This Week In Retro: Resident Evil 4 (2005)

January 11, 2005: ¡Un Forastero!

by Diamond Feit 

Humanity has yet to come up with an appropriate unit of measure to express the speed at which tastes can change. Movies can open big at the box office but plummet in subsequent weeks, turning a would-be franchise into a flop. TV audiences can abandon a show in a heartbeat, leaving networks puzzled when a one-time ratings success finds itself at rock bottom.

Even before the lightning-fast feedback of the modern era, video games likewise struggled to keep up with popular opinion. Today's killer app could become tomorrow's forgotten fad as competitors rush to get their own versions to market. Nintendo has gone from industry leader to punchline and back multiple times. Sony and Microsoft traded places atop gamers' wishlists throughout the early 2000s, but both look ill-equipped to keep pace with the rise of handheld devices that play just about every game ever made.

When Capcom coined the term "survival horror" in 1996 with the debut of Resident Evil, the Osaka company saw impressive returns and immediately began work on a sequel. Yet hiccups in the development of Resident Evil 2 caused delays and budget overruns that threatened to snuff the series before it could start. Once the sequel's eventual 1998 release outperformed the first game, Capcom bet even harder on Resident Evil, greenlighting multiple projects for both existing and upcoming platforms; some of these morphed into original titles that spawned their own sequels, but none of them sold as well as Resident Evil 2.

In 2002—the same year two Resident Evil games launched on the GameCube—Capcom officially revealed Resident Evil 4 to the public as one of five upcoming exclusives for Nintendo's struggling platform. The early footage teased a 200X release date, a purposefully vague statement that proved prophetic as behind the scenes, development of the highly-anticipated sequel proved too ambitious for the GameCube hardware. Like Resident Evil 2 before it, Resident Evil 4 would go through radical revisions before eventually arriving 20 years ago this week behind schedule and over-budget, though once again a potential failure turned into a runaway smash.

Resident Evil 4 recognizes that after multiple sequels, spinoffs, ports, remakes, and a recent prequel, even fans might feel lost about the series' status quo. Hence our protagonist Leon S. Kennedy opens the game with a recap of relevant world events, starting with the 1998 zombie outbreak he personally witnessed as a rookie cop in Resident Evil 2. Leon escaped with his life but once the American government decided to wipe out the infection with a nuclear missile at the end of Resident Evil 3, it left him without a job.

In the here and now of 2004, Leon's new assignment involves working security for the President of the United States, specifically protecting the first family. Unfortunately, someone kidnapped the president's daughter Ashley right before Leon took the job, so he's sent off to "Europe" in the hopes of catching up to her abductors and bringing her home safe. Leon delivers this exposition while riding out to a remote village with two local police officers, neither of whom want anything to do with Leon or his mission. They drop him off on the outskirts of town and "watch the car," forcing Leon—and the player—to work alone.

Many of Resident Evil 4's changes to series norms become apparent as soon as players take control of Leon. Every previous game began by trapping their heroes either indoors or surrounding them with zombies, but this time Leon gets to stroll amongst the trees without a soul in sight. The woods are fully modeled in three dimensions in service of a new behind-the-shoulder camera view that perpetually follows Leon. Players can turn around and admire the scenery in all directions or head back to the waiting cops for some words of encouragement.

Leon's quiet hike doesn't last long, as a rusted truck parked outside a house blocks the only path into the village. The home's front door sits wide open, highlighting another major shift as no cinematic loading screen separates Leon from the interior; players can march right in and assess a complete stranger's meager bookshelves.

Leon meets a lone old man inside who responds to his questions in irate Spanish—even I know the word cabrón—followed by an axe attack. Forced to defend Leon from this aggression, players get a firsthand introduction to another all-new feature as combat now offers precision aiming and location-based injuries. Shoot a guy in the leg and he'll grip his thigh in pain. Shoot him in the head and he'll stagger as he covers his face. Get in close to a wounded enemy and a context-sensitive button prompt will trigger a melee attack from Leon, usually a kick but he can even deliver a belly-to-belly suplex if his foe has dropped to their knees.

Armed with an arsenal of laser-sighted firearms and an array of martial arts moves, Resident Evil 4 players have enough tools to handle hordes of hostiles at once. The game puts them to the test soon enough once Leon reaches the nearby village and discovers every single resident is homicidal, forcing players to face as many as 10 unfriendly peasants at once—far bigger crowds than ever seen in previous games on the PlayStation or Dreamcast.

You may have noticed an absence of a certain z-word long associated with this series and that's purposeful: Resident Evil 4 features no zombies in the traditional sense. Instead, these early cannon-fodder foes are called Ganados, and while they take their time closing in on Leon they are not mindless, decaying corpses. Ganados carry weapons and can throw dangerous objects like dynamite. They break windows and force open doors. In the village they will even climb ladders to chase Leon to higher ground.

This threat elevation perfectly mirrors Leon's newfound agility, replacing the one-note enemy encounters of early Resident Evil games with tense yet dynamic engagements. While outmaneuvering and avoiding adversaries remains a viable tactic, the numbers you face in Resident Evil 4 don't make pacifism an easy option. Plus, every dead body can potentially drop more ammo for Leon's weapons, fueling further gunplay.

Even though Resident Evil 4 arrived far too late to turn the tide of the console wars, critics immediately hailed it as a triumph. Shane Bettenhausen lauded the overhauled mechanics, writing for 1up.com "RE4 doesn't merely improve upon the established Resident Evil concept, it fixes it." IGN's Matt Casamassina called it "simply the best survival horror game ever created." Despite releasing in the second week of January, Resident Evil 4 took home multiple Game of the Year awards, with Metacritic listing it as the best-reviewed game of any platform in 2005; its Metascore of 96 places it alongside other all-timers like Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Since its initial release 20 years ago, Resident Evil 4's reputation has snowballed as fans and game developers alike praise it for redefining not only its own genre but action gaming as a whole. Creative leads behind Gears of War, BioShock, Dead Space, and The Last of Us all cite Capcom's work as influential on their own award-winning titles. A 2017 Game Informer article declared Resident Evil 4 "The Most Important Third-Person Shooter Ever."

Capcom has, in turn, spent the last 20 years ensuring that every platform with a significant player base has access to a version of Resident Evil 4. The company promised a PlayStation 2 port would arrive before the end of 2005. A 2007 port for the Nintendo Wii added motion controls so players could aim Leon's gun by pointing their Wiimote at the Ganados on screen. Beginning with a 2009 iPhone version and followed by ports for iPad and Android, today players can rescue Ashley on almost any mobile device.

A 2011 high-definition remaster has kept Resident Evil 4 in print for the last three generations of PlayStation and Xbox along with the Nintendo Switch. PC owners can choose between this official HD remaster or a fan mod that replaces all in-game textures while improving lighting and other technical aspects. A 2021 VR port turns the third-person shooter into a first-person one, enabling players to make-believe they're running through Europe with a suitcase full of guns, grenades, and giant fish.

Amidst this avalanche of hype, I found very little time in my life for Resident Evil 4 despite my love for the series. I had returned to college to finish my degree in 2004 and only took one console to the dormitory—my PlayStation 2. I passed my GameCube to my friends who enthusiastically showed me what I was missing once I came home on break. By the time Capcom's PS2 port arrived in late 2005, I had left the country to study abroad in Japan, reducing my console access to nil.

Without my own copy to sit down with, this meant my initial introduction to Resident Evil 4 came via The Mercenaries, a post-game battle mode that pits players against never-ending waves of enemies in a variety of arenas. My friends delighted at the entertainment potential of new playable characters—including Albert Wesker—feasting on groups of Ganados lined up for the slaughter as they tried to maintain a kill combo for high scores.  Divorced from its story, the game's mechanics impressed me but the experience struck me as very un-horror-like.

I had no idea at the time that the critical and financial windfall surrounding Resident Evil 4 would nearly destroy the genre it helped popularize in the first place. As the game industry saw the torrent of praise rain down upon Leon Kennedy's European escapades, other publishers sought to replicate that spectacle for themselves by revamping their own horror franchises to focus on over-the-top action.

Capcom likewise saw the numbers pour in and decided that Resident Evil 4 would serve as the series template going forward without considering how increasing the scope and scale of each subsequent sequel might erode the franchise's foundation of fear. Resident Evils 5 and 6 both moved millions of copies but at the cost of the brand's identity. Without a focus on horror or isolation, Resident Evil became just another third-person shooter in a market crowded with third-person shooters.

Happily, 20 years after Resident Evil 4 almost suplexed the genre into oblivion, we have restored some semblance of sanity to survival horror. Today developers large and small offer their own interpretations on the formula Capcom codified, demonstrating that the public's appetite for fixed camera angles and zombies has not faded over time. 

Capcom, too, learned their share of lessons. Following a hard pivot to make Resident Evil actually frightening again, the company sought to reimagine the series' earlier games through a modern lens. A 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake took the classic setting of an urban zombie apocalypse and updated it with high-resolution graphics and an over-the-shoulder camera—minus the outrageous melee combat. This marriage of old and new maintained the original's nightmarish atmosphere, earning the release heaps of praise and Capcom heaps of cash.

As for me, I'm still playing catch-up with Resident Evil's many mutations over the years. I remain a die-hard fan who revels in series lore—whether through games, movies, animation, or even a Netflix original series that I alone seemingly enjoyed—yet Resident Evil 4 remains relatively low on my personal list. Thanks to its massive impact on the medium, the 2005 game resembles scores of shooters but doesn't quite control like anything else. I periodically boot the game up on Steam and fumble about with the inputs before Leon gets stabbed with a pitchfork and dies.

I know I could always give up on revisiting a 20-year-old video game and settle for the all-new Resident Evil 4 Capcom released in 2023, but along with fancier graphics and higher frame rates that remake introduces my personal gaming kryptonite—a parry mechanic. Sorry Leon, at least we'll always have Raccoon City.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.