Resident Evil 4

The Good
When I first rented this game I wasn't really interested in it, after playing it for an hour it became one of my favorite games. I rented it 3 times over the past year then I bought it, and I'm still not bored with it.

I enjoyed most of the weapons, especially the shotguns, they just look nice when you fire/reload them.

And the inventory system is nice, seeing as how you can organize everything the way you want it, and purchase larger cases, and not have to go back and drop off items in an item box, or replace them with other items when both might be necessary.

The very beginning of the game is by far the best, the village design and the atmosphere make it the most fun area in the game to play through. Even after beating the game and replaying the main village section with a large number of villagers and a chainsaw maniac with completely upgraded weapons, it still makes my pulse speed up a little.

Being grabbed by an enemy and being able to break yourself free is a pretty awesome aspect, except if your surrounded and you keep getting grappled time after time, which gets annoying/and or health consuming. Being able to kick enemies after shooting them in the head or legs is extremely helpful when there are large numbers of enemies around you, but in the later stages it could make the Las Plagas come out of one or multiple enemies which forces you to burn some ammo up on them.

The Bad
Running around a village with depressing weather and old crude looking buildings and angry villagers is was awesome. Running through a poorly designed castle and island not so much. The atmosphere changes completely from the village to the castle and not in a good way, it doesn't feel very fun going around a castle with either too large of spaces or too small of ones with little room to try and evade some new enemies. The island was especially disappointing, seeing as how the areas varied a lot, you go from a prison to a large area with a large number of infected military dudes with little or no room to hide, and running around and trying to fight at the same time would be futile.

The third person view is an awesome addition except for the fact that it focuses on the view over the right shoulder which makes it hard to see things on the left hand side of the screen, while its not a big deal it can be annoying at times to be attacked because you didn't see it coming.

Being able to upgrade your weapons is nice also, especially after beating the game and having your favorite weapons fully upgraded to use their special "ability". BUT if you replay the game like this then the village part is extremely easy and you go through it in no time at all, but once you get to the castle it tapers off a little and having completely juiced up weapons doesn't really make a difference once you get to the island part and the gameplay slows down a lot after being so quick in the beginning.

The Bottom Line
Overall Resident Evil 4 is the best game in the series so far, and should not be passed by. While not being as nerve racking as some of the older titles, it has the best gameplay and replay value.

As every game does it has a few small setbacks and some that are just plain annoying at times, but this shouldn't make a very big difference when your running around in high detail environments shooting the places up and being awesome.

This is a game I would recommend to purchase, or if nothing else to rent.