Independent Student Newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio

The Paisano

Independent Student Newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio

The Paisano

Independent Student Newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio

The Paisano

Classic ‘Resident Evil’ hits PC with significant changes

(arts) resident evil 4 (courtesy of capcom usa)

Photos Courtesy of Capcom USA

Capcom released the GameCube/PS2 classic, “Resident Evil 4” (RE4) for PC this weekend as “Resident Evil 4: Ultimate HD Edition.” The Ultimate HD Edition brings with it a wealth of improvements. The original game was released back in 2005 on the Nintendo GameCube and subsequently re-released on countless platforms in the following years.

If you haven’t played RE4 on one of the myriad of platforms it has been released on, you play as Leon S. Kennedy, an agent for the President of the United States. The game is set in a Spanish village with infected villagers constantly attacking in much smarter ways than any zombie would. Leon is on a mission to rescue the president’s daughter and runs into some old friends — and enemies — from the rest of the Resident Evil universe.

Revolutionary for its time, RE4 uses an over-the-shoulder third person camera angle that was a dramatic departure from the Resident Evil games that came before it. Instead of focusing on puzzles and atmosphere, RE4 puts a strong emphasis on guns and combat over scares, making this more of a survival title than horror.

This also isn’t the first time RE4 has been released on PC. Capcom released a poorly received, glitch-filled port of the game back in 2007 for Windows users. That version of RE4 on PC is widely regarded in the gaming community as one of the worst ports of all time, so it is best to avoid it and opt for this newer version. Since its original release in 2005, RE4 has been re-released twice now on PC and across seven different platforms: Zeebo, Apple’s iOS, GameCube, Wii, PS3, Xbox 360 and mobile.

The Ultimate HD Edition adds full 1920×1080 as a resolution option, but the visual changes don’t stop there as players can now run the game at 60 frames per second, a feature that is exclusive to this version of the game. In addition, the game supports full mouse and keyboard controls, achievements, cloud saves, leaderboards and controllers.

The game is relatively affordable, selling for $19.99 on Valve’s PC gaming service Steam. This release is digital only, like most PC games today, so don’t expect to walk into a store and purchase it.

If you’ve already played through the game there aren’t many reasons to go back and play it again other than the fact that it is an awesome action game. The visuals are better than they were on PS2 and GameCube back in 2005, but they have aged a lot in comparison to modern games. That said, you can never go wrong with a classic like this if you’re looking for a fun shooter to blow off some steam (no pun intended).

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