The year is 2017 and a lot of games came out that have improved on the formula set by Resident Evil 4. But does the King hold up today? It's safe to say it does; it holds up extremely well. Granted, its successors improved on the speed, controls, and horror but in terms of a perfect balance of horror and action, Resident Evil 4 still holds the crown.


The protagonist, Leon Scott Kennedy, is a US government special agent sent by the POTUS to find his kidnapped daughter, Ashley, from the clutches of a cult called the Los Illuminados who are situated in a remote area of Spain. He is escorted by two local officers but is soon separated and forced to conduct his investigation alone when the villagers attack. Later, he finds out that the villagers are infected with a parasite called the Las Plagas which grants them speed and power and frightening mutations. Leon's goal is secure the President's daughter and successfully exfiltrate, but he is met with overwhelming odds stacked against him.

The story of Resident Evil 4 is serviceable and does its job. After your initial playthrough of the game, you unlock Separate Ways, another campaign featuring a different character, which has its own story that fills in the gaps of the main campaign. The personalities of the characters come through the well directed and well voiced cutscenes.


Resident Evil 4 is a third person action adventure game that moves into an over-the-shoulder perspective when aiming. You will shoot, knife, grenade and even perform context specific actions like kicking and suplexing through mobs of enemies. The infected villagers (aka, the Ganados) put up quite a fight and they'll come at you with everything from simple tools like pickaxes and knives to instant killing chainsaws. They'll flank you when they can, and weave in and out of your targeting reticule. Leon can literally break heads with a well placed shot or suplex but that may not always result in a death for your foe as they can have their Plaga come out of their head. Factor in 3 different types of Plaga, and you can see Leon definitely has a lot on his plate to deal with.

You'll also face monstrous foes like the acid spewing, bug-like Novistadors or the horrifying creature called the Regenerator who, as its name implies, regenerates lost body parts despite the massive amount of damage you deal to it. You'll find Ashley early in the game and you have to protect her while she is with you. Enemies will either bee-line straight to her or carry her away (both leading to a Game Over screen if they manage to do so). You can give her rudimentary commands like Wait and Follow, and even have her hide. She even has her own playable section later on in the game.

Where Resident Evil 4 truly shines is through its brilliant boss battles. These encounters will test your mettle to the fullest. While challenging, the game is fair and perhaps, most importantly, fun. Leon is only able to take a few hits before he keels over so the game has to be fun for the player to keep returning to it.

Through the help of a Merchant, you get to buy weapons, items and even upgrade your arsenal through through the money and treasures you find in the game. You start off with a handgun, but as you progress, you'll be able to buy shotguns, magnums, sniper rifles and so on. You are, however, unable to buy ammo (which is kinda funny because you can see the Merchant with ammunition all around, but I suppose this is deliberately done so that the game doesn't become cakewalk because players happened to buy a crap ton of magnum ammunition). You'll also have access to a fun diversion in the form of a shooting gallery where you can unlock collectable Bottle Caps of characters in the game. The game has QTEs, both in-game and in cutscenes, so you have to pay attention.

The game has numerous set piece moments like riding a boat to harpoon a monstrous lake beast, and a mine cart sequence where enemies drop in from above, so the game does a lot to keep you surging on adrenaline. After you are done with the main campaign, you'll unlock Professional Mode (aka Hard Mode), and a bunch of extras - Assignment Ada (a short campaign where you have to find 5 Plaga samples), Separate Ways (a full fledged campaign that fills in a certain character's role in the main campaign), a movie browser, new costumes for the main campaign, and the excellent Mercenaries (a very fun time attack mode where you play across different maps using different characters and score points by killing enemies).

Resident Evil 4 is purely a single player game. There is no multiplayer or co-op of any kind in the game.


The game sounds great and the soundtrack is well done with some memorable tracks like the 'Save Theme' and 'Serenity' (the song you hear when you are with the Merchant). The enemies sound terrific and send a chill down your spine (the labored breathing of the Regenerators come to mind). Sound effects are excellent and everything sounds very convincing. Do yourself a favour and play this game with the headphones on.


Resident Evil 4 boasted some of the best visuals back in 2005 on the Gamecube and the PlayStation 2. The PC port supports higher resoultions, 60 FPS, extra filters, and HD textures. If you want the game to look even better the vanilla release, download the RE4HD mod; it is still a WIP (work in progress) but makes the game look insanely good (google RE4HD and see the results for yourself). If you have the rig to handle it, you should download the mod.

The artstyle of the game does a great job and the game still looks decent to this day. The game does have film grain but it's not overblown like in Resident Evil 5.

The PC version of RE 4 is not perfect - I encountered crashes in the Garden Maze section in Leon's campaign which I managed to overcome by quickly making it through the maze, but the crashes for the same area in Separate Ways required me to stop the TabletInputService in the Services tab of the Task Manager and modifiying the game's config.ini to have the game run at 15 FPS. This is the only way I got the game to stop crashing in the Garden Maze section in Chapter 3 of Separate Ways. If you encounter crashes in any other areas, try following the above steps and see if it helps you.

The game also doesn't run well on low end rigs. My potato of a laptop had no problems playing Resident Evil 5 at 720p and 30 FPS with a mixture of medium and high settings but this game runs worse than a game that came out in 2009. I was forced to lower the resolution to 800x600, turn off AA and motion blur, have shadows on Low, and play using the default textures to get the game running well at 30 FPS.


Resident Evil 4 is more than the sum of its parts. The game stands the test of time despite it being 12 years since release. It's evident that the game was a labour of love back in the days when Capcom was great and not Crap-com. RE 4 is easily one of the best games of all time.


The game is a 9.1 GB download on Steam.

The game works on Windows 10 perfectly. I had some crashes while playing this game.

Resident Evil 4 has Steam Trading Cards.


There are 12 achievements to get in Resident Evil 4. Getting 100% should take 2 playthroughs (one on Normal, the second on Professional) of the main campaign and a playthrough of Separate Ways.