Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

The Wii edition of Resident Evil 4 includes all prior DLCs from previous editions of the game, and I felt my coverage wasn’t finished until I discussed all of them, too. This time, we focus on Ada Wong, the mysterious spy that Leon keeps running into. First in Raccoon City, then here… What was she up to? Time to find out.

Separate Ways

    Oh, she knows how to use those just as well as Leon!

Ada’s quest isn't a 1-to-1 adaptation; it follows the events as she witnessed them, and her part in them. She’s responsible for a few problems Leon encounters, and saves his life more times than he knows. She can meet the merchant to buy weapons, upgrades to her attache case, and first aid kits, but the menu to upgrade guns is not available. You remain at a disadvantage since you can get all the guns you want but no improvements in firepower and efficiency. Ada has a knife too, but she starts with a Blacktail and a Shotgun, and can buy a unique weapon, the Bowgun (a crossbow, powerful but its ammo is rare and takes up inventory space). Her unique skill is the grappling hook, which she can use to reach high ledges or jump through windows; it’s only usable in specific places, though.

We see from the start that Ada is working under Albert Wesker. Does she know about his plans? That he wants to create a virus that will wipe out several billion people? She sneaks into the village from the first two chapters of the original quest. She’s there at the same time as Leon, who is already mowing through zombies. Ada is tasked by Wesker to ring the church’s bell, which will calm down the Ganados. Logically, Leon should be hearing a second shooter in the area, but he doesn’t.

Sorry, I'm not dressed for church; that's okay, I'm not here
to hear the hymns anyway.

She finds the Insignia key on a rooftop and the emblem for the church’s door. Yep – she’s the one who rung that bell that made the zombies go away while Leon was fighting them. In-between chapters, we get a recap showing that everything Leon learned on his own, Ada (and the organization she works for) already knew. She knows that Las Plagas are controlled through sonic frequencies, akin to dog whistles. It’s implied that all the key items that Leon took forever to find were so because Ada was using them first. She'd hide them off the beaten path, so Leon would take longer to finish his mission – otherwise, his heroic resolve would mow everything down before she could fulfill her goal.

She may not be the one to deal the finishing blow to the big
players of the Las Plagas conspiracy, but she still deals
with major threats in each of her chapters.

She must get into contact with Luis Sera, who has been captured by Los Illuminados. He's the one to will hand over to her the master Plaga sample. Ada starts in Mendéz’s home, follows Leon's path, and ends up saving him from the village chief. Bullets through the window, right in the guy’s back. This leads to her getting knocked out by Ganados and almost offered as sacrifice, but she kill her captors and finds her way back. She gets the key in the barn, reactivates the lift and heads over to the shack, killing an El Gigante on the way for sport. She arrives right after the cabin brawl, and confirms with Luis that he's her contact. However, he doesn’t have the sample yet…

I'm having déjà vu. (This mode is a lot better when you don't
just repeat what you've already been through as Leon,
to be honest.)

Chapter 3 opens at the reunion between Ada and Leon in the castle bedroom, and from there she encounters many situations the agent was put through. She must make her way to Luis. She was told by Wesker to kill Leon on sight, so she'll willingly avoid him. The worst part here is a retread of the battle with a Garrador in a cage; I hated that fight even more due to Ada’s lack of firepower. (Gotta hope you’ve stocked up on grenades.) This chapters ends when Luis gets killed by Saddler’s scorpion tail. Saddler has the sample; she’ll have to get it at the island lab.

Wesker and Krauser also have their doubts about her
allegiance. Whatever, she doesn't care. She knows who
she's working for.

A1 - I sink your ship! Nono, you don't get it.
I. Will. Sink. Your. Goddamn. Ship.

Chapter 4 opens on her meeting with Jack Krauser – both work for Wesker. Krauser is unaware that Saddler has already seen through his act of someone swayed to Los Illuminados. The soldier was ordered to kill Leon, and Ada decides to stop the assassination attempt. But, beforehand, she stops by the marina. Saddler had an entire army of soldiers at the ready, as well as entire warships equipped with powerful cannons. The dude was gearing up for war. Well, Ada sinks the ship and kills most of the army on her own, using their heavy weaponry against them. And then, she interrupts the original knife fight between Leon and his ex-mentor.

See? Told you.

This fight isn't too different from the one in the ruins.

In the final chapter, the spy is told by Wesker to focus on the sample and let Leon and Saddler deal with each other. Ada assumes Krauser is dead, as she saw Leon defeat him in the ruins. She runs through the military camp, cleaning up the remains. She gets her scene where the parasites take over Leon, but she stabs him so he returns to himself. Further away, she encounters Krauser, who wasn’t as dead as we thought. Fine! She’ll finish the job! He’s as weak to knife slashes as before. This battle on rooftops ends with the ex-military dead in a puddle of his blood (in RE terms, that’s a confirmation of death).

I guess that's why she wears a red dress. Not to mask her
own blood.

Y'know, I keep wondering how the fuck this guy could even
talk with that giant freaky eye in his goddamn mouth.

She arrives in time for that moment where Leon, who has rescued Ashley from her pod, runs from Saddler; Ada battles the cult leader, even getting a couple of slashes at the eye in his mouth (Again, yuck); she defeats him (or so she thinks) and goes to collect the sample; only to get knocked out by Saddler’s scorpion tail. She is found tied up on the scene of the final battle, where she's freed by Leon. During Leon's boss battle, Ada runs around the surrounding buildings, kill enemies, and reaches the rocket launcher, all within a tight time limit. When she gets there, we have the final scenes: Leon killing Saddler, Ada stealing the sample, and flying away in a helicopter (and lending Leon a jet-ski).

Her final report reveals that she pretended to work for Wesker this entire time, and sent him something else than the master sample; she took that one to her REAL employers who have never been revealed (and were scrubbed off from the plot in the remakes). Some loose ends were tied, but more remain…

Assignment Ada

Better deal with these before the Gatling dude shows up.

This secondary mode is a lot shorter. This time, Ada follows the same path as Leon in the first parts of Chapter 5: The sneak onto the island, into the camp, into the lab, stopping at the point where Leon and Ashley jump down the garbage chute. This is the only mode in which we see Ada wearing tactical gear instead of her red dress.

What changes in this mode? We don't fight any Regenerators.
Only enemy soldiers. And friggin' WAVES of 'em.

This time, her mission is to gather several Plaga samples in various research areas in the lab. You still cannot upgrade your guns… because this time, there's no merchant at all. No new guns, no typewriters; your only checkpoints are door leading to new areas. Your inventory is going to be limited, as unlike regular key items, the samples gathered will be in your main inventory instead, reducing the space you’ve got for everything else.

How many times will I have to teach you this lesson, jackass?

You’ll be encountering similar threats, with less of a focus on the horror side of things and more on surviving waves of enemies. The lack of weapon upgrades adds difficulty that wasn’t there when you played as Leon, and that wasn’t a cakewalk either! Oh, and it’s topped by a boss fight against – again? Jack Krauser? The dude won’t stay dead! And this boss fight might just be the hardest in the whole game, because it takes place in a tight corridor, Ada’s health is low, and thus he has plenty of options while you’ll probably struggle to shoot him in the legs to expose him for knife slashes. Geez.

This extra ends with Ada reaching a control tower and calling for a helicopter to pick her up. This mode is short (it can be finished in under two hours), but it’s very challenging.

Mercenaries Mode

Of all things, the soldier gets a bow?

Mercenaries Mode is a bonus mode available after finishing the main story. In it, you can play as one of five characters and battle Ganados over four maps. The main goal is to reach a high score by killing as many enemies as possible within the time limit, which can be increased by hunting down bonuses around the map. Speaking of, three battle environments are directly based on the main questline: The village, the castle and the island. A fourth, Waterworld, is unique to this mode.

The only character available from the start is Leon. If you can reach a 4-star score or better in the stages, you can unlock Ada Wong, Jack Krauser, Albert Wesker, or a HUNK (an elite soldier). For 100% completion, reeach 5 stars with eachy character, on every map.

Play as HUNK? Save bullets. Snap necks instead.

Reaching a good score isn’t going to be easy. Each playable character has a different amount of health and a different gun loadout, forcing you to figure out the best strategy to employ. Some of them don’t have knives, either. Physically, Ada has the best running speed to compensate for having the lowest health of all five, and Krauser has the most health, but few offensive options, his main one being a bow and arrows. It’s all about figuring out the best way to play every character.

If you’re at the point of playing this mini-game, you’ve already seen most of what the game has to offer, so the only rewards you can get out of it will see use in a New Game, if you choose to go through the main quest all over again.

Final words

Resident Evil 4 is one of those legendary games that reshaped the industry, because it was just so damn good. And yeah, it’s still friggin’ great! I’ve probably played some over-the-shoulder shooters before, and that’s a specific type of shooter that was made incredibly popular thanks to its use in this entry of the RE franchise.

You never know what you'll run into.

Sure, it’s an action shooter, but as a horror/survival game, it hits all the right notes: Horrifying visuals everywhere, a constant sense of unease and dread, never quite knowing what you’re going to fight off next, and always having just enough health to get by but constantly meeting new enemies that can kill you just that little bit quicker. The monsters are appropriately horrific, from the random villagers attacking you en masse, to the random bio-organic weapons just lying around, to the bosses growing extra limbs thanks to their own parasitic strains. The imagery in this game, holy shit the imagery. Chef’s kiss, exactly what I expected, and even worse at times. The jump scares aren’t powerful, but you can and will get tricked by enemies that attack from behind when you think every threat is in front of you.

Yeah, shooting with the Wii remote is really fun.

Beyond keeping an eye on your health, you must manage your inventory and whatever room you can make in it – too many guns isn’t any better than too few. You can only acquire ammo from enemy drops and finding it randomly around, so this, too, can run out if you’re not careful. Either way, you’ve got that trusty knife and those acrobatics. Beating this game means learning to use everything you’re given to its fullest, even the backup plans. The basic crafting mechanic allows the player to create first aid kits out of plants, but it’s very easy to run out of those. Perhaps the best thing about this port is that it’s on a console with motion controls, which means that Leon will be exactly as precise in his shots as you can be with the Wii Remote. Motion controls add a dimension to gameplay that, after experiencing it, I feel would be missing if I played any version where those actions would be done through regular button presses.

The game is an escort mission for about a fourth of its length, and I personally never had an issue with Ashley Graham; she’s not perfect, but she is programmed intelligently enough to know what to do in most situations, even if some of her reactions boil down to “cower and let Leon deal with things”. I didn’t even find her voice that grating. The one chapter in which we play as her alone felt special in its own way.

Yeah, I doubt this could be a full game, but it's nice enough
as is.

That seq   uence with the giant clockwork statue is...
...something else. RE embracing its inherent silliness.

My biggest issue with the game is its use of QTEs during specific scenes. For actions that cannot be done otherwise in normal gameplay, I don’t mind nearly as much. But when you’re pushed into a scene where they’re mandatory and you die instantly if you don’t see them in time to pull them off, they can be a pain in the goddamn ass. …In short, they’re QTEs as they were used back then, and how they’re still used now. I get that they are meant to convey a sense of urgency and risk, and that they represent Leon thinking fast and doing exactly the right action when needed. This does translate to a few (…nah, many) deaths I personally considered cheap. Seriously, I think I died just as often to failed QTEs than I died to regular gameplay. That’s my biggest (and almost only) issue with the game.

Considering RE4 was a trend-setter in a few ways, it probably won’t feel so fresh as it may have been when it was first released, but it’s still damn solid on its own regardless. Sure, it’s not perfect, but it’s close. With the base campaign and the Ada-centric bonuses, this is about as complete as can get. A must-play for horror gamers; I’m sure the remake is nice and all, but it doesn’t hurt to experience a classic either.

My next major article: The yearly Top 12 list!