4. The Enemies Are Poor
Resident Evil 4 was the series reboot. A terrible term, and no, it didnt retread ground in the true sense of the word, but it changed the way people thought about Resident Evil. A sluggish, dated series with terrible controls became something entirely different without compromising what the series was about. Take, primarily, the enemies. The greatest thing about Zombies as enemies were that they were essentially human. Their slow pace and durability made for a tense, rather than occasionally jumpy, game. They were iconic, and representative of the series as a whole. Capcom went the only way they could creating enemies that were even more human. The fact that they were under the influence of Las Plagas made enemies imposing, without being intelligent enough to turn things into a human shootout. Like zombies, they are most effective in groups; and the sound of Salvadors chainsaw whirring into life is scarier than anything previously. Granted, a lot of this was lost by the time Leon bumped into the soldiers but that was some way into the game, and a way of upping the difficulty in a logical way. In total, the game presented a great mix of convincing scares, both jumpy and more slow-burning. You will probably already know how Capcom improved on this; they didnt. Rather than the same enemies which would have been preferable in hindsight the 5th instalment gave us, er, the same enemies, with slightly different names, backstories, etc. There were still scares, but this was no journey in the sense that Resident Evil 4 was. Personally, I quite liked it anyway Ill get onto the games main problems later - but a lot of the criticism levelled at 5 was reserved for the enemies, whether through accusations of racism or laziness. So, we have 6. On the one hand we have the C-Virus zombie - shuffling, imposing and essentially the zombie of old with another backstory. Then theres the Javo. Fair play to Capcom for trying to switch things up, but if 6 is a bit too Call of Duty, the Javo are the prime reason. Their human intelligence essentially makes them humans its morally okay to shoot a lazy nod to CoDs success, and a step backwards if anything. Then theres the Whopper. Just, no.