Let’s make one thing perfectly clear right off the bat: The Wii is the definitive platform upon which to play Resident Evil 4. With its inclusion of all of the special features from the previous games and the masterful calibration of the Wiimote, the game simply works on a level that belies its $39.99 price tag.
The Wiimote is a versatile little device, but far too often developers have trouble getting it just right. On this title the Wiimote can easily be picked up and used to play by those familiar with RE4 without even glancing at the game manual. To use your weapon you hold the Wiimote's trigger to aim and press A to fire, and to use the knife you hold the C button on the nunchuck and swing the Wiimote. To reload your weapon you simply aim and then swing the Wiimote downward. If the Wiimote is swung without being in aim mode with a weapon Leon will use a basic knife attack, which is a great twitch way to react to a zombie lunching for your neck in front of you.
It is clear that the developers embraced the use of the Wiimote to aim, as it easily bests a gamepad in terms of precision aiming. The reticle never wavers unless you do, and the control is fine enough for even new players to snipe off those tiny blue medallions in the village with a mere pistol. With as often as the player has to worry about getting head shots and shooting thrown axes out of the air while dodging packs of enemies, the ability to do so in a fashion that is both precise and fun is one of the game's biggest strengths.
The underlying plot is unchanged in that you play as Leon Kennedy, a survivor of the events of the first and second Resident Evil titles 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.
The enemies Leon faces down in the game are nothing like the lumbering foes he has had to mow through in the past. Enemies are fully capable of running at you, can climb ladders and through windows, and often make attempts to avoid blindly staring down the barrel of your shotgun as they advance on you. They still want to eat you at the end of the day, but between now and then they are also unafraid to use various farm implements such as hatchets, sickles, axes, and the occasional chainsaw in interesting ways to try and impede your progress.
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 conveniently 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.
