I've been putting off this review so I could keep playing. First it was just to finish up the last half of the game, despite having already beaten it at least three times on the GameCube. Then it was just to sample the new Ada-centric sub-missions that have been added in. Then it was playing Mercenaries, an end-game unlockable I could hardly stand on the GameCube but is more fun than it has any right to be on the Wii.
The reason for Mercenaries' newfound enjoyability and the trick to all of this is that while on the cover Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition is the same game you remember from 2005, inside the box the Wii controls transform it into something completely different, a "survival action" game that utilizes the new controller completely to deliver the experience it feels like was intended all along.
The key here is the on-screen aiming reticule controlled simply by pointing with the Wii Remote, a far more elegant solution than the original's laser-aiming reticule, brilliant for the time but by nature imperfect and slow. With the Remote's pointer you can aim anywhere on the screen and rotate your view with the Nunchuk's control stick, allowing you (finally!) for the first time in the Resident Evil series to elegantly pick off enemies on either side of you with clean headshots not a second apart from each other, and even have time to 180-turn and high-tail it out of there for a better vantage point.
The controls that have been mapped to the motion-sensing gizmos inside the Remote add another layer, allowing you to flick your wrist from the armed position to quickly reload or from the neutral position to attack the closest object with your knife. The latter addition alone finally makes it a worthwhile proposition to cap a parasitic assaulter in the kneecaps and slash him while he's down, all with a modicum of effort and so much sweet satisfaction. The forces needed to reload and slash are just sensitive enough that you always hit it when you're trying and never when you aren't; if you're like me you'll fire random bullets just so you can reload and reloading feels so cool (you'll even hear that satisfying click of the ammo cartridge from the little speaker on the Remote).
And then there's Mercenaries, an unlockable mini-game which pits you, acting as one of a three-man and one-woman cadre, against ceaseless enemies in an attempt to kill as many as you can as fast as you can, a task almost insurmountably difficult with the GameCube's analog stick more suited to accuracy than speed—but an absolute joy with the new control scheme offered up by the Wii. Surely Resident Evil 5 weeps from the future—listen up Capcom: you've got it right already.
The greatest thing about the game, though, the thing that everyone understood when this game came out the first time and the thing that pushed it into innumerable Game of the Year lists is that Resident Evil 4 succeeds even completely ignoring how it is controlled because it embraces its own medium. It is a video game and it knows it. It offers no explanation for the boxes of ammunition strewn about in random crates and barrels. The treasures littering the walls and precious gems in caves are there just because they are. They know you'll die at the part with the flaming truck coming straight at you so when they ask if you want to continue they put you right back there again. Even the identically-dressed leperous merchants that set up similar camps behind barricaded doors that take you special keys to unlock are not bothersome. In accepting that it is a video game and not a logical treatise or a Hollywood film Resident Evil 4 is able to offer an experience so distilled and entertaining that it maintains the same level of excitement presented at the outset over the nearly seventeen hours an average player will spend the first time through. And that's a lot of shooting.
Prepare to put off your other obligations so you can play through Resident Evil 4 again or for the first time: the new controls offer an almost inconceivable amount of value for repeat-players and an experience unparalleled for first timers. Two-and-a-half years later, Resident Evil 4 reminds us why it was the game of the year in the first place.
The reason for Mercenaries' newfound enjoyability and the trick to all of this is that while on the cover Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition is the same game you remember from 2005, inside the box the Wii controls transform it into something completely different, a "survival action" game that utilizes the new controller completely to deliver the experience it feels like was intended all along.
The key here is the on-screen aiming reticule controlled simply by pointing with the Wii Remote, a far more elegant solution than the original's laser-aiming reticule, brilliant for the time but by nature imperfect and slow. With the Remote's pointer you can aim anywhere on the screen and rotate your view with the Nunchuk's control stick, allowing you (finally!) for the first time in the Resident Evil series to elegantly pick off enemies on either side of you with clean headshots not a second apart from each other, and even have time to 180-turn and high-tail it out of there for a better vantage point.
The controls that have been mapped to the motion-sensing gizmos inside the Remote add another layer, allowing you to flick your wrist from the armed position to quickly reload or from the neutral position to attack the closest object with your knife. The latter addition alone finally makes it a worthwhile proposition to cap a parasitic assaulter in the kneecaps and slash him while he's down, all with a modicum of effort and so much sweet satisfaction. The forces needed to reload and slash are just sensitive enough that you always hit it when you're trying and never when you aren't; if you're like me you'll fire random bullets just so you can reload and reloading feels so cool (you'll even hear that satisfying click of the ammo cartridge from the little speaker on the Remote).
And then there's Mercenaries, an unlockable mini-game which pits you, acting as one of a three-man and one-woman cadre, against ceaseless enemies in an attempt to kill as many as you can as fast as you can, a task almost insurmountably difficult with the GameCube's analog stick more suited to accuracy than speed—but an absolute joy with the new control scheme offered up by the Wii. Surely Resident Evil 5 weeps from the future—listen up Capcom: you've got it right already.
The greatest thing about the game, though, the thing that everyone understood when this game came out the first time and the thing that pushed it into innumerable Game of the Year lists is that Resident Evil 4 succeeds even completely ignoring how it is controlled because it embraces its own medium. It is a video game and it knows it. It offers no explanation for the boxes of ammunition strewn about in random crates and barrels. The treasures littering the walls and precious gems in caves are there just because they are. They know you'll die at the part with the flaming truck coming straight at you so when they ask if you want to continue they put you right back there again. Even the identically-dressed leperous merchants that set up similar camps behind barricaded doors that take you special keys to unlock are not bothersome. In accepting that it is a video game and not a logical treatise or a Hollywood film Resident Evil 4 is able to offer an experience so distilled and entertaining that it maintains the same level of excitement presented at the outset over the nearly seventeen hours an average player will spend the first time through. And that's a lot of shooting.
Prepare to put off your other obligations so you can play through Resident Evil 4 again or for the first time: the new controls offer an almost inconceivable amount of value for repeat-players and an experience unparalleled for first timers. Two-and-a-half years later, Resident Evil 4 reminds us why it was the game of the year in the first place.