Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition Review

Torn down to its bones, is Resident Evil 4 still a killer app?

You’ve played Resident Evil 4 right? Of course you have! Since its 2005 release it’s been ported so much that I’m pretty sure there’s only a handful of platforms you can’t play Resident Evil 4 on. It’s for this reason I find it hardly surprising that Leon’s critically acclaimed adventure has managed to strip itself down to the IPod Touch. Torn down to its bones, is Resident Evil 4 still a killer app?
 
Back when the game was fresh in our minds, it was such a revolution for both the franchise it takes after and the survival horror genre that even its ports have been able to remind us why Resident Evil 4 was such a remarkable game. Despite this, the Mobile Edition does not have this effect. It’s an otherwise impressive effort to shoehorn a triple-A console title into something that just doesn’t have the flexibility to handle a console title. Given how the original games play, they would have made far better candidates for the system, Resident Evil 4 throws itself in at the deep end and the results tend to flounder.

If you haven’t heard this story many times already, Resident Evil 4 plot wise is far simpler than its predecessors. Leon Kennedy is sent to a distant region of Spain to retrieve the US presidents daughter Ashley Graham, who it is believed has been stolen by terrorists. Upon his arrival, the townsfolk known as Ganados begin to attack Leon with uncontrollable rage as he begins to uncover more and more about a new infection the area.

Told through a series of slideshows that play at the beginning and end of each chapter, this Mobile version tends to cut out large parts of the story leaving out whole characters and boss battles for the sake of an even simpler tale.
 
The campaign is split up into 12 bite-size chapters which might come as a bit of a jarring disappointment in comparison to the console versions 12+ hours of gameplay (although some speed run enthusiasts would love to correct me on that estimation). Each chapter is made up of one location taken from the console version where you’ll face off against a wave of enemies, take out a boss or just get from A to B each taking just a few minutes to complete. As you’d expect, you’ll see some memorable areas and then some not so memorable ones plucked from the console version.

Of course when you’re done with the games campaign, you can have a go at the additional Mercenaries mode which is packed with 24 challenges to play through although if you know Mercenaries mode well enough already then this is just more of the same. It does offer some replay value if you’re a sucker for high scores but otherwise it’s just a bonus for those wanting to complete the campaign.