I played 5 hours of RE4 last night. I don’t remember the last time I played a game until four in the morning.

While RE4 is an excellent game, I am a bit supprised at all the disscusion that has risen around it. While being strides in the right direction for the series, it does not do much else.

The camera is just what this game needed. Gone are the times of me tring to turn my avatar around corners in strange hard to see angles, or running from the enemy only to get turned around and in the heat of battle resulting in death. While technically they are still the same controls, they just don’t feel like it.

This game borrows many elements from other games, it even gets some of them wrong. It got the codec wrong. It did get the have a person follow you around and don’t let them die bit right. I swear, this game ripped music straight from Silent Hill for some merchant areas. Even my wife says so and she does not really notice game music.

I know that some comments came up when MGS3 came out that people thought the animals turned into rations so to not arouse the animal rights crowd. Wether those people belived their comments or not one thing did stick out to me. In the town in RE4 if you kill any farm animals they stay dead. Unlike crows (which have gernades in their asses) or snakes the farm animals do not disapear after a few seconds. Nor do they drop items. In fact, the cows sound down right miserable when getting killed. I could not do it again after first time I sliced up the harmless thing and just left it to perish.

It cannot help but be an excellent game. I really want to put my finger on why though, as I can point at more things it gets wrong than things it gets right. Oh well. But a game is all that it is. I feel bad for PS2 owners.