Pros: Fabulous visuals, innovative and interesting new gameplay mechanics.
Cons: I thought this was supposed to be a "horror" game.
The bottom line: Resident Evil 4 isn't scary like past Resident Evil adventures, but it's still a fun "survival" game.
Remember when the word "horror" used to mean something? You'd be quaking in your bones, busying in your trousers, walloping in madness...all because the never ending, living, BREATHING terror would never give in. That's apparently gone from gaming now, thanks to the melding of action and survival/horror in titles like last year's The Suffering. Instead of fear and suspense, players are given gruesome monsters and keen weapons to bring them down with. But just because these monsters are graphic, that's not the same as setting up the stage for the true vision of "horror." You know, the moment when you hear the door banging open and shut. The hallway has been darkened, and seemingly no one's around. As you approach the repetitively winding door, all the sudden a creature springs to life through the wall behind you. Capcom, arguably the company who brought survival/horror into the mainstream, has taken their sweet time in tinkering with their latest and fourth edition of the series that continually brings zombie-based horror to the table. Only, there aren't any zombies anymore, and the usage of traditional "horror" has all but disappeared.

The town. The characters. The outbreak. The incident. Rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy had just become an officer of the law. On his fateful first day of duty arriving into the small mountain town of Raccoon City, he came and he saw the unexpected. There an army of zombies had arisen right before his very eyes. In this moment of excitement while trying to flee the scene, he came across a human girl by the name of Claire Redfield, Chris's sister. The two worked together to escape the infesting death that had infected the city. Years later, the story returns its focus on Leon who we last left off on the train tracks leading out of Raccoon. Turned into a special forces government agent, Leon has been assigned to find and protect the President's daughter, Ashley Graham. For reasons unknown to Leon, she was kidnaped by a rouge organization and brought to an outlying reach within Europe. Having breached the location, Leon must now figure out a way to find and rescue Ashley before the "welcoming committee" kills him and her first.

What went on behind the doors of Capcom's headquarters? What made them change the Resident Evil formula so lucidly, from boasting frightening surprises to barraging players with action packed mayhem? Change can be a good thing, a very good thing if done correctly. But when you aim to drain a genre of the very element that's supposed to have an effect on its double meaning, the genre of "survival" combined with "horror," you shouldn't feel brave when standing up to your fears. I guess the series had it coming, though. Capcom's done the horror thing since the franchise started nearly ten years ago. It was time to start something new. It's time to change. Resident Evil 4 takes players out of the places they're used to -- which were those linked yet confined elaborate compounds where the mutated dead were alive and killed off again by you room by room. Inserted into wider spread stomping grounds, the game charges you with Leon to survive through these vaster outdoors and indoors settings. While the alteration in Resident Evil 4's new and much more "action-oriented" gameplay style comes at a cost of the game embodying a lot less scare tactics, there is some things that still go bump in the night.

Living dead, undead -- or zombies, plain and simple. People reborn into mindless monsters, who from lore are known best for feasting on the flesh of human beings. In turn of this messy transaction, they too then become a soldier amongst the brainless army. That is the abnormal species that has been one of the main recurring factors in every Resident Evil thus far...aside from this one. Zombies are extinct in Capcom's eyes. They've been shot, burned, stabbed, and even nuked. Trying to put a different face on things, the rampant zombie that has become sort of the mascot of the Resident Evil name is now replaced with a new kind of zombie: people. Yes, people. But not just any kind of people. These villagers are mad. They're not furious as in their kid just dropped out of college to become a full-time sandwich maker at Subway. They're just crazed. Loco in the cabeza. Insane in the membrane. Coocoo for Coca Puffs. You know the deal -- their minds are shot, as they've all been brainwashed. They're able to strike in ones or twos, threes or sixes, and waves of up to about twenty or more at a time. They come with fire, they come with axes; gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning! Ganging up around Leon and Ashley, these villagers jab pitchforks and saw off heads with chainsaws. They'll toss dynamite within reaching proximity when least expected. Through windows they'll climb in, up ladders they will scale, down platforms they will fall, and through doorways they will barge in and find you. They show up unannounced from behind and they come bearing death. They're smart, these buggers are -- smarter than any zombie (not that zombies have anything but dinner on their minds). It's the idea that you always have your head straight, eyes forward, and be on the lookout for impending danger (since it's always around you) that fuels Resident Evil 4's innovative design formulating how long you can outlast not just a house full of zombies, but an entire island overflowing with them on board.

Where to go from there is the problem. Their numbers are quite vast, and yours are so few. The odds are literally impossible. NO ONE WILL SURVIVE...just kidding! Ashley is not able to do a whole lot besides hide behind Leon, get injured (or dead) or kidnaped, and help him out with a few puzzles here and there, which is why you never send a woman to do a man's job (ha!). Leon's capable of wielding more than the usual build of series weaponry, thanks in part to the game's newly arranged attache case inventory system and a traveling merchant you'll frequent through the passing hours. Now here's where Resident Evil 4 gets a little too much like Ratchet and Clank. Vendor stations are allocated throughout the game. A mysterious man dressed in a black robe waits at each location dispensing, purchasing, and upgrading variations of weaponry (with items and accessories too) all for a price. The zombie people in Resident Evil 4 usually leave behind different useable goods when they perish, including grenades, ammo, health, and cash rewards too. Named "ptas," these coins are Resident Evil 4's use for currency, which naturally allows for Leon to break into a valley girl impersonation and shop 'til he drops at each vendor's location. In the earlier segments of the game, Leon can pick out one or all weapons amongst a handgun, a shotgun, a rifle, a machinegun, or even a grenade launcher. Later as the story moves forward, better weapons will generate, ranging from a more powerful rifle, to a magnum, and a gun that fire sticky mines too. Leon also has the option of buying and attaching additional items for select sets of weapons, such as the rifle scope for sniping enemies from ranged distances. Trouble is, everything costs a lot of coinage. When the scraps left behind by fallen zombie freaks or found within breakable crates (amongst other places) is too meager (and they will be), you might find yourself shortchanged and sacrificing some necessities you really need.

But that's mainly in the beginning parts of the game. As you get used to playing Resident Evil 4 more along the way, treasure hunting will become a bigger deal than it was from the very start. Shiny objects that twinkle like in any Resident Evil adventure act as a bounty here of goods and services that aren't actually useful to the game other than to be sold, or pieced together and then sold. Certain collectibles can be combined with separate pieces and bought by the merchant at higher prices. Some trinkets though are relevant to the puzzle solving throughout the game, once again thanks to the newly designed and handy inventory system. About these means of riddle me this (which I'll get to next) and item storage me that, there are two separating areas now where regular items (i.e., health, weapons, ammo, etc.) are all placed, and another where those other specialty treasures get divided up neatly and effectively. Leon carries a suitcase that along the way can be upgraded for continued ample storage as the game gets harder and when a greater supply of items are direly needed. This suitcase stores those items in its quantity of box patterns. Health and ammo containers for instance take up two box spaces, while guns can fill up anywhere from six to twelve slots. Figuring out how to balance what items you'll save, which ones you'll discard, and which ones you'll use for the moment can be tricky at times. But by purchasing suitcase upgrades from the merchant (which allows for additional room when the upgrades are made available), you'll be sticking your thing in these sluts (er...I mean things and slots) in no time. Being able to carry items with Leon, and more items at that, also reduces the back tracking factor from past Resident Evil titles. Retaining items comes in handy particularly when you're completing the game's simpler fetch quests (so that you'll always have the items for a keepsake on you). Other puzzle types aren't as easy (barring that both kinds involve chances of death). In one segment, Leon must keep zombie people from snatching Ashley by triggering them from an elevated position, while Ashley on the other hand has to evade them long enough to gain access to the next sequence. When ready, she'll have to confront zombie people and living suits of armor using only her abilities to pull levers, toss lanterns, crawl under tables for cover, and press coordinated button sequences accordingly. These action-oriented, button mashing scenes show up at a lot of other places too (adding interesting quick arcade-like reflexes, however disappointingly draining the suspenseful horror moments in the process), like when Leon needs to avoid getting crushed by rolling boulders, or dodging all different types of boss advances elsewhere. One specifically "cool" moment's when Leon can time the creature's repeated offenses from the ceiling, and later freeze its body in liquid nitrogen temporarily, blasting it and repeating the process until the nasty is no more.

With all these big changes happening for Resident Evil 4, it comes of sort a surprise that one of the biggest and easily one of the more natural is the style in which character control is handled now. For years survival/horror adventures have utilized a third-person perspective, non-interactive dynamic camera angles, and robotic character movement. Resident Evil 4 changes all of that, in a way. Closer to your man than ever before, Resident Evil 4 takes its focal approach positioned directly from behind Leon's head and shoulder. At first you're going to think and fully realize that a blockage of screen space is awkward (since Leon's huge cranial and back aspects take up half of the screen), but gradually you'll slip into comfortably from this untraditional angle as you'll begin to master the art of downing enemies from all sides of the screen. It's kind of a more "truer" path, as you're viewing the horror happening near Leon's face and upper body (who you can kind of picture ultimately as yourself) rather than being able to see everything all around you. With the combinations of the R trigger for aiming any gun weapon (with a handy laser sight already enabled for each one), L for the knife, A for firing, B for reloading and running, and C for rotating the camera or zooming in (with the use of the rifle's scope, for one thing), Resident Evil 4 won't actually feel like the right fit right away. But with about half an hour to an hour or so of play time, the game will start to make a whole lot of sense.

So magnificent. So elaborate. So lifelike it's eerily real. Resident Evil used to be a predominantly pre-rendered series. Gore and other scare-oriented backgrounds, which were configured exquisitely beforehand, were placed into positions to paint the feel of a horror game occuring before your very eyes. These descriptions of course worked out very well with the non-interactive dynamic camera angles that had players surviving through a series of one camera focal point to the next. Though Resident Evil 4 isn't actually the first in the franchise to dispose of that graphical tradition (Resident Evil: Code Veronica on the Dreamcast used real-time instead), Resident Evil 4 is the first to take real-time into a whole new astonishing direction. For years, Resident Evil 4 has been touted by onlookers for being the best looking Resident Evil you'd ever seen. Those spectators weren't pulling our leg either. Evident in all forms and mannerisms, there is a distinctive element of naturalism overlapping any and all environments and figures. Supremely textured surfaces oozing with dramatized effects (i.e., sparking wire, thunderstorm, fire and electronic reflections) give to areas like craggy cavern passages, dried forest and village surroundings, and a castle's rich and murky dwellings a much needed touch of brilliance. You'll dive headfirst into a dead swamp, where the silence throughout the air is only enhanced by the heaviness of fog veiling foes waiting on and around the broken up wooden platform leading to the other side of the map. Along the walls of a castle's dungeon, reaching into the mountain tops, slowly scouring across the hillside of a graveyard, and tossing Leon "chew toy" Kennedy into a hedgemaze full of monstrous wolves, you'll witness some of the most astonishing environments ever conceived, all from the smallest details (of wavy flames bouncing light off Leon as he passes back into darkness seamlessly), to the grandest spectacles of all (as when a boss of giant proportions rips trees and rocks from the Earth to crush Leon like the little ant that he is). For every new territory you'll embrace, there's always something new, interesting, and shockingly accurate that you'd be hard pressed to think Capcom could outdo itself ever again.

Indeed, the attention to accuracy coursing throughout the veins of Resident Evil 4 is compensated for by the gallons. However, it's not without the miscellaneous creatures that get this game's niceties really started. After all, a nice looking house is pretty boring until the party guests arrive. Shredded clothing, decayed flesh, and anything else you can imagine your typical zombie as regularly displaying is now erased by the neatly groomed "normal" guys and gals of Resident Evil 4's neighborly community. By the droves, zombie people look just like you or me (uh...that is if I were to disguise my zombie self with a human outfit). That is in a way true, as the zombie persons here are plain looking people as if the year were still 1897. Bearded men and women clothed in old country villager outfits, the zombies of this game are only brain dead in the sense that all they know how to do besides garden in the earlier parts of the game is kill. As Leon crawls into the thicker, stickier portions of the pipeline, he'll start to encounter new forms of zombie folk and other "things" too. Zombie persons robed in black monk outfits sporting crossbows, shields, maces, and flails will begin forcing Leon to choose alternate firing strategies for disposing of these newbies. There'll even be other types of nonhuman attackers present, from invisible insects to alien organisms that can regenerate lost body parts. Blasting all these baddies back is one of the funnest parts of gazing upon the never-ending messes. Throw a grenade into a group, and Leon will react by lifting his arm up over his face as the flash settles and the dust settles. Fire a couple rounds of ammunition at one zombie person's shoulder while a whole group charges across a wooden bridge, and you might just see that single enemy lose its balance and drop off the side. Point the red laser beam at the head instead, and soon enough that temple will explode like a jelly filled melon. Partially, it's the way you can target any part of any enemy and watch all the different reactions to every type of gun in all the refined elements of quality, that makes Resident Evil 4 such a looker and one of the best damn games you've seen.

A most quintessential factor used in making every great horror game scary would be provided by its excellent use of sound design that'd pump frightening noises into your body to get your heart jumping. Though Resident Evil 4 lost the vision for producing "those" type of bone chilling noises, its present collaboration of sound elements is still intact for being excellent as they always are. Every weapon, every footstep, and every movement made fixes up all good things (right things) to listen to whenever an appropriate action is executed. Taking shots at approaching danger will vary based on the weapon you're using. Standard fire from the handgun, rapid fire from the uzi, strong but short bursts from the rifle, destructive defilement from the rocket launcher, and all the rest you'd come to expect -- like shell noises being discharged and bounced around on the floor, to a juicy splattering when an enemy's head disappears. Upset water rattles the empty boats by the lake, magma bubbles in the mine pits below the surface, and rain trinkles down in heavy splashes at one point, as these are just some of the ways the environmental ambience comes into play to give some character to the scenes at work. Adding to that, sweeping segments of dark musical scores fill the void. Without enemies, the music is of a calmer yet ominous flavor. When enemies are around, the rhythm will unsettle into a quicker, more bizarre melody. And when the zombie people do see Leon, you'll know it from their Spanish-spoken obscenities. Screaming outrightly to alert the others to your presence, you'll view all your attackers lining up and walking or running toward Leon as they'll slightly whisper even more incomprehensible dialogue -- well, unless you're fluent in a Spaniard's tongue. Through the game's story parts as well, Leon, Ashley, a few head bad guys, and a couple of interesting surprise characters all speak their mind. Leon's brash, witty banter between himself and the head honchos is funny at times and suitable, as the actor portraying Leon really seems to become Leon. Certain other characters seem to fit their respective roles as well, such as the sniveling French shorty apparently reminiscent of history's favorite emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. Some other vocals, on the other hand, are a little iffy. Ashley is a bit too high pitched to appear like she's a 20-year-old daughter of the President. The merchant's heavy British accent with his repeated and overly exaggerated lines like, "What are ye buying?" and "What are ye selling?" can be a bit annoying just as well. Somewhat hokey, somewhat tense, not scary and not perfect either, but definitely reaching a certain quality on other occasions, all the sound elements are pretty good as they work out for the game on some sides scale at the very least.

Fear Resident Evil 4. Be afraid of the game for all the wrong reasons. Resident Evil 4 isn't a terrifying game. To call this the "Best Survival/Horror Game of All-time" would be a sham. Capcom can't exactly label this a "horror" game when apparently, that aspect isn't a primary de facto for all its merits anymore. Resident Evil 4 is a great game. It's not a scary game, but it is a great action type of adventure. All for the "survival" end of the spectrum, a much meatier capacity of feistier, intelligent enemies brings the emphasis of action-packed "think-fast-and-do-fast-to-live" survival gameplay to a top notch tier. Still, suffering for this achievement is the lack of "scariness." You know, the idea that something's around the corner, breathing down your neck slowly and surely for great lengths making you panic just enough to fear stopping it for a while. Instead, you'll look evil straight in the eye in Resident Evil 4, equipped with a load of fire power, and say, "Who's your daddy?" And when they answer just before you blow them into the next life, "Tom Landry, 666 Maple Drive!" you'll just laugh and say, "Too late son of Landry -- YOU'RE DEAD!" Lots of bullets, lots of guns, lots of ways to kill and be killed, Resident Evil 4 is a remarkable game. Unfortunately, Capcom thrust their hand into the belly of the beast and ripped the best part about this horror series right out: the horror.