If anybody is paying attention (miracles happen) I haven't actively posted in GameSpot forums for like a year... Or two...

And I don't plan to...

In my exploration of the internet I found out that they are many places to get your voice heard and share opinions. And without the silly censors or clunky bug-infested custom-made boards they got here.

That doesn't mean I will not post at all I still have some ties here. But that is on a whim and time allowed basis which as my time of inactivity has shown isn't much.

I may also post on occasion on some of the Game Forums (particularly the not very popular ones that lack their own community) but most likely from GameFAQ's side.

I still plan on using the site as a resource of course so I may post on the Collection of missing games thread or what-not. And make use of this blog in the absence of another one.

Anyway, if anybody from my 05' period of posting reads this, we had some good conversations back then and you never know... Someday we may be posting in the same forum again.

OK here's my "nobody gives a *beep* about" why I didn't like RE4 essay.

Part 1: The history

Resident Evil was one of my favorite game series, I even bought money-making stink cows like the Survivor games because they had the Logo on them and thought they'd expand the story a bit (which they did somewhat). I was anticipating RE4 as much as the next guy and got very excited when one of the earlier iterations was shown (the one with the smoke armor monster or whatever that was).

Fast-forward close to release and all the positive reviews it got that kept mentioning this wasn't a survival horror game anymore but an action shooter. As disappointing as that sounded to me I pre-ordered the US release like crazy and got the game a few days after it hit US shelves on the GC.

So here I go buying this much-hyped about game on name alone expecting a more action oriented experience of the previous Resident Evil games and an expansion to the coherent but not that great plot of previous games.

Part 2: The atmosphere

For those of you who have played it you know how good the first few moments of the game are the tension of the Ganado's ganging up on you! And then when the Chainsaw Ganado shows up? Pure adrenaline bliss! Too bad that wasn't retained for the rest of the game though...

Things started to cool down but kept a pace all the way to the Lake battle. And the so bad is funny lines of the characters at that point, the out of place gun vendor, and the repetition of shooting the same Ganados over and over again started to rear their ugly heads and smeared the atmosphere the initial virgin moments the game had provided.

When we move on to the Castle more was lost and it all become a familiar shooting gallery of point and shoot. When you hit the Island later on everything is lost some of the enemies are even comedic (particularly the mini-gun dude that reminded me of a younger Saddam Hussein on steroids). And you suddenly realize how over the top everything is and how stale the settings have become.

Part 3: It's in the details

Maybe I'm the only one who notices things like this and maybe that's why I'm the only one (or one of the very few) that didn't like this game much.

When did you start to question where you are? I'm in Spain right? Some village of some rural part of Spain? Then why the villagers speak in a Latin American Spanish accent?

There's quite a difference between an American speaking English and a British the same difference is between let's say an Argentinean speaking Spanish and a Spaniard. If you are fluent in Spanish or know about languages you can tell the difference. And I did. Not noticeable to many but that was a blow to immersion imagine playing a game that's set in Britain with British characters but they speak with heavy Texan accent. Wouldn't that put you off?

The peseta (the in-game currency) the old Spanish currency, well if this is Spain the year the game was taking place then Euros would be the active currency. Since the game was developed by Japanese that might not have being known to them.

Of course in hindsight the developers never admitted in which European country the game took place in for more real-life controversy reasons (you killing Spaniards and Spanish aristocratic families have plan to take over the US and are involved in terrorism).

After Luis died Ashley though walking over his dead body didn't say anything. Not a CS not a scream not a single comment. Of course the general story by that point started to smell really bad I had to pinch my self to realize if all the crap I saw and heard was real. But that small detail helped break any hope of immersion even more.

Part 4: The storyline

Resident Evil as a series never had a particularly good storyline. But it kept the game and most importantly the characters you started to hate or love connected from game to game.

Before RE4 was released a mega-collector's box set was released in Japan for the GC consisting of most of the main entries in the series and a booklet that was titled Wesker's Report that was supposed to fill in the blanks on the storyline.

I'm glad I'm not one of the Japanese gamers who gave their hard earned money at the time to buy that box set so they can get more insight on the story. Because guess what? Capcom turned everything around with RE4.

First of all let me touch on the dialogue which reminds me of something a six year old would write for his homework. The lines the voice actors (which voice quality is not bad at all by the way) spew were so corny and cheesy they gave me shivers. This wasn't the amateurish "This is Chris's blood" of the first game. Especially since the budget was set far higher and so were the production values.

The "writers" that wrote those lines were simply either on drugs or completely incompetent.

If you followed the series and knew about the characters and setting then you will find the entire game a giant plot hole. Wesker probably the most prominent villain of the series and Chris's nemesis was working behind the scenes in an attempt to revive everybody's favorite pharmaceutical company Umbrella... Why? He was instrumental in bringing it down and has since sold his services to another pharmaceutical company? I'll tell you why. Because it doesn't matter is rather clear that when making the new plot they completely disregarded what had happened before. And yet the introduce Wesker to us as a familiar character that we are supposed to know his motives and characteristics.

Talking about a familiar character... I can still hear the scream of Leon when Ada fell in that pit/gap in RE2. And how anticlimactic their reunion was. Again you could say they didn't take past plot into mind in that case why introduce the character as a familiar face?

This sort of thing happens with a new face as well he is introduced as we the player are supposed to know about him and all his back-story. I'm talking about Krauser. He had a sudden introduction and gave me the feeling that I was supposed to know this dude, I wondered in what game he participated before. None, the people writing this mockery of a plot didn't have a sense of pace or plot setting or pretty much anything to even bring my self to call them writers.

The story also played on a popular for the time theme of terrorism. And played on the "American Agent" card like it translated to superman (given what feats Leon did in the game it might as well have). Don't get me wrong I'm not an anti-American or anything but I'm also not an American so I can't relate to an agent of a foreign country which foreign policy seems to be against the whole world. Of course the game was marketed for the US and I'm pretty sure that was taken in mind when concocting this travesty of a story.

Other than that Villains motives were never made clear (or they did in a comic-book sort of way) and the main villain of the Story Sadler seemed uncharismatic at best.

I could criticize the story of RE4 on hours on end but the real question is. Does it matter?

Does it matter if the story is junk this is an action game after all...

For me it does, it always does. In games like Ninja Gaiden the bad or non-existent story can be ignored on the merits of the gameplay and the lack of need to immerse yourself to your environments.

So with the bad plot and the other things I mentioned before how could I immerse my self in the RE4 universe?

I couldn't and that took a lot of the game enjoyment from me be it a Survival Horror or an action shooter when something feels hollow is hollow.

Part 5: The gameplay

The gameplay it self for the most part was functional the QTE's not badly executed and kept somewhat challenging since the buttons changed if you got it wrong. The boss battle particularly Krauzer and the Lake battle were of the epic feel. But unfortunately others like the village chief (which he seemed more intimidating in human form) or the final battle it self were very disappointing the disjoined monstrous forms have started to grate in all games since the 32 Bit era. Otherwise the gameplay worked, the real problem was one. Repetition, shooting the same sets of Ganados over and over and over again got old quick. By the time you finally put the second disc in (GC version) you just wished it would be over already.

Part 6: "So dude you didn't like anything?"

I did, the potential of the game was there. Atmosphere which was one of the reasons I enjoyed previous games of the series so much was exchanged for more dumb-down action, but the action it self wasn't bad at all. It was foiled at the execution which had you repeating the same thing again and again since the variety of Ganado's didn't change much both in style and models.

I also appreciated the length of the game, it may not have been enjoyable for me and most of the lifespan was to the endless Gandos waves you had to shot down but at least it wasn't cheap and had some meat into it.

The graphics I mean how could I say something bad about the graphics? As much as they failed to make a story so much they succeeded in the graphics department which initially helped with getting you immersed with the game (unfortunately the quality of the graphics wasn't enough to keep you immersed).

So I did enjoy some portions of the game and knowing me I was gonna be raving along with the rest of ya about how good this game was/is if it wasn't for the fact the certain factors that I mentioned above taking away the immersion and turning my experience with the game hollow and bitter.

Part 7: To summarize

I can understand why a lot of you enjoyed this game I would also not expect people to understand why I didn't despite my explanations above. Despite that I don't like it when I hear this game mentioned as one of the greatest of all time. Regardless of my personal opinion when I hear that about this game it saddens me... Is that what games is to most gamers? Plot-less brainless shooting fests? If a game with a plot this bad is considered one of the greatest then what expectations can I have for more elaborate stories and immersive experiences in the future of gaming?

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Congratulations to anyone bothering to read all that I comment your courage! Any comments you may have please make them constrictively and intelligently. If you haven't bothered to read it in part or in whole don't bother to comment.

I have too many games to play but not the time to play them, this past year they have gathered up and some of them haven’t even seen a disk drive yet…

I have a total of 60+ games to do something on and 10 of them I haven’t even touched, so many new games are coming I have so many games I’ve missed and yet so many more games with the new generation, I have come to a point that I don’t know what to pick first and what after…

Well some people say that is my fault because I do so many side-quests (an RPG term which I use to describe anything extra a game of any genre provides) for so many games, OK perhaps I’m a bit too much of an obsessive compulsive when it comes to playing my games completely, and I tend to spend hours on end on a single project, but is just a matter of goals…

You see I get “happy” for lack of a better term, when I accomplish goals, and one of those goals is playing all games worth playing with my criteria, completely, some times is not worth the trouble so I leave some side-quests out, but I just can’t do it with most games, besides most of the time those extra stuff are fun by themselves…

I’m in a hard predicament right now, and a major culprit to that is Final Fantasy X, I have spend an enormous amount of time playing that game, and that is because I try to be perfect even though I still won’t be perfect in the end I want to be as close to perfection as possible…

If you know the depths of Final Fantasy X then you would know that by using Power Spheres, Magic Spheres etc, you can boost the stats of Yuna’s Aeons, well I have be doing that for some time now and I have only the HP left which I take up to 50000 instead of the max 99999, I already have the MP up to 1000 instead of the max 9999…

You see that HP boost takes a lot of time no need to get in more details, and the Final Fantasy series is a series which each of its games I want to completely complete so to speak… I so far achieved that only with the original Final Fantasy by playing the superior PS1 version, but later with the Game Boy Advance release of the damn thing along with Final Fantasy II and some extra dungeons added I have more on my already heavy loaded mind, so now I’m focusing on taking Final Fantasy X out which deserves it’s own Journal, Blog, whatever, entry, and perhaps later I will be able to clear other projects more easily with the weight of the Behemoth gone (no Final Fantasy pun intended)…

But it’s a rather boring process which I try to spice up by combining the sphere gaining with other stuff, now I’m thinking of starting Second Sight (in combination with FFX of course) for the X-Box, why that game?

Well because I have been told that it doesn’t have anything extra and that is rather short, and since is not one of the best games of all time I could get it out of the way today if I sat on it …

Anyway I ranted long enough gotta get Yojimbo on the 30 g’s and maybe finally start Second Sight, I hope things get better once Final Fantasy X gets out of the way because other occupations like my education have been taking a lot of my time lately, I hope before I leave this planet I would get to play all the games I ever wanted, well I can hope can’t I?