As I said before, I have decided to use my time while I'm down here in Wichita to try to make another run through Resident Evil 4 with the special costumes and the ability to purchase all of the weapon upgrades and special weapons that you just couldn't possibly get with just one runthrough, even if you did find all of the treasures hidden throughout the game.
As such, I have found the game to be incredibly rewarding so far, and I'm even trying to set my own speed record this time through. Now that I know where all of the big battles and tough parts of the game are located, I don't need to save, nor do I feel the need to save as much as I did last time through, and I've also managed to keep my death count at a healthy "0" so far, which I'm hoping will indeed stay that way throughout this playthrough.
I've also determined that you could manage to play through the game in much less than 20 hours on a second playthrough. I'm right around 4 hours into the game right now, and I checked some of my old saves, and found that it took me nearly 9 just to get to this point my first time through the game. So I'm obviously hoping that I can manage to break 15 hours this time around. Not only that, but the special costumes that you can use the 2nd time through are a riot, with Leon having his costume from RE2, and Ashley wearing something that you'd expect to see on Brittany Spears (which is not a bad thing at all).
I guess so far I've just had a ton of fun playing through RE4 again just because I got to keep all of my upgraded weapons and all of my healing items and ammo from my first playthrough, so getting through the village was a breeze, especially considering that one shotgun blast from the striker will take down approximately 5 villagers at a time, and one shot from my upgraded Killer 7 magnum is enough to take out one of the early bosses in the game. So like I said, Resident Evil 4 has replay value, and it's great going through the game again just so you can lay waste to all of those bad guys that gave you problems early on in the game.
-Jack
