Common Sense Media Review
A fresh but still violent take on the horror series.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 18+?
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Parent and Kid Reviews
Based on 20 parent reviews
Based on 75 kid reviews
Kids say this game is a thrilling yet intense experience suitable for mature teens, often being regarded as one of the best entries in its series. Players appreciate the mix of action and horror, although many reviews emphasize the strong violence, occasional coarse language, and unsettling imagery, suggesting it’s best for those over 10 or 12 due to its mature content.
- thrilling experience
- mature audience
- strong violence
- intense imagery
- action and horror
Summarized with AI
Summarized with AI
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?
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
- Platforms : Nintendo Wii , Windows , PlayStation 2 , Nintendo GameCube
- Pricing structure :
- Available online? : Not available online
- Publisher : Capcom
- Release date : January 12, 2005
- Genre : Action/Adventure
- ESRB rating :
- Last updated : June 26, 2022
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