Resident Evil 4-- late to a masterpiece

I never played Resident Evil 4.

I can blame the timing. It came out for GameCube when I was young-- too young to appreciate a horror game.

But that's not an excuse. I owned it again when I got older on PS2 and was always too much of a coward to get beyond the village sequence.

That all changed this month when I bought the PS4 remaster, bucked up and got all the way through.

And, my Lord, what I was missing.

There were several times throughout my 15 hours spent with RE4 that I was almost completely out of ammo, panicking at the sight of an approaching mass of horrifying cultists and wishing I could disappear.

What a great feeling.

I played Shinji Mikami's The Evil Within on Xbox One late last year and loved it. A cool head and swift trigger finger had me vanquishing horrifying aberrations, but RE4 just has a totally different feel.

Mechanically, obviously, RE4 feels less modern game than TEW. The controls in the former take far longer to master than the more modernized TEW.

But even beyond mechanics, RE4 just has a really unique feel. From the familiar call of the mysterious merchant asking what you're buying or selling, to the so-suave-it-hurts-to-fathom one-liners from Leon Kennedy, there's just something unique about the classic third person action, survival horror, label it what you will because it's art, effort from Capcom and Mikami.

By now, the Internet is full of reviews for RE4.

I won't be long-winded. It's a great game, but you already knew that.

So much about RE4's success lies in the fact that it's just a master-class in game design. It doesn't get much better than RE4 and, as far as I'm concerned, is required gaming for anyone in the lifestyle today.

If you're like me and somehow missed RE4 through its initial release or any of its seemingly dozens of re-releases, now is the time to put down the binoculars and face the horrors within.

Trust me, it's gold.