Breaking your console teeth

We decided it was too much trouble to make this game playable on a keyboard, so here's a friendly disclaimer.

If you're used to the controls of PC first person shooters, you'll probably have to play for a while to get accustomed to RE4's controls. The PC port uses controls designed for the PS2 controller, although the game also supports keyboard control. This method, however, is a joke. There is no mouse control option for moving or aiming, and the developers didn't even bother to map the game's many context sensitive "press/tap this controller button/these buttons together to dodge the huge boulder" or "shake the left analog stick to avoid gruesome death" cues to the user's keyboard configuration. If you don't find the right button in a fraction of a second, it's game over and please start again. If you don't mind severe frustration and mental anguish, go ahead and master the keyboard controls - I'm sure it's humanly possible. For any normal person hoping to retain their sanity though, a gamepad is mandatory.

With a gamepad, controlling Leon starts going much more smoothly - that is, once you figure out how to enable the camera-controlling right analog stick, mysteriously unmapped by default using both a Logitech Dual Action and a XBOX 360 controller (you can find it in the game launcher's setup options). Leon moves by moving the left analog stick, runs by pressing one button, aims by pulling the right trigger and shoots with another button, interacts with the world using a third and so on. Because Leon cannot move sideways, peeking around corners is hard - you can see a little around a corner by positioning Leon right next to a corner and moving the camera. The third-person point of view doesn't give the best feeling of immersion or sense of the surroundings; the level design is pretty straightforward though and the all-knowing automap tells you exactly where to head to next, so you'll rarely feel lost. The game automatically suggests using appropriate items (such as a key) when you encounter a place you can use them at (such as a locked door), so the scenes and chapters roll along without requiring too much thinking or observation. If you haven't played too many console games - well, this is what many of them are like. And if you buy RE4, you'll find exactly what the PS2 port of the game is like. This, as we will soon find out, is a very bad thing.