Monster In The House - A Look Back At Resident Evil 4's Regenerator
Most games aren’t exactly pacifistic: in some form or another many games see players fighting against or in conflict with some sort of adversarial force. As such, the quality of that adversary can sometimes make or break the game.
Capcom’s Resident Evil 4, originally released for the Nintendo GameCube in 2005, is commonly considered one of the finest experiences the medium has yet produced, cropping up constantly near the top of “best game of all time” lists the world over.
This entry in the venerable Resident Evil franchise shook the foundations of the survival horror genre it popularized by placing the player in the role of a character who was equipped with the skill and the ability to face the horrors bearing down on him. Leon S. Kennedy was (un)lucky enough to survive a zombie outbreak on his first day on the police force in Raccoon City and moved up the ranks thereafter to occupy his current position as bodyguard to the President of the United States.
Unfortunately for Leon, this means being shipped off to a remote Spanish village infested with abominations torn from a variety of influences, from “The Thing” to “Jacob’s Ladder”, in order to rescue the President’s daughter, Ashley.
More so than the game’s new over-the-shoulder camera perspective for lining up shots or Leon’s diverse arsenal of customizable weaponry, it is the monsters that make RE4 such an enduring classic. From chainsaw wielding maniacs and hatchet throwing villagers to a blind creature with Wolverine-style claws, each enemy players face is carefully designed to push them to the limits of their ability in distinct ways.
As brilliant as RE4’s bestiary is, however, there is one creature that has burrowed deeper into my mind than all the rest: the Regenerator.
The first thing that makes these creatures brilliant is their aesthetic. Muscled-yet-lanky, humanoid, naked husks that twitch erratically with split mouths lined with teeth and bodies covered with deadly blades, these monstrosities scream “bad touch” from the first time you lay eyes on them.
There is some solace in the fact that they are generally quite slow, plodding along the floor and easily enough spotted from a distance, giving you plenty of time to line up your shots if you can calm your nerves. The game’s brilliant sound design doesn’t help with the whole “staying calm” thing, however.
Often before you can ever see that you are in the same room with one of these things, you can hear it, and hearing is worse than anything. Their tormented, raspy, inconsistent breathing is unsettling on a deeply primal level, and it is mixed so that it always sounds as though it is coming from directly behind you. Even players with a decent surround sound setup can’t rely on their senses to pinpoint a Regenerator’s location: you can have every confidence that there is only one in the room and doubt will invariably take root in your mind because that haunting, invasive sound never goes away and never stops sounding like it is right. Behind. You!
The final nail in the coffin is that even the way that you have to kill these things is deeply unnerving. Simply shooting them with your vast array of weapons won’t do much. They’re called “regenerators” for a reason: you can decapitate them, removing their arms and legs until they are little more than a torso, but they can still kill you in that state by somehow leaping from the floor and tearing out Leon’s throat. Not to mention that they can grow their limbs back in short order.
In order to kill them you have to dull your senses even more. Not only can you not rely on your hearing when fighting them, but you have to limit your field of vision dramatically. A particularly potent parasite lives within their bodies and the only way to effectively dispatch them is to destroy the puppetmaster itself. A thermal scope mounted to Leon’s sniper rifle will do the trick, highlighting the parasite by its heat signature for you to destroy.
The scope has the unfortunate side effect of forcing you to be rooted to the spot without any sense of peripheral awareness which, when combined with that awful, rasping breathing, leads to panic just a little too quickly. And against an enemy this lethal, panic leads to a particularly gruesome death.
On the plus side? Killing them causes them to swell and then “pop” in a supremely disgusting and satisfying way. It almost makes it all worth it.
Almost.
