5 Things That Sucked
1. Quick-Time Events – I’m not as outright against quick-time events as, say, Yahtzee is, but the way that they are used in RE4 generally pissed me off. For starters, most of the time, you either had to be pressing both L+R or A+B, and I don’t know about you, but when I’ve had my fingers pretty much glued to the buttons that make regular gameplay happen, I’m not exactly ready to suddenly change positions and press multiple buttons with utter precision at any given time. I could attribute nearly a fourth of my deaths in RE4 to quick-time events. In particular, the cut-scene commands got me a lot, especially the battle with Krauser through cut-scene which took me something like 8 tries to complete.
It never bothered me so much in the context of actual combat in the game. Usually, I felt that dodging was a fair way to avoid attacks and the damage done by all of those attacks wasn’t too great. Plus, a lot of the time, you could just as easily run out of the way of the attack instead of dodging. It was only when the QTE failure would result in instant death that it bothered me. The worst part was soon after the Krauser scene where you have to dodge these fucking lasers that I assume were a reference to the first Resident Evil movie, and I got killed 4 times trying to dodge the stupid fuckers.
2. Salazar – You notice how when I was listing all the great characters above, I didn’t mention ‘baby Napolean?’ That’s because Salazar was fucking annoying. My ultimate pet peeve in writing is conversation repetition. I can’t stand to listen to a villain say the same shit over and over again while they stand there watching you conquer all of their obstacles. Whereas Sadler was fun to banter with because he was such a good sport, Salazar was just annoying and his accent was too much (however, I will brag that I can do a perfect imitation.)
It wasn’t bad enough that he was annoying, though, because he was also the cheapest, most aggravating boss fight in the game. Salazar was the only fight that I genuinely did not enjoy because it was such a pain in the ass. His fucking tentacles were always working their way into my pants just in time for him to use that fucking instant-kill bite move or throw me down in the pit to fight my way up before the fucking tentacles ground-pounded me. At the very least, it was extremely gratifying to kill his punk bitch-ass. I will say, though, that the part with the giant robot Salazar almost justified his entire existence.
3. Excess Handguns – When the merchant started selling new kinds of rifles and shotguns, it made sense because they were definitive upgrades of the old versions of the weapons. However, the inclusion of the many other handguns always seemed rather pointless. The Punisher could shoot through multiple enemies, but it was also so weak that it wasn’t really an advantage. The stupid Red9 was a piece of shit, I never even understood why it was in the game, because it generally pissed me off (I sold the fucker back). Then there was the gun that was supposed to have better handling or whatever, but it didn’t seem to do anything that an upgraded starting gun didn’t already do. At the end of the game, my starting handgun was the only weapon I had managed to fully upgrade, partly because I had wasted so much money on the other useless guns that I could never max out my other stuff. I felt almost cheated by how shitty those extra guns were.
4. Some Extraneous Enemies – I know, I’m reaching here. There were some enemies that felt like they were included just for the hell of it without really being thought-out or even programmed all that well. The one that really comes to mind was the flying bug things, which you only fight on two occasions and who were only even a bother in that they were hard to hit since they were flying. Otherwise they mostly just hovered there like idiots waiting to be bowled over with shotgun blasts. Then there were the stupid dogs which could be a pain, but also could be totally retarded and run themselves into walls, and just stay there. There weren’t too many enemies like this, but when they showed up, it did make me scratch my head.
5. Letting Me Kill Ashley – A lot of people don’t like Ashley, either because she’s an annoying character, or an annoying part of the gameplay. I didn’t really mind Ashley – I never once got her killed by the enemy nor taken away, and she really did add depth to the gameplay at many points and keep the player on their toes. Plus it’s not really like she was around that much. She even puts out! However, it did piss me of that I could kill Ashley, because I accidentally did so at least 3 or 4 times. The most annoying of which was at a part that I played through numerous times wherein I killed her while trying to knife open a crate. Usually she ducks when you pull out a weapon, but apparently I was too fast for her that time and cut her fucking throat. To which I naturally reacted ‘Bitch get the fuck outta my way! God damn!’
My Sword Is Unbelievably Dull 
I liked what I played of it except for the damned controls. It is a given fact of life that survival horror games inevitably have controls that piss me off, unless they’re mixed with RPG elements, on the playstation, released by square, and are based on some novel nobody cares about. Also Aya Brea.
I should go do a Finish or Fail-esque feature over on Hakasen with something notoriously bad that I loathe, like Tecmo’s Secret of the Stars or Beyond the Beyond. I hate myself sometimes, ya know?
I loved the controls in RE4. No complaints whatsoever.
Resident Evil 4 has some of my favorite controls of any game ever made. Hell, I’m even fine with the controls in the old Silent Hill games.
Personally, I hate the controls in FPS games that everyone seems to love, they just don’t work well for me.
My deaths tend to be spread out because I’m generally overconservative with items and ammo. It takes me a death or three to get the message that items exist to be used.
The Hellspawned Superbeast was a cool fight, though I’m surprised it was your favorite considering all the quick-time events. My favorite boss was Krauser, until Assignment Ada ruined it for me. Looking back, I enjoyed the level-by-level scenarios more than the bosses, which is shocking compared to my experiences with other games.
Salazar was a little bitch.
Hehe, see you probably played in a more survival horror mindset, while I played in more of an action game mindset, i..e. shoot like crazy, never aim carefully unless you have to, always run out into fray, etc. Pretty much in every video game, I take a very juggernaut approach, with the strategy of picking up a big weapon, running directly into danger, and taking out everything I can. That’s exactly why I love shotguns so much – I love that feeling of running right up to an enemy that maybe was shooting at you from a distance, taking a few of his weak-ass bullets, and then blowing him away. Of course, this strategy means beind perpetually low on ammo, lol. but that’s when I pull out the skills that I shoulda been using all along~
As I mentioned, I liked the QTEs in the context of action, and I had no problem with them against the beast. I dodged all the tail attacks before the fight, and while I didn’t always manage to dodge them during the fight, they were also pretty weak. I only died once against him, and it was because I didn’t figure out how to kill him the first time. Krauser’s fight was fucking awesome in that it involved running around trying to dodge the fucker’s moves and all that, but I felt that the final stand-off was kind of lame. Shoot him in the nuts till he falls then pop him in the face? Kinda boring, and his attacks were nothing special either. The timer made it quite intense, though. I died once from time running out.
Yeah, Salazar was a bitch.
As a testament to the awesomeness of the merchant, it has been more than five years since my brother and I played the game, and we STILL randomly bellow, “Whattya buyin’?” at each other for no reason. The merchant is badass.
Like you, I still have a shitload of games I’ve never completed, but I don’t know how many I’ll actually beat … I’m becoming more of a casual gamer by the year, haha. I haven’t played a game on anything other than my Nintendo DS in ages. :X
I think your problem with the combat system is really a universal problem with shooters of any type. If the game spawns the enemies before you enter the room, there is almost always some way to cheese the system and defeat them with a lot less effort. Even if the spawn is triggered by entering the room, just find the nearest doorway to use as a choke point and dominate them. One example I can think of is a place in Gears of War 2 where a Reaper lands right next to a doorway. All you have to do is go back through the door and it can never hit you, even on Insane. Good level and combat design can limit this, but it can almost never remove it entirely. After all, there’s a lot of people who spend their free time trying to break games.
I always thought about playing RE4, but never got around to buying it. I’ve got a pile of other games that I bought but never played, I should probably finish those first…
Uncharted 1 is the only game that I felt I could never beat a room without using strategy in. I infinitely recommend you play it.
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