I finally picked up RE4 for the Gamecube last week. I was trying to get it from the Future Shop for the longest time, but they don't carry it, apparently. Then I was trying to get it from Amazon.ca, but it was always sold out, although the PS2 version always seemed available. I finally tracked it down at Best Buy, for a decent price too, $34.99.

The game's interface was a bit frustrating at first, the way you have to go into "aiming mode" before you can fire your weapon is a pain in the ass sometimes. No, all the time actually. Like when you're firing at a big monster and he get's too close, so you try to get out of aiming mode so you can run away, but it takes so long that he stomps on you before you can change back into "running away" mode. Bah! And there's no strafing in this game, you always have to move forwards or backwards before you can turn. Sidestepping would be so much easier. Your character moves awefully slow, too, even in running mode.

Otherwise, this is a pretty excellent game. The graphics are the nicest I've seen on the GC, the story is developing nicely [I'm on chapter 2-3?, I think] and it's tons of fun blowing away the zombies. There's a decent selection of weapons that have various upgrades to keep it interesting, and even some puzzle sections to break away from the 'killing zombies' gameplay all the time. I'm not crazy about the way the game flashes button combos on the screen once in awhile when something unusual happens. Like when this boulder comes rolling towards you, you're suddely supposed to press "A" to run away, then "A+B" and then "R+L" to duck out of it's way. It doesn't really add anything to the game and the skills you learned up to this point are useless, you just have to keep replaying the scene over and over again till you get it right. Kinda stupid.