Resident Evil 4

Terror finds a new home on GameCube, as we offer our final verdict on what has to be the best survival-horror title on the planet! All-new videos included.

	Version GameCube, PS2	Developer Capcom	Publisher Capcom	Genre Survival Horror

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By Joseph Jackson

There's no doubt that the Resident Evil series is truly defined the survival horror genre. While names like Alone in the Dark have been around longer, it wasn't until the original Resident Evil hit PlayStation nine years ago that the genre became far more prominent to the general gaming populace.

Featuring slickly produced, cinematic styled visuals with creepy, atmospheric settings, zombies and other types of enemies jumped out at players unexpectedly to provide plenty of scares. Yep, Resident Evil made quite an impact on gamers. While the idea of towns and cities being overrun by zombies isn't exactly an original one, Resident Evil was the first time all of the appropriate zombie horror movie elements had come together in a game so well.

Throughout the years, there have been numerous updates on the tried and true zombie bustin' Resi formula - sequels, gun shooting side stories, and even multiplayer online enabled games, all of which provided incremental updates on the formulaic zombie blasting - while still centering on the same premise of Umbrella Corp's viral outbreak.

And while the whole zombie thing worked pretty well for a while, just like Capcom's fighting game releases over the years, it eventually became all too familiar, and pretty much old hat. It was definitely time for a change, and fortunately series producer Shinji Mikami felt the same way. His team set out to implement the type of dramatic changes that would shake Resident Evil down to its very core.

And so we have Resident Evil 4, a game that truly takes the series in a bold new direction by redefining not only the graphics and sound, but the gameplay as well. By providing players with more pulse-pounding intensity and action than ever before, Capcom has raised the bar not only for its series, but for the survival horror genre it pioneered in the first place.

In the latest Resident Evil, players reacquaint themselves with an old friend in Leon S. Kennedy, the former Raccoon City PD Rookie cop from Resident Evil 2, who survived the harrowing events that befell the city years ago. It's now 2004 and six years have passed since Raccoon City was destroyed, and the infamous Umbrella Corporation finally met its demise. Having left that nightmare behind him, Leon now works as a U.S. agent, who under the direct order of the President has embarked on a top-secret mission to investigate the abduction of the... wait for it... President's daughter, Ashley Graham. But as luck would have it, Leon survived Raccoon City only to face a new nightmare, after his investigation leads him to a remote village located "somewhere in Europe" - Spain, it would seem - where a young girl matching Ashley's description was last spotted.

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He sets out to explore and uncover the shroud of mystery that blankets the enigmatic Spanish village, his mission to find Ashley and get her the hell out of there in one piece. Steering itself away from the all-too familiar plot device of Umbrella Corp. and the T-Virus, Resi 4's storyline is certainly an interesting departure and has a few neat surprises, all of which are unraveled in a variety of nifty cinematic sequences throughout the game.

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