Why I Hated Resident Evil 4

[The Rogue Wolf]

Yes I can definitely see how moving from Silent Hill 2 immediately to RE4 could leave a bad taste in one's mouth.

Yeah, I kind of winced when I saw that as well.

Shamus, I do have to say that it's sort of weird to complain about not knowing the storyline for a series when you're coming in on what's technically the tenth game in the series (ignoring remakes) and fourth in the main lineage- it's a bit like watching Terminator 2 and wondering why John Connor is so important. But for a lot of people who'd played the first three RE games, RE4 was a huge shakeup in the series; gone were the claustrophobic camera angles and numerous situations you'd be ambushed by something out of your sight that the character would've seen easily, the previous games' attempts to homage horror movies to the detriment of gameplay. Instead we had (comparatively) incredible freedom of movement, the ability to see everything that was a danger to us, and free aim to finally plug zombies Las Plagas in the head like you're supposed to.

But I fully agree that this whole mentality of "you can't say anything bad about this thing I like" is entirely unhelpful, and it's an argument that generally comes from a deep-seated need for validation. Anyone telling you that RE4 is "edgy" or "scary" is either being sarcastic or trying to bait you into playing a game you're not looking for out of a conceit that you have to like it because it's so good (to them). All this does is engender experiences just like Shamus's, where they actually resent the game more than they would've if they'd been given an honest analysis of it.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

I'm not sure if I can agree. I feel like you're preaching to the wrong audience. Escapist users tend to cry fowl when games have high reviews, not because Uncharted 3 got a 9.5 instead of a perfect 10. And I don't like the assertion that a review can't be criticized. A single opinion on its own can't really be criticized, "I don't like RE4" is a statement that can't really be argued with. Its how some reviewers back up their opinions that can be shit. Imagine if a reviewer said Silent Hill 2 was garbage and called it a "typical meaningless gorefest" or something. One can very well argue that reviewer is an idiot because there's more to Silent Hill 2. That said, as a fan of RE4 I get your points and can see where you're coming from because it was well argued

 

[Tarfeather]

RE4 was the first Resident Evil game I played, and I actually took the story seriously. The atmosphere of the game was good enough that I *wanted* to roleplay as my character, and the way the story didn't make any headway actually had me frustrated. In the end, I was left pretty disappointed with the game, but I still hold the first few minutes of it, and many of the atmospheric levels that had me immersed, in fond memory.

Saying the Resident Evil story was bad/intentionally bad, to me feels like saying the story of Dragon Ball Z is bad/intentionally bad. In my eyes, it isn't, it's just some incredibly ridiculous concept of what's "enjoyable", mostly shared by teens, but that an older person still might find interesting if they don't take it at face value.

 

[bdcjacko]

Uuummmmm, I say this as only watching my brother play one of the silent hills or was it resident evil. I always get them confused because I was never into them. You are complaining about how you don't know how to play a game that was 4th in its series in the period where games still came with manuals. Sounds like a you problem. While I feel like I would have had he same experience as you because I know fuck all about resident evil, I am not going to complain about how I couldn't get into.

I guess I understand that any game could be someone first game...

 

[cikame]

I'm left wondering something, when a game like RE4 comes out and you hate it, are you still capable of seeing what other people find so appealing about it, or at least its production values?
I hate Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, Street Fighter, but i am aware of the effort the developers put into those games and respect that, and i have seen enough love for those games that i can agree on their importance to video game history, you never touched on this side of things so i'm just wondering if you really think RE4 has no redeemable qualities?

You also mentioned how the game assumes people have played the previous games or are familiar with its characters, is that so wrong considering 4 is in the title?
I imagine skipping to the 3rd title in any movie trilogy would be a jarring experience.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

I understand that we need less dickheads in the gaming community but I think its your fault you didn't enjoy RE4.

You came with the expectations and you were the one who couldn't interpret the QTEs. I am also pretty sure for a lot of QTEs there were only three possible combinations, and when I was little I got through them by hitting all of them at the same time (hitting the shoulder buttons and A+B at the same time isn't hard).

If we were having a discussion about video games, I would definitely ignore the guy that goes "Well I didn't like game A, because it wasn't like game B. I fucking loved game B."

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Burn the heathen. BURN HIM!

Kidding. I enjoyed Resident Evil 4, and I liked the idea behind the quick-time events. I still remember X-Play praising their use. "Think you're safe in the cutscenes? Wrong, my friend." At the time, it was a brand new idea and it seemed to work really well.
And then you fought Krauser. And one slip up and then you had to go through the whole thing again. I didn't have a problem with the fight my first time, but playing the game years later, on hard, after my reflexes have slowed a bit, that part is a nightmare. I do not link quick-time events anymore, unless they are simply and have a decent amount of time for a player to react.

 

[Kargathia]

And that's fine if that's how you personally felt about the game, but I think it's perfectly alright for gamers to expect better from a professional review. Going into the game blind as was expressed you had earlier in the article and then coming out with a negative opinion born out of ignorance is bound to make more well-informed people annoyed or dismissive, and I think that's exactly the kind of thing fans of series talk about when they talk bad about reviewers not "getting it". A professional should do their homework, they should have some experience - they should not be coming back to console gaming after a twenty year hiatus and have a completely different game in mind and beneath their belt and then presume to speak from a position of authority.

A reviewer certainly needs to have done his homework, but it would be equally unprofessional to only review the game from that particular perspective.
As the article already points out: the main group to benefit from reviews is the one not intimately familiar with the game, its predecessors, and its contemporaries.

Either you'd want all reviewers to incorporate multiple points of view into their particular write-up, or (more practical) multiple reviewers saying their piece. Preferably all equally well argumented, but not necessarily equally well experienced or informed - as long as they're upfront about that last part.

Personal example: I have never owned a Nintendo gaming device, and subsequently don't feel any of the common nostalgia for the assorted characters.
Right now I'm a core gamer by any metric, but the vast majority of well-informed reviews of Nintendo releases are utterly useless to me, as I don't share the nostalgia over what happened twenty years ago.

It really does put me in the funny situation where ZP is one of the more reliable review sources - simply because if Yahtzee likes a game despite his hate of all things Nintendo, it probably is a genuinely good one.

Captcha edit: hardly relevant, but the captcha "'; drop table users;" deserves a mention for comedy value =)

 

[UberPubert]

A reviewer certainly needs to have done his homework, but it would be equally unprofessional to only review the game from that particular perspective.

Whether or not the research done on the reviewer's part comes up in the review is up to them, but if they neglect to inform themselves about the genre and are lost in the narrative to the point where they list it as detrimental to their experience then their work could very easily be dismissed as a "bad" review.

A good reviewer can remove their own personal feelings from the product presented, weigh what they know about the genre, or director, or developer, etc. and look to see if it's objectives were met, not whether the reviewer was pleased. A good reviewer can put aside their personal grievances and say "That was good for what it was", even if that's the short and lazy version of it.

As the article already points out: the main group to benefit from reviews is the one not intimately familiar with the game, its predecessors, and its contemporaries.

The statement is provably untrue, though. You act like there's never been a bad sequel, or that fans have never been disappointed before. Reviews for long-running series absolutely can exist to tell fans whether the next part of their franchise is still worth the money. Having played - and even liked - the previous game is not a guarantee the next one is more of the same or that they'd like it.

And we're not talking about someone who is intimately familiar with the game: The comparison made was of someone jumping feet first into a series four titles in and having problems because they didn't get it and was nothing like a completely different game they wanted it to be. This isn't being "not intimately familiar", it's being completely oblivious. It's expecting something to be offered that was never on display and was not meant for them. As I've said before, it's perfectly alright to have that opinion, but it's not a very useful one, because it's based entirely on a set of circumstances that are part of their unique personal experiences, rather than taken in the context of the franchise, which thereby makes it useless to anyone who is not like them.

Either you'd want all reviewers to incorporate multiple points of view into their particular write-up, or (more practical) multiple reviewers saying their piece. Preferably all equally well argumented, but not necessarily equally well experienced or informed - as long as they're upfront about that last part.

Multiple viewpoints isn't actually that hard. An aside or a bottom line you'd commonly find on the escapist itself is "fans of the series will know what to expect this time around, but newcomers may find the mechanics daunting" or something like that. And that's fine, but if the reviewer just says "I found the mechanics daunting, they weren't very fun." and then omits the "I don't play these games very often, they don't interest me." then it's not really a review of the game, they're just talking about their personal experience with it. Again, that's fine, but they can expect flack for it when they publish it as an official review on a reputable website and many of the people who are interested in those kinds of games don't really find it that hard.

It really does put me in the funny situation where ZP is one of the more reliable review sources - simply because if Yahtzee likes a game despite his hate of all things Nintendo, it probably is a genuinely good one.

But he is still informed. One of his biggest complaints is that Nintento likes to reuse the same ideas over and over again. That opinion wouldn't really hold much merit if he hadn't been playing Nintendo games and only said they were reusing ideas based on hearsay. And I have no idea why you'd care about his opinion on a Nintendo game if you've never owned a Nintendo console, by definition wouldn't that also make his review useless to you?

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I kind of find this article weird because I saw Galaxy Quest and thought it was awesome even though I can count the number of Star Trek episodes I've seen with one hand. And Resident Evil 4 was the 1st (and only) Resident Evil I've played and I thought it was great. Yeah, the quick-time events sucked (god, that fucking knife fight) but the majority of the gameplay was great.

Also, I wished video game reviewers reviewed games like this. I want to see game reviews where one reviewer gives a game a 9/10, then see someone give the game a 3/10 much like how Ebert would love a film while Siskel hated the same movie or vice verse (and other movie reviewers as well). There's several games that receive average scores in the 9s that suck in my opinion. It seems like reviewers rate games based on some kind of objective checklist to the point where you go to one site, see a 9/10 and the next site will rate the game an 8.5/10. Game reviewers don't give their honest opinion on their feelings on a game (besides for a few like Jim and Yahtzee). I don't have a problem with Yahtzee hating a game I love or MovieBob loving a movie I hate, I still find their takes entertaining and interesting whereas game reviewers, for the most part, are neither.

 

[Irridium]

I agree with the general concept, and the specific point that reviews aimed at people new to the series or gaming are valuable. I can't tell you how many reviews for games I've read say, "It's like X previous installment, but with changes to the Y and Z features." I never played X, so I don't know what you're talking about.

To add to this, I see tons of people describe games like this: "It's like X crossed with Y, with a dash of Z".

The fuck does that even mean? If I haven't played one or any of the games you just said, I'll have no damn idea what you're talking about and will know nothing about a game I might have been interested in. I would LOVE it if people started describing games' features without just saying "it's like this other game!".

 

[SnakeoilSage]

My Pros:

Fantastic Inventory System: Still the gold standard in any survival horror or action-horror game. You never felt like you were wasting time organizing your case to your preferences.

Escorting Ashely was not a Chore: Yeah, shrieks of "Help! Help me Leon! Help!" was a little like subjecting your brain to a crooked icepick, but she kept out of my way when I had to shoot, and I rarely had to bend over backwards to protect her. She's kind of like Newt in that regard: more competent than she ought to be. She was also easy to look at. And who didn't feel a little encouraged when you saw her fist-pump at your shooting prowess?

A Reasonable Arsenal: No, you weren't slinging ice beams or anything overly fun, but the core of pistol/magnum/shotgun/sniper/machinegun/rocket-launcher was nicely maintained. Each gun had a characteristic that made it unique, so you didn't feel like you were losing out focusing on one type of pistol or shotgun over the other.

Interactive: There was plenty to do. Hunting treasures, shooting medals, you had something more to do in each area than just shooting ganados.

Creative: The monsters were distinct, and just as varied as previous Resident Evil games. They weren't all exactly "serious horror" but it had some disturbing creatures. Tool-using zombie cultists, the xenomorph-like "Hands," Mutant Midget Napoleon Head... and the Regenerator was an honestly frightening enemy, one of the creatures that inspired true dread in me when I played and harkening to the click-clack sound of Hunters from the original Resident Evil.

My Cons:

It's Clearly Not Horror: Maybe they were losing the love of true survival horror, maybe someone took the reigns away from the development team, but the real scare potential of the game is wasted on very Japanese-inspired action. Leon has somehow distilled Raw Chuck Norris into a hair gel, and delivers head-bursting roundhouse kicks. The villains are all one-note jokes, from "Mayor Rasputin" to "Castellan Napoleon," "Metal Gear Krauser" and "Emperor Plagas-patine." Leon doesn't react to the weirdo selling him guns out of his coat like a drug peddler. Ada has a grapple gun.

You Still Drive Like a Tank: A lot of people praised RE4 for updating Resident Evil's controls, which they describe as a "walking turret" or "tank." The problem is, Leon STILL moves like that. He can't side-strafe. He locks his feet to shoot. He still moves like a turret.

Quick-Time Uneventful: This game took the then-emerging trend of QTE's and ran with it. Nearly every battle has QTE's, some battles are just long QTE's, and most are dropped on you when you least expect it. They were frustrating and strained your patience and thumbs to their limits.

These are fairly big points that signaled the decline of the franchise and Survival Horror in general, at least among the big developers.

 

[Major_Tom]

Thank you! As a RE fan I always get annoyed when someone claims RE4 was the best one (or even the only good one). You can laugh at RE1's dialogue but at least you weren't a super secret agent sent alone to Spain some random Spanish-speaking European country to save president's annoying daughter.

 

[bug_of_war]

Whilst some of these points have their validity, I gotta point out that you fully shot yourself in the foot. First mistake was expecting a psychological horror game, if someone told you RE4 was like Silent Hill you should smack them across the head, if you just made that assumption yourself...yeah. Second mistake was playing a game that was the 4th incarnation of that series (yet I think it was like the seventh...kinda like how Brotherhood and Revelations technically make 3 and Black Flag the 5th and 6th AC games(or 7th and 9th if you include all the other games)) and expecting them to tell you who certain characters are. I played RE4 first of all the RE games, and whilst I didn't know who exactly Ada or Wesker were I wasn't being all like, "Who are these people, tell me now and stop the flow of the game and story for me".

Other things that didn't go your way was the new console, the introduction to quick time events, and a game story that just doesn't fit into your taste. The first and third part are not your fault at all, the second point though...

How hard is it to get the gesture that a rapidly shaking/shrinking and expanding button on the screen means tap it hard?

The Krauser knife fight occurs well and truly 6+ hours into the game, which means you should very much be expected to know how quick time events work, the button combinations (of which there are 2 possible choices) should not come as a surprise.


This article can really be summed up as this, "I played a game on a system I was relatively unfamiliar with and was expecting a genre that the game ended up not being, I was surprised that the 4th game of the series didn't tell me who 2 characters were and found a completely new game mechanic too hard. This is why I hate the game". While it's not wrong to hate something that you were bad at, your criticism of the game for some of the article just comes off as a little dumb.

 

[grigjd3]

I have a large frustration with most game reviewers in that they appear to be all the same. There is almost never different perspectives and game reviewers don't tend to be terribly good at expressing what it is like to play the game. I think I read a dozen reviews of MGS IV which described the story as "a bit heavy handed" when the reality was that I could get to a cut scene, go for pizza, have a couple of beers and still get back in time to play the three minutes of gameplay before the next cut scene. Seriously, at one point I sat through a forty five minute cut scene, walked solid snake through four small shacks to avoid being seen and immediately I was in another cut scene. It just seemed, however, that this was never mentioned, anywhere.

 

[Metalrocks]

i also hated RE4 but for other reasons.
when it came out for the pc (because im a pc player only) on 2007, its just an terror to play it. no mouse control, buttons are shown from the GC so this made the QTEs a nightmare and you cant strafe which you try to do automatically when playing third person shooters.
the story it self was nothing special either but i liked the direction it was going compared to the thirst three games. saving this girl was just annoying that i was really happy when she got taken away. i just hated this game that it made in to my second worst game list.

i can understand his view on it that this game will make you feel lost if you never played the previous titles, particularly part 2 were you play leon and also meet ada wong, and have never encountered QTEs.

but since the HD version came out on steam, i for once enjoyed this game a lot. really a lot actually. i got quickly used to the tank controls (but still think that strafing should be implemented) and you can finally use the dam mouse and it also shows the pc buttons during QTEs. even when its not the ultimate HD, its still nicer looking at 60 fps.


but so far revelations is still the best RE title ever for me. no stupid QTEs besides shacking off enemies attacks when they grab you and at least some horror feeling which part 4 didnt have.

 

[camazotz]

Well, I have to agree: Resident Evil 4 was a terrible Silent Hill game.

Personally, I had a lot of issues with RE4, but I can also appreciate the general point being made, given that I happen to quite enjoy RE6, despite its serious flaws (many of which also began in RE4).

I have to say, though: when you're reviewing a game, I sort of expect the reviewer to have a requisite background in the genre and style of game being reviewed. I want a guy reviewing survival horror titles to have a few under his belt; the number of times I've read a poorly done review is exactly equivalent to the number of times a reviewer has usually led in with "Normally I only like Madden games, but today they told me to play Age of Empires...." yeah that's not going to end well.

I mean.....really? Anyone gives me a sports game to review and I know I'll rail on how crappy it is because I hate the sports genre...but I also know I'm a terrible, terrible voice of opinion on such a game and would do a disservice to turn a review into my personal rant on a genre I have no interest in. Sure, opinions on games are not objective, but choice of reviewer can be very objective.

EDIT: Oh Shamus, I don't think, sincerely and as a long time RE fan, that the games are deliberately played for camp humor. Some camp is there, yes....but largely due to Japan's weird taste in what it thinks makes for good Americanized action-adventure, and not any conscious effort at humorous mimicry. Seriously: the RE devs really don't get camp humor or satire, they just don't. That's what makes the RE universe so deliciously weird (to me, YMMV)

 

[Sylocat]

But imagine if someone had tried to warn me off. Maybe a friend, or maybe a professional critic might talk about the problems with the game. They would have been shouted down by a thousand howling fanboys who can't bear to inhabit a universe where differing opinions exist.

Really? Because I remember a fair bunch of bellyaching from butthurt Resident Evil fans about how the series was abandoning survival horror. User reviews were whining about the lack of zombies, "BRING BACK TEH ZOMBIEZ!!1!" and calling it the worst Resident Evil game ever. It was only afterward that people seemed to start agreeing with me that the game was great. I can't lie, it made me feel a bit smug when the internet later came around to my way of thinking.

I suppose I went into it with the exact opposite bias as Shamus, though. My exposure to the survival horror genre had been, well, the slew of godawful generic zombie shooters that RE spawned.