Friday, January 28, 2005

Del Lagos el muerte

Less than a month after "The Greatest Year of Gaming Ever," the all-mighty 2004, a game truly worthy of the title "Great" is released. While 2004 featured a ton of over-hyped games that didn't deliver on their promise, 2005 starts out with one of the best games this generation. In fact, if I was asked at gun point right now what my Top Five Best Games This Generation are, I would say Metroid Prime, Grand Theft Auto 3, Halo: Combat Evolved, Ninja Gaiden (even though I only played it an hour) and... Resident Evil 4. Put them in any order you want, but these five games are some of the very best titles ever made.

Resident Evil 4 is the most surprising entry on this list to me. Before it was released, I absolutely hated the RE series. Hated with an ever growing passion. The games played like complete ass. Sure, they offered some scares, but the games were so tedious to play it was hardly worth the trouble. Remember the horrible tank-like controls? The inability to actually aim properly at enemies? The ridiculous puzzles involving combining medallion pieces to open the bathroom door? Remember the extremely limited ammo so you had to slowly walk away from any monster you encountered? All that crap, as well as the horrible camera angles and boring pre-rendered backgrounds, are finally gone. Even the laughable voice acting is gone. No sequel has ever made its predecessors look quite so archaic. To anyone who has played RE before RE4, can you even imagine going back to what was once considered great games?

There is so much that is right with RE4 I don't even know where to begin. The first is the pure terror that hangs on your shoulders throughout every step of the journey. Obviously, seeing scary pseudo-zombies jump out at you is as scary as ever, but this game provides a much deeper level of fear as well. The environments have that eerie campfire light feel to them. When a thunder storm comes and makes the environment almost pitch black with sparse burst of lightning providing a brief view of your surroundings, you'll understand fear. When you come to a sign that points to "The Lake" in one direction and a "Church" in the other, and can't decide where to go because both locations offer more fear than you can handle, you'll understand why this game is so great. I honestly don't think I have played a game this entire generation that I was so reluctant to hand over the controller after I died, while at the same time relieved that I didn't have to fight that troll one more time.

In just four hours of gaming yesterday I experienced a handful of some of my favorite gaming moments in recent memory. When I first started playing, after almost an hour of making lame excuses why I shouldn't have to play, I was in a foggy graveyard. I hadn't even fired my gun at that point yet, and was terrified beyond belief. I looked around and saw that no one was nearby so I slowly made my way to the far corner where a rupee lay. As I came nearer I heard a noise. "I think that's just a crow," I said. Andrew responded "Do you think?" "No," I said, "I just really want it to be." As I came to a house I heard a thumping noise behind me. Just as I was about to turn around a women, out for my blood, burst out of the house. Andrew and I screamed. I whipped out my gun and tried to aim it at her. The footsteps behind me were growing louder. I finally locked on and shot her square in the chest, stunning her for a second. I took a chance then, running right next to her to enter the house, narrowly avoiding the charging enemy behind me.

At another point, a little after this, I came to a crate. There are crates all over in this game, most are empty but some of them contain health or ammo. We were already four hours into the game so the sight of a crate was less than alarming. Just a chance to restock and move on. I casually walked up to it and struck it with my knife. There was a brief streak of white and my health went all the way down. Andrew, Scott and I yelled "What was that!? What's going on!?" I look behind me and saw a snake. Just a normal, three foot long snake, doing snake things on the ground. Who keeps snakes in crates anyway? Shot it dead.

I would love to tell you more about the game, especially the fight with Del Lagos, one of the best boss battles I've ever experienced, but this game just needs to be played first hand by anyone who likes games.

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