General Strategies

The world of Resident Evil 4 will require a lot of on-the-job training, and as such, you can refer to our walkthrough for some tried-and-true strategies that'll cover individual situations. For general tips, though, you can refer to this section.

Combat Strategies

Ammo Conservation: Resident Evil 4 is blessedly not quite as intent on making you hoard ammo as previous titles in the series have been. Due to the fact that your enemies will often drop ammo when they die, and that ammo is more abundant overall, you're not going to have to worry too much about it. If you don't have to, though, it's best not to go hog wild with your ammo expenditure, especially for weapons like your Broken Butterfly and TMP, because those are the ones which you're most likely to use during boss fights.

If you can knock an enemy down with a kick, you'll be able to easily slash at them with your knife. Or, you know, shoot them in the butt.

In order to conserve ammo during normal fights, you can take advantage of two of Leon's more obscure assets; his kicking ability, and his knife. When facing off against a single enemy, you can usually wind up killing them with just a single bullet, if you can land it in their face or on their head. When you do make a successful headshot, most human enemies will stagger for a moment or two; if you run up to them and press the A button while their staggering animation is playing, Leon will let loose with a devastating roundhouse kick. This kick will knock the enemy to the ground; any other nearby enemies will also be knocked to the ground, or will at least pause for a second, depending on how close they were to the kickee.

When you have a single enemy, though, you can run up to them while they're on the ground and start stabbing them. If you press your L trigger button, you'll whip out your knife; attacking with it will cause Leon to slash at their prone bodies. The knife doesn't do a whole lot of damage, but any damage you deal will just mean fewer bullets you'll have to use on the enemy when it gets up. If you continually attempt to slash away at its head, you can even cause it to stagger again just as it completes the standing-up animation, leading to another kick, leading to another set of knife slashes while it lays down. Be sure to cackle maniacally while all this is going on.

Using Chokepoints: The one thing you're going to need to learn to really be successful in Resident Evil 4 is the art of positioning. Your foes aren't going to politely wait for you to face them before they attack you; if you run into the middle of a group of foes, you're going to find your ass getting kicked well and good by the enemies behind you unless you find some way to get all of your targets on one side of you. The best way to do this is to find some kind of bottleneck or chokepoint and position yourself on the opposite side of it from your enemies.

Doorways are ideal for this purpose, especially when there's only one entrance to the room or hallway in which you're standing; since everyone will be coming at you from the same entrance, you'll be able to easily anticipate where they'll be after it opens up and position yourself to shoot them accordingly. What's more, the ganado door-opening animation is almost always the same, save for special enemies like chainsaw freaks and chaingunners; they'll tap on the door, bang on it twice in rapid succession, then slam it open. Since this takes a few seconds, there'll be more time for the rest of the enemies on the other side to group together around the door; if you're standing on the opposite side of it with your shotgun at the ready, you should be able to blast everyone there in the head before they get a chance to attack you.

(Note that if you want to head through a door into a room that you suspect holds enemies, you can double-tap A while standing next to it to kick it open, instead of using the normal pushing animation. This is quicker, but louder. If any enemies are standing immediately next to the door, though, they'll take a small amount of damage and be staggered for a second, giving you a chance to gauge their positions and react accordingly.)

Any sufficiently narrow path can act as a bottleneck; force enemies to come at you this way, then take them down as they form a focal point for your shotgun.

Narrow hallways and corridors can also act as chokepoints, but you'll have a smaller chance of getting all of your enemies in one tight group, since some will run at you and some will walk. You'll also have to be more careful of axe-throwing or crossbow-using enemies in the rear; they can fire through the enemies closer to you and hit you without a problem.

Dealing With Tentacles: After you have a few chapters under your belt, you'll start running across Plagas-infested ganados. When you hurt these guys enough to kill them, they won't die; instead, they'll sprout a giant tentacle out of their head, looking like something straight out of the seamier side of an anime shop. While these fellows will take a bit more ammo to kill than normal, there are some tips you can use to help you deal with them.

The first rule is to keep your distance. This shouldn't be too hard to accomplish, though, because you'll hear a distinctive sound when a tentacle sprouts, and will be able to run during the interval between it popping out of the neck of the ganados and when it achieves its full form; during this time it won't be able to damage you. When it does reach full size, though, most tentacles are capable of attacking from a distance, so you'll want to be well away from the ganado before this occurs.

The second rule is that tentacles dislike light. Thus, a flash grenade will automatically kill any tentacle creatures within radius of the blast. If you've managed to sprout a bunch of tentacles, then flash grenades are a great way to deal with them all in one fell swoop. (They'll rarely occur in numbers larger than two, though.)

The third rule is that, although tentacles look intimidating, they're really not that much more difficult to deal with than ganados. They can't move much more quickly than at a slow shuffle, so as long as you have room to maneuver, you should be able to keep them away from you without a trouble, and they're still susceptible to the same ammo that their mundane zombie-like friends are. The main trouble occurs when you hit tentacles on the neck portion of their body; this can cause them to stagger in unpredictable ways, and sometimes they'll stumble forward into a position where they'll be able to attack you, even if you were previously out of range. Be careful!