Resident Evil 4

This following letter was printed in Hyper Magazine (Issue 141)

Consider this a Reader's Addendum to your Resident Evil 4 review…

By now you should have bought the higher-priced Collector's Edition of RE4. (How the only edition available can be called a "Collector's Edition" is beyond me, other than to squeeze an extra ten bucks out of every copy). You should have either played a long way through it or completed the game and possibly gone onto a second round (like I did to see what the guns maxed out are like- not much different).

RE4 is a good game executed brilliantly, but does this make it a great game? Even though it's touted as a radical new improvement for the RE series the art still outshone the game design in leaps and bounds. Don't be fooled by the gorgeous attention to detail and the stunning animation and environments, they are all there to distract you from the glaring inconsistencies of the game. I loved playing it. It was fun, but in the end, it was as pointless as its story. Collecting the Red, Blue and Green gems to complete a "puzzle" or to angle the mirrors so that the light hits the switch to open the door is so very very old now, (four games old to be precise) and for a game as realistically gritty and "Mature" as RE4 this clunky Red Blue Green game design is not just a bad fit, it's a kludge. (Look it up).

Somewhere along the way you will ask yourself, how is it that axe-throwing zombie-esque villagers carry around boxes of ammunition? Why do the robed clergy of RE4's creepy creepy cult carry incendiary grenades, yet fail to use them while they lumber up to the barrel of my shotgun? Why do security doors open up when I take a precious item from its secured place? (Last time I checked that's when security doors close).

Or most of all, how can the Merchant that you buy all your new weapons and upgrades from even exist? With all these murderous villagers and cult members everywhere, how does he survive? And moreso, how does he get from where you just left- to where you've just fought tooth and nail to get to- before you did??? The gaps of logic are as horrific as the games content and destroy so much of the atmosphere and suspension of disbelief the art team went overboard trying to create.

To regain the tension and drama promised of the term "Survival Horror" I would have opted instead to lose the Merchant entirely, and with it all the gold in the game (since there'd be no merchant to buy from anymore). Definitely lose the way these simple peasant villagers drop unimaginable amounts of convenient items for you. There are far better ways to drop ammo in a game than this. Please. Also, I would have had more Creepy Cult and less Hi-Tech Laboratories. Did any of the reviews even point out how mindless zombie peasants could have the presence of mind to use electronic key cards and high tech genetics equipment, but then be stupid enough not take cover when you're shooting a machine gun at them? If you want to scare me, Capcom, I mean reeeally scare me, then have the story and game design make some sense at least. For example: It would have been great if you had a 2 gun restriction (like Halo) and Ashley (the girl you are rescuing) was used to carry any extra guns or equipment- then she would have replaced that horribly intrusive inventory screen. The effects of this to the gameplay would have been a much better fit- The more you load on the poor girl the slower she would walk. Asking her to follow you gives you access to more weapons, but also puts her in more danger. So what do I do? Survive on little and play it safer, or risk Ashley's life and get through it easier? These are almost ethical questions! And this is precisely the level of mature game design that needs to be asked of the new generation of games these days. Not the tired standard of being able to pause an enemy mid-attack to go look in an imaginary briefcase of weapons for a more appropriate one. Or at the very worst, asking the player to collect a red gem, green gem, and blue gem, and insert them into holes conveniently gem-shaped. What condescendingly pointless shite. Christ almighty, Capcom, don't be afraid to grow up a little bit, will you?

Now don't get me wrong, if I want fun RedGreenBlue game design then give me Zelda:Wind Waker any day. I'd argue that even it had more sophisticated game design than RE4 does. But if we're talking a new generation of survival horror for the growing main-stream market then for all the great innovations RE4 did have (like context-sensitive areas, etc) overall it still falls embarrassingly short of the mark. Perhaps we will only see a true reinvention of the series when a good game executed brilliantly isn't reviewed as a great game.

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M

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Hey M,

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You raise some good points, but we can't help but think that Resident Evil is the wrong series to start demanding more mature game design and logical consistency in. For us it just doesn't matter that the villages are full of weaponry, ammo and life curing herbs, nor that the Merchant couldn't realistically get to his shop locations. They're just devices to keep the game flowing smoothly and work wonderfully in that context. By your logic healing yourself with herbs isn't realistic so Leon should only have one life bar for the whole game. And stepping in a bear trap should cripple Leon and not allow him to go any further. That just wouldn't be fun.

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We do like your idea about having Ashley carry your excess weaponry, however, and certainly the obtuse puzzles could definitely be improved, but RE4 is first and foremost a game about atmosphere and intensity and we think it does this particularly well. You're meant to switch your brain off and enjoy it!

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Moving away from RE4 though, there's certainly a case for more believability in games, but it must always be balanced against ensuring the title is fun. Games have linear storylines for a reason (as infuriating as that may be), and they let you get shot a bunch of times without dying for a reason. There is hope, however, for change and maturation, and many developers are aware of the need to break free of these artificial devices. David Perry outlines some of these things he'd like to see on page 38 for instance, and a game like Half-Life 2 (although constrained to many of the conventions of the genre) built in physics related puzzles as an intuitive part of the game world, as opposed to the inanity of "find the red key for the red door" type game design.

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Cam Shea, Editor

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Cam missed my point a little. Adding realism doesn't mean getting caught in a bear trap and staying there. That's not my point, but RE4 could have easily implimented some realistic solutions in place of their old ones (which have been inherited from their previous games from as way back as 1997). By doing so would have only made the game better. I'll also add that it would have been more appropriate to the extraordinary effort their art team went to.

My main point can really be summarised as so: Good game design doesn't invent solutions that are preposterous to the reality of the story for the sake of retaining fun. This is a kludge. Good game design invents solutions that stay within the reality of the story, but do exactly the same as the old game devices do, only better since they are in context with the events of the game. There is no compromise on the fun, or the story, when game design solutions do exactly job as those in 1997, only more intelligently/creatively/both. When I see so many of the old devices still being used in games it tells me loud an clear that for all the bells and whistles, there really isn't a lot of creativity in the games industry.

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Prince Of Persia is a terrific example of good game design. The dagger of time is clever as a story device and game device which creatively and intelligently solves many of the kludges of the old game genres Prince Of Persia stemmed from. In fact, its harmonisation and reinvention of the platform, adventure and fighting genres makes me believe that good game design ignores genres. And why wouldn't it? Afterall, the term "genre" is really just another word for mold, and the purpose of molds are to create imitations. So what is the most common trend in games development? Imitations. But when someone creates a game with genuine innovation, what do the critics proclaim? That X developer has created a new genre. And so what then does the industry do? That's right... make imitations.

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We need to destroy our genres.

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(It's an easy prediction to see that in a few years there will be a much larger number of independent games developers who will act as the mad scientists of the games industry. Their role is to innovate on low budget titles (ie. taking all the risk) mostly with proprietory software (mods) while the major games developers immitate the most popular of these indie games in big budget titles (ie. taking no risk, making all the money and giving no credit to the people who came up with the original idea). Re: Gish and Loco Roco.

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