This was originally posted on my site.

Resident Evil 4 is a horror FPS game that does things differently compared to the other Resident Evil games.

You play as Leon Kennedy, a survivor of the Raccoon City incident that occurred during the events of Resident Evil 2 and 3. He now works for that government and is sent on a mission of find and rescue the President's daughter who has been kidnapped by a mysterious cult. There's a sighting of the President's daughter in an isolated village in Europe and Leon investigates. While he is there the villagers start attacking him for an unknown reason so Leon has to find the President's daughter and find out the secret of the village.

There are no zombies this time around. I know what you're probably thinking. 'But its a Resident Evil game, the only thing you do is shoot zombies'. Yes, that is true but they have been replaced by something so original (/sarcasm) that it will make you think, 'Wow, why didn't I think of that.' Possessed humans, fully equipped with pitchforks, axes, knifes, other whatnot that has a sharp end and dynamite sticks.

Gone are the absolutely horrible (and somehow awesome) 'frozen' camera angles. Instead of the camera pointing at you in some awkward position, the camera is in an over-the-shoulder position which is alright but it seems like its been done, which it has, many times before.

Almost the entire game is an escort mission. I hate escort missions especially if they make the NPC who's following you a complete idiot. Unfortunately sometimes in this game, your partner does something so stupid that it makes you not want to care about her and just push her into a mob of charging bloodthirsty villagers.

The guns in this game range from pathetic to freaking' awesome. You start off with a handgun and, if you are like me and chose the easy mode (which I'm pretty sure is Wii exclusive), a shotgun. You eventually get a sniper rifle that is hopeless in a close-up situation, a rocket launcher and a few different types of grenades like the hand and flash grenade.

The enemies are good and bad at the same time. The case for the game says that the enemies work together but I've never seen them once perform this feat. The enemies react differently to where you shoot them. Shoot them in the feet and they stumble to the ground. Shoot them in the arm and they drop their weapon. Shoot them in the head and they die, sometimes.

Ammo is everywhere in this game. They are in boxes, the enemies drop it but you can't buy them from the salesman who looks like one of 'them' and will turn on you at any moment. When you run out of ammo, you are screwed. This time you have a knife if you run out of ammo so you aren't as screwed as you would be if you ran out of ammo in any other Resident Evil game.

The whole game takes some advantage to the Wii's motion sensing capabilities. You aim using the wiimote, slice the knife by shaking the wiimote and that's actually it but I don't blame the lack of motion sensing abilities because that's really all you can do with it.

In short, this is another Resident Evil game, just revamped with a whole new way to play. I highly suggest buying it and keeping it.

If I may ask a couple of questions...

What did you think of the game's difficulty curve?

Also did you play it on GameCube or PS3 before? If so are the Wii's controls better or the standard pointlessly gimmicky non-sense?

Tanthalos:
If I may ask a couple of questions...

What did you think of the game's difficulty curve?

Also did you play it on GameCube or PS3 before? If so are the Wii's controls better or the standard pointlessly gimmicky non-sense?

I haven't played it for long enough to notice a difficulty curve and no, this is the only version of Resident Evil 4 I have ever played.

isnt it a general trend that all RE games give you a knife. The joke being its completely useless against anything more than 1 zombie.

Unless you run in a circle, then you become invincible.

Shaun here is an advanced warning, you will have 3 types of fights easy, pissy easy and WTF?

Bosses in particular tend to have a much higher place on the difficulty curve above the townsfolk and the "this is the unkillable unless you do something very specific guy who looks different in every area cause we wanted him to match the drapes"

Tanthalos:
Unless you run in a circle, then you become invincible.

Shaun here is an advanced warning, you will have 3 types of fights easy, pissy easy and WTF?

Bosses in particular tend to have a much higher place on the difficulty curve above the townsfolk and the "this is the unkillable unless you do something very specific guy who looks different in every area cause we wanted him to match the drapes"

Thanks for the warning. *gulp*

I thought in general the storyline for this game was pretty weak. Its pretty much a new level of poor writing after the brilliance of RE1, the okay story line of RE2, and then the below par of RE3. Why the hell dosnt the series start to cover what the fans want to know! I demand to know what happened to Barry Burton!!! He is the best characted of the series without doubt.

TrevorOfCrete:
I thought in general the storyline for this game was pretty weak. Its pretty much a new level of poor writing after the brilliance of RE1, the okay story line of RE2, and then the below par of RE3. Why the hell dosnt the series start to cover what the fans want to know! I demand to know what happened to Barry Burton!!! He is the best characted of the series without doubt.

"The brilliance of RE1?" That's right up there with "The genius of Aaron Seltzer" or "the brains of Paris Hilton."

I like RE4 because it has play control that actually works, and monsters that are actually somewhat fun to fight. Sure it's not scary, and the story is laughably idiotic, but what else is new? Nothing in the entire RE series has ever caused me to lose a wink of sleep.

Not even the cinematic for when they first introduced the Licker in RE2?

That creeped me out...

Sylocat:

TrevorOfCrete:
I thought in general the storyline for this game was pretty weak. Its pretty much a new level of poor writing after the brilliance of RE1, the okay story line of RE2, and then the below par of RE3. Why the hell dosnt the series start to cover what the fans want to know! I demand to know what happened to Barry Burton!!! He is the best characted of the series without doubt.

"The brilliance of RE1?" That's right up there with "The genius of Aaron Seltzer" or "the brains of Paris Hilton."

I like RE4 because it has play control that actually works, and monsters that are actually somewhat fun to fight. Sure it's not scary, and the story is laughably idiotic, but what else is new? Nothing in the entire RE series has ever caused me to lose a wink of sleep.

Well perhaps not brilliance, but RE1 was a pretty original storyline. It really paved the way for Zombie genre games, aswell as re-arousing its interest in cinima.

the difficulty curve is wierd on the wii version - certainly learning the nuances of the controls takes a while (not being able to move and shoot) other than that the game has 3 steps as you move from village to castle to island - some of th boss fights are insanely difficult (krauser) others are ridiculously easy - the main boss at end of castle for instance.

Ok... It's seems to me that the some of you guys actually like Resident Evil 4: Wii edition and actually don't regret spending money on it. Me on the other hand; HATE Resident Evil 4: Wii edition and regret spending money on it! The only reason I bought it where because my good friend (Wich name I will not mention to hurt any third parties, and will give him the pseudonym of) Turdface said "Dude, those RE games are friggin' awsome! You're like, shootin' heads of zombies and stuff! And then there's this chainsaw guy, and then he dashes towards you and then... VRRRRR! SPLRRRR! SPLOOSH! ARRRGH! Splat... and then they cut your head off man! You gotta try it now that there's a Wii Edition!" Well, I thoght the game were suitable a influential, honourable and highly undesired award entitled: "The-most-predictable-boring-stereotype-piece-of-crap-I-could-ever-imagine-capcom-would-ever-produce-as-soon-as-someone-stuck-an-inspiring-foot-up-their-groin awards" only wanted by anti-social freaks with no depending future.

Now this is my opinion: Resident Evil 4: Wii edition is a game trying to create a new way to kill zombies, with the wii'mote. Guess what, they failed. trying to adapt a game from one console to another, fails allmost every time! The first "small" thing that I think bugged me the most, have to be the controls. Holding down the B'button to draw and A' to fire? What kind of jerk tought of that? The buttons adjusted for the pointing finger should allways be the the firing button! While bearing a grudge I went to the options menu, trying to switch the buttons. No can do. Besides they could have done a lot more about the motion sensing system, for instance: Shake the nunchuk from side to side to stab, point the wii'mote upwards to draw your weapon and downwards to reload. I'm not saying these controls would be better, I'm just saying that they could have used the motion sensing system better. and it's also a bit annoying that you can't walk and shoot at the same time or at least shoot from the hip. That disability makes the whole game seem like an arcade game, where you can back-off from time to time. And that truly pisses me off!

The second small thing that bugged me a bit, were the stupidity of the enemies. They start by yelling some spanish in your face before grunting and moaning, and then coming lobbing towards you one after the other, neatly lined up facing the very tip of your Shotgun, with "Please, Blow my brains out!" stampled in their forehead. All you have to do is pull the misfit trigger!

Last but not least. That stupid, stupid, defencless, stupid, useless, bitch who allways manage, to get herself kidnapped over and over and over! While I'm having a good time with some peasants assisting their suicide. I hear that stupid, stupid, defencless, stupid, useless, bitch screaming for help as she allways manage, to get herself kidnapped over and over and over! And I can't tell her how to tell when she should run away, I can't explain to her the simple point and shoot function of a gun, and I can't show her how to climb down a ladder! Nooo! Since she got the IQ of a toaster, she can only wait and follow!

It's fun shooting a living dead head right off it's shoulders, but when there's so many unnecessary things to irritate you it's simply not worth it.

RE4 is so far the equal best game I've played on the Wii (tying with SMG), despite the dated graphics the overall level design is simply astonishing. I wish we'd see this level of detail in modern games, and can only drool at the thought of a "hi-res" version of RE4. With RE5 coming though I guess that will have to suffice.

That reminds me, where is RE5 anyway? What's delaying it?

I really liked Res4 on the wii. The controls while not what you expected functioned quite well. I also like the Quick time Events in that I wasn't driven to homicidal rage from repeated failures.
I do agree with holness, the difficulty curve is weird, starting out on easy is a small challenge. then you go to normal and hit a damn wall because everything becomes so F***ing hard, but after playing through on it and starting again on hard I found it to not be that much of difference.

I think Vumsy should not bother with Resident Evil and go back to Doom.

I've got so much to say about this game, this just seemed uninformative.

I haven't even played DOOM, Eyclonus... I just don't like RE4 wii... I hate it...

I liked RE4 better on the ps2 or gc honestly. The only reason for that is in the Wii they removed the laser sight and they gave you reticle. The aiming is much easier and took out the fun getting head shots with a pistol from far away.

The Wii controls worked better than the ps2 or GC.
I didn't even play it on easy because I didn't even know there was easy, only normal and hard.
Altogether one of my favorite games.

(So what. You can't delete posts here? Sorry about the double post if that's the case...)

shaun832:
Resident Evil 4 is a horror FPS game...

i stopped reading right there. RE4 is third person. You're not Leon S. Kennedy, you're watching Leon S. Kennedy.

Finishes reading it...

Valid criticisms but no panache. It's a good review and nothing more.

The enemies do work together in that they throw up ladders and cover close range attackers with throwing knives and axes. They also divide and conquer if you begin to funnel them at the top of a set of stairs and there's a window they can take advantage of. The teamwork they display is limited and lazy, but existent none the less.

I would also say that RE4 Wii is probably the ideal example (along with Metroid Prime 3 and perhaps Zach and Wiki) of Wii remote integration without it becoming obnoxious.

Vumsy:
Last but not least. That stupid, stupid, defencless, stupid, useless, bitch who allways manage, to get herself kidnapped over and over and over! While I'm having a good time with some peasants assisting their suicide. I hear that stupid, stupid, defencless, stupid, useless, bitch screaming for help as she allways manage, to get herself kidnapped over and over and over! And I can't tell her how to tell when she should run away, I can't explain to her the simple point and shoot function of a gun, and I can't show her how to climb down a ladder! Nooo! Since she got the IQ of a toaster, she can only wait and follow!

Ashley's AI is actually pretty decent, and any inconvenience she causes it a result of you, the player. She's always right beside you, but is never in your line of fire. You can tell her to be idle somewhere and she won't budge no matter what happens (for better or worse) and you actually have to deliberately leave her in peril if you want something bad to happen. You can stash her in a dumpster and she'll go undetected (which speaks volumes of the enemy AI), and she comes running soon as you call her. Criticize Ashley for being a poor gameplay element, but don't accuse her of being dumb as a post when you can't get the hang of a control scheme.

Last edit -- To all who criticize Leon's poor maneuverability, try playing any other core RE game that came before it. You have to walk before you can run is all I can say.

To all who criticize the weak story, consider Resident Evil as a franchise the ultimate example of Japanese/American story telling lost in translation. RE was set in a mansion with one dimensional characters and a linear story with no desire to become a mega franchise with deep everything. As far as the Japanese developers were concerned, it was RE and that was it. Then survival horror as a genre kicked off, and RE became big in America, and people in America enjoy explanations and details and stories and what not. Resident Evil has always been about Japanese immediacy mixed with the American desire for reason or purpose. When they made RE in Japan, no one cared about why cops were investigating a mansion or why there were zombies everywhere. As far as they were concerned, cops have guns and zombies hate bullet, and the game is good to go. In North America, we can't enjoy a game unless we know why everything is happening as a result of what, so an inane story about conspiracy and bioweapons was tacked on because that's all it takes to satisfy the North American appetite for bullshit.

Resident Evil has never been and will never will be about games as high art and inventive stories with unique characters. Resident Evil use to be about the atmosphere (which kind of went out the door with RE4) and the thrill. Everything else is secondary. RE4 updated the gameplay at the cost of atmosphere, which was a betrayal to draw in more people to the series (a complete lie: it's all about making money). Given the RE5 trailers, the best we can hope for is a game that balances gameplay with atmosphere, and a story that's content with fucking itself.

**I'm sorry, but I do enjoy the RE games quite a bit and I can go off like this for hours**