finished resident evil 4 last week. i’d read in a lot of places that a lot of critics regard this as one of the best gamecube games and one of the best games ever, and although i enjoyed a lot about the game, overall i def. don’t count this among the best games i’ve played this year. i’m not at all familiar w/ the “survival-horror” genre, and it seems that a lot of the praise for the game comes from capcom’s decision to break the conventions of the other games in the series and move in a different direction. but just coming into it as a newbie i found the game, while atmospheric and quite excellent during the first two chapters, really dragged its way to the finish. this was largely due to the fact that by then much of the enemy variety had been exhausted, the difficulty lessened somewhat, and some of the showiest environments were packed into the beginning (e.g. the village, swamp, and besieged shack). there were also some areas in the castle section that distinctly reminded me of castlevania 64, which i had played earlier this year, including one place where the music was eerily very similar.

one thing worth noting is the excellent voice acting. kudos to paul mercier as the hero leon, and carolyn lawrence as his whiny sidekick ashley. and how’s this for a bit of trivia: carolyn lawrence is also the voice of the squirrel “sandy cheeks” on nickelodeon’s spongebob squarepants. awesome.

anyway, i won’t be replaying this anytime soon, although people have been raving about the wii-make which might be worth a playthrough. it’s interesting to note that on the IGN resident evil messageboard it seems that many fans prefer resident evil 2 or the remake of the original resident evil, both of which i’m interested in checking out. eventually!

one li’l link:
- good guide at IGN