Resident Evil 4 revolutionized the survival horror genre with a shift to third-person action while retaining its suspenseful roots. You take control of Leon S. Kennedy on a mission to rescue the President's daughter from a mysterious cult. The game offers a thrilling mix of action and exploration, with tense encounters against deranged villagers and puzzles to solve. While some may find the escort mechanic with Ashley Graham frustrating, Resident Evil 4 remains a landmark title with its atmospheric environments, iconic boss fights, and rewarding weapon upgrade system.

Quintessential. Nearly everything in this game has purpose and adds to instill a specific feeling. The action is tense and extremely fun, the inventory management and preserving resources remains engaging to this day, and this might be the best version of quick time events integrated into both cutscenes and gameplay. The game effortlessly balances the fear due to the atmosphere with how funny the dialogue is. The dialogue being so cheesy and funny helps reset the tension, keeping the pacing well balanced.

While the controls can be weird if you aren't used to tank controls, it isn't inherently worse. Mastery of these controls is extremely satisfying, and it proves that having a homogenized control scheme isn't always going to be a good thing if a team wants their game to achieve different things.

Even though this game has a remake which is also amazing, the original will always be a fundamental work and worth playing on it's own merits. Don't let there being a prettier and newer version have you miss out on peak video games. The game is iconic for a reason.