Resident Evil 4: The Long Trudge

I know RE4 is popular amongst many a gamer, but my god the controls are a nightmare. The PS2 had been out for 5 years at this point. 5 years of other developers really getting grips with a dual stick controller. Hell, even some PS1 titles did it better than this game.

SH2 was GTA3 was 3 years old at the time of RE4s release, San Andreas was out the year before, so why the hell did we end up with this locked down FoV, unable to move when attacking, forced perspective control system?

Now, I have no issue with being forced to look in the direction a character is facing in a 3rd person game, and I get the temptation to use the right stick to temporary change perspective, but why, when you aim, do you loose all peripheral vision, go into nearly 1st person and it uses the left stick to change aim direction? My god, this was infuriating.

Not to mention you had little idea of where you were aiming in relation to what you wanted to aim. Unless it was directly at a target, it was just somewhere in the ether. Also, especially the pistols, your aim was never stable, if your target was more than a few feet away, you just had to shoot and hope it was on target before it veered off somewhere else on its own.

I did not enjoy the combat of this game, I was constantly fighting the context change, and this is coming from a hardened Silent Hill fan. Yeah, a Silent Hill fan thought the combat was bad.

I know the remake has fixed all of this, but I was not playing the remake.

The story was OK, proper Team USA propaganda, President's daughter is kidnapped so they send in 1 guy and his pistol, and he completely clears out a small eastern European town, and some unspecific island of all inhabitants.

I would have loved some more lore around the merchant. How come he seems to get places before me? Also, a bit disappointed with where Luis ended up.

But it is done now. I have owned this game for over 9 years after getting it in a RE bundle, which I will now continue on with. I hope Resident Evil 5 fixed the damn combat.

Here we go again. 

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