A perfect game

Not being a fan of the previous resident evil entries, I was a bit dubious about buying this game until the extremely high ratings from Gamespot came out...and then it went on to win game of the year...a pretty high honor in a year of outstanding titles. I never liked the resident evil series because of the lack of strafing, that is, side-stepping. Coming from a background in CS and other FPS games and 3rd person shooters, I was always used to side-stepping and the lack of this feature always hindered my ability in the Resident Evil franchise. However, I went ahead and bought the game along with God of War (which was also in contention for game of the year.) I popped in RE and played for about 20 minutes and noticed there was still no side-stepping feature and was quickly killed while trying to slowly turn and shoot the "zombies." I gave up and put in GOW and was immediately blown away by the incredible graphics and dynamic gameplay. I literally missed work for two days as I battled my way through the entire game. I slept little. After beating GOW, I popped in RE4 just to give it one more opportunity to impress me. The more I played, the more comfortable I became with the control system. Then I became engrossed in the fantastic storyline. I thought there was no way any game was going to impress me more on the PS2 this year than GOW, but man was I wrong. RE4 won game of the year for a reason...it is an amazing game. I played the entire game through in about 30 hours. As soon as i finished it, i reloaded and played it a second time all the way through in about half the time. Plus you get to play some very difficult side missions once you complete the game. The control system takes a bit to get used to, but is not unwieldily. I thoroughly enjoyed the game and would recommend it highly to anyone...even if your not a RE fan. Trust me...you will be impressed. The monsters are original and scary as hell, the gameplay is hectic, and the action intense. You will not want to stop playing once you get into it.