I picked up Resident Evil 4 on Friday. Was able to spend a bit of time playing it this weekend as well as playing it over at my brother’s house where we switched off upon dying (which was often).
First I have to say this is one of the best action games I’ve ever played. I put a little bit of time into the original Gamecube version, but for someone who hates dual analog controls this version is like a godsend. The aiming controls add so much to the game without making it easy. I guess the best way to explain it is that the previous control feel almost, unnecessarily difficult. Like they didn’t add real difficulty to the game but just made it more annoying to play (even though it wasn’t). Now aiming and shooting is almost a reflex. You just aim the cross hairs where you want to shoot and shoot.
And that brings me to my second point today. As developers continue to improve the core basics for controls on Wii games, it is actually going to suck worse and worse to use dual analog controls in certain control schemes. I’ve always hated dual analog FPS titles, and Wii shows that you CAN do them on a console without a mouse and keyboard. Anything either requiring aiming or using a pointer will pretty much be crap on other consoles. It’s the difference between dragging your control to where you want it to be, or fluidly pointing with ease and reflex.
The best part of this whole thing though was I only paid $11.32 for the game. The retail is an unbelievable $29.99 (well worth the price). On top of that Circuit City had a promotion a few weeks back that if they didn’t have Mario Party 8 in stock after 2pm on launch day, you got a free $20 gift card. You’d think with that kind of a promotion you’d go to the store and see a mountain of games. Nope. Not a single one so I waited in line for my free $20.