A sliding block puzzle is about as complex as it gets here. Gone are the convoluted and completely impractical locks from previous games. There is some light puzzle solving, but it’s usually of the fetch quest variety.
You can buy and upgrade your weapons from him, which seems like an awfully niche market for him. There’s also a mysterious merchant who appears all over the town, and eventually the castle and the island you’ll investigate.
The series trademark restorative herbs also return, and can be combined to restore your health further or even extend your lifebar. Unlike Resident Evils past, there are lots of bullets to be found for a multitude of weapons. You’ll shoot them all in the face, and when they start sprouting parasite heads, you’ll shoot those in the general face-area too. You start in the village of Pueblo where you’ll encounter hostile locals, including a chainsaw-wielding maniac with a sack over his head, giant monsters that look like cave trolls from The Lord of the Rings, and a hulking, bearded man that turns out to be the village’s chief. This is practically the same basic plotline of the Data East arcade classic Bad Dudes, but sadly President Ronnie does not take you out for a burger afterward. Kennedy several years after the events of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and you’re sent to rescue the President’s daughter from a group of creepy cultist kidnappers that turn out to be infected with a parasitic virus. But for those of you who are stubborn, you’re Leon S. Is there really any point in summarizing the story for Resident Evil 4 at this point? I mean, if you haven’t played one of the six (seven, if you include the mobile version) ports, or the original GameCube release by now, you really should just buy one of them and experience it for yourself already. Many games have since tried to ape it, but none have really come close. Ironically, longtime fans of the franchise would later complain about its shift towards action and away from its horror roots, but RE4 still gets a pass despite being the game that started the trend. At the time of its release, it set the benchmark for in-game graphics, and in fact still looks great today. It’s decidedly more action-oriented than its pure survival-horror predecessors, and it trades in a lot of the jump scares for an atmosphere of dread.
RE4 sent the series along a different path from the four prior outings. I enjoyed the sequel a bit more when I picked it up cheap at a used game shop, but I never got too far into it either. I had tried to play the original Resident Evil (the Saturn port), but I found it extremely clunky and just…not fun. It’s widely considered one of the best games of all-time, arguably the best in the long-running franchise, and on a personal level, it’s the game that really got me into the series. Resident Evil 4 is a very special game for a lot of reasons.