10 Hated Video Game Mechanics The World Was Wrong About
9. Fixed To Over-The-Shoulder Camera - Resident Evil 4
"It'll ruin the horror!", they said. "It'll take away from what made Resident Evil what it is!", they shrieked.
Yet people couldn't have been more wrong, as such a radical redesign propelled Resi 4 into "greatest game ever" annals and laid the foundation for many other imitators down the line. Games like Dead Space and The Evil Within owe their combat to Resident Evil 4.
The claim was that taking the surprise of fixed camera would ruin Resident Evil, for fear that it'd just descend into a shoot 'em up instead. Yet 4 did such a great job of retaining the tense combat, it quickly shut people up.
For even though it was over the shoulder, it was such a tight perspective that Leon had to pick and choose his moments to stop and shoot. The threat of being flanked or snuck up on was still there, making firefights tense when attackers flocked in from all angles. The game introduces this early on in the village, as if to say, "Here is the benchmark, get used to it", and we did.
Then they got greedy with Resident Evil 6.