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Resident Evil 4

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Publisher: UbiSoft
Genre(s): Action, Shooting
Home Page: http://www.capcom.com/re4/

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By: Antti Summala Mar 13, 2007

Final thoughts

Just like the PS2 version, the PC port has no reflective water. You need a super high-tech GameCube for that

That Resident Evil 4 for the PC fails to impress is an understatement. Despite its status as the pinnacle of technical excellence for a GameCube game, releasing the same game unchanged two years later on the PC platform was a risky bet. When the game was further crippled by porting a technically inferior PlayStation 2 version, it was basically doomed. The PS2 port, at least, contained plenty of extra content to make up for its delayed release. The PC port was delayed three times longer, and what do we get? Nothing, not even a properly ported interface.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

If you've been wondering what those strange console games are all about, this is your chance to hop onto console gaming at its best (arguably) and worst (definitely), with no training wheels to help you. If you buy or own a game controller, the game is actually playable and the in-game manuals will work as intended. The publisher's minimum and recommended system requirements are spot on for once, except of course for the gamepad omission. That's not nearly enough, however, to balance for their blatant lack of respect for their customers.

Summary of YouGamers Hardware Testing

The publisher of this game state the following specifications for their minimum and recommended requirements:

Component	Publisher's Minimum	Publisher's Recommended
Processor	1400 Mhz processor	2.4 GHz Intel or equivalent AMD processor or better
Memory	256 MB	512 MB
Graphics Card	128 MB video RAM or greater, with DirectX 9 Vertex Shader / Pixel Shader 2.0 support	256 MB video RAM, with DirectX 9 Vertex Shader / Pixel Shader 2.0 support
Graphics Card Example	Not specified	Not specified
Free Disk Space	7 GB	7 GB
Net Link	Not specified	Not specified

To learn more about how YouGamers performs its hardware testing, click here. Through our extensive gameplay and hardware testing across the full spectrum of PC configurations, YouGamers suggests that one should use the following guidelines for an appropriate minimum and recommended setup:

Component	YouGamers Minimum	YouGamers Recommended
Processor	AMD Athlon XP 1600+ / Intel Pentium 4 1.4 GHz	AMD Athlon 64 3000+ / Intel Pentium 4 2.6 GHz
Memory	512 MB	512 MB
Graphics Card	ATI Radeon 9500 128MB / NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 128MB	ATI Radeon X800 XT 256MB / NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB
Free Disk Space	7 GB	7 GB
Net Link	n/a	n/a

Scores

To learn more about our scoring methodology, please click here.

Gameplay	78	Scrounging horror survival. Entertaining if somewhat repetitive, has lots of content and secrets to unlock.
Graphics	55	Outdated graphics, terrible cutscene quality. Very nice character design and animation, but that isn't nearly enough.
Audio	60	Low quality audio taken from the PS2 port. Good voice acting, bad almost everything else.
Technology	34	A minimum-effort port of a two-year old game. Let's hope this doesn't become the norm. Runs well on low-end systems.

OVERALL

Dismal showing from Ubisoft. If you want to play this game, you should seriously consider buying a GameCube or a Wii instead.

If you want to offer feedback or discuss this review, then please head over to our forums - click right here (registration not needed).

2nd Opinion

If you were a keen console owner that had longed for a PC-only game to appear, you'd rightly be disappointed if no effort was made to maximum the game's potential for that system and it's no different the other way round. Resident Evil 4 is a great game...but not in this format. Yes, console ports aren't a simple case of just changing a few lines of code but here was a game that was crying out to be refreshed for the PC, as it's for a genre that is sadly relatively empty. By all means purchase RE4 (along with a gamepad controller) and have fun nailing zombies but please don't expect it to use all of your PC's hot technology. In fact, I'm still wondering why the minimum video card requirement is not lower than a SM2.0 level card.

Nick Evanson