Residence Evil 4 is a orgy in warm environmentalist, disgusting enemies,
bizarre characteristics, bad weather - and fantastic game experience.

1996 Capcom released Resident Evil and introduced us for the story about the evil company Umbrella and it's noxious virus research. The game was perfect with both action, adventure and problem-solving. With a superb atmosphere and high scare-factor, the game got their self a world of zombie-fans.
Since that, it has released a couple of sequels, remakes, spin-offs, one prequel and even two movies. Even if many of the games were "okay", it seemed like if the concept of the old Resident Evil feeling had starting to lack. It was just irritating with the not-so-good-controls, bad camera cues and easy puzzles with mysterious medallions. These things would have been a lot better if Capcom did something to it, but instead they chose to be safe and make the games on a winning concept. Until now.

Capcom has finally taken the criticism and done something that the two prequels should have done.
Some of these changes that they promised were that the game was going to be all 3D and play six years after Resident Evil 3. Umbrella wouldn't exist anymore and - the most unexpected - there wouldn't be anymore zombies! Many have been worried that Capcom wasn't on the right track, Resident Evil-games without zombies would be like Pac-Man without ghosts.
But the amazing thing is, Resident Evil 4 does everything perfect without almost any bad things.
No zombies? But who are those unbrushed teeth dudes that I've seen on the pictures all the time? Well, the traditional zombies have been erased and exchanged to Spanish crazy savages.


The game takes role as Leon S Kennedy, known from Resident Evil 2. In that game, he was a new guy for the Racoon City-police who actually destroyed Umbrella the first day he got in.
From a start, Leon doesn't seem to have changed since we saw him last time.
David Bowie-hairstyle looks alright and he still has a problem to shoot while walking at the same time. But don't get fooled by that, because under the surface, it has changed a lot.
Under these six years that has gone since the second game, has Leon been through many things.
One very special thing is that he is now an agent for the USA:s government. He is with other words
even more awesome then before, he can even flirt on an agent-manner. Capcom has also done Leon to be excellent at acrobatics tricks.
As an agent his new job is to guarantee that the president families daughter is safe. Unfortunately already in the beginning of the game, the 20-year old daughter named Ashley has been kidnapped of an unknown group of people. They have taken her to some mysterious place far deep in Europe.
Leon's bad luck starts again, and his mission is now to make sure she is safe, and take her back to USA.
The game starts with an excellent intro with Leon in a car with two Spanish officers.
We don't really know exactly where Resident Evil takes place, but we all think that it's Spain.
We don't know why the the producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi doesn't tell us, why is it so important?
Anyway, the car takes Leon to a not-so-much-colour place. In fact, it's all grey and brown.
Soon, the car stops and you can finally move your character. It doesn't take to long until Leon meets some new "friends".

This time, the story reminds me of the Metal Gear Solid-games. Anyone can notice that when you see Leon take his Codec-radio and starts talking, exactly how Solid Snake would have done.
Nothing bad it meant here against Resident Evil 4, Codecs are just awesome, and everyone should learn from these two games.


Impressive control
If you were familiar with the classic Resident Evil control, the new system will be familiar even more and new at the same time. In other words, it actually works almost perfectly.
Even if you play with the analogue stick, there will only be two different movement-methods. Leon can simply walk and run. The system that up with the stick means that Leon walks forward is rather then walking
forward in the camera-view is definitely better. This does make more sense though, now when Resident Evil 4 doesn't have scripted camera-views like the previous games in the series. Instead, the camera is now
right behind Leon's back, exactly like any other thirdperson-game out there. Even though Leon's back sometimes can be in the way of the camera, it works superb and without almost any other problem.
A push on the R-button, and Leon will take out his weapon from his pocket. In the condition, you can now change which direction Leon will shoot, with the new laseraim it won't be hard to aim at the Spanish savages.
This isn't really something we haven't seen before, but when it comes to Resident Evil, it seems so much revolutionary then in any other game.
Finally you won't have to stand right behind the enemy to be able to see it because of the angles, in Resident Evil 4, you could just take out your gun from a long distance and place a bullet in the head of your so called enemy.
Another nice thing is the L-button, when you hold it down, Leon will take out his extremely sharp knife and prepare himself. With other words, the knife is now a secondary weapon, you don't have to open the menu now just for the sake of a pitiful knife unlike in the previous games. And besides, the secondary weapon doesn't even take place in the bag anymore, which makes it even a better weapon. The knife is also much more gameplay based in Resident Evil 4, you can paralyze the enemy by shooting its leg, then finish the job of with the knife. You can never get tired of slashing enemies with the knife, believe me, I've done it thousands of times.
Like almost any other GameCube game, you open doors, and pick up items with the A-button. In Resident Evil 4 though, it gives you much more options to do with it. Some examples are that you can jump out of windows, or fences. Leon can also do some extremely cool tricks, like doing a suplex and a roundkick, he can also jump from explosions, throw things, run from a big boulder and integrate with much more things.
It's not only the A-button that will be of use, sometimes you will have to switch between the A,B,L and R-button, that is if you want to do some even more awesome abilities. I can never get tired of using the L and R-buttons to dodge the slow savages. It's that fun, and it never gets repetitive in some special way that Capcom does. Even if Resident Evil 4 sometimes can feel like Track & Field, it works almost better then you would imagine, and it will give you much more intense battles, not to mention the boss battles which are more then amazing to watch and play.
After a couple of hours of playing, you will meet Ashley for the first time. With the X-button, you can command her to either stay where she stands or to follow the player. She's not the girl that draws much attention to her unlike many other female characters in games, and that's what I like about Ashley, she is an excellent choice of a character. Sure, sometimes she screams for Leon to help her, but that whats girls are supposed to do right? It is up to Leon to save her, the enemy doesn't intend to kill her but instead, they will do anything to take her away from Leon. If they walk out of the screen with Ashley, the game will end so you better keep an eye on her all the time.

Unlike in Resident Evil 0, there aren't any magical chests to put items in, instead Leon has now one bag which is divided in two parts. One of the bag can store unlimited with items, and is for special equipment like keys and diamonds. The other part though is limited, you can put things like weapons, ammo's and medical items also known as herbs and first aids. If your bag is full and you want to place another item instead, then you have to get rid of one, so you have to prioritize. Different items takes different kind of space, which actually makes sense, so you have to think what's necessary and not needed. Unfortunately, you can't put stuff on the floor and come back again to pick it up again, you can only discard items. There are probably some people that likes this system and I don't mind them, it's just that it doesn't really suit in. I must admit, it would have been better without it. Another thing I didn't like about Resident Evil 4, is that you can't reload your weapons from the inventory like you could in the other games. Capcom probably thought that it was a better idea to do it this way.


New guys
What's new in Resident Evil 4 is the merchant who can see sometimes in the game. Instead of the chests, Capcom has exchanged them for this merchant, and I think it was an excellent thing to do.
From him, you can buy new weapons and equipments, you can also upgrade your weapons which is kind of a cool feature in Resident Evil 4. For this, the cheap bastard demands money of course, which you can find everywhere: behind houses, inside boxes and even after killing enemies will you get some earning money. It isn't that hard to find pesetas, but the merchant is quite overpriced. Doesn't he know that it isn't easy to kill savages in Spain? Anyhow, the further in the game you get, the better weapons will you be able to buy from him. It has happend to me many times that I've had to sell a couple of weapons of mine, just to be able to get one single pistol and upgrade its maximum power. My point with all this, is that Capcom actually did this very well and I'm impressed by miles. Many games should have this feuture as it's the best of its kind.
But honestly, what would Resident Evil be without disgusting monsters? Fortunately, the game is loaded with its kind.
The first enemy race we encounter is the villagers of course, they aren't zombies nor human beings. They are quite smart and just by a small mount somewhat civilized, but they lack feelings. What lies deep inside of these foul creatures? You really want to know don't you? Well, do me a favour and go buy the game and figure it out yourself, I won't spoil anymore. I can tell that it's so fun killing these ugly mutants and as usual, it never gets repetitive.

When you for the first time arrive at the town, the game will demonstrate how non-linear and fun it is to kill the villagers. The savages will cooperate with each other, it's almost terrifying how smart their artificial intelligence are. They will take cover, climb ladders just to get a backattack from the window and heck, even surround the house you are in. So you better hurry up while your inside, they might plan something terrible.
Of course, Leon can do some defence too, he can push tables and wardrobes in front of the door, but it's just a matter of time until the enemy will kick the door so hard, it will even break. The villagers also has a lot of variation when it comes to weapons. Some savages has weapons like small axes, knifes, tridents and forks while other has dynamites and other explosive items. Oh, and I recommend you to watch out for the chainsaw man, he's extremely scary and if you get one hit from him, Leon won't have his head in place anymore.
It's very simple to run away from the enemies instead of killing them, but that's something I wouldn't recommend, in fact Resident Evil 4 is an action-based game and with the new camera-angles, it's more then fun to spend some bullets on the savages. Resident Evil 4 seems so much more alive and realistic then almost any other game out there, it's definitely much more then the typical "run and shoot" game.
There are more then enough to do each map you come to, and it keeps getting better and better all the time. One of my special tricks to defeat an enemy is by shooting it in the leg, if you shoot it right, the savage will fall immediately. Now you have the chance to do anything you please, shoot his head into pieces, knife it to death, break his head with Leon's boots? Don't panic, it's your game and your decision.
It's not that hard to understand why Capcom replaced the zombies to these smart enemies, they wanted to make Resident Evil quite a bit faster then what it was before, and I agree with them. Doing Resident Evil 4 as it is right now must be the best they've done in many years. Something that actually made me confused was that Capcom didn't even put in the classic monsters like Hunters or Lickers. Capcom finally realized that it was totally unnecessary to have these monsters in Resident Evil 4 and killing human beings (okay, almost humans then) must be the most addiction in gaming-history.
The boss battles are unbelievable in this game too, it's so hard to explain how amazing scenes there are in this game. Call me crazy, but I would've payed the normal price of a game, just for the boss battles. They are that amazing, and trust me when I say this; I'm not the guy that gets impressed by everything I play.
Not only does Resident Evil 4 have one of the best boss battles ever, it also has the greatest graphics on the console. Never in my life have I seen such detailed polygons and textures on the wall, furniture , enemies and everything else. It's almost uncomfortable how grey and detailed Resident Evil 4 is, but that does the atmosphere so well made in this game.
Sometimes in the game, a storm will occur and it will start raining. The rain is fantastic and has the "rain-feeling" no game ever has had yet. It also bounces on Leons shoulders, which is fabulous when you see it frame by frame. Even in small water puddles, you will see the rain hit the puddle. That also reminds me of the lightning effects that the graphics-engine shows us. Sometimes, when the the lightning strikes, the whole village with lit up and it's amazing how the GameCube can handle such powerful graphics. It's probably one of Capcoms special trick, to show everyone how strong and detailed a game on the console can be.

The presentation meets its standard, the sound effects in Resident Evil 4 are like they should be and it fits perfectly to the atmosphere. The voice-acting though gets an "okay" from me, it's nothing special with other words. And besides, the pathetic voice when you start a new game is still there, you know, the guy that says: RESIDENT EVIL! Something even more irritating is when he at the end of the sentence says: FOUR!, it gives me the chills and nightmares. Okay, it's not that serious, but I still think that they should skip that for their next game.
Same with the music, it isn't something special or something that everyone will remember for a long time, and it's definitely far away of being even close to Akira Yamaoka's well made songs and lyrics (not to mention his games). Capcom doesn't really have the best soundtracks out there, they are okay. Resident Evil 4's soundtrack is with other words nothing that you can put on the Christmas-tree, like the other games.

Capcom promised us 20 hours of gameplay and it's not so hard to understand why, in Resident Evil 4, Leon will walk in villages, cemeteries , sewers, big seas, castles and of course laboratories.
The previous games took like 10 hours to beat, so it feels like if Resident Evil 4 is three times worth the money. And as I stated many times before, this game never gets boring. Even after beating it twice, which I've done now. I'm planning on my third save right now, it's really that amazing.
Capcom did a good thing to take away the Ink Ribbons - also known as saves - away. You can't save everywhere though, you have to find an old writer like in the other games. That isn't quite much of a problem for me. Saving isn't anything you do if you're going to play this game without any sleep (which I don't recommend for your health). When you die in Resident Evil 4, you will restart just before the last checkpoint, which should be less then 10 minutes of playtime, I enjoy this system very much. I only saved three times the first round I played this game, and that was when I really had to sleep. But for those who doesn't sleep terribly much, well, you people won't have to save even once. What does that effect though? To tell you the truth, they're not giving out grades when beating this game, which is so unlike Capcom.

Anyhow, if you're a proud owner of a GameCube, and love the genre which is action, not horror, then Resident Evil 4 is the best game out there for the console. Don't miss the chance, Resident Evil 4 is the best game in the series. /John Dirani


Graphics: 10 - GameCube shows us how real graphics are made.
Sound: 8 - Good sound effects, with okay voice-acting.
Lasting Appeal: 9 - I love Capcom.
Control 10 - Huge difference from the previous games, it's wonderful

TOTAL: 10 (98%) - Do you have a GameCube? Do you like action? What are you waiting for? Resident Evil 4 is one of the best games out there for the console!

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Fool! All we do in hell is play Seiken Densetsu 3!
/Satan