If you go to any forum on any website pertaining in any way to video games, it is likely that somewhere, be it recently or deep in the forum archives, there is a topic asking the question "What is your favorite video game of all time?" Many times the topic will have been created at least 5 or 6 times in the past. Sometimes people mistake opinion for fact and title the topic "What is the best game of all time?" Sometimes these people compile pointless lists with the number of times each game was mentioned, as if it means something.. And you don't even have to open that thread to know what will be said. Someone will say Chrono Trigger, another will say Ocarina of Time. One time I said "Illusion of Gaia" but I later realized I was just basing that statement on the ending, where Will has just saved the Earth from the deadly impact of a comet, and he and Tara stand on the moon holding hands, just watching the lonely Earth off in the distance. Somebody else will say Final Fantasy VII and some total fanboy who owns all the Final Fantasy piano collection OSTs will jump in and say "You fucking n00b, FFVI is the best Final Fantasy ever."

Honestly it's kind of depressing.

If you're a gamer, than it's likely you've debated the "are games art?" question. Usually, the kind of gamers that hang out on internet forums and say FFVI is their favorite game of all time would argue "yes, games can be art." They'd probably write up some sort of explanation where they compare the game industry to the movie industry. Whereas people who don't play video games would say "those electronic murder simulations? I scoff at the concept of games as art." Sometimes these people who don't play video games are politicians, who try to stop games from inspiring murders and corrupting the good healthy Christian youth of America.

Movies were once in this same predicament. Movie studios were forced to adapt to strict film codes beginning in the 1930s to make sure movies existed as good wholesome family entertainment. It wouldn't be until the release of "Bonnie and Clyde" in the late 1960s that people would realize "You know, maybe extreme violence can actually mean something deep down." I learned all this from an incredibly hot girl at my workplace who's studying film. Actually I just overheard her telling it to somebody else, but I'm willing to accept that kind of third hand knowledge as fact to make a point.

See, games are not movies yet. Games do not have a long rich traditional of struggling to find their niche in American society. Hell, for the most part video games are largely a Japanese art form. And unlike movies, most games are not art. Most games are exactly what politicians see them as, mindless entertainment designed to take money away from young people. See, in those forum topics, the ones where people talk about their favorites games of all time.

Those are the few games that were truly art.

This is the paragraph where I take each of the games and briefly describe why they were art, but I'm sure you can fill in the blanks for yourself.

A month before I beat Resident Evil 4, I beat Metal Gear Solid 3. I sat back in my chair, watched the credits scroll, and realized "This... is my favorite game of all time." I went online, found a topic asking the question "What is your favorite video game of all time?" and wrote the one line answer "Metal Gear Solid 3." I looked at the screen for a few minutes and thought "Yeah... that feels right."

A month later I would do the exact same thing with Resident Evil 4.

But this time, I wasn't so sure.

As I sat there, looking at the screen, I realized something. Resident Evil 4, what I had just decided as my "favorite game of all time," was... almost shallow. Not gameplay wise, hell the gameplay was pure unbridled zombie killing glee. But the plot... I mean it wasn't bad, but it wasn't beautiful. It wasn't a field of flowers, or a painting of a field of flowers, or a video game with a special agent fighting his former mentor in a field of flowers, questioning the truths of patriotism and what it means to be a soldier as he fights with fire in his eyes.

It wasn't... art.

Or was it?

This was the question I spent two months pondering. I needed desperately to justify RE4 as my favorite game of all time, and I couldn't accept the fate that I had judged the game's worth more on it's hardcore action rather than some inherent beauty it hid inside of it. I'm the kind of person who on Dreamcast Remembrance Day (9/99) tells the waiter at the local overpriced diner that his favorite Dreamcast game was Shenmue. Shenmue is in all honesty a rather unremarkable game, but yet I will never forget it. There's this one scene where Ryo has just saved Nozomi from a bunch of thugs at the docks, and they hop on a motorcycle and drive away into the night, Nozomi clutching Ryo tightly. It made me feel something, and that something was beautiful.

Had I felt something like that with Resident Evil 4? Could I?

The owner of this site Gamingredients, Rahul Choudbury, once told me he "plays games for the plot." And I laughed, because, that's such an fanboyish thing to say. I can't overlook a terrible and plodding game just because the storyline is good. That isn't how games work. I mean, isn't the inherent nature of a game to be a game? A game can have the most beautiful and powerful plot line ever seen, but if that game isn't fun, then what is the point of it existing as a game? If you aren't here to make games go home. If you have a great plot but can't construct an entertaining game around it then stop what're you're doing and go find a new job. You are making "games." Games should be fun. If your games aren't fun go make motion pictures or techno music or whatever. Just get the hell out of my game industry.

Resident Evil 4 understands that games should be fun, and in response it provides the most exciting game I've ever played. Every area is exciting and new, every moment action-packed and suspenseful. And as I'm sure the politicians hate, it makes killing people fun. I don't think I've ever experienced so much joy in the act of killing something, whether it's shooting people's in the face with the shotgun, shooting them from long range in the face with a sniper rifle, or just continually shooting people in the face with a handgun. That isn't to say I don't switch it up though, I mean, sometimes I shoot somebody in the legs and then shoot them in the face as they try to get up. And sometimes I just kind of set everyone on fire with an incendiary grenade.

Yeah, it's awesome.

The thing is though, Resident Evil 4 gets the game part so right, that it almost seems like the plot suffers because of it. Like the people who scripted the game out said "Ok, first Leon is going to go to this village and kill all these dudes, then he's going to go to the forest and kill all these dudes, and then he's going to go the castle and kill all these dudes." And then at some point somebody interrupted and said "Wait a minute, isn't there supposed to be a plot or something?"

I like to imagine they stripped this man and threw him into traffic.

Did you ever see the movie "XXX"? I did, and it was terrible. Basically Vin Diesel is a special agent who does a variety of extreme things, such as snowboarding his way through machine gun fire, and blowing Frenchmen up with rocket launchers. Then he has sex with beautiful women, but they cut away to preserve the PG-13 rating. "XXX" represents everything wrong with entertainment today. Kids don't want deep moving experiences. They want action and in-your-face street style. They want baggy pants and Linkin Park. The day the movie "You Got Served" went to number one in the country I wept openly for the children of America. In January I wrote the following on my site, and I will put it here since I makes the point I want to make just fine and there's little point in me rewriting it now.

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The industry is dying and I'm the only one who can save it.

This above is something I remark often in all seriousness. Of course I refer to the game industry, which is coming closer and closer to losing all hope of innovation in the face of companies like EA and the sheep gamers who just want to play Halo and Final Fantasy. It's just idiots making the same game that was made before with prettier graphics.

Case in point, the new Prince of Persia game.

You know a game is bad when you have to enter your date of birth to see the website.

I don't mean "bad" in the sense that this is a shitty game. I'm sure the platforming elements are just as solid as the original, and I heard they improved the combat (which was great despite it's repetitiveness). But... the problem is its need to be "hardcore." See, the original Prince of Persia was perhaps one of the best games of 2003. It was a clever action platformer with probably the best platforming puzzles ever seen in it's genre. Wall running, wall jumping, pole swinging, it was just so fluid and awesome. But it didn't sell.

See, Prince of Persia was a great game, with a main character who was interesting and likable. The prince is arrogant, but funny, poking fun at his female companion and joking about her slowing him down. I laughed out loud after the Prince had one of many monologues, and then suddenly remarked "Why am I talking to myself?" But now the Prince has... well, nothing really. He's dark and "hardcore" because that's what sells. Ubisoft traded personality for a hard rock soundtrack and a lot of blood. And we can't blame them because hell, this new Prince of Persia sold a lot better than the last one.

I mean, I guess this is what people want.

I bring all this up because Halo 2 is the most generic mediocre game I have ever played. The school paper has a review, stating that it is "The most advanced influential FPS of all time." I know reviews like that are circulating in school papers across the country, written by kids who love the hype. That hurts a bit. Because I know that some of these kids will probably grow up to make games. Not just games, but movies and music and books and all that jazz. And it's all going to be the same generic bland trash. Because that's what's "cool."

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I exaggerated a little when I called Halo 2 " the most generic mediocre game I have ever played." The multiplayer is good fun, but other than that there's no reason this game should be anyone's favorite game. However, as much as I dislike Halo 2, I did like how when I unsubscribed from my free Xbox Live trial and the female CSR asked me why I was cancelling my service, I got to yell at this poor woman for a few minutes about how Halo 2 was ruining the game industry.

I'm kind of passionate about things like that.

Unfortunately, one of the things I made my main point. The idea that "You know a game is bad when you have to enter your date of birth to see the website." That holds true for the Resident Evil 4 website as well, and it kind of stopped me in my tracks. Was Resident Evil 4 really the same sort of game that POP: Warrior Within was? Another game made with the idea of cashing in on that "hardcore" scene that the kids love so much?

Was it?

I hate special editions of games, because as a collector I am unable to resist buying them. This is why things like Growlanser Generations sit on my shelf. Because they come with fancy watches, and medallion necklaces, and decks of lenticular playing cards I will never open for fear of ruining the collector's value. This is why I bought Gamestop's limited edition version of RE4, which comes with a lot of things I really don't need, things like a collector's tin, a mini-artbook, and a shitty 7-song soundtrack.

There's a point worth making about the soundtrack here.

See, the Silent Hill games come with soundtracks as well, soundtracks filled with beautiful music composed by genius composer Akira Yamaoka. If the game is Silent Hill 3, the soundtrack comes with the game. If the game is Silent Hill 4, the soundtrack is a limited edition preorder bonus that fucking Joey Stankowitz refuses to sell me no matter how much I beg. Resident Evil 4 comes with a soundtrack of shitty hardcore music from the two "extreme" Resident Evil movies. This music is played by bands with names like "Cradle of Filth" "Fear Factory" and "DevilDriver." This is the difference between the two. Looking at the soundtracks alone, we can see that the Silent Hill is something closer to art than that hardcore Resident Evil bullshit.

But honestly, that's on the surface. It's much more complex than that.

A line has really been drawn in the sand now that RE4 has reinvented the wheel that was survival horror. See, Resident Evil 4 aspires to be an action movie, it puts the action at the forefront and doesn't give you time to think about anything too deep. Whereas rival series Silent Hill has gone the route of throwing metaphorical nonsense at you, none of which you come away really understanding. Playing Resident Evil 4 is like watching Die Hard for the first time. You're excited, you want Bruce Willis to beat some people up so you can scream "Yeah! Kick his ass!" Playing Silent Hill is watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, when part of you is trying to make deep philosophical connections about how HAL represents the true nature of humanity, while the other part of you is saying "This movie is bullshit, it's just a lot of flashing colors and nonsense." But Resident Evil 4 says, maybe this survival horror thing isn't about trying to provoke questions. Maybe it can be about kicking a zombie in the face and getting excited about the act of doing so. Maybe it can be about action, and excitement, and fun.

Maybe a survival horror game can be about love?

I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Is Resident Evil 4 a step in any direction for video games? I think it's honestly too early to tell. As with just about anything, there are three labels we can apply to its impact - success, failure, and nothingness. I honestly don't know which one I would wish comes true.

Success - Resident Evil 4 is one of the greatest game ever made, and has brought a new step of evolution to the game industry by not only redefining the survival horror genre, but by introducing a new level of interactive storytelling that is largely unmatched.

Failure - Resident Evil 4 is a shallow game which fails to provoke any real intellectual thought. It is nothing but mindless action with a predictable plot and QTE sequences stolen from Shenmue.

Nothingness - Resident Evil 4 fails to impact the industry in any real way. It will be largely forgotten in the years to come, much as Ninja Gaiden already has been (That game sure got shafted when the GOTY awards rolled around, eh?).

If Resident Evil 4 is a success, then I think we're going to see a lot of copycat games with over the shoulder shooting perspectives and diablo-like inventory menus that hold a variety of guns. I don't think I can argue much with that, I'd like to see what a company like Konami or Namco could do with a system like that. If it's a failure then well, people will probably keep making first-person shooters and 80 hour RPGs no one really wants to play, but will anyway because they've convinced themselves they "like RPGs." And if RE4 is nothingness, then in ten years I like to think I'll be sitting on a stoop somewhere, drinking from a bottle of whiskey in a brown paper bag, and somebody will say "Man, remember Resident Evil 4? I wish they still made games like that."

I'll sit in quiet thought and say, "You know I once wrote a eight page feature about that game?"

"Yeah?" He'll inquire, pausing to look up at me.

"Yeah."

How many "groundbreaking" games have their been recently, really? Are we going to remember half of these games in the years to come? What makes RE4 any different?

Ada Wong is the sexy, beautiful Asian bombshell of Resident Evil 4. If I had to write the spoiler text for the back of the Resident Evil 4 box, I would likely include somewhere "Featuring the sexy, beautiful Asian bombshell Ada Wong." It's one of those generic descriptions that makes you wonder when people first began referring to beautiful women as "bombshells." But that's not the point.

See, in Resident Evil 4, Leon is sent in to rescue the president's daughter from the remote Spanish town she was reportedly seen in. This town is of course, filled with zombies. I don't get the revelation everyone was having over RE4 being the first RE game without zombies. Honestly, they're still zombies. Sure, they're faster and yell "penis" at you in Spanish, but they're still zombies. And yes, Umbrella is involved, despite what the opening cutscene would have you believe.

I told you this thing was full of spoilers, it's your own fault for reading this far, honestly.

Ada appears maybe halfway through the game, wearing a long red dress and looking much like Trinity from "The Matrix," and not just because of the slow motion bullet time action sequence that follows. Ada Wong was the feminine heroine of Leon's Resident Evil 2 storyline, who somehow fell in love with Leon after working with him to push a crate out of the way of a door. Later, as Ada holds desperately onto the recently destroyed walkway, she reveals her true nature as an Umbrella operative, tells Leon she loves him, and plunges to her death.

And Leon, well, he spends six years training to become the kind of man suited for singlehandedly shooting his way through a couple hundred crazy Spanish people. The kind of guy who when somebody shows his picture to the President of the United States of America and says "This is the guy we're sending in to save your daughter," the President says "I like his jacket." And the entire time Leon trains for this mission he knows will eventually come his way, he thinks of Ada. She is the enigma he cannot solve. She is love, she is hate. She is the one thing Leon will never truly understand.

This is it, this is the key.

At the end of the game, the president daughter Ashley asks Leon if he wants to put in some "overtime," which is a clever euphemism that allows Ashley to proposition Leon to have underage sex with her while still appearing innocent. But, Leon just smiles and turns her down. Ashley is disappointed, but she understands, but she wants to know.

Who is the woman in the red dress?

Leon tries to avoid the question, but he knows it's hard to avoid somebody when stranded in the middle of the ocean on a jetski. The truth is, Leon doesn't know who the woman in the red dress really is either. She is the one thing Leon will never truly understand. But, he puts it like this.

"She's like a part of me I can't let go. Let's leave it at that."

You know, sometimes I dig out my copy of Illusion of Gaia, boot up my save and beat the final boss in a few tries. Then I sit back watching Will and Tara holding hands on the moon, as the Earth shines alone in the darkness. Sometimes I dig out Shenmue and watch the cutscene with Ryo and Nozomi riding that motorcycle through the night, Nozomi holding Ryo tightly. And as I watch these things I think "I want to stand on the Moon and see the Earth shining alone in the darkness, I want to ride that motorcycle off into the endless night."

And now I think--

"I want to sit on a waterski in the middle of the ocean as an island filled with possessed Spanish villagers explodes behind me. And when the president's daughter propositions me I want to be able to tell her "Sorry, there's someone else."

"She's a part of me I can't let go."

Resident Evil 4 might not have the beautiful movie quality cutscenes of Metal Gear Solid 3, and it might not be Final Fantasy VII's inspiring tale of a group of renegades fighting to save the planet. It doesn't have the kind of open ended exploration that Ocarina of Time features, and it doesn't have FFVI's soundtrack.

What Resident Evil 4 does do is say maybe this survival horror thing isn't about trying to provoke questions. Maybe it can be about kicking a zombie in the face and getting excited about the act of doing so. Maybe it can be about action, and excitement, and fun. And deep down, if you look hard enough, you can find that maybe, just maybe--

Maybe a survival horror game can be about love?

A few minutes after writing this I went online, found a topic asking the question "What is your favorite video game of all time?" and wrote the one line answer "Resident Evil 4." I looked at the screen for a few minutes and thought

Yeah.

That feels right.