The best way to play Resident Evil 4 requires taking a time machine back to its time and place in 2005. A myriad of ports, especially on the Switch, continue to provide a more practical method. From a historical standpoint or modern approach, Resident Evil 4 remains one of the finest ways to survive horror.
Resident Evil 4 has earned the catalog releases expected from a game of its stature. Its 2005 GameCube debut, despite Shinji Mikami’s infamous protests , gave way to an underperforming (but more popular) PlayStation 2 release later that year. Its 2007 trip to the Wii was adored for the attention it devoted to the Wii’s motion controller while the PC port that same year was adored for nothing because it was terrible. Time would take Resident Evil 4 to every platform under the sun. Of course Resident Evil 4 would come to the Nintendo Switch. It had to.
It’s fair to ask whether a fourteen-year-old game deserves to celebrate its twelfth release. In the case of Resident Evil 4 the answer is an unqualified absolutely. In both popular opinion and critical praise, Resident Evil 4 is part of its generation’s Games That Matter. Resident Evil 4 along with Grand Theft Auto III, Halo: Combat Evolved, Shadow of the Colossus, and Metroid Prime defined the PlayStation 2-Xbox-GameCube generation of console software. Itself the product of constant refinement, Resident Evil 4 was also part of the mold that cast games that defined the following generation of shooters. Like Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 4 found Resident Evil at its peak. Surviving horror, in its time and place, was never better.
It is also fair to ask how well Resident Evil 4 works in 2019. From a visual standpoint, the game still holds its own. The Switch release carries the high definition textures, bump in resolution, and stable frame-rate that benefited its later iterations. These assets are tough to appreciate in a vacuum, especially after half a decade with this “updated” Resident Evil 4 normalized through other platforms, but the difference in appearance remains profound. It looks better than its 480i CRT debut.
A fourteen-year-old game still has its blemishes. Hand-animated character articulation differs greatly from modern motion-capture, making some of Leon’s actions appear unnatural and jerky. It’s also worth noting that Capcom didn’t upgrade every texture, creating strange dissonance when you get really close to a particular rock here and there. Differing from other Resident Evil 4 releases, all of the cut-scenes are cleanly reproduced in-engine and don’t carry any of the nasty artifacting of older, pre-rendered cut-scenes. Most complaints are minor; Resident Evil 4 looks great when you’re actually playing it.
Player control is another area where Resident Evil 4 shows a bit of its age. The game was built under the idea of using a single analog stick for movement; “tank controls,” as they’re referenced now, are ingrained in Resident Evil 4’s design. To change them would change the dynamic of the game (and the same can be said for Leon’s gross inability to move and shoot at the same time). This makes for an awkward hurdle competing against playing modern games, although the transition is not insurmountable. Like anything else, it takes some getting used to before you’re properly acclimated to shooting Los Ganados in the legs and then rushing in for Leon’s roundhouse special.
This was my third time playing Resident Evil 4 since its first release. What jumped out immediately was how quickly the game finds creativity within its, by modern standards, limited environments. Resident Evil 4 was one of the first games to layout a large open-ended area and surround the player with viable options. There always seemed to be more than one way to deal with an escalating series of challenges. The novelty has only faded because almost two decades worth of games have learned most of Resident Evil 4’s lessons.
Leon’s opposition also boasted an unusually high level of artificial intelligence. Feeling safe behind the doors of a ramshackle house lead to cataclysmic fear the first time one of the Los Ganados broke down the door or busted through a window. In Resident Evil 4’s vast layout of villages, castles, and fortresses there is almost nowhere safe to hide. Your preferred means of body disposal must be created and applied on the fly. Games struggle to create scenarios like this today and watching Resident Evil 4 repeatedly perform this trick is one of its most impressive feats.
Resident Evil 4 also teaches a master class in inducing a constant sense of dread, tension, and paranoia in the mind of the player. You’re never safe, ammo is always scarce, and there’s always something that’s going to kill you a moment away. Part of this sentiment arrives from Resident Evil 4’s use of quick-time events, the divisive sequences where a cut-scene or unrelated gameplay is interrupted with do-or-die button prompts. Your taste may vary, but these sequences remain effective in instructing the player that the cut-scene is not a cut-scene.
While Resident Evil 4’s story is composed of equal parts pulp and garbage, the eerie atmosphere in generates is present the whole way through. It’s weird to say one of the game’s best features is its ability to make you not want to play it, or at best play it in short, controlled bursts, but with Resident Evil 4 that’s all part of its intended design. It’s not scary, but a mentally exhausting onslaught of constant dread and imminent peril, it doesn’t have to be. It’s worth the feeling of accomplishment when survival is finally within reach. All acquired tension, at some point, finds release.
It’s remarkable how advanced Resident Evil 4 feels after all of this time. Looking at the leap between 1996 and 2005, and then comparing it between 2005 and 2019, and it’s astounding that Resident Evil 4 even remains playable, let alone able to hold its own against its modern peers. Some of this arrives from the memories generated by reliving now-classic segments (or appreciating the surreal ubiquity of the infamous weapons seller), but what remains is utterly unique to its design and choices. Action games neither take twenty hours nor enjoy the breakneck pace of Resident Evil 4. Its save system, though founded in games’ past, is effective in forcing the player to play for keeps. The myriad of extra modes included post-game would be downloadable content, if it existed at all, today. Even Resident Evil 4’s direct successors, other than the Resident Evil 2 remake last winter, couldn’t nail the complete feeling of Resident Evil 4’s final package.
It still seems strange that the Switch port of Resident Evil 4 doesn’t unload its treasure chest of extras until after the game is completed once. Assignment Ada, in particular, is a perfectly streamlined version of the last third of the proper game, providing a satisfying journey without having to commit a couple dozen hours to its cause. Assignment Ada, the then PlayStation 2-exclusive that rewires Resident Evil 4’s narrative for Ada Wong’s starring role, is somewhat less substantial, but it’s still weird that it’s unavailable from the get-go. Same goes for The Mercenaries, the first iteration of Resident Evil 4’s wave-based survival mode. If there’s a legacy feature that Resident Evil 4 could have done without, it’s certainly erecting a wall between these extras and the player.
The best way to play Resident Evil 4 requires taking a time machine back to its time and place in 2005. A myriad of ports, especially on the Switch, continue to provide a more practical method. From a historical standpoint or modern approach, Resident Evil 4 remains one of the finest ways to survive horror.
