R ESIDENT E VIL 4 – R EVIEW Marcus Gilbert CIS 487 – Maxim 9/23/07

B ASIC I NFORMATION Title – Resident Evil 4 Company – Capcom Director - Shinji Mikami Producer - Hiroyuki Kobayashi Game Genre – Horror/Survival Price - $19.99 Hardware – Gamecube/PS2/Wii Release date – Jan 11 th 2005

G AME S UMMARY Overview – You are Leon Kennedy, an elite secret agent in a government agency. You are sent to a small village in Europe to look for Ashley, the president’s daughter who recently was taken captive by the cult Los Iluminados. Story – The story is very well done, however drastically changed from all previous Resident Evil games. All previous RE games have had the corporation “The Umbrella Company” trying to cover up an experiment gone wrong (usually using a biological weapon called the T-virus)

G AME S UMMARY – CONT. Story (cont) – This resident evil game finds you in a village where everyone has been taken over by a mind controlling parasite and throughout the game you find out more about the parasite and the cult. Player’s role – Secret agent on a mission to retrieve president’s daughter Installation – No installation. It is a console game.

U SER INTERFACE Very simplistic Health and ammo gauge in lower right hand corner You run around with the analog stick Can go into aim mode which brings up a laser pointer from the gun allowing you to blast enemies in the head Button’s flash on screen for scripted events like melee combat, reflex saves, and puzzles.

U SER I NTERFACE - IMAGE

G AME P LAY There are two main “types” of game play. One is trying to stay alive against the hordes of “zombies” while finding Ashley The other is escorting Ashley out of the village by holding her hand and not letting her or you die from zombie attacks. Many weapons to choose from – pistol, shotgun, rifle, flame thrower, rocket launcher. All weapons can be upgraded in accuracy, firepower, rate of fire, etc.

S CORING There is no “scoring” per se It does have accuracy stats and such at the end of each chapter The main focus of the game is storyline and survival rather than points or scores

A RTWORK

S PECIAL F EATURES /S OUND AND M USIC Unlockable mode where you are able to play as another character A couple mini games Special modes of each weapon once it’s stats are custom tuned Sound for footsteps, weapons, “zombies”, getting attacked, etc Music went “dramatic” when engaged in combat.

M ANUAL /B UGS Nothing special about the manual – gives some back story and tells about the controls of the game Not many, if any, known bugs. It was originally released on gamecube. It was released on the Wii and PS2 later, so any bugs would have been fixed.

G OOD THINGS ABOUT THE GAME Engaging storyline Wide variety of weapons Combat system is very fun Very thrilling to try to stay alive when 20 – 40 zombies are on screen coming at you with pitchforks, molotov cocktails and catapults.

B AD THINGS ABOUT THE GAME Ammo is very limited (not necessarily bad, part of the genre) Not many bad things about the game, was given an average rating of 9.8/10 on review websites

C OMPARISON Resident Evil is considered one of the best games in the horror/survival genre This one tops all of its predecessors with the revamped combat system The game went over so well with gamers and reviewers that Resident Evil 5 is supposed to have an identical combat system and similar story as RE4

A UDIENCE /D ESIGN M ISTAKES It is a mature rated game – audience is age 17+ and more than likely male Has received much praise for it’s design – however the one thing that people disliked was the fact that you cannot move well while in aiming mode

S TRENGTHS / WEAKNESSES Fantastic combat system Beautiful graphics (at the time) Amazing storyline Difficulty was greater due to “parasite zombies” instead of “undead zombies” Was sometimes frustrating when engaged with 30 “zombies” and trying to escort Ashley safely away.

S UMMARY For the price of $19.99 it is a great investment if you have not already played it The only thing that could really be improved upon greatly is the graphics, which is already in the works with Resident Evil 5 (PS3, Xbox 360)

R ESIDENT E VIL 5 - IMAGE