I had been worried after dying several times in the opening village segment of RE4 that I was going to struggle the whole game. To be fair, when a game has really captivated me, I've been willing to put up with a brutal wall, like Central Yharnam in Bloodborne, for example (though that might be the extreme - the oddity being that now, with so much experience in that game, I now find that opening pretty easy, even if I stop to fight everything).
What I'm finding kind of interesting is the way in which RE4 plays in both one-way paths and revisits. I came back to that starting village square, only for the bell tower (which is a bit of a trap even if you go in there the first time) and was able to use a key to get into one of the desks, but I think I still need Ashley to get into the damaged building.
I'm finding myself with more weapons than I can reasonably use - I bought the SMG but haven't actually used it. I'm currently focusing a lot on the Bolt Launcher and the starting pistol, which has such ample ammo that it always feels like a reliable option.
Comparing this to the other seminal survival horror remake I played recently, RE4 has way more "systems" than Silent Hill 2 did. This, combined with the more action-movie tone of it, has really made me feel less, well, horror than I did playing SH2, even when peoples' heads are exploding with some kind of big tentacle parasite thing.
I'm given to understand that in the original Resident Evil, the zombies you took down early in the game can rise up as "Crimson Heads," and so there's actually some incentive to, when you can, leave the zombies alive and just evade them. I don't think it's the same mechanic at play here, but it does seem that taking down a foe sometimes causes them to start wriggling, and then you can do a quick execute with your knife (which costs precious durability, of course) to prevent them from rising again.
This version, though, has them just a little more erratic and, you know, having to fight an enemy you've already killed. The new foes have their heads fully explode in gore and a bunch of horrifying lashing tentacles come out.
I don't love seeing Leon torn apart in brutal ways when I die. Gore is my least favorite aspect of the horror genre, and the one that honestly holds me back more than anything else when it comes to embracing it. Comparing this to Silent Hill 2 and Alan Wake II, those games were focused far more on the psychological horror elements (though I'd argue the story more than the enemies themselves in AWII did that. AWII does actually have some nasty gore when you blast away at Taken, but it's all kind of a surface thing - bits of exposed muscle and bone on their bodies but still all held in the same shape).
There are sidequests and minigames, and I'm not sure how much I'm going to have to invest in these to make it through the game. I took an elevator at the Merchant's lakeside shop and found a shooting gallery game. I was able to get B grades in each, which gave me enough tokens to get a charm for my attache case.
It's actually only now, on chapter 4, I think, that I've managed to hit a point where I'm running out of inventory space, though I also just bought another upgrade. I'm tempted to put another of my weapons in storage (I also just got a new pistol, but it's not upgraded at all, and so I'm tempted to stick to the starting handgun, which I've poured a fair amount into). I like having the rifle for long-range kills, and I like the Bolt Launcher/Thrower (whatever it's called) for its efficiency (though having only three shots per reload is not great - might upgrade that). The Shotgun I actually don't use as much as I expected to, but it's nice when I need to pour a lot of damage onto a dangerous target. I also think that blowing a foe's head off might prevent them from rising again.
The new issue, not related to the game, is that my PS5 controller has developed a very slight drift on one of its joysticks, which I only noticed when I opened the map and it started zooming out on its own. Sigh.
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