A part from the two Outbreak games, RE4 is my least favorite Resident Evil game. Sure, Salazar is a good villain (in fact, he is my favorite villain from the Resident Evil series) and Luis is a rather interesting character. It was also good to see Ada and Wesker make returns. However, that does not take away the fact that its story is horribly cliched. Basically, it involves a government agent sent on a mission to save the president's daughter from a religious cult group, which is plotting to dominate the world. How many times has that been done? With the exceptions of the characters I mentioned (Salazar, Luis, Ada, and Wesker), the cast of characters is irritating. In this title, Leon is a cocky stereotypical bad-ass government agent with a crap load of corny lines. Ashley is a weak and dependent damsel-in-distress. Krauser is an ugly meat-head army man pumped on steroids. Saddler is a religious cult group leader who wants to, "ZOMG! Tke ovur teh wurld!!!111" And Mendez? The man has no personality and is boring.
Many think the Ganados are better than the zombies. However, I have to disagree. I did not have any problem outsmarting the Ganados. Their actions were predictable and easy to figure out. Overall, they were dumb ***** who randomly screamed Spanish phrases. The zombies are more intelligent than them. At least they provided me with a challenge.
And what happened to the fear factor Resident Evil is so famous for? I jumped at least once while playing REO, REmake, RE1, RE2, RE3, REC:V and REC:VX, and Umbrella Chronicles (hell, I will admit to nearly pissing my pants when Nemesis crashed through the RPD window in RE3). And RE4? No such luck in that title. In fact, some of Capcom's attempts to scare players in the game are laughable, since they tried to make certain monsters appear frightening when they really are not.
As for Capcom eliminating the series' camera angles in place of an over-the-shoulder control system, I am quite angry over it. The camera angles added to the suspense of the games and made them more terrifying to play. Meanwhile, the over-the-shoulder control system takes away that suspense by having enemies come straight at a player. Personally, I would rather have enemies pop out at random in a game instead of having them come at me head on. That way, I feel more pumped with adrenaline while playing it.
Overall, I would say that Resident Evil 4 is a decent game, but not a good Resident Evil game. Hopefully, RE5 will be better. Given that Umbrella Chronicles turned out to be great, the likelihood of RE5 being good is there.
