The Video Game Revue

Resident Evil 4

Well, this blog is supposed to be ranting and raving about games of "all eras" so I might as well cover something in the very recent past. I could easily have ranted about the original Resident Evil instead, but I have a lot of similar things to say about the current one, so why not stick to the present for once?

Gamers who have been around for a while (no offense to the 16 and under crowd, but you guys just wait and see how you feel about video games in another decade) often seem to complain about how a lot of the "magic" has gone out of games these days. Supposedly games have lost their "spark" or they aren't as "fun and challenging" as they used to be. I have my own theory about this, which is basically that there are as many great games being made today as there always has been, but there are also many more video games being made in general, and it's just that the great ones are being lost in the shuffle of the hyped-up crappy ones. It's all because the video game industry is very lucrative these days, and frankly a lot of the people who are in the industry to make big bucks don't understand what it takes to make gamers care about their games. It's far easier to throw together an expensive production with great graphics, sound engineering, and storyboards--a glossy game that will draw in lots of casual player dollars while generally lacking the "punch" that really gets people hooked on video games.

Resident Evil 4 has that "punch" that I am talking about. For reasons that are difficult to explain or even properly articulate, RE4 makes the player want to be good at it. It's not the sort of game that you play through and tell your friends, "yeah, it was fun, you can borrow it if you like"; rather, it's the sort that keeps you up late at night, foaming at the mouth with blistered thumbs, with nearly all sense of the outside world obliterated. That is gaming. That is what I am here for.

And sure, RE4 has amazing graphics and production value. I do appreciate that, and it definitely enhances the experience, but it's the fact that there is a real experience to build on in the first place that drives me. A big part of it is the gameplay; the rich, deep gameplay. There are skills to master in RE4--and I don't mean no freaking stats that you "level up," although there are those as well. I mean getting good at the game, like learning the right and wrong way to do things, and making the controls second-nature so that when a scary monster jumps out at you from the dark, the motion of brining your shotgun to bear and sending him into the abyss requires no thought or hesitation. When things like that are done as well as they are in RE4, it goes a long, long way towards drawing the player into the game. And RE4 demonstrates exactly how that sort of thing should be done.

posted by Parappa @ 2:24 PM