Resident Evil 4HD

What do you get when you take Resident Evil and remove the zombies, the puzzle solving and the general sense of fear and dread? This.

Story

Leon Kennedy, one of the most renowned survivors of the Raccoon City incident in 1996/7, has become a government agent working with various types of top security information and receiving orders directly from the President of the United States. What is Leon’s goal this time, preventing nuclear war, rescuing a valuable P.O.W, assassinating a dangerous dictator? No, none of these…. Well, somewhat, but no. Leon is given the task of rescuing the President daughter, Ashley, who was kidnapped by a mysterious organization.

Unfortunately for Leon, when he arrives in a town that looks like it was taken from ‘The Lottery’, things go awry and the villagers begin attacking Leon and he is forced to take them out in Super Secret Agent fashion. Not far into the story, Leon learns that the village is not just full of angry Euros and that something much more sinister is going on.


Graphics

The game is titled Resident Evil HD, so you would believe the graphics are going to be better than those seen on previous consoles. While they do look better, they aren’t anything to get excited about. Yes they look better, but I didn't even see the difference till I searched Google for a comparison, and honestly it wasn't a huge difference, the hair seemed a bit more highlighted giving the layered effect. I digress though, the game looks pretty good for a game that originally came out in…. 2006 (too lazy to Wiki the release date), although the game does have a sort of ‘static’ overlay to it.


Controls

If you've played an over the shoulder shooter, then you likely know the controls already, as this game helped cement them, it does all the right things right and the wrong things right as well. The controls are very simplistic and easy to learn while giving you plenty of options and allow you to interact with the environment (although not to the same levels as RE5 or RE6). You don’t have a quick select like you do in the predecessors, so you’ll have to go into your inventory to equip something or use an item, but all in all, it’s easy to use and causes no real issues (in-fact I prefer this, if you make a mistake in RE5/6, you may die, panicking to grab an herb from the hotwheel and you end up pulling out an egg….).


Other

As far as extras, you get Mercenaries and a mission where you get to play as Ada Wong where you must collect a sample of the Las Plagas (which were included in all versions of the game). You can also earn some outfits from the PS2/WII/PC versions, one being Leon’s mobster outfit (looks more like a priest to me) and Ashley’s armor, which is invaluable as it makes her invincible and unable to be carried away by the villagers, so Hard mode is stupidly easy.

There’s also a Separate Ways campaign, which was only PS2, Wii and PC versions, this scenario is significantly longer than Assignment Ada and shows how some of the items ended up being where they are in Leon’s scenario (the main game).


Overall

For those that enjoyed Resident Evil 4 when it originally launched, then this will be a good dose of nostalgia for you. If you haven’t played it and enjoyed Resident Evil 5/6, then yes, pick this up as it is what changed the series to what it is now. If you’re like me and like the series for what it USED to be, this is still worth picking getting, just don’t think of it as Resident Evil. The game is a good suspenseful shooter, but a terrible Resident Evil game.


8.0/10.0 (if you don’t count it as a Resident Evil game)
4.0/10.0 (if you count it as a Resident Evil game)


Pros:

- New content (if you had the GameCube version of the game)
- A fun game, despite not staying true to the name
- Luis!!!! He’s just awesome

Cons:

- Shooting Gallery is a bitch!!!!
- Ruined the rest of the series (for me)
- Ashley…. Nobody likes her, nobody.