was re-released close to a year later on the PS2 with some additional content. Now in 2007 it’s finally making its way to the PC, and despite the fact that the core title is now over two years old the PC port feels surprisingly rushed.
See the mouse on your desktop? You may as well ignore it as the PC version of Resident Evil 4 doesn't use the mouse at all. The argument can be made that the ability to use the mouse to aim would make head shots easier, but at the same time a keyboard simply doesn't allow for anywhere near the necessary control that the title requires. This essentially means that you need a gamepad hooked up in order to enjoy the game and not curse every time you keep trying to line up a headshot with a sniper rifle.
Another area where the port doesn't utilize the strengths of the PC is its visual quality. On one hand the character models have never looked as defined as they do on the PC, and even though the textures are all years old the game still looks decent. The widescreen rendering throughout the gameplay does come off as a little annoying at first but does give way to looking more like a blockbuster summer movie than a video game. The biggest offender by far are the cutscenes; while they were beautiful on the GCN and rendered in real-time, the PC port uses nothing but prerecorded 640x480 footage that looks like hell.
As for the game itself, you play as Leon Kennedy, a survivor of the events of the first Resident Evil who now has found himself tasked with rescuing the president's daughter who has been kidnapped and brought to a mysterious island. At first glance the inhabitants of the island are human enough, but as Leon quickly finds out even though the inhabitants are not technically zombies they attack without mercy and go for the jugular just as any self-respecting zombie would.
Resident Evil 4 marked a radical departure from the gameplay seen in previous titles in the series. Bullets are still a precious commodity, and while you get much more of them than in any of the previous games your enemies are not only numerous but also fast moving and armed with hatchets, sickles, axes, and the occasional chainsaw. The game is still squarely set in the survival horror genre, increased ammo count notwithstanding, and many of the set-piece battles do nothing but reinforce that fact.
Leon can only carry so much stuff around in his case at any given time. As the adventure moves forward you can pick up money, valuable gems and objects, guns and ammo, and health restoring items. You can then sell the valuables to a mysterious vendor that has a shop set up every so often to purchase new weapons or upgrade existing weapons (such as increased damage, clip size, mount scopes/stocks, etc.) as well as purchase bigger cases to allow Leon to lug more items around.
There are large amounts of papers and folders that contain communiqués between many people on the island and serve to fill in the story's background. In fact, much of the storyline actually unfolds via these documents as they serve to explain what is going on elsewhere on the island at certain times and to explain how and why some of the other characters are involved. The story plays out like a true horror novel with quite a few twists and turns here and there to spice things up a bit.
