Having been introduced to the exciting world of horror games by the Resident Evil 2 Remake, I knew exactly where to go next in the Resident Evil franchise. Resident Evil 4 isn’t just one of the most well regarded games in the series, it’s considered one of the greatest video games ever created. What makes this game so special? Grab a survival knife and a first aid spray because we’re about to find out.

Resident Evil 4 follows Resident Evil 2 protagonist Leon S. Kennedy, upgraded from rookie police officer to US secret agent, on a mission to rescue the president’s daughter, Ashley Graham, who has been kidnaped by a group of cultists from a remote village in rural Spain. The story is often considered the weakest link of Resident Evil 4, especially by Resident Evil purists who believe this is where the series jumps the shark with its exotic setting and heavier emphasis on action. Personally I’ve always felt the story of Resident Evil has always been campy B-movie material, but in a good way so the more over-the-top elements didn’t bother me. I would still agree that the story is not Resident Evil 4’s strongest selling point, but I was thoroughly entertained watching Leon and Ashley overcome increasingly crazy monsters from beginning to end.

Visually Resident Evil 4 has aged really well for something created for the Gamecube 20 years ago. The characters are surprisingly expressive, the environments are appropriately eerie and unsettling, and the monsters are often disgusting to behold in the best way possible. The sound design is no slouch either with a combination of atmospheric music that intensifies every encounter, crunchy sound effects that make weapons feel powerful and monsters extra creepy, and charming voice acting that compliments campy tone of the story. I’m not here to say Resident Evil 4 has the best presentation of all time, but what it was able to accomplish within the limitations of its hardware is very impressive.

For as much as I enjoyed the story and presentation, Resident Evil 4’s status as one of the greatest video games of all time comes from its innovative gameplay. Resident Evil 4 was the first game in the series to adopt an over-the-shoulder 3rd-person perspective, opening new dimensions for exploration and combat not possible from the fixed perspectives of the previous Resident Evil games. The combat in particular was so influential that it’s probably easier to explain what it doesn’t have compared to the many 3rd-person shooters that followed in its footsteps. To use weapons Leon must be standing still and precisely aim every shot, no firing from the hip or strafing down the sights here. These limitations actually work in the game’s favor as the separation between moving and attacking creates tension that works well in a horror game.

This isn’t to say Leon doesn’t have a few tricks up his sleeve. Precision aiming allows the player to shoot specific parts of the enemies such as their legs to slow them down or their heads to deal extra damage. Furthermore, if an enemy is stunned by a headshot Leon can knock them to the ground with a roundhouse kick. Aside from looking cool as heck, this maneuver provides ample time for the player to do more damage, reposition, reload, or deal with other enemies. If Resident Evil 4 is starting to sound a little too action heavy, fear not because there’s still some mechanics that heighten the tension. The limited inventory system from previous games has been made more robust with all items being physically placed in a case which can be rearranged at any time. Players won’t have enough space to carry everything they find and if they lug around lots of large weapons there’ll be far less space for ammunition and healing items, but taking some time to arrange the case just might help squeeze in a few extra items they couldn’t have taken otherwise.

Once Leon manages to find Ashley the gameplay dynamic shifts dramatically as the player must protect her from enemies as they try to find a way to escape the village. Ashley can be given simple commands like stay put, follow Leon, hide, or interact with objects to help solve puzzles, but she’s still a frail young lady with no combat training so her utility is very limited in most situations. Escorting Ashley is many players’ least favorite part of Resident Evil 4, but I think it’s my favorite part of the game. Having to protect a vulnerable companion does wonders to heighten the tension just as you’re starting to think you’ve got this whole monster shootin’ business figured out and it synergizes story and gameplay in a meaningful way. So to anyone who goes on and on about how they hate that their Gun-Fu power trip keeps getting interrupted by Ashley screaming “LEON! HELP!”, how about you actually embody the spirit of Leon’s mission and make protecting Ashley your first priority so you never get into that situation in the first place?

Another aspect of Resident Evil 4 people love to gripe about is the quick time events. During the game’s story cutscenes when Leon is ambushed or springs a trap the game will throw out a random button prompt to avoid being instantly killed. This mechanic can be really annoying and in a few instances straight up unfair, but I can’t bring myself to hate it with a passion the way other people do. Resident Evil 4 is a horror game, ripping away the player’s typical sense of security when encountering a story event is exactly the kind of gaming magic that reinforces the themes of the genre. If you constantly feel safe in a horror game, is it really a horror game?

The final element of gameplay I’d like to touch on are the game’s monsters which I saved for last because they directly tie into my perspective on the game as a Catholic. Resident Evil 4 does not feature the typical zombies seen in previous games in the series. The most common enemy type are Ganados, villagers infected by a parasite called Las Plagas, who are smart enough to wield weapons and obey commands, but their free will has been completely usurped by Osmund Saddler, leader of the Los Illuminados cult. From a gameplay perspective the Ganados are great because their ability to use weapons allows for more varied combat encounters, but thematically their cultist theme complements the Las Plagas’s hivemind-like properties very well.

I imagine my satisfaction with Resident Evil 4’s antagonists comes as a surprise for most readers. The common sentiment is that Saddler and his enforcers are one-dimensional bad guys, which I acknowledge even if I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing for a Resident Evil game, but more importantly their religious trappings imply they fall into the dreadfully shallow “religion bad” trope that’s been done to death. Thankfully, I believe the game does a good job presenting the Los Illuminados as an evil cult without broadly condemning other religions. I can’t recall any instances where Leon or his allies make a sweeping generalization along the lines of “typical religious people” in reaction to the cultists. It also becomes pretty obvious by the end of the game that Saddler is using the cult as a front to create a private bio-terrorist army, complete with his own island fortress and underground science lab. 

Heck, the cult’s heavy use of Catholic aesthetics didn’t bother me that much because it felt less like an attack on Catholicism and more like a natural extension of the game’s setting. Spain has historically been a quintessentially Catholic country so any cult looking to plant its roots there would probably have to lean into that history in order to be more palatable to the locals. Had the game been set in Japan for example, the cult probably would have leaned into Shinto instead of Catholicism and the story wouldn’t change very much because Saddler never uses the theology of the locals’ religion to justify his actions.

Outside of the main campaign, Resident Evil 4 has a few extra modes for players who want more bang for their buck. Separate Ways is a short campaign that expands on Ada Wong’s role in the story by letting the player experience key moments in the narrative from her perspective. Ada has an arsenal of special weapons not available in Leon’s campaign and the solutions to puzzles will be different so combined with the additional story content Separate Ways is a must play in my opinion. The Mercenaries is an arcade style mode where the player is given a limited selection of weapons and items to kill monsters and rack up as many points as possible before the timer runs out. This is a great mode if you just want to kick back and have fun with the game’s combat mechanics, plus you can unlock new characters to use by achieving high scores. Finally there’s Assignment Ada, a prototype version of Separate Ways from the original Gamecube version of Resident Evil 4 that’s only really worth playing for novelty’s sake.

What can be said about Resident Evil 4 that hasn’t been said a million times before? The story is fun, the atmospheric presentation aged well, the gameplay revolutionized action while retaining a good deal of horror, and it’s endlessly replayable. Of all the Resident Evil games I’ve played to date, Resident Evil 4 is easily the best of the bunch. I would go as far as to say it’s overtaken Garou: Mark of the Wolves as my all time favorite video game. So long as horror isn’t a hurdle for you, I highly recommend you play Resident Evil 4 and pay your respects to the game that set the bar for third-person action to this very day.

About Gaius Requiem