While I had done Ada Wong's "Separate Ways" campaign, it wasn't really like the "second run" you get in RE2. That's arguably to its benefit: RE2's second run, giving you the opportunity to play as the other character, is nearly a full second playthrough (I don't remember exactly how it changes outside of the ordinary Leon/Claire differences, but Mr. X at least shows up earlier - which does make his perfect helicopter-hauling entrance sort of redundant). Really, though, I was curious to see if I could get every last treasure I had missed in my first playthrough of RE4, and also see how it felt to go in with fully-upgraded weapons (in fairness, I think I only had the Blacktail truly fully upgraded, but your handgun is generally your default weapon in these games, and especially when you are hitting pretty hard with it, it will serve you quite well).
I have just defeated Ramon Salazar. While the first time against him took me many, many attempts, this one only took me two - the one death came from his insta-kill attack when I lost sight on him and didn't realize how close he was.
Ramon is a great villain and a terrible boss fight, which is a shame. It's a fight that feels designed to frustrate, giving you tiny windows in which to actually damage him, some attacks that feel undodgeable (when he does the horizontal black-bile spray). To be honest, I'm not really enamored with any of the bosses in... well, most survival horror games. (I think the ones in Silent Hill 2 were more interesting than frustrating - I struggled a lot on Eddie, but appreciated it).
Castle Salazar is generally agreed upon as the best part of the game, and I agree. The Gothic Castle (thinking of an Arrested Development joke - if you know, you know) has a grandeur to it, has cool new enemies, and really amps up the feeling of being displaced in time.
Basically, if we are to rank the three main acts of RE4, I think there's a consensus that the Castle is a firm #1, the Village is a respectable #2, and the final act on the Island is a distant #3 - which I, again, agree with.
But playing through again, I can't help but notice the linear design of the castle. There are kind of segments of it that we need to do in a strict sequence, and rather than a comprehensive and cohesive space, it feels a bit like a series of set-pieces that stand mostly in a line from west to east.
One of the detours from this eastward movement is Leon's trip along the castle walls. It's a thrilling sequence in which we need to dodge hurled explosives by a Gigante that has armor like that sapper Uruk-hai from the Two Towers (the one that ignites the bombs under the big wall).
It's a memorable part of the castle, but it's also weird, because the walls project out from about a third of the way into the castle and reconnect before they can protect other parts of the castle.
RE4's combat is more satisfying than that of RE2 (again, talking about the remakes of both) but the level design is less impressive. It's kind of mad that the RPD and the sewers below all fit together like a big jigsaw puzzle.
Survival Horror rewards (and sometimes in the same breath punishes) exploration. RE4 has a whole mechanic for this, giving you treasures that make up a big bulk of the Pesetas you need to make your weapons more effective. More effective weapons mean enemies that are dead faster, and enemies that die faster mean you're both less likely to take damage from them and also you use up less ammo on them. So there's a really strong incentive to explore the map.
But there are a lot of points-of-no-return in RE4 - I realized only after the knife fight with Krauser in the mines that there was one treasure back in the Hive area that evidently would have required me to blow open a wall, but because I had fallen down the ledge into the arena where we fight Krauser, and I had saved in the Chapter End screen (something that is usually unnecessary because we tend to immediately find a new Typewriter at the start of each chapter) I was SOL, and finished the castle with 40/41 treasures collected.
It's interesting, because I remember playing a lot of games in the mid-2000s that embraced linearity in the name of storytelling. I didn't play RE4 until a couple months ago, but I remember playing the Prince of Persia games of the same generation, and I remember having a frustrating moment where I realized in Warrior Within that I had missed just one of the shrines where you can increase your health and earn the Water Sword, which in turn gives you the true final boss of that game.
Earlier games, in the 90s, often had discrete levels that could be re-played, even if there wasn't anything you needed to unlock in them. But I think as games were starting to be treated more as a legitimate storytelling medium, particularly in this PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era, there was a greater drive to move forward with the story by continually pushing the player through the game.
What's kind of fascinating is the way that the next big move in video games was the Open World genre, which went the opposite direction. Obviously, titles that pre-dated RE4, like Grand Theft Auto 3, which kind of invented the modern open-world game, existed. But I wonder if the popularity of games like Assassin's Creed were born in part out of the idea that, because the missions didn't take you to some unique location, meant you could always revisit places and continue your treasure hunts.
But to turn back to RE4, the forward momentum means that there's less of an intricate puzzle box approach to the level design. Castle Salazar implies a lot of unvisited rooms, or is the most inefficiently-designed castle in the world. (I think the implication is the former because there's no bedrooms or kitchens or other pretty necessary parts of a castle).
In contrast, the RPD is madly designed, but there's something more believable about the fact that all of its chambers fit into a rectangular footprint.
But I think that this linear design in an exploration-focused game creates a major problem: it punishes exploration. If you take a wrong turn, and you haven't solved this one puzzle, you're screwed. In my first playthrough, I think I had the third tile for that one puzzle in the lakeside village where you have to swap hexagonal tiles around to make an image, but because I had gone far enough that the game wanted to funnel me toward the eventual Father Mendez fight, I couldn't actually get back to the place to plug the third piece in and collect the idol treasure (on my second run, I did finish this puzzle, and the idol was kind of underwhelmingly low-value, but I had to remind myself that in the first act of the game, when you're just barely able to afford the first couple upgrades on your weapons, that treasure is probably worth more, relatively speaking).
I'm thinking about, like, the locker room in RE2, and how I could totally imagine forgetting to go and plug in the second spare button, thus being unable to claim the super-valuable hip-pack there. But until you go to the Nest, there's nothing stopping you from returning there, and by that point, you've probably got a fairly fast route to return to the RPD from the sewers.
Anyway, having finished the Castle, I'm trying to decide if I want to finish the final part of the game. I died something like fourteen times in the real Krauser fight, but maybe I'd do better this time. I kind of dread the part where you need to deal with both an Iron Maiden and four Ganados trying to grab Ashley from behind a bunch of metal bars, but maybe with my fully upgraded LE5 or Stingray, I might be able to down the Iron Maiden quickly and be able to deal with the Ganados at a leisurely pace (when I finally beat that encounter, I didn't kill the Iron Maiden, instead just dropping it into the chasm and forfeiting any treasure I might have gotten. Like fleeing Verdugo the first time, this time I killed it, so we could see).
Really, I'm mostly contemplating what I want to play next. Truly, there is something very satisfying to the combat in RE4, so there's a hook there.
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