Walkthrough

Chapter 1-1

Six years have passed since that horrendous incident, it seems - check the opening cutscene for more info on what incident we're talking about. You could also watch the Resident Evil films, if you wish, but, well, those are more difficult to survive with your sanity than the previous games in the series are.

In Resident Evil 4, you take the role of Leon, a man searching for the daughter of the president, who's been recently kidnapped by a shadowy group of people. You begin your little quest on the outskirts of a rural village in an unnamed European country. Judging by the fact that your upcoming assailants speak Spanish, we're going to guess that it's Spain, but we'll leave the final determination to the experts.

After you gain control of Leon, you'll have to head towards the nearby house. Before you move too far, though, you'll want to take a little target practice by shooting the blackbirds on the path in front of you. If you get them all, you should be able to check their bodies for some money and a nice little gem; these'll come in handy when you meet up with weapons merchants later on. You'll thus want to kill birds when you spot them; they're one-shot kills, but they will fly away if you startle them, so try to land your shots accurately. They carry all kinds of stuff, from cash to hand grenades (which makes perfect sense), so off them for easy pickups.

The first of many, MANY glorious kills.

One of the locals will confront you when you enter the house here. He doesn't appear to be a zombie, but axe-wielding bad guys still deserve a bullet or two in the head, if you ask us; the fact that he's got half a dozen maggot-infested skulls drying out underneath his stairwell seems to lend weight to that opinion. Take him down with your trusty pistol, slash him with your knife, kick him to death; try to get used to the controls here. The fact that you can easily skip the opening intro scenes makes it easy to get back here if you die, so this fight and the upcoming fight against three more dudes should act as something of a trial-by-fire for you; if you die, just start a new game and try again.

After killing the initial assailant, the aforementioned three guys will appear outside the house. They can't get in, but you can't kill them without leaving, making for something of a stalemate. Check the corpse of your slain foe for any items, then run upstairs and grab the handgun ammo from the table on the second floor. When you have that, you can either jump out of the second-floor window (you don't take damage from this), or hop from the first-floor window to get outside. The second-floor option is probably the better of the two, as it'll let you maneuver during the upcoming fight. If you want to, you can try slashing out the window with your knife (hold L trigger, then use A to swing your knife), then shooting the guys outside, but it'll be difficult to get a clear shot while doing so.

Regardless, you'll need to put everyone outside out of their respective miseries. Your best bet here is to run away from the house, use your quick-turn maneuver (press down on the analog stick and hit B), then fire away at them until they get close, then repeating the maneuver. If the three targets clump together, try and get a headshot on one of them, then run up and use your Kick command (tap A while you don't have your gun aimed) to knock them all down. The kick doesn't do much damage, but it'll keep the bad guys off your back for a second or two, and you may be able to get a headshot in while they're lying prone.

Before leaving the vicinity of the house, check the cart behind it for a crate; you can open these by swinging your knife at them. The contents are random (like the items that the non-zombie enemies drop, for the most part), but you should still check, obviously.

A little bit further down the road is a small hut with a typewriter in it; you can use these to save your game.

Approaching Pueblo

Leon has a wit like a…witty person. How droll!

As you walk down the path, you'll come to a dog caught in a bear trap; you can either help it or shoot it, depending on your demeanor. As you may suspect, it'll come in handy later on if you save it, and save your butt during a particularly hard boss fight, so we'll encourage you to get it out of the trap. Near the second guidepost nearby, you can find a Red Herb if you walk to the southern wall of the zone, but be careful, as there are more beartraps lain down in the grass; getting caught in one will take off one and a half bars of health. There are more traps ahead, as well, including some tripwires laid out across trees; if you hit the dynamite, you'll take plenty of damage, but you can either avoid it or shoot it. There's also a beartrap in between the tripwire traps, but you can also shoot that to trip it before passing by.

After you pass by these traps, it's a fairly simple walk to the village, albeit one infested with homicidal maniacs.