Without realizing it, I'm now able to say I'm really done with Resident Evil 4. Sort of - I've finished all the extra content from the PS2 release now, bought Ada a Chicago Typewriter (nice of them to give you more than enough funds to buy it on replaying the game without selling terribly much, not nice you never get a magnum or anything of note to put in those inventory slots...and still no weapon upgrades, unfortunately). It's even more fun now to pick off all the Ganados following Robo-Leon as he blindly goes through the village without realizing you've cleared a path for him. There's some good moments in it, but I'm not sure if the stage 4 ship (?!) was cut content or just sloppily hacked in. Half interesting, half "oh god I'm in a cube with a big thing shipwreck from the deep
SUBMECHANOPHOBIA omg stop hyperventilating...eh it's pretty nasty to look at.
Ada's "Leon is a near genius" report is just embarrassing, although it could have been worse. Again I don't can't fathom why these hacks kept fucking around with the storyline of RE4 for Separate Ways, like with Ada and "The Organization." Guess it could've been worse though. Oh, and whoever has been putting the maps together (the few bits of new stuff) was rather bad at pacing and placing items near dropoffs and making use of Ada's grappling hook mechanic - in the original game content there are essentially no areas where you feel like you've been cheated out of exploration by a sudden impassable barrier to backtracking; this game uses them frequently. The whole concept of showing "the stuff behind the scenes" is a farce; they get the timing wrong (Ada follows Leon and the chopper's rampage -> she gets there right behind Leon -> she fights some enemies in the next section before Leon and the chopper show up again for Mike's death scene...huh?) and it's always killing my suspension of disbelief that she can be firing loud, loud weapons nearby that Leon never hears. The grappling hook seems to be more a cruel joke than anything else; you generally only use it to pull yourself up ledges hiding treasure, and which you can jump straight down from, so they haven't done too much of interest with vertical gameplay, though I had some hopes early on. They are obviously pretty constricted with only having a handful of semi-new areas amongst all the reused ones. I was thinking it was kind of nice I didn't have to deal with Krauser, because he's a punk and I didn't want to mess with it. Well, I went and found him anyway, and after a couple deaths I knifed him to death with ease. Of course "the bitch in the red dress" decided to grapple away before I could collect all the goodies from the final area...not a big deal but it's the principle of the thing; whoever made this crap was completely clueless. Saddler the boss? LOL. I can't recognize those voice effects at all.
A while ago I replayed the regular campaign on Pro. It was pretty damn ugly - I don't know if they've increased the difficulty from the GameCube release or whether I've forgotten how difficult it was the first time around, but 77 deaths to 950 or so enemy kills. Ouch - and I used some reloading (restarting from a continue won't reset your death count) to wipe deaths a few times, and I got pretty used to restarting areas before dying. It was really strange though - when I started I was breezing through stuff and was starting to wonder if it was easier than the normal mode in some respects; Del Lago couldn't touch me (aside from being bumped off the boat one or two times, but if you're careful that shouldn't happen), never getting smashed by quicktime events (through the whole game I just missed a number of combat context cues), and killing some things that are thought of as difficult without trouble. I had quite a few deaths from just fucking around with mobs instead of gutting them quickly, and taking unnecessary damage. Some things were genuinely frustrating - the silly cage match against the Garrador and cultists caused a lot of trouble this time around, even though I breezed through it in Normal. I probably should have gotten in close at the start and kept firing away, but that's dangerous to try. Salazar? Couldn't touch me. Verdurgo? Could hit me a few times per playthrough but not enough to really be a menace. Ended up wasting a bunch of money (15000 ptas. net, although that is paid back from reaping the reward and using it to its fullest) rebuying the rocket launcher to go back and finish the job with a single shot. Saddler? Maybe a little harder than before, but nothing to really worry about.
The main thing that's changed on a replay is having a magnum fully upgraded.
I don't know what exactly would have been the best course of action, but they went pretty crazy with the Broken Butterfly's exclusive (50 damage a shot, first El Gigante: Two shots, dead. Giving the bolt-action rifle a 30 damage exclusive is okay because of how awkward it is to use that rifle; it's not a fast death-dealing machine like a pistol can be. The other new weapons - infinite rocket launcher, tommygun, handcannon - are you kidding me? These destroy any semblance of gameplay balance (the Typewriter's fast damage output can bog the game down when you've got four or five enemies dying at the same time, too).
Knife, now that's the shit. Just the first part of fighting Krauser was going to cause severe headaches, until I found out about knifing. Oh yeah! I used the same technique to take him out in Separate Ways too. Really cathartic to humiliate him like that. Of all the characters in RE he's the only one that ever really got to me, and he still does.
Haven't played Combatribes much but I've been on a Technos kick lately, especially their FC output. The first Double Dragon has aged pretty terribly, but later stuff like DD2 and the superdeformed Kunio games still bring a lot of joy to my heart. They tend to be a bit rough-feeling, but also utterly charming and laugh-out-loud brutal, especially with company. So much pain in those FC Double Dragon II sound effects...
Looks amazing! I think I need to pick up a Gamecube+GBA Player, and one of those SNES-pad likes for the GC, and go to town 
