This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Chuck Landry.

Leon from the Raccoon City PD is back. He’s in Spain working for the U.S. government, and his mission is to recover the President’s kidnapped daughter. Simple enough, right? Starting in a remote village, Leon will tumble down a path of mystery regarding the location of the daughter, the reason the villagers won’t stop throwing hatchets at him, and why he keeps running into some people from his past.

I don’t care if you don’t like Resident Evil games. If you like any action games, anything other than Barbie Super Shopper or the Mary Kate and Ashley games, then you need to play Resident Evil 4. It truly is a whole new gaming experience, and while it retains some familiar staples from the series, everything is updated to maintain and sometimes surpass today’s standards. For instance, while you’ll still be saving your game at typewriters, you will never need a single ink ribbon. But to get you ready for what kind of game you’re going to be getting yourself into, how’s this for an opening level:

I was dropped off outside of an old home by some Spanish policia to start my investigation. I walk inside to ask the resident if he has any information on the President’s daughter, and his response is to try to chop my arm off at the shoulder with an axe. Luckily (for me more than for him) I put him down with a couple of shots to the nose. My guides speed off in the van, wreck, and now there are three other angry villagers waiting for me outside. I pick them off from an upstairs window rather than face them. At the main village, I see one of my former travel companions burning on a stake, and am quickly noticed by a female villager. She alerts the rest of the town and tries to give me an extreme close-up of her shiny pitchfork. Angry villagers with hatchets, axes, pitchforks, and torches are running – not walking – at me from every direction. I hold my ground as long as I can, swinging in every direction and aiming for their heads.

It quickly becomes apparent that there are too many of them, so I run into a house. I notice that I can push bookcases in front of the windows, and I do so. The villagers are banging from outside. I run upstairs to employ my "shoot them from the safety of the window" tactic, and notice someone climbing in from a wooden ladder. I knock him outside with a shot to the chest, and push the ladder away from the house. I shoot who I can while they scramble to put the ladder back up, push it back down, and repeat. My surround sound eventually alerts me that it’s time to turn around, and when I do I see six villagers in the room with me, coming in through another window, and from downstairs (they apparently broke the bookcases). Before I can catch my breath from my scream, the nearest one raises a chainsaw above his head, and separates my mind from body…literally. I wipe the sweat off my hands and try again.

I played Resident Evil 4 with my roommate and neighbor watching. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times we screamed that first night. There is a different kind of fear oozing out of RE4 than the previous games. There aren’t many instances where dogs come crashing through a window, for instance. But we screamed more often when we knew what was coming, we just didn’t anticipate how quickly, how many, or from how many directions. The first enemy you meet is the standard villager, and while they don’t always run, they are smarter than your average zombie. As described above, they will put ladders up against buildings to get at you. They will throw their hatchets at you from rooftops. They will blow fire at you with their torches. They will set traps for you, including dynamite trip wires and bear traps. And as I learned through a very painful lesson, they will throw fire at you if you climb the tower in the middle of town.

Let’s talk about some of the major changes veterans of the series will notice. First and foremost, the entire world is 3D – not just characters walking on a pre-rendered backdrop. The game plays in a third person perspective, as always, except the camera now floats directly behind Leon’s shoulder, rather than being fixed in a corner somewhere. Rather than targeting either straight, up, or down as in the past, you now directly control each of Leon’s shots, aiming made possible by laser sights mounted on each of his weapons. What this does, overall, is make the game play much more like a first-person shooter than a third-person action game.

The controls are pretty standard for the RE universe. You still walk using the stick, and turning is no better than before. Holding the B button allows you to run, holding R zooms the camera closer to Leon’s shoulder and lets you aim. Holding L instead pulls out Leon’s knife. The A button is used to attack and also for several context-sensitive actions. These range from basic actions such as picking up items or opening doors, to some new techniques including diving through windows, jumping over gaps, or kicking enemies at just the right time. In fact, several points in the game require you to react very quickly to icons that pop up on screen, indicating what to press (think Shenmue). Someone might try to stab Leon, and you’ll have about one second to press whatever button appears on screen if you want to dodge. This happens a lot, and forces you to constantly pay attention, even during cutscenes or else have to try again. Don’t think you can memorize the button, either, as it randomly changes each time. There’s even almost an entire boss fight that takes place within a cutscene filled with these events, which works very well – an interesting challenge that puts your reaction time to the test.

There are also changes in the way inventory is handled. Gone are the storage boxes and (at last) the need to constantly exchange your items for an ink ribbon every time you want to save. In Resident Evil 4, Leon can only hold a certain amount. If it doesn’t fit, it’ll have to be discarded or sold. Items can be bought and sold via some seriously shady merchants who turn up in the most random of places for running a business. Here’s where you’ll purchase most of your weapons, as well as some first-aid spray if you need it. As you have limited space, you can choose to either spend your pesetas (apparently this village hasn’t yet adopted the Euro along with the rest of the country) on new weapons or to purchase upgrades to the ones you already have. You will pick up cash from fallen enemies, in wooden crates, or inside dressers. You’ll also come across a few trinkets that have no value to you, but can be sold to the merchant. Luckily, because enemies randomly drop items, you’ll hardly ever have to worry about your ammunition, which is a completely different approach for the RE series, but a very good new direction. It’s much more exciting to have to fight off hordes of enemies rather than be worried about how you’re going to finish off a couple with 4 shots. Among all of the first-aid spray, ammunition, grenades (frag, incendiary, and flash), weapon upgrades, etc. it’s a good thing the merchant also sells larger bags in which to hold your inventory. Rather than listing your items and weapons on a scroll list as before, now inventory shows up in an actual layout, similar to games like Chrome or Deus Ex. Everything takes up a certain geometrical area in your case, and sometimes you’ll have to rearrange your items to make them fit tighter so you can take that one extra grenade.

All in all, this game is the most action oriented one yet. You’ll never have to remember which door a new key goes to, as it’s almost always one in the same room you are in, or one you are just about to encounter. Like a gift from heaven, there is virtually no backtracking at all in RE4. The object is to keep moving forward – not to remember where it was that you saw a particular hexagonal-shaped slot on a door. This alone puts the whole experience light years ahead of the earlier games.

As should be no surprise with an action-oriented game, combat is a major part of the gameplay. And this part is why I’m so sure no future Resident Evil game will ever go back to the way of the older ones. Combat in RE4 is absolutely, positively the best part of the game. While Leon can’t walk and shoot simultaneously, this is the only drawback on the gunplay. Once you take a few minutes to get used to the view, firing your weapons with pinpoint accuracy is pretty natural, although you’ll never be as precise as you would were this game truly in first-person. Leon’s laser sights prove indispensable, allowing you to choose whether to try to take an enemy out with a headshot, go for the easy torso hit, or simply slow them down by putting a round into the leg of your choice. Sure, many games have location based damage – meaning a shot in the head causes more damage than a shot in the toe, but RE4 makes it all very satisfying because of the way the enemies react based on where you hit them. A running enemy will literally trip and tumble if you hit it in the leg. A shot to a villager’s face will cause them to spin around, grabbing at their face with their hands, until they can see again. A shot in the arm will make them drop their weapon. You can really use this strategically at some points, as a well-placed bullet can send enemies off of ledges, or cause them to burn themselves with their own torches. See an enemy holding dynamite? Try shooting the dynamite.

Of course, it’s not just the animation that makes the fighting so damn entertaining in RE4. Let’s not forget the weapons, which include several types of pistols, shotguns, grenades, and sniper rifles, to name a few. When using a rifle equipped with a scope, you can zoom in with a first-person view for some very exact hits. There’s also a rocket launcher, which can kill absolutely any enemy in a single blast (it’s expensive and large though) and a mine thrower, which is essentially a sniper rifle that launches timed, explosive darts.

And don’t worry – the enemies get a bit more sophisticated than pitchfork-wielding villagers. Just when you think you can handle them, you’ll face monks armed with maces crouched behind wooden riot shields. You can either aim for the teeny-tiny parts of them that are exposed (such as a pinky toe) or destroy their shields. A shotgun will tear the entire shield apart, while pistols and machine guns will break small parts of the shield into splinted holes, piece by piece. You’ll encounter monks armed with crossbows, a few blind gladiators with Wolverine-style claws, fully armored knights, mutant flies straight out of Star Wars, and giant ogres. There are of course some seriously demented boss fights, but I’ll let you discover those for yourself.

The game is so much fun that it could stand on its gameplay merits alone. Fortunately, the presentation is impressive as well. The graphics are so good, I often find myself forgetting that I’ve been playing my GameCube all week – not my Xbox. The environments, from the wooded village to sewers and castles are all intricately detailed, and you’ll never notice repeated textures. Animation as I said earlier is some of the best I’ve ever seen, and weather effects, such as rain, fog, and lightning are handled very well by Nintendo’s little console. Sound effects are also near perfect, although my roommate did get sick of hearing "Alli esta!" and some of the other phrases the villagers shout out. Surround sound is not only amazing, but also often a lifesaver.

It took me almost 25 hours to get through Resident Evil 4, but I immediately started again form the beginning because the gameplay is just that good. Once you beat it, some new weapons are available to you from the merchant, as well as some extra mission types and minigames. And of course, you can unlock special costumes.

Well the game ended, for one thing. I was kind of hoping it would just continue on, indefinitely. Any downsides to this game are forgivable because of how entertaining it is to play, but it does have its faults.

For one thing, there’s been lots of hype surrounding this game in the form of a claim that "these are not zombies" – appealing to the way the enemies react more intelligently. Still, at the risk of a very minor spoiler (skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know anything about the story) a very familiar corporation is still involved, as always, and while they might not technically be zombies, there is a virus in these people that causes them to mutate. Don’t expect to be fighting humans for long. Although the villagers can and do run at you, later enemies often do just walk, moan, and stagger towards you, much like the zombies of earlier Resident Evil games.

Although I do approve of a limited inventory system and more importantly the exclusion of storage boxes, I still hate the geometrical space approach to managing items. Rather than make me physically move, rotate, and shift items to make things fit efficiently, why not just give me a total number, say ‘50,’ and assign a number to each item. A grenade could be assigned a ‘2,’ a rocket launcher ’12,’ etc. Then just let me hold as much as I want until my items total ’50.’ If something will physically fit into my box with some shifting around, why make players actually move stuff around? Let the game do it for us because it takes a lot of time and is very annoying.

Lastly, the dialogue is still very obviously translated from Japanese, which sometimes makes it sound awkward. The dialogue between Leon and his government contact via radio is often pointless, weird, or just doesn’t make logical sense. Why Leon doesn’t call for backup until the last part of the game seems ridiculous, as does the fact that after the opening of the game I described above, Leon never tells his contact just how strange everything is.

Resident Evil games will never go back to the old format. There’s simply no way Capcom would ever make us suffer through that after a taste of this game. Everything – absolutely everything - works better in this game than in any RE title before. The end result is a game that is a total blast to play through. If you’ve been burned by the dated RE formula in the past, I’d tell you that you owe it to yourself to rent it… but then you’d be irate because you wasted six bucks only to spend another $50 so you can own it. Resident Evil 4 is a masterpiece; the entire survival horror genre has just been redefined.

I don’t care that Leon still pivots when you turn him. There’s no back tracking. Boss fights are varied and inventive. You can aim exactly where you need to. Everything mixes together beautifully.

Easily the best graphics on the system. Textures are detailed, and the animation is incredible.

This might be your excuse to get surround sound. You will hear some of the same phrases from the enemies, however.

Action-packed, thrilling, surprising combat will not let you go more than an hour without doing something new and thinking, “Cool, I didn’t realize I could do that.”

It’s definitely fun enough to play again. I for one just want to watch other people play the beginning who haven’t seen it yet. Plus you get some extra features when you beat it.