It's been about two and a half years since the GameCube exclusive Resident Evil 4 was released. Since then it's smashing success forced Capcom to release it on other platforms, where it's success was even greater, until it made it to the PC. Though the PC version manages to look as good or (after patching) better than the orignal, it's still an extremely straightforward port and an opportunity lost to bring one of the greatest games of all time to PC gamers in it's full glory. You play as Leon Scott Kennedy, a former police officer and Raccoon City survivor, who now works as a special agent for the United States government. The president's daughter has been kidnapped and traced to a village in central Europe. The government decides to send Leon to investigate, but soon enough, Leon finds himself in a world of trouble as the whole village is bent on erradicating him. But it won't be easy, since these aren't zombies. These enemies can run, work together, improvise and arm themselves with any weapons they can find. The story might have some clichè's in it, but for the most part it's interesting, original and well executed. The gameplay hasn't changed at all, since this is a direct port of the PS-2 version. Most of the time you will be in combat, using a variety of weapons to take down single powerful enemies or whole crowds of makeshift weapon wielding lunatics. This isn't your typical shooter, you have to conserve ammunition and make your shots count. By the end of the game, you will be able to take down crowds using only your pistol. The most important factor is where you shoot. Headshots will obviously cause lots of damage, but sometimes enemies will cover their faces using their hands or bullet proof helmets. In these cases, you can shoot them in the legs while they are running, so they fall down or shoot them in the knees and and then kick them back. Shots to the head will also stagger enemies, so you can kick back them and anyone around them, this is the very basic concept of fighting a crowd. Besides firearms, one of your most important weapons is your knife. Once an opponent is knocked down, you can use your knife on them to conserve ammunition, though most of the time you will be using it to bust open containers, break locks or disarm traps. The areas in which you play are very large, but the loading times are nice and short. Throughout the game you will find treasures, precious stones and artifacts that you can combine and then sell for the highest possible price to a mysterious merchant who you will encounter from time to time. This merchant not only offers weapons and first aid sprays, but he can also upgrade your weapons and inventory, which is critical if you want to survive. Speaking of inventory, Residen Evil 4 has some well placed RPG elements in it as well. You can increase your maximum health using different herb mixtures and you also have an inventory, which limits the amount of objects you can carry. Unlike a lot of inventory based games, in Resident Evil 4 you can rotate the items to make them fit better. Even though you can enlarge your inventory remarkably, you will still find it stuffed with all kinds of herbs, grenades and ofcourse weapons. Enemies are slow when they approach you, but that is countered by the fact that you can't move while aiming. If you decide to turn around and run, enemies will relentlessly chase you. Once you are spotted it is almost impossible to shake them off. Even if you hide behind a door, they will either break it open or simply break it down to the ground. You don't have a crosshair, instead all your weapons (except the sniper rifles) use laser sights, this adds to the immersion, though Leon's shaky hands can be a niusance when trying to pick off targets at a longer range. The game almost never gives you a break, if you aren't fighting off massive amounts of enemies, you will either be working on a puzzle or readily holding your controller during a cutscene to dodge or attack foes using a combination of buttons. The graphics can easily rival that of the original GameCube version, though only after you patch the game to 1.1.0, which creates lightmaps and adds shader support, but it will increase the requirements significantly. If you have an older system you can easily run the game without the patch, though it will look a lot worse. The reason it looks worse is that the filters commonly used the make console games look better (and might i remind you that this is the direct port of the PS-2 version) has been removed. Because of this, most areas will look amazing yet some look absolutely atrocious. Why they removed it is beyond all logic, but if you have atleast a medium quality PC you wont have to worry about it. One thing that will plague all players is the fact that the cutscnes look horrible. They have a low resolution and high gamma, but that's OK as long as the team who ported the game didn't have to spend extra time correctly converting the cutscenes. Also, during the cutscenes you can clearly see when one cutscene connects to another, this will drastically reduce the intensity of cinematic fights. One thing that you have to remember before playing this game, is that you should probably sit about a metre and a half away from your screen and lower your brightness and contrast for the game to look alright, this is especialy critical for those who don't use the patch. The sound is completely intact, just like the gameplay. The whole game sounds phenomenal. Whether you are firing a weapon, kicking open a door or hearing someone get crushed. What the cutscenes lack in visuals, they make up for in sound, every time you hear Leon get knocked around, you will cringe at the grotesque realism of the sound. The voice acting is also great and really brings you closer to the characters. The controls are awful. Absolutely no work was done to make it playable with a keyboard and mouse. Mouse support is completely non-existent and the keyboard controls are extremely clumsy and numbered in the game so you won't have any idea what you are supposed to press at first. Though you can find programs that add mouse support, your best bet is to just use a gamepad. If you have a Xbox 360, it's controller would be your best choice. Anything resembling it or a PS-2 controller will do great as well. Once you are done with the ~20 hour main story, you will also be able to play Separate Ways, which shows the story from a different perspective, providing faster gameplay and another 5 hours of intense fights. And once you are done with that, you can play Assignment Ada or The Mercenaries. In the first you will play a ~1 hour mission with the same fast paced action of Separate Ways. The second is a score based mini-game in which you have to dispose of as many enemies as you can before the timer runs out. For every 4 star rating you will unlock a new charater. Once you have gotten 4 stars on all the levels with all the characters, there will be a special surprise in store for you. All the extras will be unlocked after beating the game just once and will be available to play in any order. The extra games don't have any difficulty levels, but the main story can be played on either Easy, Normal or (after you beat the game) Professional. All games will unlock new content, whether in the form of new weapons or costumes. Capcom really didn't hold back with the extra content. Overall, Resident Evil 4 for the PC is excellent, but only if you have a gamepad, a good PC and the ability to forgive some of it's haunting flaws. If you have a PS-2, GameCube or Wii, you should definitely get one of those versions. If not, 20 dollars is still a great price to pay for this game.

For a graphics comparison of the PC and GameCube, check this link:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/20139.html