9 hours isn't a good representation, just the amount on the save file since it doesn't include times when I've gotten through most of an area and then died for example.

I aim at the head with everything other than the pistol. With the pistol, I'll shoot a guy's leg to get him on his knees where I'll do suplex which most of the time will kill them and remove their head in a single move.  

The only negative I agree with is the Merchant, I've heard there was some kind of side-story to him that ended up getting cut.

As for everything else, it seems like you're looking for an FPS, and this is definitely not that. It's meant to be a bit more "realistic" (difficult) combat so that when you get hit it hurts and when you shoot a zombie he isn't necessarily going to care. You're not meant to feel safe fighting these zombies, and there aren't any situations early in the game where you're actually supposed to fight off a crowd of people with the knife. The random head explosions are just that -- random critical hits that result in an instant death. Otherwise you're playing the typical drain-the-hp game. Playing the Wii version probably made it a bit easier for me I guess.

The button pressing minigames are supposed to add suspense and difficulty to the game. Since dieing has effectively no penalty -- you just start from the beginning of the area again -- why does it really matter?

PS: Whenever someone threw something at me I just shot it in midair and it fell down harmlessly. Then I charged the offender like Rambo and shot him once in the head and kicked his head off.

I'm not looking for an FPS in it, but these things would have made it a little better. I didn't mean to make it sound like I'm incompetent with the controls because I'm pretty nimble, but I feel that they could have been better.

I played RE4 on the Wii like 2 months ago... And i got totally gripped by the game!... I HAD to play it... But after i had finished the main-game i didn't bother the ADA missions and stuff because they sucked... You can definitely see that the ADA-missions run on PS2 hardware in my opinion btw in comparison to the almighty Gamecube maingame! :-p...

The merchant rocked! but I will agree there seemed to be no reason for his appearance, and I would love to be able to buy ammo but RE has always been about being scared you don't have enough ammo/health.

The only thing I would say could be improved [bare in mind I have the Wii version, which must have better sound than yours... and graphically looks close to the pre-rendered quality of REmake] is that it wasn't quite scary enough and there were very few decent puzzles like REmake.

This is just absurd ... you actually see the GC and PS2 power difference the same as the PS3 and Wii ... you would just wish that the Wii would be s powerfull ;)

Edit : if you really want to play the worst version , try the PC version :P 

all I know is that every time the chainsaw guy showed up my heart skipped a beat and there were times in the game where I went "holy crap..that was cool." that pretty much defines my exp. haha

Save your flash grenades for when parasites pop out of people's heads. They result in a one-hit kill.

 I never actually played the PC version but I heard you don't even use the mouse to aim.  That can't seriously be true can it?

WTF really I never knew that.  I always ended up junking them 'cause I didn't find them very useful except in a huge crowd like in the cabin with Luis.