Resident Evil 4 (2005)’s ‘bad’ controls were, and are, great

destructoid.com:

There’s a prevailing modern philosophy in action game design that says that the controller should “disappear.” You should feel like you’re doing something when you press a button and the character on the screen responds. You should map “looking around” and “walking” to two different sticks because we look around and walk at the same time. You should put “shoot” on a trigger because it feels a bit like pulling the trigger on a gun. You should not have your character stop in place every time they ready their gun, because holding a gun does not incapacitate the legs.

And yet, Resident Evil 4, among the most celebrated action games ever made, breaks every one of these rules. It constantly emphasizes the break between the player and the character. The presence of the controller is always felt. The movement is bizarre and unnatural. In recent years, it’s been subject to some criticism (IGN’s review of the remake says the original game’s star “struggles to get around as though he’s wearing an old pair of skinny jeans that haven’t fit him since his police academy days”). When the remake demo was released, I heard no shortage of praise for the new, more traditional dual-stick controls, usually accompanied by the phrase “they fixed the controls” or something similar.

But here’s the thing: Resident Evil 4‘s controls were already perfect.

The first three Resident Evil games are often celebrated (and sometimes derided) for their bizarre control schemes. These are games about rookie cops and civilians tossed into the deep end of a zombie apocalypse. They’re not sprinting through action sequences, they’re scrambling when they reach for their guns. Of course they move as though they’re being controlled by someone who can’t see the end