One of the best games of 2005!
The game takes place a couple of years after Resident Evil 2, the Raccoon city incident to be exact. You play as Leon Kennedy who is sent to Europe to find and rescue the President's daughter. When you go to the island you'll notice that the people here are very strange and as you explore the island you'll find out what's going on why people are acting so weird.
The gameplay had changed completely. You no longer have bad camera angles and closed in corridor fights with slow moving flesh eating rotten zombies. The camera angle is placed behind Leon Kennedy at all times unless you change it and can aim in the game. The camera will be shifted above Leon's right shoulder and you'll be able to aim at people at the perspective. Aiming like that makes it hard for you to tell if there's a person to the left or right of you which makes it scarier. It can get kind of annoying when your trying to kill massive amounts of enemies at once. You can't move or strafe while your in that position. Also in order to reload you have to go into aiming mode. Sometimes this becomes a pain.
The controls can be difficult to get used to, especially on the PS2'c controller. Resident Evil 4 was originally made to fit the Gamecube's controller, so importing it on the PS2 kind of make the controls a little awkward. It also feels a little too slow to aim and move to another target. So if there are a lot of enemies it can get quite difficult to shoot them all with a single fire gun. But you'll get used to it once you've tried it.
Another problem is that the moving may feel a little to slow. So when you're cornered, you pretty much screwed. I spent most of the time running far distances and trying to dodge attacks and picking them off one by one from a distance. Did I mention that you can shoot objects thrown at you?
After playing for a while, the game seems some what repetitive. All you do is run and shoot enemies and move on to solve puzzles to advance to the next area. But it's some what entertaining and the puzzles are varied.
There are tons of different items in the game including treasures and guns. Each gun has its own pros and cons, for example some guns may be more effective long range or may be good against certain enemies and bosses. Each gun even its own upgrades. You can upgrade them to make it stronger, shoot faster, reload faster, and hold more ammo.
There are also many different types of enemies and bosses. The enemies will look more different and act more different at different parts of the game making them scarier than others. They also act very different from each other. The boss fights in this game are what makes this game fantastic. There are different ways to beat them and each of them has their own unique way of fighting them. They also have their own strengths as well as weaknesses.
What I like most about the new gameplay is that you have these quick button commands that appear on the screen in which you have to press quickly and correctly to either dodge attacks or not get killed. This occurs many times, like dodging the boss' attacks or during movie scenes. If you want to sit back and watch movie scenes, just remember to keep your hands on the controller or you'll die. This means that you can't relax anytime during the game keeping you paranoid.
The graphics are really good, especially for the PS2. It doesn't look as good as the Gamecube, but you can hardly tell. The environments are varied with much detail. At first you start off in a village and move on to a castle and to a laboratory and the game slowly looks more like the old style Resident Evil. The environment gets more enclosed as more enemies will ambush you from multiple directions.
The sound in the game is great. The songs in this game definitely give you a spooky feeling and make you paranoid. Sometimes you'll just check around to see if there's anything lurking around you. The voice acting is pretty good. I found that the villagers responding in Spanish is unique. The enemies respond to each other and call other people to help them kill you and they say a lot of random things. Each enemy in the game sounds different, like they make different noises except for the ones that are doubled throughout the game.
This game is long! It took me like 26 hours to beat it the first time excluding the fact that there are extras in this game. Once you beat this game, you'll unlock some secret weapons, bonus mini game, and extra missions. The extra missions will make you play as Ada, the side character of this game and let you know what her side of the story of Resident Evil 4 is like. The bonus mini game is called "The Mercenaries" in which go around in certain levels killing enemies and trying to get the highest score.
Definitely a must buy for horror/action fans or any Resident Evil fans. You'll enjoy this game even if you aren't a Resident Evil fan. I had a blast with this game and I'm sure you will to.