Sounds like you have some aversion to the plot/writing in 4 but liked the story in 1-3?
Also, elaborate on the "miss" portions of level design and why the merchant/economy is bad. And wtf at claiming Pro being easier than Normal.
The game is far too long to do an entire dissemination on the level design here and now. Perhaps sometime, when I have time off, I'll do it. It would certainly generate some worthy discussion.
The merchant is a bad element for a handful of reasons. My biggest peeve with him, however, is that his presence is not explained and comes across as shoe-horned in to merely accommodate the upgrade system. This guy walks all around the enemy grounds supplying their primary foe with support, and sometimes within close proximity to the enemy themselves, yet nothing is made of it. Just lazy.
Hate on Resident Evil 5 all you want, but at least it's upgrade system ditched this pointless character and relegated all activity to between chapter breaks. Nonsensical as well, but doesn't come across as nebulous in practice.
Pro mode
is easier than normal. What? It's certainly not difficult.
Oh my God in the other thread you said that the chainsaw characters were always encountered at long range and that the game didn't push the GameCube, and imply that the game looked bad outside of Leon's model. You even threw in a "heh" at that idea.
I would hate to live in this horrifying phantom dimension where your alternate version of RE4 exists.
Believe me. I would dearly love to live in this awesome phantom dimension where the game is everything it's claimed to be.
Lack of scares, focus on shooting, QTEs, escorting, and etc. being bad is 100% subjective. What if I found more scares, like the focus on shooting, liked the QTEs, liked how it has little connection to the previous stories, and enjoyed the escorting?
I'd wonder about you if the game scared you in any way. It's literally Shooter McGunsmack starring Leon. There is way too much action and you're way too powerful for it to present any kind of situation where you could be scared, at least in a traditional sense.
Liking the shooting? That's cool. I actually like the shooting in the game, too. I just don't think that's what Resident Evil should ever have been about.
I can't imagine liking the QTEs. They are among gaming's worst. Little variety in button usage, none of which correlates to the action being taken. God of War does it better in just about every way, and God of War has pretty bad QTEs, too. But hey, I like pixelated sprites, so I guess we all have our weird little quirks.
If you liked how it had little connection to the rest of the series, then it stands to reason that you really only like Resident Evil 4 for what it is, not because it "breathed new life into the series" or whatever other Camelshit people spew. And if so, that's cool. Really. But I am a huge fan of Resident Evil. So imagine my disappointment when the newest installment of one of my favorite franchises just takes a big steamy dump on it's history, and then adds insult to injury by turning it into a half-baked shooter. Is it even possible for anyone to see my point of view?
Enjoying the escorting? Eh. Most people hate that shit. But again, it may be one of your quirks. I'd think that for escorting to be enjoyable, I'd have to have a greater control over my instructional capabilities, and a better AI in place for the unit being escorted. Ashley doesn't have any damned AI except for ducking when I aim at her, which I did praise.