Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition Review

Tourist evil.

Version tested: iPhone

In a sense, you couldn't ask for a more faithful adaptation of a home console blockbuster to a mobile handset than Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition for iPhone and iPod Touch. Here's a game that somehow packs a fair approximation of its daddy's graphics, control system, enemies, locations, perspective, playing style, systems and story into a mere 37MB. It's even got a Mercenaries mode. It's unmistakably, faithfully Resident Evil 4, and Resident Evil 4 is a titan among action games. How could that be a bad thing?

It depends what you mean by faithfulness. A game like Metal Gear Solid Touch ludicrously reduces MGS4 down to a simple duck-shoot - but it does so with all the style, finesse and sense of drama you expect from Kojima Productions. That's a different kind of faithfulness, and I'd argue a better one, than that displayed by this port - which presses a magnificent game into your hand regardless of whether it's a good idea in the first place, and without the one thing that made the original truly great: attention to detail.

Although Resident Evil 4 is known as the game that finally liberated the hidebound survival-horror series from its painful control shackles and made it playable again, it was still restrictive and nit-picking in its way. It eked it out its fair share of tension from the fact you have to stop moving to aim your gun, and an hour or two of running time from inventory-management, treasure-hunting and shopping for weapons. The reason it worked so brilliantly is the same as the reason its predecessors worked - every minute of play, every cautious, echoing step, every lurch from the shadows, every camera angle and panicked set-piece was crafted to perfection, and paced better than most Hollywood thrillers.

'Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition' Screenshot 1

Proof: Resident Evil 4 is racist against gigantism sufferers.

It's that element the Mobile Edition entirely lacks, and without it, you're left with a clumsy and irritating shooting game made slightly more clumsy and irritating by being put somewhere it's not supposed to be.

Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition consists of 12 stages. interspersed with barely comprehensible bursts of telegraphed plot. Each stage is a recognisable and atmospherically drawn location from the original, but in microcosm: a tiny, open-plan chunk of real estate with nowhere to go, a snow-globe souvenir of real Resident Evil. A reduction in scale is fair enough, but it's the reductive design of these stages that really disappoints.

You could fully explore each one, including awkwardly and laboriously hacking at item boxes with your knife and shooting down glinting treasure items, in under a minute. So they're spun out with carelessly placed, frustratingly random and seemingly endless respawning waves of Ganados zombies who seem to be able to materialise anywhere around you. Conditions for progress vary; sometimes you need to find a key, defeat a boss or simply outlast the shuffling, hatchet-throwing menace until the game decides it's time to move on.

The lack of craft or indeed, much thought at all in the way the enemies attack you and direction from which they do so turns what ought to be a compact Resident Evil Lite into a formless and sometimes farcical melee. The best tactic is often to run around the stage in circles, brushing straight past flailing Ganados until you can find a relatively safe, spawn-free spot to shoot from. It doesn't feel anything like Resident Evil at all.

That's all the more striking when you consider the almost exact transposition of the controls. Hero Leon is manipulated with a virtual, analogue thumbstick in the bottom left, with buttons on the right switching between movement, aiming his gun with the familiar red laser sight and tight over-the-shoulder view, and using his knife. Contextual buttons also appear for picking up and using objects, kicking vulnerable enemies and so on. It's an efficient system, and the virtual stick works well enough for movement, although its sensitivity can be bizarrely and frustratingly unpredictable - and tracking painfully slow - when aiming.

Although the end result isn't too far removed from the console experience - and it certainly wouldn't be a Resident Evil game without a slow, deliberate, heart-in-mouth aiming system - Mobile Edition's combat edges over the boundary into the cheerless territory of "no fun". The wavering fudginess to taking aim and lack of feedback take most of the blame for that. It's not as if these are inherent flaws of touch-screen control, but past iPhone releases (including the aforementioned MGS Touch) have proven that using the whole screen as a track-pad provides more accuracy and tactile satisfaction, and good sound helps too. Apple's device is certainly capable of far better audio than the handful of weedy, coarsely compressed samples gracing this game.

Graphical fidelity is much better, and the 3D engine is smooth and capable by iPhone standards, with good draw distance. But the - admittedly remarkable - efforts made to transpose the original game assets onto the iPhone are misguided. Limited animation lets the models down, and limited resolution and texture definition mean that the original's moody look quickly becomes just muddy, with far-off enemies hard to make out in the overall murky wash of brown and grey.

'Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition' Screenshot 2

And peasants from the 1930s.

There's only one difficulty setting, and it's a tough game, for some fair reasons and some unfair ones. The supply of ammo and health in each stage is meagre, and you'll need to spend money on these and upgrades between stages - with that gloriously overplayed Cockney weapons-dealer, a warmly-welcome old friend - to make consistent progress. You won't have much money, though, which is where Mercenaries mode comes in.

In Mobile Edition, the score-attack Mercs stages unlock one-for-one with the story stages as you progress. They re-use exactly the same maps and, as you'd expect, are a simple rush to kill as many enemies as possible within the time limit, with your score converting to cash at the end. They're an easy and useful way to earn currency, and arguably a more enjoyable way to play game in any case, although they go too far in turning the difficulty tables. Early Mercs maps in particular have you running in the same circles as the main game, only this time you're desperately hunting for a new spawn to kill, rather than racing to avoid them.

It would be tempting to say that Mercenaries mode saves Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition, but all it really does is make it slightly less annoying. It's possible to have much more fun for much less money than its £4.99 price tag on the App Store. Capcom has made all the classic mistakes of the mobile port: over-developed technology, under-developed content, and an all-too-literal approach to the licence that doesn't tailor the design to the device. Yes, it's faithful - but it's blind faith.

4 / 10

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Comments (26) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • lambtron #1 3 years ago

    Wow I must have missed that MrED209, I've heard some crazy criteria for a game being good before but never how much it cost :D.

    In that case Modern Warfare 2 really IS going to be the greatest game ever ;).
  • the_dudefather #2 3 years ago

    Ideal iphone games are super simple and can be played for 1 minute

    The air traffic control game is the system's benchmark for awesome simple games
  • Pac-man-ate-my-wife #3 3 years ago

    Can EG review some good iPhone games now please!

    ;)
  • GiarcYekrub #4 3 years ago

    Why not release a XBLA version?
    Edited by 1 at 31/07/09 @ 11:39
  • kangarootoo #5 3 years ago

    Thought as much. The controls always looked distincyly suspicious.
  • JohnnyWashnGo #6 3 years ago

    Another poorly realised console conversion shoehorned onto a platform that is not appropriate for the type of game it is.

    Also, we need superimposed fingers/thumbs on the screen shots to get a true feel for how much of the display you actually see when playing the game.
  • therev #7 3 years ago

    I can appreciate the flaws in the game, but I've been having huge amounts of fun with it, mainly in the Mercenaries levels. I find the game appropriately tense and exciting and find myself letting lose with the swears and yelps as the time counts down to safety and the horde advances. I've not played through the whole thing yet - I've finished four story levels and played the five Mercenaries levels I've unlocked many times over - but after a shaky start, I've really been enjoying myself. Level five of Mercenaries, Sniper's Hand, is especially good, starting as what seems like an easy killfest and gradually becoming more and more tense until outright panic sets in as the final few seconds until rescue tick away.
  • HolyJebus #8 3 years ago

    Isn't this a conversion of a mobile phone game? Old school mobiles, not fancy pancy iPhone mobile.
  • skillian #9 3 years ago

    the virtual stick works well enough for movement, although its sensitivity can be bizarrely and frustratingly unpredictable

    Erm - doesn't sound like it works "well enough" :/
  • DFawkes #10 3 years ago

    I bought this on release (in fact it's one of the reasons I bought my iPod Touch). I'd certainly not say it's worth buying an iPhone/iPod for, but it's harmless enough. The controls are a bitch to get used to though, and to be honest I'm absolutely awful at it. I'd say that's a fair review.

    I enjoyed Res Evil: Degeneration a lot more - it felt more like it was made for portable formats. Which it was, so that'll explain it :)
  • Vroom #11 3 years ago

    Why not review some good iPhone games.

    Why not review Real Racing?
  • spookyzombie #12 3 years ago

    Degeneration hurt my fingers after five or more minutes of play. I'll unfortunately have to give this a miss.
  • NOSAVIOUR #13 3 years ago

    and who said the iphone was more powerful then the Wii...?!
  • mingster #14 3 years ago

    I was the 'weirdo' that suggested you shouldnt review a 59p game.

    I stick by this assumption as the whole point of pricing something at 59p puts it in the impulse buy category.

    Therefore 100's and thousands of people will just click on it and buy it with no forethought in the same way you pick up a copy of the times or a can of coke.

    you don't need to read a review of a game that costs 59p you just buy it and decide for yourself with no regrets if it was crap as it cost nothing.

    You don't ask for your money back if you didn't like the new 'cajun squirrel' walkers crisps you didn't ask araound getting peer reviews of their flavour first before deciding whether to 'drop' 59p on a packet you just buy it and think .. hmmm ok or rubbish.
    It doesn't need a review thats the point.

    This games is £4.99 its a totally different price point and is not in 'impulse buy' territory therefore a review is valid

    OK im editing this to point out it was a waste reviewing a 'rubbish' 59p game.
    I can see where it would be beneficial reviewing an actual good game so you don't miss it.
    But ther are thousands of rubbish games on app store so you really don't need to know about those only the good ones.
    Edited by 1 at 31/07/09 @ 12:47
  • HolyJebus #15 3 years ago

    Mingster, reviews aren't always just to see if something is worth its value for money. Sometimes reviews are great for informing the public of a great game. If no one reviews the games that are 59p then how are we supposed to know which ones to get. We can't just go out and buy all the 59p games. Its not a matter of price.
  • axman303 #16 3 years ago

    @mingster That argument doesn't make any sense as a very large chunk of iPhone games are priced at 59p. Purchasing every 59p game on the iPhone without first reading a review you can trust to help guide you, would be prohibitively expensive.

    The most important aspect of a video game review site is drawing our attention to the best quality games available for a particular platform. If those games happen to cost 59p, then surely they should be given a review?

  • skillian #17 3 years ago

    Mingster, reviews aren't always just to see if something is worth its value for money. Sometimes reviews are great for informing the public of a great game.

    And sometimes they're just for entertainment. I don't have an iPhone, and I'm not likely to buy one, but I still read the review because I usually enjoy the writing on EG and I like to keep up with what's going on in gaming.
  • mingster #18 3 years ago

    Yes holy jebus i agree but they wern't informing you of a great game for 59p it was a rubbish one.

    I would be happy to have a 10/10 game that costs nothing promoted to the hills to stop it sinking into obscurity amongst a sea of dross.

    The only benefit of the review was that it was something to read therefore the writers time could have been spent more constructively reviewing something better.
  • mezzomorto #19 3 years ago

    As someone rightly pointed out in the original trail that "59p" comment was made in, there are also other reasons EG would dedicate two virtual pages to a review aside from whether the title is actually top qulaity or not, namely if it's one of the first games from a new iPhone-specifc dev team owned by a big industry name (EA).
  • HolyJebus #20 3 years ago

    But mingster, when they are deciding on what game to review, they don't know at that time if the game is going to be great or not. There's no point in going to all the effort of reviewing it but if it turns out crap, then dumping the review. That's my opinion anyway, I get the feeling you're not going to change your mind on this one :)
  • Zebula77 #21 3 years ago

    Hell, I think the Resi series went downwards when they 'fixed' the old survival horror controls. Resi 4 was a good game when it came out, but I think Resi 5 showed that the new control system got old. Fast.

    Bring back the old fixed camera gameplay - love that stuff (and am currently playing Resi 1 director's cut on my PSP. Joy!
  • Nithron #22 3 years ago

    Could you review Resi Evil: Degeneration please?

    It's the same engine, but with normal zombies rather than Spaniards, and y'know, it might be better.

    Edit: Good job reviewing iphone games at all, keep up the good work.
    Edited by 1 at 31/07/09 @ 15:34
  • lcmnick #23 3 years ago

    Hope the PSP version is better.
  • septimus #24 3 years ago

    Bad bad port from an originally bad port.

    Could do better Capcom.
  • dominalien #25 3 years ago

    It's just not the same.
  • IneptPercy #26 3 years ago

    Since they have come this far, might as well finish with a PS1 port.