Hello, Umbrella. How've Ya Been?

After a not-so-brief hiatus, I have dived headlong back into Resident Evil 4. Well, if by "dived headlong" you mean "played through one more chapter". But oh jesus christ lord mamma, WHAT a chapter!

It started with me having to kill a few more Arghs and ganados, thus wasting much of the little ammo I had left. Following that, I reached the infamous "wrecking ball" segment. A few friends had warned me about this segment, claiming that it was one of the hardest parts of the game. I must say, I don't see what all the hoop-dee-doo was all about. Basically, I had to fend off enemies for like half a minute while Ashley smashed a hole in a wall, and then run through that hole. It really wasn't that big a deal; I did it in one try without wasting too much ammo or getting injured, and the worst thing that happened was that Ashley got hit and required a herb. No biggie.

What came next was, in my opinion, much harder. I had to ride on the back of a truck and fend off ganados that ran at me as Ashley drove through a series of tunnels. I died several times attempting this, mainly because I kept running out of ammo after the first couple of ganado swarms. Finally, I utilized a balanced mix of grenades and gunplay to get through this part. Unfortunately, this pretty much completely depleted my grenade supply, so now I have no grenades AND no bullets for any of my guns. The most frustrating part was that as the truck barreled away from the ganados I'd just blown to shit, I could see all the little red ammo indicators popping up as their bodies disintegrated. I even tried to jump off the truck a couple times, hoping to grab some of that sweet sweet ammunition, but the game wouldn't let me. So close, and yet so far.

And thus ended Chapter 5-2. I played through a bit of 5-3, but I got to a point where I was running around on cargo containers, trying to open doors while being hounded by the horrific "IT". I got killed a couple of times trying to do this, and then gave up. I think I have a decent strategy for when I tackle the segment again though: I will just run by IT and avoid his attacks, rather than wasting magnum ammo trying to kill his ass. I'm sure that once I get past this annoying door puzzle nonsense, I'll have to battle him for reals anyway, so I'll save my precious magnum bullets for that. I know I keep saying this, but oh god I hope there's a bunch of ammo lying around somewhere soon!!

At one point in the midst of all this, I had a fairly awesome encounter with Krauser. He was all like "Umbrella, Umbrella, Wesker, Umbrella, Umbrelladee-doo... oh wait, did I say Umbrella? I have said too much, comrade. (knife knife knife)". I must say that after all this crazy Salazar/Saddler/ganado/gigante/plagas stuff, it's pretty satisfying for elements like Umbrella and Albert Wesker FINALLY come up in this game. Don't get me wrong - I love the game, but as a big Resident Evil fan, it does seem very disconnected from the rest of the series. It's nice to see some connections, even if they turn out to be loose or superficial (which I'm thinking they probably will). This game is a masterpiece, no question, but their decision to change up both the storyline AND the gameplay style really makes it feel like something completely different. Different is good, but in the world of video games, part of the satisfation of playing a new game in a franchise is that sense of familiarity mixed in with all the new stuff. I hope they take this into account when creating the next Resident Evil game.

See you next time, when I will hopefully boast of toppling the mighty IT.