“You are Dead,” Resident Evil 4 tells me as my avatar gets fried for the fourth time by the trap with erratically moving laser beams. It’s this type of hamfisted advice that seems to be the undercurrent of the entire experience. The game isn’t content to set up a rustic, chilling atmosphere for you to cautiously explore, and instead offers you many, many reasons on why you should be killing the things on screen, as if the player couldn’t figure it out for themselves. If Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer had made a game, I’m pretty sure this is how it would turn out. Only with less plot.

I’ve been trying to figure out Resident Evil 4’s appeal for a year. I even played through it twice, thinking my first impressions may have been too harsh. They weren’t, and for one very big reason: the story doesn’t make any god damned sense. A game that is considered part of the Survival Horror genre has to rely on two, very important things: an immersive, believable atmosphere, and a good story to support this atmosphere as well as give purpose to the action. Forget the clunky controls and rail-shooter pacing, it should be about getting to the point where you feared for your virtual life.

I remember being scared out of my wits after a few hours with Resident Evil 2 on a friend’s Playstation, my first taste of survival horror. “This,” he told me as he flicked the lights off, “is the future of interactive fiction.” The premise was simple enough: survive a city full of zombies intent on eating your brains. He had recently picked up a dual-shock controller, and was eager to try it out, bragging that I would be jumping out of my seat. And I did a few times, after moments that years later would be dubbed as “cheap tricks” in the genre. I’m referring of course to the many times zombies break through a window you’ve just passed or bust through a wall in the hallway you’re walking down. Resident Evil 4 doesn’t have any of these typical scares, placing emphasis on its convoluted story to drive the action forward instead of relying on the player’s basest fears and the game’s atmosphere to keep them playing.

Resident Evil 4 puts you in control of Leon Kennedy, who has been charged with rescuing the kidnapped daughter of the President of the United States. A newly recruited secret agent working directly for the President, Leon has come a long way since fending off zombies as a member of the Raccoon City P.D. in Resident Evil 2. A lead says that the President’s daughter is being held in a rural village somewhere in Spain; the game begins by you being dropped off at this creepy, remote enclave. And then things get ugly. After a close call with one of the locals, Leon is faced with a town that has apparently been turned into zombies. Leon begins his quest to save the President’s daughter, and hopefully figure out what has become of this hapless town.

It was a suitable introduction, and one that had me interested enough to keep playing. The controls were serviceable at first; to be honest I didn’t even really notice their limitations until I had gone past the stage of “hmm?.this game is interesting” into full on, stabbing-myself-in-the-groin frustration at the number of lame plot contrivances. You see, as with many Japanese-developed games, the plots tend to get convoluted extremely fast. Take any JRPG for example – it’s the same story every time, except with more characters with different colored hair. Of course I’m making mass generalizations here, but the story can often be overlooked if the gameplay is compelling enough. In the case of Resident Evil 4, both contributed to the game’s lack of appeal for me. The player shouldn’t be trying to figure out a story, they should be busy getting scared. In the case of horror, less is more! The player’s imagination should be running wild.

The action was just starting to move along when the game introduces Luis, a former police officer from Madrid. I had no idea why he was captured and left alive. He also disappears a lot during the game, but often leaves you handy notes for more plot exposition. Then this giant bearded man who looks uncannily similar to Rasputin, attempts to violate you with his mutant phallus. And well, then there’s the pasty faced midget dressed like Napoleon who lets you wander around his castle while you fend off robed zombies, who I can only assume were formerly the town’s inhabitants. Then you actually rescue Ashley, and have to protect her through some extremely frustrating sequences that bring those annoying controls to the forefront. But of course there’s two discs, so Ashley gets nabbed again and you have to go after her. And it turns out Jack Krauser isn’t dead, and you have to fight him off – wait, did I mention Leon gets injected with the zombie plague, which might actually be the contributing factor to the town’s infestation? Ah, good old Luis – he shows up to give a substance that will slow the poison, only to die in dramatic fashion. Wait – just who is controlling things behind the scenes here? It’s the evil Lord Saddler, high priest of the zombie-people, who turns into a giant spider-like creature and can can only be defeated with a well-placed rocket. After a thoroughly heroic rescue scene and awkward romantic advances from young Ashley, the game is done. Scary, indeed!

I should probably get the obvious out of the way: I was absolutely amazed at the graphical fidelity of this game. I had seen the screenshots, but had no idea that actually playing the game would be as beautifully rendered. At first, I was rolling my eyes at the colours in use to display the enviroment. I’m sure it’s entirely possible to create a convincingly creepy atmosphere without resorting to drab shades of brown and grey, but that’s another subject entirely and something level designers need to address eventually, because I know I’ll never stop mentioning it. Then I got to the graveyard and it started raining. Suitably moody; the rain makes everything depressing. Someone was paying attention in English lit! But nothing could have prepared me for the torches.

There’s a part in the game where you need to travel through a mysterious looking cave under a waterfall. Once you figure out how to get inside, a mob of zombies stand between you and your objective. The flickering of the fire, and the shadows playing on their faces quickly convinced me of the truth. The Gamecube is the most underused platform of all time.

The gameworld is seamless, with a smoothness equalled only by Metroid Prime. The only load times I experienced were when I continued from a save point, or restarted after dying. Which, by the way, happened far less than I expected. Both the overall length of the game and the normal difficulty level have been criticized. It seemed like the designers wanted you to spend less time in the game, and more time watching the story unfold. Perhaps in the survival horror genre this is a viable means to get a player to experience the game, because it’s certainly easier to control the pacing. However, the important question to ask yourself during Resident Evil 4 is: are you playing a game or are you watching one? This is something I never came to terms with amongst the favorable reviews.

Cinematic is a word many like to throw around, myself included, when describing a game. But in all honesty, that’s all I can come up with when thinking about Resident Evil 4’s presentation. It’s established like a movie, the action happens like a movie, and you’re pretty much on a set path for the entire game. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because I don’t think the intention of the game is to allow you to roam free through this creepy European village. I could have lived with that, because as far as I was concerned this was survival horror. Then I played through my first interactive cutscene – a foolish decision to make it seem like you’re still playing the game.

“Interactive cutscene” is a contradiction in terms. The gameplay mechanic during one of these cutscenes is not the same as when you’re in the game world. Instead, each scene begins with a brief clip of what’s happening: for example, a boulder has just been pushed down a hill and is coming after you. A button combination flashes on screen, upon which you must immediately start tapping away lest you be flattened/gutted/etc. This wouldn’t be so bad if the button combination stayed the same between attempts. It doesn’t. This same approach is used during boss battles. The controls will change partway through a fight – within the span of a few seconds you can go from shooting your gun to bashing “A” to wiggle free from some overbearing supervillain’s grip.

There’s a mysterious shopkeeper that keeps showing up, too. There is no explanation offered for why he is wandering around the village, or castle, or how he even knows where you are. Or why he hasn’t been infected by the zombie plague (though his arsenal might have something to do with it). The weapon upgrade options were a great excuse to spend money, but completely unnecessary if you look what was intended by the game. Why not just sell more powerful weapons? I was more annoyed that I couldn’t strafe while firing, or reload my weapons while moving – it certainly leaves you open for more punishment. I’ve read a lot of positive things about the game’s controls, but I still don’t see it – the very act of turning around takes ages, and is almost pointless when surrounded as it eats up valuable time that can be spent shooting. And the zombies don’t drop as much ammo as I’d have liked, though it’s an improvement over past installments of the series.

A word about zombies: as our culture of instant gratification walks us down the path of Instant Macaroni and Cheese, many people complained that the fast running zombies of 28 Days Later and the remake of Dawn of the Dead were a blasphemy upon the rich traditions developed by Romero’s classic movies. I’d definitely agree, as it seems strange that a lumbering, mindless skinbag can suddenly take off in a run to chase after people. The scary thing about zombies was the constant threat of inevitability; not that they would chase after you. As their numbers increased, the possibility of you being infected grows. Your allies dwindle, and it becomes a matter of accepting your fate.

In Resident Evil 4, the zombies are fairly unpredictable. I’m not saying there’s AI or anything – there were numerous times where I could wander around zombie mobs without being noticed – but when they do spot you, they begin their slow plodding to your position, establish you as a threat and then…run? Yes, they run towards you, axe or whatever bladed weapon was strapped to their back in hand, to hack you to bits. But then they stop, and just continue to shamble around, occasionally lunging for your neck when you least expect it. This was the most frightening part of the game. Sometimes I would run out of ammo, and no matter how quick I could reload my weapon the swarm would still get up again, in mockery of the bullets I had just embedded in their corrupted flesh. Aside from the graphics, the other thing this game does extremely well is the level of gore. From the parasites that erupt from the infected to watching Leon getting his head chainsawed off, there’s no shortage of blood on screen. But the violence soon became comedic, exarcerbated by the absurd story. When the fear you’re supposed to be feeling becomes obvious, it’s less engaging. A classic example of this is the much maligned Doom 3.

In an effort to extend the game’s life, once you’ve finished the main game an additional adventure is unlocked: Assignment Ada. This vignette puts you in control of the title character, exploring a part of the game from her perspective. Though it introduces a few new areas with new objectives, you’ve mostly already played through them as Leon. I suppose the intent behind this is to explain why Ada seemed to appear whenever Leon needed assistance, but I can’t say I was convinced. If replay value is to be considered, the “Mercenaries” arcade mode challenges you to kill as many zombies in a set time, which in turn unlocks new weapons and characters within this game mode. This would have been great as multiplayer; as it stands it feels like a time waster. You’re probably better off replaying the game with the unlimited rocket launcher. The explosions are pretty.

I usually dismiss the relevance of numerical ratings out of habit, but it’s pretty hard to ignore Resident Evil 4’s near perfect average on Metacritic and Gamerankings. Whether it deserves such a high rating is something I struggled with even during my first hours of play. To say that this improves on the Resident Evil series in every way is one thing, but to insinuate that this is one of the greatest games to ever grace my television is pushing the envelope. It’s good in the sense that I gained some enjoyment from playing it, but I will never play it again. The action was plodding at times, and felt as if it would be just as easy to toss the game into my DVD player and press “play” to watch the Resident Evil 4 movie. At least then I could fast forward through the “save Ashley” missions. In terms of action games, this is certainly a slickly produced endeavour, and in the collective minds of gamers will probably end up as the finest game in the Resident Evil series. But I’m not going to delude myself into thinking that this is a game worthy of a near-perfect rating; there are too many things wrong with it that in any other game would garner only moderate reviews (and a lot more criticism). At times extremely visceral and at others scraping the deepest pits of tired cliché, Resident Evil 4 was monumentally disappointing.