10 Essential Third-Person Gaming Shooter Levels You Must Play
4. Chapter 1-1 - Resident Evil 4
Chapter 1-1 is right up there with Super Mario Bros. World 1-1, DOOM’s E1M1 and Half-Life’s Welcome To Black Mesa as one of the most iconic, best opening levels of all time.
Yet, at first glance you’d be forgiven for asking why.
It’s brown, Quake brown, a muddy mélange of faded leaves, muddy tracks and a depressingly dusty, brown cabin. It’s dreary, abandoned and just a bit...unfriendly. And therein lies the magic, developers Capcom planting a subtle seed of dread that flowers into full blown gibbering panic when a crazed villager tries to separate protagonist Leon Kennedy’s head from his shoulders with an axe.
And then, we come to that most iconic location of all, the village. It is here that Resident Evil 4 turns up the action, plunging you into a desperate melee against a relentless tide of zombie villagers, called ganados. In a lesser game a big action set-piece like this might have ruined the tense, oppressive atmosphere. Instead, subjecting the player to a nigh un-winnable fight, this early on, only adds to the terror.
Chapter 1-1 affords you a much need breather with its more sedate second half, but it’s that first foray into the village, that uniquely chilling atmosphere, that earned it the accolade of one of gaming’s all time greats.