Writing: 2/5
Gameplay: 5/5
Art Design & Visuals: 3/5
Voices & Sounds: 4/5
Atmosphere & Immersion: 3/5

My personal fav Resident Evil game - mainly because its the one I put the most time into. Sure looking back on it there are plenty of issues - the game feels a little too long and some boss fights are a little underwhelming.

I don't really have any issues with Ashley - but maybe thats because I have played the game so much I'm just used to it? But hey - I still think this is one of the greatest action games ever created - it's definitely one of the most influential ones. It changed gaming for decades.

A game that in no way needed a remake.

A reinvention of both the Resident Evil franchise and the third person shooter genre as a whole, RE4 is a sticky, methodical action game that almost completely abandons the resource scarcity of its roots and instead replaces it with an addictive, tense, action-packed core loop. Players can and should gun down every single enemy without fear of running out of ammo, at least compared to previous Resident Evils, but they will still need to manage their ammo TYPES as well as their healing items by literally, physically organizing items to fit within their inventory. Exploration and attentiveness in the environments is generously rewarded with currency, which is then applied toward the RPG element of upgrade purchases. One can, in fact, have a "build" in RE4, and sure, Devil May Cry had been doing this sort of thing for a while already, but that's honestly still a bit more revolutionary than it sounds. The name of the game in Resident Evil 4, unless you're in a boss fight, is crowd control. Enemies are slow, but so numerous as to surround and overwhelm, with many more advanced enemies being harder to stagger. Resident Evil 4 expects a player to prioritize targets effectively, deciding which gun to use and where to strike. Each gun will do the job differently, so there is a reason to juggle that ammo economy well. Enemies will react to being shot in their limbs, so it's always worth considering. Ashley, while a pain point for many, only adds another layer onto this crowd control. Now there's another target the player needs to keep the crowd away from, and individual members of that crowd suddenly become ultra-priority targets as soon as they scoop her up. Resident Evil 4, especially with its later enemies, becomes a game designed around the question: "How do I keep this guy away from me until he dies." It is a game about zoning, and it pulls it off so well that most people don't even think about it.

I've found that many, including myself, struggle to describe what exactly is so great about Resident Evil 4 amid the grand canon of video games. It is, by all accounts, just a wonderfully polished, smooth, engaging shooter that is well-paced and generally does everything well. It's easy to forget that before Resident Evil 4, "over-the-shoulder" shooters weren't exactly a thing, or that RE4 has quite possibly the best implementation of adaptive difficulty in video game history. So many of its innovations are quiet and slight. They are felt, but seldom identified.

The consequences of the tonal shift for Resident Evil that this game represents are a bit controversial, but the quality of Resident Evil 4 in a vacuum is not. It is a fun, campy, satisfying action film that I could boot up on any day of the week and have a good time with. I'm not a fan of slasher movies, but I'm glad that their exact sense of humor has a home in the video game canon, and that it is such a luxurious one. RE4's tone is a critical part of its package, and I wouldn't change a thing about it.