Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

This is an M-rated Wii game, so expect a lot of
family-unfriendly violence and horror.

This year, I had another Wii game in the plans, and as time went on, I wondered if I would have the time to play (and finish!) it in time. But! I got lucky; I finished the game, and now I can cover it. There are Wii games that I’ve owned for a long while now – almost as long as this blog has existed. Some games have waited in the collection, untouched, for nearly 10 years! One notable title in there is today’s title, the Wii rerelease of Resident Evil 4; I bought that one at a convention in… uh… early 2016. Yeah. I was long overdue to give it a chance. RE is one of those franchises I haven’t touched at all yet, and I recall that was my specific intention when buying that game, way back.

And yet, it took this long. But here it is! Finally! And I can experience this franchise through one of its best games! Only one issue: Since I don’t know much about the franchise, if this is the fourth (…technically sixth) game in the series, I probably need to read up on a bit of lore. But thankfully, not too much, as the story here is removed from much of the connections with the Umbrella Corporation, which stands front and center of the first three games.

However, we are still dealing with zombies (but not the type you might think), and we have the protagonist of Resident Evil 2 making a comeback, with a new role gained through his status as a heroic survivor. However, do note that I am covering the original version of 4, not the remake released in 2023; my research revealed that there are many differences between the two, some minor, some significant. I’ll stick to the story in the original.

One Hell of a Promotion

Let’s recap Leon Scott Kennedy’s backstory: On his very first day in the Raccoon City police force, the promising rookie ended up in the middle of a zombie outbreak caused by the Umbrella Corporation. Their experimentations on biological manipulation and viruses of all kinds had the side-effect of creating zombies, which broke out and attacked the Midwestern city. The infected destroyed everything, with Leon as one of the few to make it out alive.

Is just one guy really enough to save the President's daughter?
I mean, when that one guy survived a zombie apocalypse...
BTW, big thanks to the World of Longplays YouTube channel
for their playthrough.

For these efforts, he got a significant promotion; he was recruited as an elite agent for the US government, usually assigned to missions that involve similar cases of bioweapons and other bioterrorism. Sounds like a fun life. The events of RE4 take place six years after RE2, with Leon being driven through the woods of Spain by two local agents. His mission? Rescue Ashley Graham, the President’s daughter. She was kidnapped in the area, and he knows roughly where to look. He can handle this on his own, as long as he stays in contact with mission control Ingrid Hunnigan, who’ll send a helicopter as soon as the girl has been rescued. Leon is dropped past a wooden bridge, with one shack nearby and a remote village down the road. Ingrid helpfully sends him (well, you) a “playing manual” to learn the basics.

This guy ain't too friendly. Also, he and everyone else in
the village is tossing around the word Cabrón (Spanish
for "Bastard") like it's going out of style.

They even got a welcoming commitee!

Leon enters the shack and ask the man inside about Ashley Graham, even showing a picture. The man angrily responds in Spanish. Leon is about to leave, but he gets attacked by the man, wielding an axe. Whoa! Leon kills the guy in self-defense, to see that more villagers with weapons have arrived. Cornered, Leon ends up killing the others before heading further down the forest path. None of these guys seemed to be zombies… No fleeing, either; the villagers blew up the bridge while Leon’s drivers were driving away. (For short, the basic zombie villagers are named Ganados; I’ll use that term.)

In a cabin behind the house, we find wooden boxes and a typewriter. Leon can break boxes, barrels and urns with his knife, as they’ll often contain items such as healing plants, ammunition, grenades, and so on. The typewriters are save points. If he dies or his mission fails, he will either respawn at the latest typewriter, or if he walked into a new scene that had to be loaded in, he’ll return at the start of that scene.

Backyard Shack: Your one-stop shop for a quick resource
refill. We can even bring you back from the dead!

When prompted, kick away! It can incapacitate some enemies
and get them away enough from you for a counterattack.

I probably should cover the controls. Leon moves with the Nunchuk’s control stick, while the Wii Remote’s control pad moves the camera. Nunchuk-wise, C is used to draw out Leon’s knife, while Z makes him run. The A button is used for various prompted actions that can appear on-screen during exploration or in battle (as examples, to kick an enemy that’s come close, or to pick up an item). The - button opens the attache case where Leon stores his stuff (you WILL need to move your stuff around to make room for new weapons, extra items and ammo, etc.), and you can open the map with the 1 button. The B button is used to draw your current main weapon, whether a grenade or any gun – after which, you hold it down to aim (using the Wii remote’s pointer) and shoot with A. Swinging the Wii remote causes Leon to slash with his knife, and swinging down while holding B reloads the equipped firearm.

Down the path towards the village, Leon can rescue a dog from a bear trap. Eventually, he reaches the area…

Nobody Expects the Spanish Zombification

You're not seeing the 30 or so bodies scattered around the
village, courtesy of me. Also, welcome to Spanish
Chainsaw Massacre, apparently.

Watching the village from afar, Leon sees that one of his drivers was killed, impaled on a hook, and hanged over a fire. Christ. There are just too many villagers in the area, sneaking around is impossible; you ARE going to fight. This game doesn’t put on kid gloves; sink or swim, here’s 20 violent guys and since it’s early, you have almost nothing to defend yourself with. Learn to save bullets by finishing enemies using the knife or a kick, learn to grab everything they drop (they’re the best source of new ammo), break every crate or urn you find, reload often. And watch your back. These lessons will be drilled into you by force. The first few hours of this game were a genuine challenge. It also highlights the more action-horror turn the series chose to take by that point; there’s still an element of survival and inventory management, but you play a badass that fights back.

When in doubt, up the firepower.

These zombies are smart enough to devise plans and think logically, something's not right. Leon can barely survive the onslaught when the village church’s bell rings. As if none of this had happened, the attackers ignore their target and walk away. Investigating the buildings, Leon finds a message about his presence there; it says that the “prisoner” was taken to a more secure area. Its author also implies that beyond the American government, there's another group involved in this whole thing.

Leon opens a wardrobe in a house in the second part of the village and finds a Spanish guy gagged and bound. Leon unties the guy, only for the two to get cornered by two Ganados and their leader. That giant of a man throws Leon into the other guy, knocking them both out; thus, ends Chapter 1-1. (Yeah, chapters here are split into portions, which can still be plenty long.)

This would be the end, if we weren't playing a badass.

Before regaining consciousness, Leon is injected something in the neck. When he comes to, he’s bound to the guy he saved, and they’ve been taken elsewhere. The other guy says he’s named Luis Sera and claims he used to be a cop in Madrid. When asked about Ashley, Luis says she might be in the church. A Ganado attacks them with an axe and, in a swift move, the two get their chains broken by the zombie, then fight back. Oh yeah! Luis runs off, while Leon must make his way back to the village from… wherever he is.

Behind the building, Leon meets the merchant, a strange figure that’s always ready to sell his wares. He can take your precious stones and, in return, you can buy guns, extra space for your attache case, or upgrade any guns you own. It’s expensive, but it’s worth it. You might as well spend the hundreds of thousands of Pesetas you’ll collect along the way!

You'll never have enough money (or inventory room) for
every weapon this guy sells. So choose wisely!

There are ways to cheese this extra-tough section; the
Longplay I use for screenhots had most Ganados kill each
other with explosives. But for a first-timer, yeah, this
specific part of the game is really damn difficult.

To get back to the village, Leon must cross suspended bridges and buildings over a giant chasm. Here again, the game shows that it has no kid gloves; this segment is one of the toughest I’ve encountered. It’s like the game expects you to already have all the mechanics down this early. It left an impression, at least! Some Ganados carry explosives they they toss at Leon; well, you can blow it up in their hands with a bullet! You’ll take down literal dozens of Ganados here, it’s crazy. And you’ll have to, since you need to explore in order to find the two pieces of an emblem that opens the doors leading back to the village.

Investigating a normal house outside the area, Leon is caught by the humongous man and choked, but the man sees in Leon’s eyes the traces of the parasite injected into him – the same one that infected every villager. The man drops Leon and says something about the agent “carrying the same blood”, leaving him completely puzzled.

Come on... QTE... show up already... Oh, I see, the
resolution to this one is in the cutscene itself.

The Beast in the Lake

Leon gets a communication from Ingrid, who found new information; this community was taken over by a cult known as Los Illuminados (The Illuminated). Exploring the house, he can learn that it belongs to Bitores Méndez, the huge guy, also the village’s chief. Unlike the other infected, Méndez has retained his mental capabilities. If Leon runs into him again, Méndez will outright try to kill him; our protagonist is only saved in time by bullets hitting the big guy in the back, shot from a gun held by a woman outside in a red dress. …The other intruder, I presume. Méndez jumps through the window, trying to catch the woman; this allows Leon to escape.

Might as well deal preemptively with that second
"welcoming committee" just outside this other home.

One at a time, there's enough for everyone!

We can use a key found in Méndez’s home to enter a locked building in the village, which hides an underground passageway to the church. However, the church's doors are locked with a round hole. Lots of insignia locks around the Spanish countryside, huh? Fine, I’ll follow the cliffside bridges and see if it takes me somewhere interesting. First, this holding area where the merchant has set up shop. And second, a nasty swamp with more Ganados and C4 traps scattered about. This leads to a lake. From an overlook, Leon spots Ganados tossing the body of his second driver into the water, where it is swiftly snatched by a giant sea monster.

Do me a favor, don’t shoot the water. Or, do shoot it, about 6 times, see what happens…

I do love whenever a boss works outside of the regular
mechanics of the game it's in. But, call me a complainer, but
I'd prefer if the game's first proper boss had the regular
mechanics, with a later boss switching things up instead.

Different playthrough, 'cause the one I was using didn't show
this part. Anyway - if you end up in the water, you better swim
fast! This thing's nastier than Bruce, the shark of Jaws.

This thing, Del Lago, cannot stay alive. Leon ends up fighting the damn thing on a tiny wooden boat, which often gets dragged by the giant amphibian. This thing won’t go down until it has been impaled by something like a dozen spears (if not more), and even as it sinks in the water, it almost takes our character to a watery doom due to a rope wrapping around his foot. Good thing we can get out of it by slashing at the rope during a quick-time event!

Oh! Yeah. There’s a lot of QTEs around this game. It’s baked into combat, since a lot of moves Leon can make are only available when their command appears onscreen. Some are limited to specific scenes, like the boulder we had to outrun earlier in this chapter (I'm skipping a lot of minor events for this recap). You might not always know when they pop up, so you should stay ready to do them when necessary. (I can attribute many of my deaths while playing through this game to failing to notice a QTE, or failing to do it in time.) On the plus side, since they come up so often during action scenes (such as when Leon kicks an opponent, struggles out of a zombie’s grasp, or the like), you’re always encouraged to keep an eye on those. Later in the game, they can even happen during boss fights and cutscenes!

Waggle to survive! Waggle! To! Survive!

Resident Evil 4 is a legendary game for doing things that a lot of later games would eventually do as well. The first is over-the-shoulder third-person shooter, which it didn't invent but made massively popular; and the other, for better or for worse, is the omnipresence of QTEs. Both of these feel dated in an age where so many video games do them (especially QTEs, ugh), but there was a time when they were groundbreaking and, put together here, gave the game a feel that few others of its time had.

We can’t go back the way we came, so we might as well go down the alternate route. Besides, I’ve written enough for today and beating El Lago finishes Chapter 1 (we also got a scene of Leon taking refuge in a shack and coughing up blood due to the parasite that was injected in him). Part 2 will try to cover both Chapters 2 and 3.