A car rolls up onto a small dirt road located just outside a small village. A man, wielding a handgun, walks towards a small village house. Inside the home, he produces a photograph of a young girl and questions the villager. Almost immediately, the man is attacked by the villager who now holds an axe in his hand. After unsuccessfully commanding the axe man to freeze, the man neutralizes him on the spot. This is Resident Evil 4.
In Resident Evil 4 you play as Leon S. Kennedy - a smart ass government agent who loves to defy the odds set against him. Your objective is to secure the kidnapped president's daughter and bring her back home. However, your mission gets extremely dangerous once setting foot in this remote, European locale. After silencing the attacking villager, you will be left thinking to yourself "Just what the hell is going on here?"
Upon taking control of Leon, you can see that the series has changed course in a bold, new direction with its new game play mechanics. A behind-the-back perspective has replaced the old camera position, and this allows full freedom of control. Unlike the past Resident Evil games, you won't have to continuously press D-pad buttons to move Leon in the general direction you want to him to go. You can move Leon in any direction by pushing the control stick in whichever direction you desire. With this addition, Leon can easily move around the environment while trying to evade the villagers' onslaught or he can take them on through a variety of means with his arsenal.
Another important change is the hit zone aiming system, which gives you the ability to aim your weapon anywhere on the enemy's body. Each gun has a laser sight, which allows you to aim accurately and precisely. Simply hold the "R" button to ready your gun and aim with the control stick. The average person would think that aiming for the head would kill everything quickly and easily; however, Capcom has done an outstanding job by limiting the usefulness of the head shot.
Many enemies have head protectors or some other sort of "evolution" that prevents vulnerability in the upper extremities. The hit zone aiming system creates a plethora of ways to take down all the creatures that come to cross your path. For example, you can shoot a Ganado in the knee to drop him on the ground and finish him off with swift bullet to a weak point.
Over the course of the adventure, Leon will come across many dark, mysterious, and cloaked figures hiding away from the attacking creatures. These lonesome fellows are the merchants of this game, and they will help you out in many ways. You can purchase attache case extensions and weapons such as handguns, shotguns, rifles, and more from these guys, or you can choose to take a different course of action.
If you choose to upgrade your weapon, a fee (sometimes quite hefty) will be imposed so you can power up your shots, speed up reload times, fire more quickly, or stock more rounds in your weapon. The upgrade feature creates new strategies because now you can either sell your current weapon, or you can upgrade it to make it just as good (or even better) as the one in the shop. Whichever method you choose is up to you, as these choices create different experiences every time.
After a few short hours of game play, Leon will finally come into contact with Ashley (the president's daughter). This point adds a new element to the game, because she will accompany through the dangerous territories that lay ahead of you. If she dies or is taken away by the enemy, then you fail your mission and will have to start at the most recent checkpoint.
You can have Ashley stay put in a secure location by pressing the "X" button, and you can call her to you by pressing it again. Escorting her actually proves to be fun for the majority of the time, because now you have more than just yourself to look after. On the other hand, sometimes she can be a burden to you, but there's no job that Leon can't handle!
One major difference from the predecessors that you can recognize immediately is that there are no zombies in this game. If you inspect the first villager after killing him, you get a message saying "He's not a zombie…." Believe it or not, this game is much better without the zombies. The zombies from the previous Resident Evil games were mindless and nothing short of forgettable. Our humanoid enemies are much smarter, faster, and more powerful than the zombies you once knew.
Once a villager spots Leon, he or she will communicate to the others in Spanish: the villagers will be informed of your location, they will set up an attack pattern, and they will run at you. These enemies are more unsettling than the zombies of yesteryear, because these guys will throw axes, dynamite, and many other projectiles at you. Of course, these villagers are just the tip of the iceberg - many unimaginable horrors await Leon in this "cage of torment…"
