Like Half Life 2, Resident Evil 4 has a delightfully organic feel to it, where the landscape flows naturally from one scene to the next. The first is the environmental progression. There are two other aspects of the game I want to discuss. It's an ingenious exercise in crowd-control, an act of plate-spinning with potentially deadly consequences.
The grid-based inventory system, adapted from RPGs, is a smart way of balancing the player's combat capabilities without arbitrary restrictions, and the combat still carries itself proudly after years of copycats. The controls still lend just the right amount of manoeuvrability without making you feel overpowered. Thankfully, these stumbling cut-scenes only amount to a small portion of the game, and they're the only significant flaw that sticks out a decade on. Perhaps its intended as lighthearted relief from the lengthy periods of panicky action, but whatever the intention, the delivery is near-disastrous.
Particularly cringeworthy are Leon's attempts at flirtation with his handler, and the cocky Luis Sera's reference to Ashley's "ballistics". The script is riddled with inappropriately-timed witticisms that verge on a parody of American action heroes, while the antagonists are firmly on the moustache-twirling end of the villain scale. It still baffles me how Resident Evil as a series can combine such wonderfully evocative environmental descriptions with such wincingly bad dialogue. If there is a smidge of satire hiding in Resident Evil 4's heart, its effect is almost completely cancelled out by the atrocious writing. Leon drastically underestimates both the nature of his enemy and the scale of the task set before him. Ashley Graham is real enough, and rescued within the first couple of hours, but this proves to be only the beginning of their trials. The chest-beating rhetoric that surrounded that event is echoed in Leon's mission to save the President's daughter, and his blasé intrusion into the village is openly commented on by the cult's leader, Osmund Saddler. Resident Evil 4 was released in January 2005, a time when America's relationship with the rest of the world had turned distinctly cold due to the invasion of Iraq, a three-week war that was still spitting out casualties years later over nuclear weapons that never existed. A cynical sort might spy a sprinkling of political commentary in this.
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