Resident Evil 4 (GameCube) Review
~By tankMage (February 2025)
Score: 9.3/10 (Excellent)
More fun than a barrel of zombies!
I’m not sure how others feel about Resident Evil 4, especially with it being a departure from the series. Regardless, RE4 is a personal favorite of mine. That’s not to say it’s perfect, it’s got a few bugs and inconsistencies, plus even the original GameCube version is a bit too easy in my opinion. With all that said, it’s a beautifully paced action title with enough variety in it to keep it fresh even two decades after its release. It’s just one of those games that has a certain magic to it that’s hard to quantify, though I’ll try to do so in this review.
Before I go on, I have to include my usual caveat when it comes to games that get really high scores. First, nothing is perfect and this game certainly has flaws. Secondly, people often get disappointed when they go into games that get talked up a lot and their sky high expectations are not met. My advice with RE4 (and any game for that matter) is to go in with an open mind and let it play out naturally; it’s always more fun that way.
Heavy on action, light on survival horror.
Resident Evil didn’t exactly invent the Survival Horror genre, but it certainly defined it in the mid 90s. Ironically, Resident Evil 4 arguably killed the genre or transformed it as far as the mainstream goes. While the older titles emphasized suspense and the occasional jump scare, the fourth installment plays like a cheesey action movie with a few horror elements thrown in for good measure.
Wandering around dark hallways and solving puzzles has largely been replaced by blasting bad guys, though traces of the old design philosophy are still present. Speaking of bad guys, Resident Evil’s trademark zombies were replaced with humans who are under the control of parasites. Said parasite victims are called ganados. These parasite infested humans are less disgusting than zombies, but there’s still plenty of body horror to keep the unsettling aspect of the series alive.
Shifting from the slow, suspense laden plodding of yesteryear to action oriented gameplay was a risky decision that did not always pay off in later games, but RE4 stuck the landing nearly perfectly. Upgrading guns, blowing ganados away, and looting treasure which can be used for more gun upgrades was great fun.
Is this a game or a cheesey action movie?
Most fans of the series are probably aware that it was inspired by campy zombie flicks from the 70s and 80s. Once again RE4 breaks with tradition by emulating action movies from around the same era. This game draws from movies like Terminator and Predator far more than it does Night of the Living Dead. Cinematic camera angles, guns that never seem to run out of ammo, rocket launchers, a femme fatale, and corny one liners give this game its action vibe. All Leon needs to complete the feel is a crew-cut, one hundred extra pounds of muscle, and an Austrian accent.
While the earlier titles certainly had the elements I just described, they’re dialed up to 11 in RE4 and some of the scenes in the game are certainly callbacks to the type of movies I mentioned, especially certain enemies, which reminded me of Predator. There’s also a fair amount of incontinuity which I think was deliberate. For example, Leon throws his knife in one scene only to use it moments later, which is the sort of thing you could expect from a silly action film.
All in all, I love the aesthetic of this game. It’s truly unique and says something about the brilliance of its creators. That said, the charm, mystery, and humor of RE4 are going to be lost on people who over analyze or approach this type of entertainment too seriously. Resident Evil 4 is a roller coaster ride, not a chess game.
No sleeping through the cutscenes!
Like most games made after the late 90s, Resident Evil 4 has its share of cutscenes that serve as exposition for the story. If you’re like me, you may have trouble paying attention when video game characters are flapping their gums (I’ve corrected this issue, I promise!) so Capcom came up with a creative solution to this problem: Leon dies if players don’t watch the cutscenes closely! And so, the Quick Time Event (QTE), where players have to press buttons during cutscenes to keep the hero from being crushed, stabbed, burned, mauled, or dispatched in some other horrific manner, was born. Well, maybe RE4 didn’t invent Quick Time Events, one could argue that an arcade game called Dragon’s Lair was the first game to feature something akin them and there are other examples. Regardless, this game is notable for them.
While the QTEs can be cool and fun, I’ve always had conflicted feelings about them. They give the game some extra oomph and some of them are really great, but they can also be annoying, especially in subsequent playthroughs. To this day I sometimes die in cutscenes, because I zoned out for a second…but that’s my fault in the end.
Traps, puzzles, and explosions galore.
Players don’t just run through mazes or wander through an open world in RE4, instead the game puts them in situations. Leon will often find himself stepping into rooms where the ganados, who are more than mindless zombies, have fortified their position and it’s up to the player to figure how to deal with them. This can range from ganados rolling boulders at Leon to them firing crossbows from behind sandbags. The enemy may even change up their tactics depending on what the player does, though such instances are rare.
Traps also await players, though they are almost always painfully obvious and easy to disarm. Clever players can even lead enemies into some traps, eliminating two threats in the process.
Capcom also included some puzzles, but they are incredibly easy. Most puzzles can be solved with maybe a second or two of thought. While this may be disappointing to some players, I kind of like the fact that the game focuses more on action with some light puzzle solving to preserve the spirit of the series. If anything, the puzzles serve as a break between shooting sprees rather than a means of slowing players down to make the game seem longer… though they still pad play time a bit.
Of course, the main feature is the third person run and gun gameplay. Blasting baddies with a shotgun and popping heads like type ripe tomatoes with a rifle never gets old to me. Resident Evil 4 offers plenty of opportunities to burn ammo and a nice variety of guns for trigger happy gamers. As far as I can tell, most of the guns are at least vaguely based on real world firearms, but they have rather creative names. What appears to be a Luger is called the Red9; other weapons have names like Broken Butterfly and Blacktail. I’m not sure why they decided to rename weapons, maybe it had something to do with trademark rights or maybe they didn’t want to draw too much ire from our good friends at the ESRB, but the rather silly names are a nice touch in my opinion. The few weapons that have normal names like “Shotgun” lack flavor when compared to monikers like Striker and Punisher.
While we’re on the subject of weapons, there are quite a few of them and they all feel different from one another. This extends to guns that are in the same family and you’ll find players debating the virtues of the Red9 vs. the Blacktail or the Broken Butterfly vs. the Killer 7 to this day. Additionally, most guns can be upgraded for greater fire power, firing rates, increased ammo capacity, and even exclusive bonuses, which can increase the viability of a player’s favorite piece late into the game.
I have a few criticisms of the weapons. For example, some of the reload times aren’t terribly realistic, especially for the Broken Butterfly revolver, though that one could be explained away by the use of speed-loaders. Ironically, a lot of the load times are too slow for a trained pro like Leon. The insanely slow rate of fire for the Semi-Auto Rifle also bugs me. At a nearly two second delay between rounds, the Semi-Auto is slower than a real life bolt action. I know this is just me being a nit-picky American and it’s not sensible to expect realism from the guns in a game that’s not designed to be particularly realistic by any stretch of the imagination, so I’ll let it slide.
Grenades of various types, a Mine Thrower, and single use rocket launchers round out the roster of Re4’s more exotic weapons. The three types of grenades (explosive, flash, and incendiary) are all very useful and the Mine Thrower is a fun novelty that launches explosive darts. If that’s not enough for you, there are several unlockable guns, which serve as rewards for completing the game and special missions.
All in all, RE4 gives players lots to do and it’s all set in some really nicely designed areas.
Who’s the boss?
There are maybe 8 bosses in the game (I’m probably forgetting a few) and they are all fairly gruesome. None of them are super hard, but there are a couple that may take a few attempts to conquer. While I do not think the boss battles are bad, they could have used a little more tweaking. Maybe the bosses could have been a little more durable, because I have trouble thinking of any that took very long to defeat. Of course this may be a byproduct of me being very familiar with the game even after a nearly 20 year break. In the end, they all get points for being fairly entertaining and freaky.
Mostly innocuous escort missions.
There are a few points in the game where Leon has to escort a character as ganados attempt to capture her. The person Leon has to escort usually stays out of the way and is fast enough to keep up with the player. It is also possible to tell her to stay behind or hide, which cuts down on a lot of potentially bothersome situations. Even with a fairly decent amount of care put into the design of the character the player must escort, she will get caught or get in the way from time to time, which is irritating, especially when she shouts “Leon, help!” in a shrill voice over and over again. Luckily, it’s easy to keep this from happening if you’re at all awake. Overall, it’s not a great feature, but it could have been way worse and it at least serves to mix things up a bit.
Ever hear of a hotkey, Capcom?
For the most part the controls and inventory are really good. However, if there’s one thing I think hurts the experience in a tangible way, it’s the lack of hotkeys for weapons. I often switch guns in combat, because sometimes you need a shotty one moment and a rifle the next. Having to go into the inventory and choose a gun in the heat of battle throws a wrench in the action. Why they didn’t allow players to bind four items to the D-Pad or something baffles me. DOOM, Mega Man X, and a bunch of other games that predate RE4 by over a decade all had some way of cycling through weapons. Maybe it’s not a big deal and I just play the game too frenetically, but I really wish they had thought this aspect of the inventory through a bit better.
Despite the lack of hotkeys, everything else works great. In fact, the controls are a tremendous improvement over those of older Resident Evil titles with their clunky menus and clunkier tank controls. There’s even a few contextual commands. For example, the A Button will fire a gun or swipe with the knife if Leon has his weapon raised, but it can also be used to kick enemies that have been hit in the head, or perform actions like jumping over fences. With all the improvements in mind, it’s hard to fault Capcom for overlooking a few creature comforts.
It only took four games to get the voice acting right.
The voice acting and sound work are excellent by the standards of the mid 2000s. No one gave a stunning performance, but all of the actors do a good enough job. There was even some attention to detail with the ganados speaking Spanish instead of English, which makes sense seeing as how the game takes place in Spain. Of course, the voice acting in Resident Evil games had steadily improved since RE1, so this is more a culmination of Capcom’s efforts than a leap forward.
The music is also just about perfect. Silence, atmospheric ambiance, and a movie style sound track set the mood of each area beautifully. At times I wondered if any of the composers had worked for Fromsoft (some of the tracks sound like they could be in King’s Field or Dark Souls) but this was not the case. At any rate, Capcom knocked it out of the park with excellent sound work.
Mercenaries, Assignment Ada, and New Game+…oh my!
Beating the main story is just the beginning as it unlocks a special mode where players control Ada, a sub-game called Mercenaries, and New Game+ which allows the player to go through the story with the same weapons they beat the game with. While NG+ is a nice touch, it’s Assignment Ada and Mercenaries that add to the longevity of the game without making it drag out.
In Assignment Ada, players control Ada as she collects items for her mission. It’s nothing flashy, but there are a few semi-difficult scenarios and it expands on the story a bit.
The Mercenaries was an arcade game by Capcom that more or less flopped, which is a shame since it’s a ton of fun. Players can choose from several characters including Leon and a few surprise guests, then blast their way through one of several maps filled with bad guys. The premise is simple, but it’s a lot of fun and it nearly qualifies as a full game in its own right.
The best iteration of RE4?
Earlier in this review I kind of questioned how popular this game was only to realize it was ported to the PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360, the Wii and more, so it had to have been a strong seller. With all these ports, there’s debate about which version of the game is best. Having first played the PS2 port, I can confidently say the GameCube port is superior to it in many ways, but also lacks Separate Ways (an excellent side mission for Ada) and some bug fixes. The guns in the GameCube version are also a bit underpowered compared to later ports, which is a good or bad thing depending on how much challenge you want, though RE4 is not a hard game at the end of the day.
I tried to look up a list of bugs that appeared on the original GameCube release, but the results were clogged with nonsense about the remake, which I don’t care about or want to play. Consequently, I have to go by my own experience which was bug-free as far as I could tell. With all this in mind, I’ll say the GameCube version of RE4 is certainly worth playing. While it lacks Separate Ways, it looks nicer than the PS2 version and offers more challenge than the ports.
That’s all folks!
I don’t have a lot more to say about Resident Evil 4 without going into spoilers. It’s an excellent game from a bygone era of gaming where gamers got to actually own physical copies of the games they bought and most games were more or less finished products. In light of this, RE4 managed to distinguish itself by going above and beyond with extra content like the Mercenaries. This goes a bit beyond the boundaries I set for my reviews, but I gotta say it: those of us who got to experience this era didn’t know how good we had it. Games like this just started, no updates, no DLC, no microtransactions, you just got a game and you either liked it or didn’t like it. Sure, dropping $60 bucks on a trash game sucked, but the good games more than made up for it. For me, RE4 is a melancholy reminder that those days are gone forever.
Thanks for reading my Resident Evil 4 (GameCube) review!
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