Dominant Strategy - Resident Evil 4 (Wii)

            Once the player has passed the game the first time, they can go through it again and retain all of their items, weapons and Pesata (money) from their previous game. In addition to all of that, new weapons are unlocked, including an Infinite Rocket Launcher and a Chicago Typewriter, which is a fairly strong machine gun with infinite ammo.

            Either of these could be used as a dominant strategy as they work for any situation and both have infinite ammo. The Launcher is a little more difficult to utilize just because it has crosshairs and there is a small delay while the player aims it. It is a little like a rifle with the way it has to be aimed and isn’t great in close quarters, but it would still work. The Chicago Typewriter can be used in any situation and close quarters won’t matter.

            Both weapons described above are special weapons that have to be bought and cost quite a bit. There are two other weapons that can be acquired and upgraded towards the end of the player’s first run through. These two weapons are the Red9, which is a high-powered handgun and the Striker, which is a high-powered, high-capacity shotgun that, on top of everything else it has going for it, doesn’t take up a lot of space in the attaché case. Either one of these would work well as a dominant strategy in a second run through of this game. Also, though these guns do not have infinite ammo, it really isn’t much of a problem because they are more powerful and don’t require as many shots to incapacitate the player’s enemies and the player retains any ammo they had and can pick up any additional ammo.

            I wanted to see how long it took me to get through part of the game using only my Red9. It took me about an hour to get through the first chapter and I didn’t die even once. Normally, to get through the first chapter would have taken me about twice that long. I also noticed that I wasn’t as careful as I usually am because I didn’t have to worry about getting overwhelmed as much nor did I have to really worry about conserving ammo.