Six years after the events of the Raccoon City incident, Leon S. Kennedy, former police officer of Raccoon City, is sent on a mission to somewhere in a rural village in Spain to rescue the U.S. President's daughter Ashley Graham who was kidnapped by a mysterious cult, Leon however encounters a group of hostile villagers and many more different people who pledge their lives to Los Illuminados, the same cult that kidnapped Ashley, and many mysteries later on has led Leon's mission from being a rescue mission to a battle to survival...

Story
I thought that this story was good, the way it was presented and lined up was very well done aside from a few issues, in which are something that is just there for making the game a little longer or something that doesn't make any sense, I did liked how well paced the story was in which consists of handling its plot twists and other moments well, however there are some instances where after some certain cutscenes, there's going to be a moment where Leon will have a conversation to a certain character, which varies depending on how far you have reached into the game, into some sort of walkie-talkie with video camera and while these moments makes the characters feel more natural, most people will find it unnecessary or pointless, since most of the time the conversations will be stating the obvious of what happened and what's going to happen next. And since this is a sequel, they did mention some details regarding to its respective previous game, Resident Evil 2, from the opening cutscene to some returning characters, but other than that, this story remains original on its own.



Gameplay
Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition is a third-person survival horror game that uses the Wii Remote and Nunchuck, the Classic Controller/Pro and the Gamecube Controller. The main objective is to reach a marked objective to an area while also trying to survive from what you have in terms of weapons, ammo, health items, etc. and by either escaping through the enemies or taking them out while also having moments where you must fight hoards of enemies or fight an occasional boss later on. Keeping the tradition to its franchise, you control Leon in a "Tank" control method where you walk forward and backwards with one stick, but you turn left and right with the same stick, you shoot by holding the B button and then pressing A, and reload by holding the B button and either pressing the control pad or swing the Wii remote downwards, you can also pull out a knife that, although short ranged, can be used for close encounters by holding the C button and then pressing A to slash, although there is also an automatic quick slash that you can pull off by just swinging the Wii Remote vertically where it can slash a nearby enemy or breakable object automatically without aiming it yourself, you can also examine and pick up items with A, run by holding Z, move the camera with the D-pad, check your inventory with the - button, etc. The controls works well, and they are very appropriate for this type of game since I didn't struggle with them in some cases meaning that it was very well designed for me, what is really great about them is how you shoot, you aim your gun with the IR pointer of your Wii Remote and it feels amazing ! it makes the game feel like a breeze in terms of gameplay, but speaking of which, it should be known that when using a weapon where you must use the scope, you can aim the reticle with the control stick and zoom in and out with the Z and C buttons, and to be honest, when aiming like this, I really wanted to use the IR pointer for it since I thought that it was that much more comfortable.

While the early Resident Evil games focused more on the horror aspect as well as the many spread out puzzles here and there, this game focuses more on the action aspect, even though there are some occasional puzzles you can stumble upon sometimes, the game requires you to use your weapon a lot because of the hoard of enemies you must face, you'll first encounter some regular not-too-special enemies but as you move on, the enemies get more stronger and tougher and might even hide up a trick up its sleeve when it comes to attacking you, however that doesn't mean that you don't have an advantage of some sorts, since thanks to the third person perspective and it's aiming reticule, you can actually aim well and you shoot the enemies in certain body parts that can affect the enemies specifically depending where they are shot to, for example you can shoot them to the feet and it can cause enemies to stumble and be on its knees, while shots to the hands can cause them to drop their weapons or explode if he was holding an explosive ! or you can even shoot them in the head and they will get distracted from it, allowing you to kick them and land them on the ground, as well as others if they were closer to you ! you also have ability to use context-sensitive controls, where based on the situation, you can interact with aspects of their environment by kicking down a ladder, jumping out of a window, or dodging an enemy attack, allowing you to plan on how to handle a horde of enemies, but the thing is, this game is not really linear but the whole map design and the way you must accomplish certain objectives can make it seem so, there is variety on every area you enter through but there are moments where you just simply can't run away from the enemies since you need to kill them all or it might be a pain to do so.

As for your equipment, your inventory consists of a briefcase where you manually place your items, be it ammo, weapons, health items, etc., and you can move, discard or even combine the items with one another, but that only works in some of the health items like the herbs and equipping a scope for your rifle, speaking of herbs, they are one of the items in which you can heal with, that and the first aid spray that can heal you completely and some different types of eggs that some place that has chickens nearby can lay randomly (in which you can also use them as a weapon for some odd reason...), a single green herb can heal you decently, but mix it up with a red herb and you it can heal you completely like the first aid spray, and you can also mix it up with the yellow herb and you can increase your health bar, you can even mix them all together into one mighty herb if you want. And as for getting the items, you can pick them up from some defeated enemy or you can spot them in one certain part of some areas or also by later on encountering a shopkeeper in which it can sell you the items with the money you pick from some defeated enemies or by finding them in some certain areas, but you can also sell your items as well and the treasure that you can also find secretly or occasionally within the game, in which it also comes with its own menu where you can examine them and such. In terms of weaponry, you have a decent amount of pistols, shotguns, rifles, a machine gun, grenades, and others, and you can also upgrade them by tuning them up on how much damage they can deal, how much ammo they can hold, how much faster it can reload and how much faster you can shoot with the same shopkeeper I mentioned before. This game mechanic makes you be responsible on how you are going to go through some certain sections and how to survive from it, thankfully though it doesn't determine you to use a specific loadout just to beat the game since it instead determines you with the loadout you want to choose... that is if you're good with it, otherwise you might struggle through the game... it's worth noting however that there are some certain moments where you might need a certain weapon to go kill an enemy or a boss properly, but these are not very frequent and you have the choice to do it or not (but obviously it will be much harder not to do it).

Sadly though, there is one mechanic in this game that I'm really not a fan of, which are quick time events (QTE's for short), where there's moments where in one situation, be it running away from something or evading something, it requires you to rapidly press a certain button until it’s over or press a certain button or more simultaneously in a quick amount of time, otherwise you either get a great amount of damage or you die instantly, resulting a quick game over, it's a cheap way to make a game difficult or engaging, however while this game does include them, they are tolerable and not too intrusive... except for the fact that there is one cutscene where it's nothing but QTE's where if you miss any one of the 6 button presses, you WILL get a quick game over, no matter how good you were in the game ! And there's also Ashley Graham who you find later on, and she will follow along with you in some cases and you must protect her from getting killed or being kidnapped while doing so since she can't protect herself and because she has a life bar on her own in which you can also upgrade her life bar with the yellow+green herb as well, you can even command her to follow you or stay with the + button, there's also certain moments where you can make her hide inside a container in certain places, so in other words, it sounds like she will hold you back on a lot of things, but if you're good at the game enough, you might have no problems with her as long as you're keeping a watch on her, at least that's how I played in the game.

The difficulty in this game may vary depending on how good you are of surviving, attacking and protecting someone, this may sound like a lot of work, but in my case, it was very difficult the very first time but as soon as I've played through it more and more, I can actually dominate this game without getting myself be in trouble in some occasions.

The game plays great ! the controls are so good and I did had some great enjoyment thanks to them ! while I would've wished to see the QTE's go away as well as some problems with the game, the game was fun and it requires you to be responsible on surviving, attacking and protecting, however, really big fans of the early Resident Evil games might get bothered with it though due to the style of gameplay this game contains.

Graphics
The game does look really nice, this being a port of a 2005 Gamecube game, there is a lot of great design in the environment consisting of forests, a castle and much more and it gives a dark tone to give it a horror feel on them, for being what it is there is a lot of variety in them and all of it has been placed well such as the lightning, the shadows, etc. in which it results in giving out a great environment, there is however some textures, specially some pictures, that look really outdated in terms of its look, and the character models look really great, there is great detail on them even today, but a lot of people will notice that their build looks a little "blocky", however one of the things that people might not like about it is that the game is pretty low on its resolution and in some cases, but it might just be me, the game might look blurry, while it’s not too bothersome, it’s still noticeable.



Music & Sound
The soundtrack is really good, consisting on sounding creepy but in a cool and fast paced manner in some and just sounding creepy and cool, it's very well done for this game since the way they are placed in a situation or on an event is placed nicely, there are some moments where the music is placed somewhat strange due to how random it shows up, but it's not really bothersome.

The sounds are pretty great, guns sounds are really great, effects such as a thrown weapons, chainsaws, etc. sound really good, and every sound just feels comfortable when doing its job, as for the voice acting the main characters such as Leon, Ashley, and others sounded great, although some people might have a problem with Ashley's voice as well as some repeated voice clips that the game also includes, and this game being taken place in Spain, aside from the main antagonists and a certain other, the people living in some part of Spain do speak the Spanish language, and me being from a country where it also speak spanish (though, Spain spanish and Latin American spanish are different even if they sound the same most of the time in general), I can tell you that they do speak it well and they do not sound awkward as they are speaking it... although there are some voice clips that I thought they weren't pronounced well for the Spaniard accent... but that is just because the ones doing the voices for these people were actually Latin Americans and not Spaniards for some odd reason...

Presentation
For this type of game where it mixes horror and action at the same time, the whole atmosphere for it was designed greatly and it does feel like the game can be a little creepy at times due to its great environments, and the action part does feel like it has a much more tense feeling and it has much more fast paced fear than an action packed, extreme game like most action games, as the game consists of a village somewhere in a forest area in Spain, an antique castle that has its own secrets and traps within its rooms, and a military base hidden somewhere in the ocean, every environment of this set pieces does include a lot of variety in its many places that you can travel to and it does indeed bring more variety to it instead of feeling like it's more of the same just in a different area with not much to do aside from that.

But the question that it must be asked for this type of game is, was this game scary for me ? not much, I mean sure, there were moments were I got afraid and felt some fear to certain events, but most of the time I felt more like a fast paced fear instead of traditional fear that more horror games should provoke you, but for me this game does its horror well since I did had some fear on it, but some people who love traditional horror more might not enjoy this game's way to present horror.

And this of course being a port of a Gamecube game alongside having extras from the PS2 port, how does this one compare to the Gamecube one over to this one, aside from the major changes like its controls scheme and such ? well, I played them both on the very first part of the game right from the beginning, and as I try to compare both back to back, this is what I came up with during the comparison along with other notices:

- The GCN was much more generous in giving me more items from defeated enemies than in the Wii version.
- One odd notice I've found is that having the normal and special 1 costume on both Leon and Ashley can appear in cutscenes... but the special 2 costume doesn't, meaning that I have no idea if the Wii version's cutscenes are pre-rendered or are running in real time like in the GCN version.
- The Wii version keeps the same PS2 graphics for the items and treasures when picked up in the "Separate Ways" campaign.
- The Wii version includes a trailer for Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles in the extras menu in the "Bonus" section alongside the credits.
- Although it's not indicated in the Box art of this game, the game does support the Gamecube controller even though it registers it as a classic controller... but the Gamecube controls are the same, and the way to include the Gamecube controller is really odd, when starting up the game and then asking you to connect the Nunchuck (assuming you have the Wii Remote not connected to the Nunchuck), connect it and when the message is gone and the "loading the save files" message is also gone, quickly disconnect the Nunchuck from the Wii remote and then connect the Gamecube controller and if done right, the game will register it and you can play with it as long as you want.

As for the replayability, this game has a lot to go for ! when beating the game, you can unlock a harder difficulty (where you can also unlock a new weapon if you beat this difficulty mode), two campaigns such as the short "Assignment Ada" and the lengthy "Separate Ways" campaign (so lengthy that it has its own save files as well and also its own unlockables for itself and the main game), a sort of minigame called "The Mercenaries" where you can get a high score by killing as much hordes of enemies in a short time possible (complete with its own unlockables for itself and a bonus gun for the main game), special costumes, new overpowered guns, and a Movie Browser to see the cutscenes from the main game, the game not only does it take a lot of work to unlock everything, but it also takes a long time in order to purchase the new guns that you can unlock since it's really expensive in the shop ! in other words, this game will take some time and work to unlock everything !



Overall
I did had a lot of fun with this game, the main game was great, the Wii controller works perfect for this game, there's some rewarding unlockables that you can obtain, and it does a decent job balancing horror and action at the same time, but I really thought that it could've been better if this game didn't included the QTE's, or that it included some little more extras instead of just the new controller options, and I also feel that the diehard fans of the early Resident Evil games and/or traditional horror games might not enjoy this game as much as I did, so if you’re those type of people, at least give this a rent to see how well it does it for you, but for those of you who haven't played the original game or if you're interested in this game but already have it and don't mind replaying it again and unlock everything, then you must absolutely get this version, but if you're not interested in getting it again if you already have it and don't like the Wii controller for aiming, then skip it since this version doesn't add much for you, as for me though, this game gets...


an 8/10

8- Great This is a great game that might have a few flaws or could have been better, but is still a game we highly recommend!