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Resident Evil 4 Review - Gamecube

Never forget 1998…

It was the year Raccoon City turned into the city of the undead. Zombies spreading havoc across a seemingly peaceful human society, destroying everything in their path. Although the memories are still stuck firmly in Leon’s mind, the two police officers driving him out to the village see differently. Leon has been sent out to a lost village in search for Ashley, the president’s daughter. What he doesn’t realise is that these are no ordinary terrorists – and Leon will to be dealing with something a lot worse than Raccoon City.

Gameplay

Resident Evil 4’s gameplay is astounding in many ways. You must walk through the whole game, which can get a bit tedious sometimes when you have to go from A to B and you know that no bad guys are waiting for you, however it builds a lot of tension, creating fear amongst the strongest gamers. The combat system is designed almost perfectly, shooting, slashing and kicking your enemies around, however there is a slight camera issue. The camera is fixed behind you, but your character takes so long to turn around (unless you use the 180 spin button) that quite often you get attacked from behind in sticky situations. You just have to hope that the thing attacking you from behind doesn’t have a chainsaw!

The HUD is an interesting one, and it gradually becomes upgraded throughout the game. Health comes in a variety of flavours including plants, eggs, fish, and First Aid spray. The fish takes up a lot of room in your Attache case, but you can sell them for a pretty high price. Yep, that’s right; there are shops around where a rather creepy guy (who happens to be at every shop in the area) will do business with you. You can sell him your rare items, such as rings, amulets, or even just stones, as well as any weapons or ammo you may have picked up, or you can buy from him. Although he mainly focuses on the sales of weapons, he can sometimes have some useful items such as a treasure map, and more First Aid spray.

Save points can be found all around the village, and they come in the form of typewriters. Whenever you see a typewriter we suggest you save because you never know what’s going to be around the next corner, however it does keep track of how many saves you’ve done, so you might not want to use them. The game saves at the end of every level though, and each level takes about 20 – 30 minutes to pass. The game has levels, but it also has overall chapters. Levels can end at any given point, however chapters usually end when something major happens. The game has five chapters, and each chapter has around 3 to 5 levels. You do the maths.

The enemies are not zombies in Resident Evil (continued next page)