Given its beloved status, it's always funny to me when I chronicle my journey through a game (in this case a game's remake) that has been out for a quarter of a century or so. I was around the target audience when it came out (at least in terms of demographics) but I was scared of the gore and horror of it.
Anyway, finally experiencing Resident Evil 4 in its fancy, modern incarnation, it's been pretty interesting:
Beating the evil priest (whose name I do not recall) sent me on from the game's rural village setting in which it starts to a grand medieval castle, where I'm taunted by a creepy little in-bred (one assumes, though he's also probably got the weird Plaga parasite) aristocrat.
Actually, let's talk about that boss fight:
(Just looked his name up) Mendez has of course been an implacable force in the game - not long before we have this fight, we have a segment where we need to flee him with Ashley, starting with him only like ten feet away, and then a bunch of Genados (I don't know that I've actually seen this term used in-game yet) getting in our way. I died (or got Ashley killed or captured) far more here than I did in the actual boss fight.
The fight itself has two distinct phases, taking place in a burning building. The first allows you to climb up to a loft where his attacks can be usually pretty easily either parried with your knife or dodged with a quick evade. From this angle, you can hit the creepy parasite eye growing out of his back and then leap down for a nice critical hit if you stun him. The second phase, he sets that loft on fire and starts jumping back into the burning rafters to throw flaming debris at you and also, occasionally, barrels of explosive oil, which you can shoot to do a bunch of damage to him.
The lack of a dodge button really messes up my muscle memory - you just need to run to make sure that the debris doesn't hit you. Anyway, he'll occasionally jump back into melee range, and I found that running forward so that his attacks would go past you was the safest bet. It took two attempts to take him down, and I collected his false eye to sell to the Merchant.
Anyway, the castle has been gothic excess to the extreme, which is super fun. Resident Evil has always been more in the sci-fi horror territory, with its evil pharmaceutical megacorp Umbrella as the big bad of the first three games, but my understanding is that all of that 80s action movie stuff is wedded to these classic horror aesthetics, like the big haunted house that is the first game's setting.
Folk Horror is obviously the real touchstone of the game's first act, with these bizarre villagers burning a police officer alive and attacking Leon without warning. The various sieges (I can think of three - the opening village square, later when we meet up with Luis, and then when we're attacked by a pair of chainsaw-wielding ladies along with a bunch of other Genados) reinforce this subgenre, which always kind of plays on people with strange beliefs turning into predators stalking you as prey.
Going into the castle, in addition to throwing you into what is effectively a siege where you're the one attacking (there's a second El Gigante you have to kill with a cannon that is wearing a mask like that one Uruk-Hai who blows up the wall at Helm's Deep in The Two Towers,) but it's also here where Ashely briefly gets separated from Leon after the parasite drives her to attack him.
Gothic Horror, I think, is very much focused on the fear of becoming the monster, and Leon and Ashley's parasitic infections are, of course, terrifying because it could presage their own transformation into these horrible tentacle-headed monstrosities (oh, also, I've encountered a more powerful version of the exploding-head Genados that can do a one-hit kill, which is fun).
Anyway, there are plenty of tense set-pieces. One involves sending Ashely up to raise a bridge where you have to kill like, twenty cultists trying to capture her (a few also attack you, but that's mainly so they can drop ammo). I found myself quite good at taking them out with headshots with my handgun, but I was truly nearly out of ammo by the end of it.
In contrast with the Silent Hill 2 remake I played last year, RE4 for sure puts you in positions where you could potentially be helpless, running out of ammo and potentially breaking all your knives. I think the game is generous enough, and the enemies aren't too spongey, so that you are unlikely to hit that point. I've found that a tactic I like to use is to hit Genados in the leg and then do a melee attack to preserve ammo, but this rarely takes them out anymore. The Bolt Thrower is a decent default weapon, though the Riot Gun, my newer shotgun, is something I'd like to use all the time, it's just that there's not enough ammo.
I think I must have hit some important central location at the castle, because the Merchant shop has another elevator to his shooting gallery. Getting B grades isn't too bad, but I haven't really tried for A grades - I'm hoping this mini-game isn't too necessary.
I also unlocked more weapon upgrade ranks. I wonder if there even is enough money to get them all, but I know that the game will refund most of the cash you pour into upgrades if you sell a weapon, which I take to be an invitation to try them out. I sold my old handgun, for example, which had everything up at the previous max of 3 ranks of upgrades.
I've gotten a little more liberal with green herbs - typically I try to get a green/red/yellow combination and then pop it when I'm in dire straits to not only fully heal myself by also increase my max HP. But healing items are not super plentiful - it is a survival horror game, after all - and so I'm focusing as best I can on not taking damage.
No comments:
Post a Comment