SegaBoxStation

Wonderful game, especially for the time it was released, so perfectly crafted. The soundtrack is in my top 5 game OST's, it's magical, and it deeply enhances the experience of each level. I love the way a story is interwoven with levels, each mission feels like a compact short story, and with each successive mission you uncover more of Tenchu's creative a richly packed world. Fantasy is masterfully interwoven with era accurate sociopolitical drama, without overdoing it like many modern games being tacky copies of generic Hollywood drab. Gameplay is mostly of it's time, veterans won't have a problem because everything works well, but newcomers may struggle getting to grips with them, and nothing is explained, i remember finding out the full arsenal of moves via pure trial and error, but there are some really neat abilities to use in combat once you've mastered them, from sidesteps to acrobatic aerial flips over your opponent to the stab their back. However, the best thing about this game for me is the stealth elements, plotting your path forward, needing to think, observe, have patience, wait for the right time to either assassinate or go past quietly without being noticed. I like the blocky ps1 graphics, full of charm and character. I love the homage to feudal Japan and it's honour system, mixed with subterfuge and the mystical. A truly unique game from a very special time in gaming history.

I give it a 5 because on the one hand, its great we can actually play the first 3 Tomb Raider games without lugging out an old console, so for convenience its great. I love that you can switch between not only tank controls and analogue, but also the original games and the remasters at any time, and most of the updated remastered backgrounds and general environment and objects looks really good, but the other half of my score leaving minus 5, is because of my own personal bias.... The frame rate at 60 just kills it for me, it's awful. It's too smooth,Lara's animation was made exactly for 25 fps, but running at 60 just makes it look uncanny and odd, Lara loses her grace in her movements. Also sorry to say but i'm not impressed with her face,I know the originals, particularly the first game (being a victim of it's time) Lara's face isn't exactly the most detailed avatar but imo they still have charm that i enjoy, i like things to be less than perfect but have more character, like cartoons and art that select characterisation over realism, but new remastered Lara looks like she's had plastic surgery to look like many women in Hollywood and in mass media trying to hold onto their looks. Also some of the backgrounds i actually prefer the original (like the great wall, when you finally get up the the main wall area before swan diving, the sky and trees etc imo look better in the original). The games have received a new fancy coat of paint that looks beautiful in many places, but in return they've lost their soul.

This is where it all went wrong, at least for true original Resident Evil 'survival horror' fans. This game was responsible for spawning; not just the complete abolishment of a unique and innovative gameplay genre of survival horror with fixed camera angles, not just the dire dull and uninspired comedic 'horror' shooter on rails - RE5 and the clown show known as Resident Evil 6, but what we have now with the complete over-saturation of Over-The-Shoulder 3rd person view shooty shooty ‘hey why's that camera so far up my butt’ games. It worked with Dead Space, wonderful game, and DS 2. But even Dead Space couldn't avoid the shallow carrot on a stick chase the popular action money route but crap on any horror aspect we originally had that made our IP so great in the first place with DS3. Gears of War also managed to not only take from RE4 and improve it, but innovate and master the cover shooting gameplay mechanic that has yet to be beaten. Now is RE4 the worst game all time? No (that honour belongs to E.T on the Atari). It’s not a terrible game, it does have its charms, and yes, it was innovative with its use of 3rd person OTS view for its time, but those controls... ugh, tank controls do not translate to OTS shooter style games when you are surrounded by a plethora of wannabe pretend zombies. It's charms lie in the weapon upgrade system, the carry case inventory system, the shooting range tasks (not the main game itself... which lets face it, is basically a giant shooting range on rails), and the treasure hunting and monetary rewards with the ridiculously delightful "WHADDYA BOUYIN'!?!?!?... WHADDYA SELLIN'????" Merchant. These were like mini-games within the main game and really helped dissolve the monotony of shooty shooty run shooty shooty again for another 6 hours, to imo make this game sustainably playable.. But, in terms of longevity and legacy, they don't redeem this game. The monotony pervades every revamped play-through, and it gets frustrating, tiresome and boring very quickly, that not even a fully pimped out Beerstein Jug adorned with cats eye gems, and a chirpy mock cockney, "Ahhhhhhh, I'll buy it at a high price!" can subdue the dismal overall gameplay, nor the schlock drab awful tones of brown and grey that pervade every single environmental background cheaply programmed in a seeming rush to get RE4 finished, nor can those charms save this game from its shallow use of QTE’s in an attempt to make cutscenes and terrain traversals ‘exciting’, more like eye-rolling annoyances. This game does not deserve the high status hyperbolic praise it receives from many easy-to-please action oriented gamers. Truly overrated.

I remember playing this game on the PS2 way back when it first came out (for that console). It was fun, unique for it’s time, but for me anyway it was nothing special. I remember going back to the well with the OG RE2 more times than RE4, once me and my friends completed RE4, played through all the extras, that was it, never picked it up again. Years later after being away from any mainstream gaming culture, I was surprised to find out this game is revered as a masterpiece and seminal in making many games what they are today. I can see the transference from RE4 to Dead Space, and I can also see the huge improvements, and overall superiority with DS. It’s like RE4 opened the door, but DS decorated the whole room and made it something you could live in. RE4 imo doesn’t have that ‘liveable space’ (to be incidentally ironic) that DS has, I can go back to DS and still enjoy it every time. RE4? Playing it recently, my god did it drag on, and on, and on. It gets boring, and the controls only frustrate the longer i played on Nomral difficulty, on a game mechanics level, the game is not equipped to deal with the enemies it's constantly throwing at you. So why did i keep playing it for 2 weeks before cutting my ties with it completely? I will give it this, there is something slightly addictive about it, and the main reason I went back is to get one unlockable I didn’t know existed (the P.R.L laser). Finding out I had to play on Normal to unlock Professional, after one run-through on easy, I got half way through a Normal campaign and just couldn’t take any more. The constant enemies, the constant shooting, the constant awkward controls, lack of clarity in seeing where the enemies are thus getting cheap shotted from behind, the delay (maybe Xbox port related) in controls often screw-in me over in crucial moments where I need to aim before another enemy grabs me point range. It’s just a constant rinse-repeat of; enemies, clear space onto the next area, shoot more masses of enemies, clear area, next area, shoot enemies… How can anyone perpetually enjoy this? It started to become torture to me. So boring and frustrating. I don’t get any sense of reward or adrenaline or achievement from shooting the same annoying enemy a.i over and over. I get the addiction with COD online multiplayer because they are live enemies sitting in their room and you’re trying to outmanoeuvre each other, a game of wits and skills, this is just monotonous shooting of imposter zombies. I think, the saving grace for it that had me slightly hooked, in terms of a ‘reward system’ is the treasure hunting and the gun upgrades, these are like mini-games within the game itself and probably were giving me a kind of small boost of dopamine when established. The controls are just so clunky, even with the analogue stick, controlling Leon is like controlling a tank, “hold up fake zombies, let me put it in reverse, ok now I need to flip about-face turn, ok now run…ah too late he grabbed me” try backing off then aiming, still not enough at times. Awful controls. At least the tank controls in the OG RE’s made sense and fit the design of these games perfectly due to the ever shifting camera views (persistence of forward motion, aka forward always being... forward, duh). As funny as some of the quippy one liners from Leon can be, I won’t even go there with it’s lacklustre ridiculous story, not to mention this game being responsible for the killing off in the Resident Evil franchise of pure, true "Survival Horror"…. that and the modern gaming market now being saturated with over-the-shoulder 3rd person view games, and games like the new God of War using this view being the most obnoxious misuse of a view (designed for shooting down the barrel in 3rd person) for a hack'n'slash game. My God (facepalm). Resident Evil 4 is one of the most overrated games in history.