Resident Evil 4 – Los Ganados
This game is weirdly polarizing for many Resident Evil fans. Some see it as the beginning of the end for the series, while others see it for what it is. Resident Evil 4 didn’t ruin the series. It took Resident Evil in what could have been an exciting new direction, before the “action” half of “action horror” took over in Resident Evil 5.
As much as I love Resident Evil 2, which may very well be the “best” game in the series, its legacy doesn’t come close to matching Resident Evil 4. It turned gaming’s most successful horror franchise on its head, and it did this when the series was still relatively close to the top of its game.
Some people forget that it followed Code: Veronica, a fantastic sequel in its own right, so a “reboot” wasn’t necessarily something Capcom needed to do. That didn’t stop them from taking everything that was familiar and tossing it out the window. Or rather, everything except for Leon, though if it thrown him out too he just would’ve landed on his feet, like a boss.
A good developer uses fan feedback to help guide the path they take with their game(s), but a great one knows their game(s) well enough to know where to take it ahead of time. Back then, Capcom was at the top of their game. They knew Resident Evil needed some rejuvenation, so they rebooted it before many of us knew that’s what we wanted.
Resident Evil 4 defined a generation. It innovated in a relatively unknown subgenre — third person “over the shoulder” first seen in Splinter Cell — while at the same time taking another — action horror — mainstream. It also introduced us to the Ganados.
Before, the monsters of Resident Evil were predictable. The Ganados were created by Las Plagas, a parasite unearthed in Europe, as opposed to a virus. This gives them the remarkable ability to mutate on the fly. We had seen this before with creatures like the Crimsons Heads, but this game took that concept and brought it closer to full realization.
We also can’t forget about my all-time favorite Resident Evil monster, the Regenerator. That’s what it wants us to do, because as soon as we forget, that’s when it will strike.
