Resident Evil 4 (2005)
Ah, the game that divided the fanbase! And one of the best games from the franchise, too!
Yeah, I know we're skipping a bunch of games here. Last time we talked about a Resident Evil game, it was Resident Evil 3: Nemesis... and between RE3 and RE4, we've got a whole ton of spinoffs, side-games, prequels and whatnot, each with its own bestiary. there is Resident Evil - Code: Veronica, Resident Evil 0, two Resident Evil: Survivor games, two Resident Evil: Outbreak games, and a Gaiden game. It's just that I have zero to no real experience with any of these games, whereas with most of the numbered games up to 5, I have either played parts of it or watched someone play it. So until I decide to splurge and buy some of these spinoffs on Steam, or watch a playthrough to at least get a grasp of what's going on, we'll be sticking with the main numbered series for now.
Between RE3 and RE4 we've got a fair bit of jump in the terms of hardware and the amount of detail you can put into the story. It's basically the jump from PS1 to PS2, and while it's not quite modern-game material yet, it holds up remarkably well in having a pretty fun storyline. And best of all... I never actually appreciated what a breath of fresh air tone-wise Resident Evil 4 must be to the players of the franchise after nearly eight to nine games all just revolving around Umbrella corporation and the breakout in Raccoon City. We get zombies, sure, but in a completely different way. (The change into the now-universal third-person-shooter format in shooter games is also something that was pretty welcome and made the franchise more accessible -- even if it admittedly did come with a decrease in terms of horror.)
Besides, if you know anything about the type of monsters that tickle my fancy and really gets me genuinely disturbed while also going 'oh shit god dang that's cool' at the same time, you know Resident Evil 4 is basically the perfect one for me. Hell, it's honestly one of the few Resident Evil games that I have played personally and got a decent amount of progress in. It's also a game that I picked up earlier on Steam during the whole quarantine earlier this year and finally played all the way to the end.
And... well, as with any game that I've actually personally experienced versus a game that I've mostly just seen or am just appreciating the bestiary of, there are definitely going to be a fair bit more for me to talk about here.
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The Story:
Good ol' Leon Kennedy from RE2 has been promoted after the Raccoon City incident into a special agent for the United States government. His current assignment brings him to Spain to rescue the President of USA's daughter, Ashley Graham, who was kidnapped by a mysterious cult. The locals are less than helpful, and Leon soon finds himself cut off from all backup and fending off an entire village of crazed, seemingly mindless villagers. Leon soon finds out that the villagers are worshipping a cult called the Los Illuminados (ha!) and fights his way through the berserk villagers while looking for clues about where Ashley is.
On his way, he meets and rescues the mysterious Luis Sera (who crosses paths with him several times), briefly gets rescued by his one-time fling Ada Wong, and during a scuffle with some of the Los Illuminados lieutenants, gets himself injected with a mysterious parasite called Las Plagas. Through documents and snippets of information from the allies he meets briefly along the way, Leon soon discovers that the villagers are all being controlled by monstrous, somewhat insect-like parasites within their body. After fighting against the village's many inhabitants and several giant mutant creatures (who we'll cover below!) Leon finally making his way into a church and freeing Ashley Graham, who has also been infected. The leader of Los Illuminados, the high priest Osmund Saddler, monologues, telling them of their plan to use the Plagas parasite implanted in them to take control of their minds.
As Leon and Ashley escape and try and make their way out of the village, they fight through endless hordes of the Ganados, briefly meet up with Luis, kill the village chief Father Mendez and find their way to a nearby giant castle -- the castle of the noble Salazar family. Unfortunaetly, its castellan, the psychotic Ramon Salazar, is also part of the Los Illuminados cult, and Leon has to fight his way against not only the cultists, but also the many deadly traps within the castle. Throughout this long, long night, Ashley gets captured and re-rescued several times; Leon fights stronge and stronger bio-weapons; Ada shows up several more times... and ultimately, Luis is killed by Saddler despite him being the only one that knows how to cure the Plagas infection. Ashley is captured and taken by Saddler to a separate island, while Leon fights and defeats Salazar, who mutates into a grotesque, giant form.
Ada Wong assists Leon with getting to the island before buggering off to do her own thing, while Leon fights against the Los Illuminados militia on the island, equipped with better weaponry than the ones in the mainland. Leon also discovers a high-tech research facility, fighting through not only the Illuminados militia but also the monstrous B.O.W.'s that Saddler unleashes from within. Ultimately, Leon's way is barred by his former military comrade, Jack Krauser, who now works as an Umbrella agent infiltrating Los Illuminados. Leon kills Krauser after a prolonged battle, before finding Ashley and using Luis's machine and directions to burn out the Plagas parasite within himself and Ashley. With Ada's help, Leon confronts Osmund Saddler, who mutates into a grotesque, giant form, and ultimately blows up the cult leader with Ada's help. Ada then steals the 'Dominant Plagas' parasite sample and leaves on her own, while Leon successfully rescues Ashley and escapes the exploding island through a jet-ski.
RE4 is the first numbered Resident Evil game to not have a 'A/B pathway' like the previous three games, but most copies do come with an unlockable 'Separate Ways' mini-campaign, starring Ada Wong and basically putting some context to her mysterious actions in the game. It reveals that in addition to helping Leon a lot behind the scenes (ringing the bell; rescuing Luis at one point; blowing up a giant battleship...), Ada fights through hordes of the Los Iluminados. She starts her side-campaign seemingly working under the orders of Umbrella head honcho Albert Wesker, who sent her and Krauser to Spain to get the Plagas parasite. However, Ada's loyalties is to 'the Organization', a rival company, and has infiltrated Umbrella in order to gain the parasite for her own employers. At the climax of Ada's journey, she ends up fighting Krauser (who survived his battle with Leon) and permanently killing him, before facing off against Saddler prior to the Leon fight.
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Animals
In perhaps one of the biggest departure from the previous games (especially the first two) is the much less focus on 'zombie animals'. We do still have a bunch of hostile or killable animals -- cows and chicken that aren't hostile; crows and bass that could be shot for items, bats that bother you, and snakes that jump out of item crates to attack you if you are not fast enough to stab them first. None of these are especially noteworthy as adversaries or enemies, and none are the far-more-powerful-than-a-normal-species mutant like the T-Virus infected creatures in previous games.
Ganado
All the enemies in this game are given the names from Spanish words, which is pretty cool! And... there's always a bit of an unease when you play a game starring a white blond man protagonist going in and killing a bunch of people from another race. It doesn't quite feel as uncomfortable as the next game, though, because the Ganado are... well, they're clearly out of their minds and are quite literally used as "livestock", which is what 'ganado' really means. As Leon moves through the dilapidated village it's clear that while the Ganado are smart enough to follow orders and use tools like torches or farming equipment, they have basically given up on living normal lives, leaving a lot of their homes, food and livestock completely ignored. Pretty creepily, the 'sinister fake cult' aspect of Los Illuminados actually plays into why the nameless villagers were all indoctrinated into taking the Plagas parasite voluntarily, since it's basically disguised as a baptism ritual for the locals. I like this, we still fight creatures that behave like zombies, but it's a fresh take on the video game formula while also keeping it within the biological horror theme.
And, again, while initially it's a bit bizarre that Leon is just going around killing not even zombies but just a bunch of angry farmers out to shishkebab him and his European police allies with pitchforks, turns out that the Ganado are, well, basically humans that play host to the Plagas parasite. More on that later! As with the regular 'zombies' of previous games, I really don't have much to say here -- two distinct 'breeds' of Ganados exist, with the earlier ones being all in regular farming clothes, and those in Salazar's castle basically cosplaying in medieval cult outfits... which is so ridiculous that it steeps back into awesome. They otherwise behave more or less similarly to regular zombie enemies, with the added creepy caveat that they seem to sort of 'play' through what should be their daily lives like working with farming tools, but actual close inspection shows that they really weren't keeping their homes and farms clean at all. The second half of the game basically takes place in the castle, and because the Los Illuminados cult are weirdos like that, all their cult members dress up in medieval robes and carry flails and spiky shields and stuff. Some even walk around with goat-skull helmets or skull masks (which prevent headshots) but are otherwise implied to 'merely' be regular, mindless indoctrinated-by-religion-and-parasite Ganado. Notable variants includes the "Chainsaw Man", who is one hell of an annoying miniboss with a chainsaw and a sack-head (no, seriously, the Chainsaw Man is super-duper annoying). The final chapter of the game has military-themed Ganados, and their little sub-boss, the "Ganado Arma de Gatling", which is a ganado with a goddamn gatling gun. I tried to put all of these separately, but ultimately all it reduced me to is just talking about when you meet them in-game and that's not interesting for a monster review, not at all.
Las Plagas
It's impossible to talk about the game's antagonists without talking about the Las Plagas ("The Plagues") parasite. Because while the previous couple of games have dealt with a virus that strips humans and animals of their intelligence and turns them into zombies and other biological horrors, the antagonists of RE4 are a cult that have discovered these ancient parasites, the "Las Plagas", and built a cult around them. I low-key really love the fact that they took the shape of the Plagas parasite and turned it into their religious iconography. There's certainly an instant bit of some Facehugger-esque vibe to the anatomy, albeit this one looks extremely arthropodal instead of Alien's more ambiguous design. I don't think we ever get to see the Plagas parasite in RE4's gameplay, but we know what they look like for sure! They get injected into hosts as eggs, and then they start to mutate and take control of their hosts. At least one account in the games also note that they can reproduce through spores, too.
Interestingly, there are two different types of Plagas. The "Recessive Plagas" turns their human host into the submissive, subservient Ganado, which draws comparison with something like, well, an eusocial insect nest without making it too obvious. Meanwhile, the "Dominant Plagas" (or "Master Plagas" in some game dialogue) will actually bond intellectually with its host, as we will discuss later on with this game's various bosses. It's an actually clever twist on just having parasites that are non-sentient, but rather they work in symbiosis with their hosts.
Most interestingly (and this is a bit of a spoiler, but we've spoiled the main story of the game above anyway) is the fact that unlike most of Umbrella's genetically-manipulated man-made virus, the Las Plagas aren't actually man-made. It's a bit of a 'common knowledge' twist nowadays, but playing through RE4 the first time and thinking that the Las Plagas is just 'well, they made an Aliens-style parasite instead of a virus, that's a neat variation', it was a sufficiently cool twist to realize that the Plagas are actually ancient creatures living on Earth, old enough to have left behind fossils. Whether they naturally evolved and is a 'forgotten species', or as some fans and in-game characters speculated, if they came from an extraterrestrial source (the Aliens inspiration is probably a huge reason why this is a huge theory), the true origins of the Las Plagas is shrouded by mystery, and I absolutely loved that. It's the sort of 'discovering an ancient horror' that tends to just be reduced to either Satan or Cthulhu in most media nowadays, and I am a huge fan of this one.
Plaga-infested Ganado
So, as the game moved from chapter to chapter and nightfall came over the unnamed Spanish village, some of the Ganados that Leon killed would, have their head explode and turn into a writhing mass of tentacles or bug legs, showing the true form of the parasite within the shambling bodies and showing just what is really in control of these unfortunate villagers and cultists. Interestingly, in something that I never really thought too much about, the Plagas are extremely vulnerable to sunlight, which is why you only encounter these variants at night, and why the flashbang grenade (a.k.a. completely useless in most shooter games) can one-shot-kill any exposed Plagas. There's a bit of a vampire-like shrug of why light is so utterly deadly to them, but it sure lends credence to why they needed parasitic hosts!
Sadly, we don't actually have any good shots of any of the three Plaga Ganados (referred to by official sources by just "Plaga A", "Plaga B" and "Plaga C"... really could've given them better names IMO), so click those images and open them in a new one to really get a sense of what's going on. Plaga A is a bit of a more messy combination of random fleshy features and whirling tentacles, with some people out there noting the comparison to iconic body-horror manga Parasyte. Plaga A, a moment after exposing its true form, will eventually summon out a gigantic blade-tipped tentacle of flesh, allowing it a surprising amount of reach. Easily my favourite version of the three basic Plagas. It's very hard to tell from these screenshots, but Plaga A even has a pair of creepy dangling eyeballs. Click here to see the in-game cutscene where you first see a Plaga A burst out of someone's head.
That flesh-tentacle mass is apparently an interim form, though, because stronger versions of the Plaga will have their entire head be replaced by what's essentially a monstrous eyeless centipede-creature. This Plaga B, in addition to having the same amount of reach as its weaker counterpart, also has the chance to one-shot-kill you by biting your head off. As the Plagas matures, it becomes more and more like an arthropod, I suppose. Its mouth opens in three ways like a flower, or like some sort of nematode. Pretty cool!
Its most mature form is the Plaga C, where it has gigantic spider-like legs with webs between them (and makes the Facehugger comparison earlier a lot more relevant, except that this thing is huge enough to wrap around your entire torso). The animation of the spider legs are creepy as hell and, upon being 'killed', the entire Plagas segment will detach, scuttle around like little demonic spiders to attack you as a truly last-ditch effort. Despite being far more terrifying, appearing later in the game and visually impressive-looking, Plaga C are actually far less threatening in-game. A bit too much like a Facehugger, perhaps, but still pretty cool.
Like its predecessors, Resident Evil 4 also features a whole ton of other horrifying mutants and elites, but for the first time in the franchise, even the low-ranking minions look and behave so interestingly, and it does make the basic enemies so much more dynamic. From a gameplay perspective, it adds another layer of fun. Sure, you can basically tell when the big, gun-toting enemies or the ones with shields are more powerful, but you never know when the generic mook can suddenly become so much more dangerous when their head explodes and then transforms into a much more powerful creature. It adds an element of utter uncertainty to any given large group of regular Ganados enemies, and that's very awesome.
Colmillos
Zombie dogs are like a staple in Resident Evil games, but instead of being yet another half-desiccated undead zombie dog, the Colmillos (Spanish for "fangs") employed by Los Illuminados are wolves infested with Plaga, and their backs burst open to reveal a fuck-ton of whip-like tentacles. It's not the most memorable enemy from this game, honestly, but it sure feels like a neat step-up from the now-repetitive zombie dogs of previous games. I really don't have much to say here, they sure are cool plague-infested dogs.
Garrador
Huh, I guess the Garrador (roughly translates to "The Clawer", the same root word that English borrows for 'garrote') is considered a 'common enemy', huh? The first time you meet one of these guys, though he sure feels like a miniboss! But you do meet the Garrador sparingly several times through your journey through the Los Illuminados facilities. I'm going by the Wiki, which in turn goes by the official sourcebooks here!
And the first time you meet the Garrador he's pretty interesting. He's this half-naked man in a prison cell, strapped to some metal bindings, and his eyes are sewn shut. And as the Garrador wakes up, his arms begin to deploy these massive Wolverine claws which seem bolted to his lower arms. Apparently, Los Illuminados are also experimenting on augmenting their minions, making them the creepy, Dark-Ages-medieval-torture version of Umbrella Corporation. The Garrador feels so different compared to the other Plaga-controlled Ganados you fight, which at least follow some sort of pack mentality. More than anything else, the Garrador lashes around like a wounded animal. Most importantly, though, the Garrador is utterly blind, so the only way to trick him to exposing the weak point on its back (I think he's invulnerable to all but your strongest weapons otherwise) is to shoot the bells that are located in the battlefield; trick him to stabbing the walls; or just walk (not run!) quick enough to position yourself behind him to shoot the engorged, tick-like parasite on his back. Later on, you meet one that has also been given a knight's armour.
Ultimately not the most interesting design visually, but certainly a very cool one as a sub-boss for the simple reason that giant metal Wolverine claws are pretty damn cool. It's mostly remembered for being one of the more difficult enemies in the game, though -- that's the sort of context that actually playing through the game gives me.
Novistador
Oh shit, oh shit, these fuckers. The Novistador (Spanish for "the Unseen") are giant monstrous bug-men. And I would've readily dismissed them as being just a bit too similar to the Chimera or the Deimos of previous games, but man, these guys. Design-wise, they're honestly nothing too special as far as monstrous bug-people in this franchise go. You get the gangly, jointed legs, long massive claws, a mouth that opens sideways in a hideous attempt at replicating a bug's jaws, a bunch of creepy eyes, antennae, wings... all the hallmarks of a cool bug monster, but nothing too special compared to last game's Drain Deimos. But then when you fight them you realize that they have ribcages on their torsos. And apparently, these Novistadores were once human. They aren't a biological creation like the Chimera, or mutated insects like the Drain Deimos or Grave Digger, they are yet another part of the Plagas mutation. Whether it's a natural part of the Plagas transformation or if it's a more dramatic change in biology done by the Illuminados cult is never made clear, but clearly there's enough 'bug' within these Novistadores that they are able to create a gigantic hornet-style nest in the middle of the castle.
Later on in the game we also meet the "Flying-type" Novistadores, which exchange their invisibility powers for bug wings. Which sure makes them neat 'shoot 'em up' enemies, but it's nowhere as terrifyingly impressive as their 'Stealth-type' counterparts.
Armadura
Huh, I actually almost completely forgot these guys exist. The Armadura ("Armor") only show up for a couple of short sequences in the game, basically playing the fantasy part of the game to the hilt. As you briefly take control of Ashley and navigate a particularly dark part of the Los Illuminados castle, some of the suits of armour will move, attack, and some of them crumble into dust. What's up with that, right? Is that just a trap, or is it an actual creature? Then when you regain control of Leon you fight a bunch of these guys and you realize that they're actually controlled by Plaga -- shooting off their helmet will reveal the Plaga A heads within them, which is a very cool visual. There are stronger ones with Crusade-era armour with Plaga B within.
I would've dismissed this as a one-off, neat-looking boss in the same vein as Chainsaw Man or Gatling Gun Cultist Man, but supplementary material would tell us what is up with these Armadura. They are actually Plaga who lost their hosts but somehow survive, and are basically placed into these suits of armour while dormant to conserve their energy. The Plaga can stretch out inside the armour and manipulate its movement with its tentacles... which also gives us the reason why some of the Armadura just crumble into dust the moment Ashley dodges their attacks. The Plaga are likely so decrepit and near-death that the movement taxes them so much that they shatter from it. A very cool concept, and one that instantly reminds me of Dungeon Meshi's awesome reinvention of the classic fantasy Mimic monster.
Regenerador
This last 'common' enemy is actually met only in the final areas and final couple of chapters of the game, which makes me feel a bit odd talking about it before some of the earlier bosses, but hey. The Regeneradores (obviously, 'regenerator', and the game uses the English and Spanish name interchangeably) are perhaps one of the more 'complete'-feeling bioweapon alongside the Novistadores, and, well, what they can do is basically obvious by their name, yeah? They regenerate very quickly, and are noted to be able to do so because they implanted multiple parasites within a single body. As we play through RE4 we've seen the Las Plagas basically 'knit' and burst out of their hosts' heads and form the giant masses of flesh, and this is basically an extension of that, albeit instead of creating the flesh-tentacle head of the Plagas-infested Ganados, the Regenerador just, well, regenerates their limbs. The look of this one is... a bit boring as far as Resident Evil monsters go, but it's not a terrible design! An emaciated, white monster with massive fangs, it certainly feels genuinely different and alien when you play through the game considering most of the common enemies have been clothed members of the Los Illuminados cult.
Of course, it is still ultimately just a humanoid with a massive fanged grin. Or so I thought! I hyped up the Novistadores as being well done in really showcasing just how claustrophobic it is when they unleash the Regeneradores in the final dungeon, a classic ol' Resident Evil 1 creepy research facility. And hoo boy, for what's basically a spasming, twitching pale man, the Regeneradores are sure hyped up to be badass. The first couple of Regeneradores basically sneak up on you after pretending to be corpses on autopsy tables, and the way they move. Right before you fight your first Regenerador, you find notes detailing just what they are -- humanoid experimentations with multiple Plagas parasites within them, and the first couple of Regeneradores? You really have no idea what to do with them other than tossing everything at them and hoping it works. And man, between their spasming bodies, their slow gait, their chuckles... they're very lethal! Their surprise bursts of speed really caught me off-guard the first time I saw it, and their arms are stretchy ones that can pull you close. The animations really give an impression less of a humanoid possessed by internal parasites, but more like a bunch of parasites puppeteering a human-shaped body bag.
Later on, you discover an additional infrared scope that allows you to see the little Plagas parasites within the Regenerador's body, and that's the easiest way to kill them -- to snipe them off before they reach you. A very, very cool mechanic, and the fact that the game lets you stew and panic and waste your ammunition trying to figure out why headshots don't work and how this thing can regenerate from having a hole blown in his chest... pretty cool. It's not often than a design I personally find underwhelming get turned around in a whole 180 by simply seeing it move.
Iron Maiden
The Regeneradores come with their own 'upgraded' version (which appears pretty quickly after it), the Iron Maiden, which... is a Regenerador with extra spikes! They also lose their eyes, which is pretty neat, while the mouths (which are pulled into a grin as a Regenerador) now split upwards and cuts through the upper part of the head. Ultimately they're just the Regenerador with the ability to extend the spikes on their body -- through admittedly at a range that will surprise you the first time you see it. Mechanics-wise, they are significantly more durable and have five parasites within their body, one of which is almost always in the back. So in addition to being fast enough in sniping the four on the Iron Maiden's front, you also have to either sneak behind it or blow up one of the Maiden's legs to expose his back. Again, I emphasize that both Regenerador and Iron Maidens really only ever show up in cramped, tight corridors, making any fight against them extra-neurotic.
Still, a neat little addition nonetheless, which makes the Los Illluminados's research and attempt at weaponizing the Plaga feel just that much richer. Design-wise I still do find that the Regenerador and Iron Maiden to be a bit underwhelming, but, again, the little 'snipe the parasite' minigame and the animations they put into these guys make them feel so much neater.
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BOSSES:
Del Lago
Del Lago (Spanish for "From the Lake") is the first boss in the game, met very early on in the game. Hell, before you even meet your first Plaga-head monsters, even! I suppose it's the vogue for games at that era to start off with a big, impressive show-piece of a first boss, huh? Del Lago is a very, very cool set-piece, though. Look here for just how well they animated Del Lago's first appearance. Your character, Leon, is just driving a speedboat in a massive lake... and then the murk beneath the lake itself just moves and you realize the sheer size of this giant monster beneath you. That's just such a haunting image when Del Lago just slowly swims beneath the lake, and brings to mind a lot of ancient legends about great leviathan just waiting deep beneath great bodies of water. Krakens and Loch Nesses and Leviathans... and, well, Del Lago. Really love just how wretched and mottled this thing looks -- it's not strictly a 'zombie animal' the same way that Neptune or RE2's alligator were, but it visually does resemble it. Oh, and during the sequences where the Del Lago attempts to capsize Leon's boat you can see the massive Plaga tentacles writhing from within its throat. Nasty!
Best of all, despite being the size of a whale, Del Lago's body shape is unmistakably that of a humble salamander. The exact head-shape that a Chinese Giant Salamander has, in fact -- a creature that I've personally seen and interacted with several times. Can I just say how much I appreciate this, and how much more unique Del Lago feels compared to it just being yet another giant shark or whale or plesiosaur sea monster? Apparently the Del Lago did start off as the Los Illuminados's attempt to experiment with the Plaga parasite, and somehow within a salamander's body, it mutated it to the size of the whale. I'm... I'm not going to question it, it's cool Resident Evil logic and it gives me a pretty cool boss fight. Apparently, the Illuminados kept the Del Lago in, well, their lake, and used it as a way to dispose of corpses. The boss fight is pretty cool, too. Your boat is hooked to the Del Lago and you have to both navigate the boat to prevent it from capsizing while chucking javelins, Ahab-style, to the Del Lago. Ultimately it's an utterly simple boss fight, but the tension of fighting a building-sized creature and both the visuals and music and the sheer ridiculousness of a giant zombie salamander is so awesome.
El Gigante
El Gigante (Spanish for "The Giant") is the second boss you encounter, although unlike other bosses you fight him potentially three times in the game. But he's considered a boss while the Garrador isn't? Okay, then. El Gigante's design honestly is a bit boring, he's basically like a cave troll or ogre straight out of Lord of the Rings or Dungeons and Dragons or whatever. They're still a pretty decent in-game boss fight, especially when their back bursts open to reveal a gigantic centipede-shaped Plaga that Leon has to acrobat-kung-fu-climb the El Gigante's body to stab with his knife. The lore behind these guys is that they are the failed attempts at modifying the Plagas parasite, and the first El Gigante you see even goes around to crush and smash its fellow Ganados upon being unleashed. Kind of a yawner, if you ask me, especially compared to the far cooler-looking enemies in the game... but it's one that, I feel, helps to pad out the bestiary and gives us a bit of a more gradual 'climb' as we get to the far more complete mutations like the Novistadores, Regeneradores and Verdugos.
Father Bitores Mendez
This Rasputin-looking dude was once the local village elder and priest until he fell in line with the Los Illuminados. And for the first act of the game when Leon transverses the village, he basically serves as the starter villain and someone who hounds Leon in cutscenes and acts as this imposing, gigantic implacable man, sort-of filling the role of the Nemesis from the previous game, if Nemesis was dispatched in the first act of the story instead of being the main antagonist. He even has the badass trenchcoat! Mendez is the first real 'character' antagonist we encounter and fight, and the first real member of the Illuminados cult to show that not only is he still sentient and highly intelligent, he's capable of transforming into a mutant-Plaga form. In retrospect, it's also a neat hint that there are different sub-species of Plaga since Father Mendez is one that's combined with a Dominant Species Plaga.
When Leon finally confronts Mendez mano-a-mano in a slaughterhouse, his transformation is... very interesting. I actually vastly prefer these sort of 'hybrid' transformation compared to the flesh-globster bosses that the Resident Evil franchise love so much. There's just something extra-disturbing (and simultaneously funny) about Mendez still keeping his legs and jeans, as well as that iconic Rasputin-bearded face. The rest of his design is pretty cool -- a mass of giant spider-mantis-flesh-claws that jut out of his back, and, best of all, his torso and waist is connected by his 'spine' that also has centipede-esque legs replacing the transverse processes of the spine bones. During his fight, Leon ultimately severs the spine and blows his lower body off, but the upper body keeps fighting, using those giant mantis-arms to hoist himself up onto the rafters and leap around like a psychotic monkey. He's not my favourite boss in the franchise by any means, but a perfectly serviceable lesser antagonist.
Verdugo
Like Mendez, you meet the two Verdugos (Spanish for "Executioner") several times in the story before you fight them. And they are always silent, tall, imposing cloaked figures that stand next to the diminutive, Napoleonic man Ramon Salazar -- our next entry. And no one really mentions it, but throughout all the cutscenes you can see the glowing eyes, the insectoid mandibles, and the long, tapering claws jutting out of those robed sleeves. A very cool visual. Eventually Salazar gets sick that none of his lesser minions or traps can manage to kill Leon Kennedy, and he sics one of the Verdugo on you. I really do like the full design of this thing, even if its face does instantly remind me of Darth Vader's look at the end of Star Wars: Episode VI so there's an unintentional 'hee hee' factor from me.
And it's interesting, really. I tend to like my bug monsters to be more beastly, in the vein of the Drain Deimos or Novistador of the franchise, but god damn, cloaked or uncloaked, the Verdugo looks pretty damn cool, don't they? There's certainly a bit of Aliens inspiration in them, what with the sleek, glossy chitinous skin and the giant blade-tipped tail, but I feel like it's distinct enough as this gangly, armoured bug-man humanoid for it to not just scream 'you're fighting a Xenomorph with Darth Vader's face!' during the fight. I feel like Resident Evil tries its best to keep the "holy shit, that's so cool" designs to a minimum, but in this case I feel like the one cool design is pretty damn cool. Also, are the Novistadores the 'prototype' versions of these guys? Considering that they and the Verdugo are the only explicitly bug-based humanoid monsters, I kind of always thought that while playing the game, but apparently that's just me reading into the lines.
Again, this is another one where me playing through the game ends up giving me such a badass feel, because the place where you fight the Verdugo is so... claustrophobic. It's like this network of sewers and control rooms, very narrow spaces and completely not like the huge 'boss fight rooms' that you usually encounter enemies in. And it's an interesting fight where you don't even have to kill the Verdugo, you can just outrun and survive him for four minutes until the elevator arrives. The only way to really weaken him is to blow up the liquid nitrogen canisters located very sparsely throughout the area... something that you have to time correctly since there's a finite amount of canisters, and you need to get the Verdugo to follow you there without dying in the process. That's the only way to get the Verdugo vulnerable, and he shakes off the freezing quickly so there's also a short window of time for you to unload your most powerful weapons on him. Ultimately, a very, very cool design!
Ramon Salazar (a.k.a. Queen Plaga)
Otherwise known as 'our first big flesh-glob boss'. The final boss of the second (and longest) act of the story, the castle, which takes up chapter 3 and 4 of the main game's story, Ramon Salazar isn't actually the first antagonist character to show up. Mendez and Saddler show up much earlier than Salazar... but Salazar is just one of those utterly hammy villains that ends up stealing the show, showing up early in chapter 3 when you enter the castle. Introducing himself as the 'steward' of the castle and the latest in a family line of Salazars, Ramon Salazar keeps showing up being flanked by his two cloaked Verdugo, taunting Leon and sending his armies of endless cultists and trap rooms at Leon. At one point, he no-joke sends a gigantic robot statue of himself, because plague-infested cultists with goat-skull helmets, fire crossbows and rocket launchers aren't enough. He hijacks Leon's communications phone at one point and continues to taunt you, this little shitbag, and the voice actor really did a great job at making him feel like an irritating piece of shit without actually having him irritate the player. There is admittedly a fair bit of a backstory of how the Salazar family first encountered the Las Plagas parasite, how they excavated it and how Salazar became influenced by Osmund Saddler, but I'm not going to go into all that jazz. That picture of him being a little shit is enough to tell you what you need to know about him.
One thing I really liked? The Verdugo-based 'head' had these lower-jaw-esque bones that clearly wasn't part of any real jaw. And it's got a bunch of buggy mandibles underneath its 'upper jaw'. But turns out the way that it feeds? The entire head splits apart sideways in what's basically the one-shot kill attack of this boss.
One huge complaint that I definitely could have against Resident Evil 4 would definitely be them explaining or at least hinting that the Queen Plaga exists, because up until that point all we know from the scattered notes and villain monologues is that the Plaga were simply exhumed from a mine where the previous Salazar lord sealed them in, and they reproduced through 'eggs' and 'spores'. Sure, the presence of a Queen isn't too far-fetched, but I kinda wished we learned a bit more, y'know?
U-3 (a.k.a. "It")
Resident Evil 4 has been pretty stingy with its bosses, with each of the four-part chapters all ending in a single boss. Chapter 1 ended with Del Lago; chapter 2 with Father Mendez; chapter 3 and 4 ended with Ramon Salazar. But then the four missions in chapter 5 each had a single unique 'boss'. I kinda wished that maybe they had spread the bosses out a bit more, but I guess that's what the El Gigante, the Garrdor and the Novistador sequence were supposed to be. Instead, chapter 5 is a bit hectic, with 5-1 and 5-2 dealing mostly with the Regeneradores and Iron Maidens, while U-3 and the next boss Jack Krauser taking up 5-3.
Anyway, U-3 here is another one of Los Illuminados's bio-weapons, and... what am I looking at here? It's an interesting mixture of bizarre human, insect and flesh-tentacle anatomy (and apparently a little reptile in there too, I guess the legs?), and the end result is a two-headed centaur monster. There's a vaguely insectoid body-silhouette here with the four scuttling arms and the huge fat abdomen, but then the two heads bursting out of the 'torso' ends up making it truly look like some bio-engineered horror. The Las Plagas parasite (which has sprouted two gigantic stag beetle-esque pincers) still sort of burst out of the human's "back", like the El Gigante, but at this point the two separate upper bodies look so large that you're not even sure if the human is still the 'host'. Especially with how mutated the human's arm and face ends up being.
The fight against U-3 is a kind of interesting, where you first face him as this hideous centaur-man that hops around a mass of suspended crates like some sort of mutant cricket or frog, while Leon continually drops the crates into the abyss. It's a fun bit of cat-and-mouse, and, naturally, the Plagas erupts at some point in the fight. In a fun bit, Leon seems to dispatch the U-3 after several segments of hiding, driving it off, and avoiding him while he drops the crates into a chasm... only for U-3 to crawl back up like a cockroach and battle Leon properly in an island cave. In the final battle against U-3, the human side even 'dies' first, going limp while the Plagas side continues to rampage, essentially taking over as the dominant head. That is a completely unnecessary detail that the designers didn't have to put in, but the fact that they did makes it so much cooler, giving us this little mini-story of the Plagas parasite taking over from the human host. Very cool.
Ultimately the final design is honestly perhaps a bit too messy for my liking, but the 'centaur' aspect is done well and in motion, they actually manage to portray U-3 very, very well. The franchise in general does have a love for hideous 'chimera' style fusion monsters a la William Birkin or Queen Plaga Salazar above. U-3 just happens to be one of the unlucky ones who is so imperfect that it looks like a bunch of creatures grafted together. I respect it for what it is, and the boss fight against it was pretty fun.
Jack Krauser
Ehhhhhhh. Jack Krauser would admittedly get his backstory and role expanded in the later-released "The Darkside Chronicles", a what-Umbrella-is-doing-behind-the-scenes gameplay showing the actions of these villains on the other side of the curtain while we are controlling the good guys, but as far as Resident Evil 4's story is concerned Jack Krauser is a bit of an oddball that only gets brief cameos until randomly being super-relevant only in chapter 5-3. Sure, I get what he's here for, narratively -- he's the Umbrella mole, he's tied to Ada and Leon's story... it's just that they could integrate him into the story way better. And his boss fight is admittedly pretty fun -- you have to dodge this superhumanly fast and durable superhuman as he teleports and super-speeds around you as you try to collect a bunch of plot devices in the ruins of a castle. And he's got random Umbrella high-tech drones as minions at one point, which is one of the very rare times that we ever see mechanical enemies in this setting.
But... I dunno. His basic human design is a typical military man with a beret and a scar on his face. And when he gets mutated by the Dominant Plaga and gets some generic superhuman jumping and durability... all the design he gets is ultimately just a messy spiky blade-arm. And that sure is a cool blade arm -- it can also splay out and become a fan-like shield. And I find it cool, don't get me wrong, but that is it? No, really, that's it? This feels like the 'first form' of a fight. Not that I want every boss to turn into a giant flesh-blob (as noted before, I don't like it when the franchise does it too often) but... I dunno, something? Something like what Father Mendez turned into, or one of William Birkin or Nemesis's earlier forms? Maybe some extra Plagas tentacles or something? Something like one of the mutated humanoids in RE6? Not even a token fanged worm-tentacle head? I dunno, this is not terrible, and not exactly boring, but as the penultimate antagonist of the main campaign, his supposed final form feels so underwhelming compared to Salazar, Mendes and even U-3. Maybe if you fought Krauser earlier in the game the more subtle mutation would make sense, but as essentially one of the final bosses of the game? You even fight blade-arm Krauser twice if you count the Ada Wong mini-campaign, and they didn't even bother adding like an extra mutation or even attacks.
Osmund Saddler
His design is typical 'evil religious man' vibe, but check out that badass parasite staff with tentacles jutting in and out of it. Saddler soon reveals that despite seeming human, he has greater control of the Las Plagas parasite within him, able to create this gigantic flesh tentacle that he uses to stab poor Luis Sera around the halfway point of the game. We also see him basically being able to command any lesser Plagas with his staff, as well as basically absorb bullets shot into his chest and spitting it out from his fingers, a sequence so badass they copied it for one of the live-action movies.
Interestingly, Saddler technically has two boss fights in the game, but in the main Leon campaign you only fight his full, mutated form below. But acting as the 'final boss' of the Ada Wong campaign, she faces off against Saddler's 'human' form, although he does flash-step and super-speeds through the battlefield and attack Ada with these giant tentacle-arms. Not super-duper memorable compared to some of the other boss fights in the game, and more than a little reminiscent of the Jack Krauser fight, but they do give us some fun animations for human!Saddler, and in a neat little easter egg, if you try and use the machinegun on Saddler, just like the cutscene he'll turn his own fingers into what's basically a machinegun eject the bullets back at you.
Saddler of course became the final boss of the main campaign. Interestingly, Saddler's transformation is a whole lot more subdued and a lot smaller in scale compared to Birkin, Nemesis or even Salazar from earlier in this very game. I like that, actually. Maybe that's another reason why I liked Resident Evil 4 -- they still had a huge flesh-glob mutant, but they mixed the formula up to have it not be the final boss.
Saddler's transformation is a bit more clearer with the brighter colours of that more cartoony artwork from the Clan Master game, and you can more clearly see what's going on here. Interestingly it's basically a far, far more elaborate version of the head-replacing basic Plagas you fight so many times earlier in the game, where the Dominant Plagas in Saddler's body has grown into a full creature with giant crab/spider legs that suspend the once-human body mid-air. Even Saddler's legs have sort of withered away into little tapering pieces of flesh, while giant eyeballs, the flesh-scythes. Unlike most other Plagas, Saddler keeps his head... albeit widely stretched out, his mouth essentially serving as an eye socket to one of his parasite's many vulnerable points. A giant spider-crab-flesh beast holding a human body suspended is a pretty cool final boss. The fight itself is pretty intense if short. No real complaints here, it's memorable enough and suitable enough to the general vibe of the main story.
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...and that's it for Resident Evil 4! Can you already tell just how much I like this game? Because I do. I'm not someone who followed the franchise as it released title by title, and only knew about it by osmosis. But I jumped into the game at around the time of RE4 and RE5, and while I didn't complete RE4's entire story on my own until earlier this year, I do think that as fun as all the Raccoon City and Umbrella corporation storyline has been, the Las Plagas and Los Illuminados story is a very nice breath of fresh air that involves aspects both new and familiar. Honestly, it was kind of interesting where they were going to take the franchise in after this... after the zombie virus trilogy of the original three Resident Evil games (and like the ten different spinoffs and prequel games), was it time for a new trilogy of Las Plagas parasite storyline? Or are we going to get something new every Resident Evil game going forwards? Well, yes and no. RE4 was, as far as I can tell, universally praised for its story and game mechanics... but RE5 was a bit more divisive and RE6 even more so. We'll try to talk about the next couple of 'main numbered' games from here on out, but I have to note that my feelings towards the next couple of games are... well, they're a bit more divisive as well, and we'll see how much that extends to the monsters in the games.
Apparently RE 4 got a remake. Ever think of coming back to this to compare the differences like you did with RE 2?
ReplyDeleteWhenever I get to playing the RE4 remake, because I do plan on playing it! ...just probably not particularly soon, because I'm kinda stuck on the mammoth of a game that's Persona 5. But eventually!
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