With brutishly fast zombies, raw action and most importantly an over-the-shoulder viewpoint, the influence of Capcom’s horror game can still be felt. It is an interesting quirk of video game history that one of the greatest ever horror titles debuted on the Nintendo GameCube, a toylike console better known for the cutest titles in the Zelda series and Animal Crossing. But in 2002, Capcom revealed five exclusives to boost the beleaguered platform – and among them was Resident Evil 4, technically the 13th title in the franchise, which on its release three years later would be considered its zenith. It was an exciting new lease of life for the survival horror genre.
![[Keith Stuart]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/06/Keith-Stuart,-R.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Not that you’d guess all this from the game’s extraordinarily pedestrian setup. Six years after the fall of the Umbrella Corporation smouldering cop Leon Kennedy has been dispatched on a mission to retrieve the US president’s kidnapped daughter, who has been spotted in a tiny village in rural Spain. For some reason best known to the Secret Service, he’s going in alone.
![[Resident Evil 4 (2005).]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/052d47f7661f04b1a4f7b466ef0a4b6a8cc38478/120_276_2644_1588/master/2644.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Yet from this B-movie premise, it radically challenged the conventions of the Resident Evil series and the survival horror genre itself. By moving the action away from the grim, rainy midwest of Raccoon City and into the Spanish countryside, Capcom thrust Resi fans (and Leon himself) into utterly unfamiliar surroundings. This sense of dislocation continued when the traditional lumbering zombies (clearly inspired by George A Romero’s Night of the Living Dead trilogy) were replaced by brutishly fast, axe-wielding country folk, infected with parasites by evil aristocrats in a gothic castle. These sprightly creatures were much more in line with the infected maniacs depicted in Danny Boyle’s modern take on the zombie flick, 28 Days Later, surely an influence on Resi 4 director Shinji Mikami. Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the obscure Lovecraftian horror Dagon, which is actually set in Spain, have also been put forward by fans as potential inspirations.
