"No zombies? who cares!"

Story- The main character in resident evil 4 is Leon. Yes the same Leon from resident evil 2, he is back. This time he is more than just a cop. After the incident in resident evil 2, Leon was promoted and is now working for the government. The president's daughter Ashley has gone missing, it is rumored to be kidnapped somewhere in Europe. Of course no public news was published, the president wishes to keep it a secret. He assigns Leon to go to Europe and find his daughter and bring her back, that of course assuming she is there. The president gives Leon a picture of his daughter so he can show it there to the people and ask if anybody seen her. Sounds like an easy job, does it not? Well Leon arrives and he enters a house, and asks the man inside if he knows anything about the girl in the picture. When suddenly the villager tries to attack Leon, then Leon is forced to kill the villager. To Leon's surprise the villager is not a zombie, but not a human either. Few hours into the game, Leon finds Ashley and meets up with an old friend: Ada. What is she doing here? What are these hostile villagers? And what happened to Leon's companions? And how will Leon escort Ashley to safety with all these villagers want them dead? The story is quite interesting for an action game. Its not final fantasy quality, but will definitely keep you on your toes.

Characters- Resident evil 4 brings back many old characters from previous games. The main hero Leon, is much more developed than he was in resident evil 2. Ashley is not well …good. She is always complaining and never happy, but I guess that's how a president's daughter should be like. Ada is the most interesting character in the game. She appears several times, sometimes she will help you. While other times will put her gun in your face. She is a very mysterious woman, who is she working for? What does she exactly want from Leon? Why is she helping him? And many other question will occur to you. Most of them will be answered but some are still mystery.

Enemies- Zombies? Nope. They are gone for good, and no I am not spoiling anything for you. From the very start you will know that your main enemies are not zombies but not human either. Later in the game you will discover their true name. they are called Ganados. Ganados are much more advanced then Zombies, they run, talk and act like humans. At first I was really skeptical about the idea of not having zombies, I mean the resident evil series have been around for almost a decade and in every game the main focus was about zombies. Capcom took a huge risk by changing that, by it paid off. The game is much harder and funner now.

Graphics- Simply put the best looking game on this system. You thought metal gear solid looked good? Think again. The character models is just amazing, they almost look real. Leon for example looks like a real cop. The atmosphere the game makes is so eerie and scary you almost feel like you are really there. The environments will blow you away. There are so many details, the trees, the houses, the farms, everything you expect in a village is there. Other details you will admire such as pictures on walls, rotten food, dirty beds, corps, there are just so many things it feels like a real world. The characters animation is perfect, if you look at how Leon's hair move when there is wind you will be amazed. The cut scenes are stunning, some of not the best on the system. It even top products like Final Fantasy and Gran Turisom in terms of polygon count and texture. Everything looks sharp and highly detailed during cut scenes.

Music/sound- wow Capcom knew exactly how to use the music and sound effects to set the mood for players. Many times the music suddenly stops, everything is quiet almost too quiet, I know something is about to happen. Other example is when the Ganados start screaming in their language, they will scare the hell out of you. Even more, when the Ganados start chanting, or when the Regenerator start breathing heavily, you know he is there somewhere but where? The music and sound effects make the game very atmospheric and eerie.

Gameplay- Resident Evil 4 play a lot more like an action game. The game encourages you to go and kill everybody by giving you insane amount of weapons and ammunition to use. They also improved the aiming system, in the past you were able to aim in three directions: up, down, and middle. Now you can aim at any part of your enemy's body. Wanna shoot his leg? Left arm? Or maybe his foot? Do it. This new aiming system gives more freedom, for instance I encountered a Ganado that holding a dynamite in his left arm. I aimed at the dynamite and shot it. To give you more accurate aiming, every gun is equipped with laser sight, so you have much better accuracy. So what else they improved? Well the inventory. You no longer are restricted to eight items only. You can upgrade your inventory, so it is possible to hold up to twenty or even more items. How awesome is that? The improvements do not end here. They improved the map, so now you can easily see where you are, where you already visited and where your destination. You can also see what doors are locked, unlocked and the ones you have they key for are marked as blue. They cut down the backtracking as well. You rarely have to backtrack to find a key or other item. What else..yeah the camera! The camera now is always places behind your back. You will have a much better view for your surroundings. One of my favorite improvements are the puzzles. The puzzles are few and far between, and they are much easier and logical. I finished the game without using the guide at all. I usually need more than one guide to beat resident evil games, but this one is much easier.

Boss fights are the real treat in this game. I never ever had so much fun fighting huge, powerful monsters. Bosses are not just stronger version of Ganados, no they are much bigger, tougher and scarier. Every boss brings new challenge, the key to defeat them is to use your weapons and surroundings wisely. They all can be brought down by using once rocket launcher, but where is the fun in that? I recommend against using the rocket launcher, the experience is too good to be missed.

As you know, you will be escorting Ashley in this game. So she will be following you around the whole time. That sucks right? Because she will distract you and get you killed? Not really. Usually I hate escort missions in games for the said reasons, but in this game escorting Ashley is rather fun and helpful. She can not fight, but you can always use a bait! Ha just kidding. The game gives you many options to deal with Ashley in tough situation, you will always find a place where she can hide. So she won't cause you any troubles.

The key for survivals is to use herbs wisely. You will find many herbs laying around, and you can even buy some from the mysterious merchant that seems to appear out of no where. Anyway, your best bet is to combine herbs together to make them stronger and raise your max health.

Weapons can be bought from the merchant. There are three set of weapons, you start with normal pistol, shotgun, and machine gun. Then you can upgrade them into stronger versions. You can upgrade anything like its speed, reloading, fire power and accuracy.

So is it really a perfect game? Well almost. The only flaw is the difficulty level, which is not a flaw but more like a disappointment. The game gives you too much ammo and healing items and money so you don't get the feeling of survival. You never have to conserve your items because you simply can buy more. But even this problem has a solution: Professional mode. You unlock this mode after beating the game at least once. In this mode ammo is rare, healing items and money are almost impossible to find. Yes this is the true horror.

Value- the game is very long, about 30 hours to beat. That is certainly a lot for an action game! I used to beat the old resident evil game in a weekend. The replay value is ultra high, there are so many extras and bonuses to unlock you will easily put another 30 hours. And don't forget the mercenary mode, this mode is basically an arcade-like RE4 where you have to kill as many Ganados as you can before the time runs out. And more importantly there is assignment Ada, this is a five chapter story mode about Ada. You get to see what she was doing the whole time.

Overall- it does not matter what kind of games you like, you will enjoy Resident Evil four. If you like survival horror, then you will love Pro mode. If you just like normal action adventure games then you will love normal mode. This game is simply amazing, go buy it now!

Final score- 10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/06