The design structure almost always foreshadows where you’re heading. Big set-pieces such as the village and the canyon are designed to feel open through their vertical structure – you can often go along the ground, or head up on to rooftops, you can pick off enemies from a distance, use explosives or stealth. The map is essentially linear, so you don’t have to make constant navigation decisions, but it doesn’t look linear, so there are often splitting paths and extra rooms to look in, which means you’re having to constantly engage with the space. The game achieves this phenomenon in several ways – and this applies to the original version, too. Reviewing the remake earlier this week, I sat down at 7pm to play for an hour, when I looked at my watch again it was 1am.
Resident Evil 4 isn’t an easy game, yet when I first played it I would lose huge chunks of time to it. Tetris is the perfect example, a game so tuned to the concept of flow that fans would see the shapes falling when they shut their eyes – a phenomenon later termed the Tetris Effect. If you play games regularly, you may have felt it yourself – a period of time in which you achieve complete immersion, where your actions are utterly intuitive, and where everything feels seamless. The activity, he noted, didn’t have to be mindless or repetitive – the flow state is about achieving a heightened level of skill and focus and, through the mastery of these elements, experiencing relaxation and happiness. For many years, game designers have sought to give players the experience of flow, as defined by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who referred to it as becoming so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. I reviewed the game 15 years ago, and I can say with confidence that what made Capcom’s horror sequel so special then still works in its favour years later, in our era of vast open-world adventures. Expectations for the full release are high. Fans are already discovering hidden modes and weapons and even modding it. The response has been ecstatic, both from newcomers and veterans of the original 2005 version.
I am of course referring to the Resident Evil 4 remake, a 20-minute slice of which was made available for free on PlayStation, Xbox and PC last Thursday. You know a game is important when even the release of a short playable demo is the most exciting, talked about event of the week.
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