Parents' Guide to

Resident Evil 4

By Chris Jozefowicz, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 18+

A fresh but still violent take on the horror series.

Game Nintendo Wii, Windows, PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube 2005
Resident Evil 4 Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this game.

Community Reviews

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age 13+

Based on 22 parent reviews

Mukah
Mukah Adult
August 6, 2021
age 4+

This title has:

Easy to play/use
1 person found this helpful.
This dude
This dude Adult
January 6, 2023
age 15+

Intense and disturbing, but not as violent as some modern games.

Violence: The player often takes on entire hoards of human/mutant enemies at a time, resulting in them frequently killing dozens of people in short periods of time. The player kills enemies with guns, explosives, and knives. Human enemies react somewhat realistically to being shot in different locations, (for example, if an enemy is shot in the leg he will grab his thigh and cry out in pain.) Human enemies can also be set on fire, and have their heads blown off. The player can die in many gruesome ways, including having their face melted off, getting cut in half, and being decapitated with a chainsaw. Mutant enemies mutilate their own bodies as they transform, complete with arms and heads exploding as blades and claws crawl out of their wounds. Sex: A few scenes where men make sexual comments about women, and occasional references to "Getting numbers" or hook ups. Role Models: Leon is a relatively blank, but still heroic character who puts innocent lives before his own. While Ashley does often come across as a damsel in distress she does genuinely try her best to survive, and can occasionally save herself. Ada is portrayed as being Leon's equal, her gender not being seen as a weakness.

This title has:

Great role models
Too much violence
Too much sex
See all 22 parent reviews

What’s It About?

RESIDENT EVIL 4 is really more of a horror-themed shoot-'em-up than a survival horror game. Players assume the role of Leon Kennedy, a U.S. government agent. Leon is a veteran of the Raccoon City Police Department, but the whole former Resident Evil setting has been scrapped. Instead, Leon finds himself sent to Spain to retrieve the president's daughter, Ashley, who has been kidnapped by mysterious foes. Finding Ashley will take Leon through a rural village, an elaborate castle, and a run-down research facility, all the while killing just about everything in sight including possessed people and monster aliens. Players can expect a number of plot surprises and double-crosses through a linear and surprisingly long one-player adventure.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (22):
Kids say (77):

In addition to new environments and new baddies, Resident Evil 4 ditches survival-horror gameplay for something more akin to straightforward action. Players will also appreciate the truly wonderful overhaul of the controls. Thanks to floating camera angles and more intuitive controls, Leon is more agile than his Resident Evil predecessors. The result of these changes is that gamers feel more in control of their hero.

Resident Evil 4 is in many ways an outstanding game. It is a long, involving, graphically gorgeous action experience, and a wealth of unlockable gameplay modes adds a lot of replay value. But remember that in the Resident Evil universe, ramping up the action means ramping up the gory carnage. Combine this with a splattering of curse words and some sexual innuendo in the cutscene dialogue, and the result is a game that is most definitely for adults and mature teens only. But it's still pretty amazing.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the role of violence and gore in the horror genre. Do games and movies need to be violent to be scary? Do science fiction elements -- like monsters -- make the violence more palatable than in reality-based games like Grand Theft Auto?

Game Details

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