Although it may not look like it from images, Resident Evil 4 is a thinking man’s action game. Many will disagree with me but I like to believe that most first-person shooters and third-person action games are mindless in the way which they don’t force players to use specific strategies and different weapons to eliminate their enemies. Well, RE4 continously forces players to keep their wits at their sharpest. Some enemies are vulnerable to different weapons and tactics and players must continously keep this in mind because when large amounts of enemies are tossed at you, they’re not all the same easy-to-dispose grunts. Because of this fact the game never becomes tedious and a result you never want to put it down. Not that many games have such a characteristic yet RE4 does and that’s just one of the many reasons as to why it’s one of the best action games ever created.

Some of the most enjoyable enemy encounters in the game are its boss battles. The boss battles in Resident Evil games have always been a test of endurance and strategy. These battles do not follow the Nintendo-like conventions in which you memorize an enemy attack pattern, strike a blow, rinse and repeat another two times. RE4 stays true to the approach used in previous games for boss battles but this time it’s been injected with some powerful steroids. In simpler terms, the boss battles in Resident Evil 4 are some of the best seen in any videogame to date. The creatures you run into in these boss battles are of massive size, whether is giant sea creature, a Lord of the Rings-like troll, or a human/spider thing which looks as if it came out of your most disturbing nightmares. The tactics used for each boss battle vary from battle to battle and since most bosses in the game do not have an absurdly obvious attack pattern, players will have to change their approach accordingly to the situation at hand. One of the most interesting things I’ve noticed is that using a Rocket Launcher, one of the game’s most powerful weapons, can often kill a boss in a single hit when targeting a its weak point, although the Rocket Launcher is only good for one shot and has to be re-bought at a hefty price to use again. Most of these battles also feature context sensitive actions which helps make each battle feel more unique than the previous one. For instance, one context sensitive action sends a crane swinging dropping one of the game’s latter bosses to its many knees and in another these context sensitive actions will give players the opening to dodge an enemy’s lethal attacks. In fact, these context sensitive actions are feature heavily throughout the entire game.

Context sensitive actions isn’t a gameplay feature that we haven’t seen implemented into a videogame in the past. Luckily, gameplay features implemented into a game do not have to be original in order to be commended. No sir, it’s all about the execution and quite frankly innovation means shit if someone takes that idea and puts it to much better use. Resident Evil 4 is an excellent example of putting context sensitive action to good use... Go near a door and an image appears on screen that tells you a certain button will open it. Go near a ledge or a broken window and the same image will appear, telling players to drop down to the next platform, or in the case of the broken window, jump through it to reach the other side. Resident Evil 4 is filled with context sensitive actions such as these but what’s been mentioned so far doesn’t really appear to be anything special. Thankfully, the use of these context sensitive actions are extended to more than just simple actions like those mentioned.

Let’s say a monstrous bolder is tossed at you by your enemies and it begins to roll down a hill after you. In the game, when such an obstacle is encountered, players will have to rapidly waggle the Wii-mote to sprint and eventually get out of the way of monstrous piece of rock that would probably splatter you insides in a very disturbing fashion. Fans of SEGA’s Shenmue series will definitely feel at home with how these context sensitive actions are used but all of these actions mentioned so far pale into comparison as to how they actions are used during the game’s cutscenes.