No need for tension when you have thrills, right? This mindset would carry onto the next few entries, coming to a crescendo in the climax of Resident Evil 5, where burly beefy boy Chris Redfield moved entire boulders through a potent combination of punches and shouts. Some moments were shocking or gruesome, yet other than a few isolated examples, you were rarely expected to feel a sense of dread. It was gratifying and exciting, however it had all but forsaken either word present in the delineation “survival horror”. No need to be sagacious when this random elderly woman is carrying a box of handgun bullets for you to pilfer. Your resources were only as limited as your capacity to kill, so fire away, Mr. The games had been fairly tongue-in-cheek up to this point - intentional or not, let’s not pretend that RE1’s dialogue that included “Jill sandwich” was peak drama - but now it leant hard into this, rewarding players for their hubris by equipping fallen Ganados with lootable items. This form was typified by former rookie police officer Leon evolving into a smug action hero, nailing assailants with a deft suplex before reeling off some kind of witty one-liner. For a franchise that had long been locked into fixed camera angles, emphasizing resource management and meticulously planned strategies, Resident Evil 4 would throw a myriad of ideas at the wall before settling into its final form. The shorthand version of events is that, due to underwhelming sales of 2002’s Resident Evil 1 Remake, series director Shinji Mikami was obligated to take things down a different path. On the surface, this success after a lengthy and gruelling development period is deserving of universal approval, however there is a subset of the fandom lurking angrily within the depths like Del Lago itself festering and wondering what could have been. It is rightly lauded as a pinnacle of gaming, acclaimed by critics and fans alike for being the peak of Resident Evil. The change to an action-skewed over-the-shoulder perspective would ingrain itself as an industry standard that has endured to this day, swapping out the methodical, slower paced exploration of its predecessors in favor of constant adrenaline as Leon Kennedy mowed down hordes of displeased Spanish residents. When Resident Evil 4 first launched on the GameCube in 2005, it would drastically shift the course not only for the franchise, but survival horror as a whole and, more broadly, gaming itself.
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