10 Resident Evil Games - Ranked From Worst To Best

Something of a hybrid, Resident Evil 4 represented a pivotal moment in the franchise, a moment in which the focus undoubtedly shifted from traditional survival horror to a more commercial action-adventure. With that said, the game got nearly everything right, perfectly blending the contradictory elements of both genres in order to create a wonderful amalgam of the two.

Released in 2005, Resident Evil 4 follows Leon S. Kennedy, a special operative tasked with rescuing the president’s daughter from a sinister Spanish cult, Los Illuminados. Alone, vastly outnumbered, and completely oblivious to the situation, Leon and Ashley Graham are infected with a lethal virus, leaving them with precious little time to make their escape.

Cheesy, ridiculous, and wonderfully self-aware, Resident Evil 4 also distanced itself from the rest of the series, choosing instead to focus on a self-contained, entirely separate story with only a few miscellaneous connections to the wider universe. Almost as a direct result, Resident Evil 4 comes across as a miraculously original game with its own distinct personality, unencumbered by the larger plot of the series, and all the nonsense that entails.