PC Review: 'Resident Evil 4'

Resident Evil 4 on the Nintendo GameCube is a uniquely sublime game, sporting some excellent eye-candy, an above average plot and moments of sheer horror followed by extended, yet relaxing, periods of violently shooting stuff. It also is an obvious, major even, evolution of the whole Resident Evil series and the first RE game to do away with zombies and go for the rather more nimble possessed peasant variety of baddies. Oh, and it's in glorious real-time 3D.

What's more, RE 4 has also been made available for the mainstream PS2, which, despite the underpowered hardware, got a pretty impressive port, only slightly lacking in the looks department and more than making up for this drawback by offering a few extra gameplay hours. Kudos to Capcom for successfully pushing the PS2 hardware, then.

So, what happens when Resident Evil 4, the same president's daughter saving supernatural survival horror video game that amazed the console crowds, hits the PC? Tragedy, that's what. Or to be more precise, what happens, is a tragedy of such epic proportions Sophocles might consider producing it, for Capcom has somehow ignored the hardware muscle of the PC, the fact that the mouse is now (for this deceivingly 10 year long decade, at least) considered a pretty standard piece of high-tech equipment, that contemporary gamers like to have a proper save (let alone quicksave) function and that PC gamers aren't as game-starved as in the very early eighties, and went on to promptly produce the shoddiest Resi 4 port imaginable.

That's ...uhm... stunning?

The game, cunningly avoiding to offer mouse control as an option, is virtually unplayable without a gamepad (even though being prompted to press buttons 1, 2, 3 or 4 can still be baffling) as the keyboard-only control method is frankly shocking (WASD to aim?). Even if, and this will be a very ill-conceived if, you do decide to give RE4 a try just to experience the story and visuals, think again.

So, I'm supposed to press 3, am I? Oh, you mean enter? No? Ctrl, perhaps?

The thing not only plays but looks decidedly shite and doesn't even bother to provide a way to exit the game without going for the ol' ctrl-alt-del trick.The graphics themselves are a travesty, which could a) have been easily avoided b) really wouldn't be so important if they hadn't removed daylight, night and fog effects in a brilliant attempt to strip away any sense of atmosphere. Then again, instantly disappearing characters have been added, thus succesfuly adding to the hilarity of the whole affair. Obviously anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and modern soundcard technology have seemed to evade Capcom's attention all together. And still, the bloody thing will eat up almost 5 Gigas of your hard drive. For what? I really can't imagine. Probably just to irritate you.

Warning, obvious conclusion: Avoid Resident Evil 4 PC like the plague. In fact, given a choice, go for the rotting away to death fetish, and if you really desperately need to play Resident Evil 4 -which you do- you're better off buying a GameCube and the original version. Or a Wii and waiting a bit. Or, why not, a PS2. Heck, you'll probably enjoy playing the offending Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man more. Oh, and to remind you... THERE'S NO MOUSE SUPPORT. Tsk, tsk.

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