Capcom tried to bring something new to gamers with the remake of the original Resident Evil on GameCube, and they tried again with RE0. While both sold extremely well to fans of the series, it wasn't loved by the rest of the gaming world. Despite the only issue people really had being the clunky controls, Capcom felt it was something else. Something else that they could fix easily: the camera angle.

While others would say a lot more has been changed, in essense it's the new camera angle that drives it all. With the jump to the over the shoulder view, Capcom needed to throw away the pre-rendered backgrounds and create the new story in a fully emmersive 3D world, and because of how REmake and RE0 looked they couldn't jump into 3D without making it look just as good.

The gaming world isn't quite sure what Capcom unlocked inside the dev kit they worked with, but they managed to create one of the best looking games found on the GameCube (and maybe this generation). Fans of the series are re-united with Leon, the new recruit to the Raccoon City Police Department from Resident Evil 2. It's been six years since the incident at Raccoon City and Umbrella are no longer a part of the saga. And without Umbrella, there are no experiments causing zombies to run amok.

o, OK, Capcom have changed a fair bit - no Umbrella, no zombies - but it's all to do with giving gamers a new Resident Evil that appeals to every gamer while also delivering to the die-hard fan. There are still typewriters - although you don't need annoying ribbons - to save your progress, there are still herbs that can be mixed to make more potent medicines, ammo still sparkles so you don't miss it, puzzles still need to be solved and lastly, there is still somewhere to store items although it's been changed a hell of a lot.

No longer do you need to hunt down a drop box to store items you don't need as RE4 doesn't give you a lot of items that you won't use almost right away. The inventory is broken down into three areas. The main area shows your weapons cache. Your weapons, ammo and health items are all stored in here. You start off with a small attache case and throughout the game you can upgrade to bigger sizes. At first you might find yourself "umm"ing and "aah"ing over what to put in to make the most of the space you have. Items can be rotated and shuffled about to ensure every space is being used to its potential.

You also have an area which stores key items, another which stores treasure - which can be sold later in the game - and yet another which stores unlockables. What makes the inventory system lacking this time through is that Capcom didn't add Wiimote functionality to it. Jumping into the menus or inventory after using the Wiimote for all your aiming goodness, it is almost a little abrasive to have.

The story begins with Leon explaining what happened to Umbrella and detailing why he's now in the middle of Europe. It seems that the president's daughter has been kidnapped - as cheesy as it sounds - and it's his job to find her. Well it's up to him and two other guys, but they aren't really up to the task. After confronting the first villager he sees, he feels he is unwelcome as a small axe barely misses his side. It's when he takes out his gun and drops this villager to his demise that he realises something is not quite right.

He is not a zombie. More villagers hear the commotion and are out to get Leon; there are human bones in the fireplace and crates of human skulls under the stairs. After a little more progression he stumbles across the main village - everyone is out to kill the outsider and things just get weirder when the dead bodies of the villagers start melting into the ground.

omething is definitely not right here and Capcom slowly surround you with the story inch by inch. You're going to need guns... and a lot of them. Guns have never been an issue with the Resident Evil series. There is always a pistol, shotgun, grenades, grenade launcher, machine gun of some sort and a rocket launcher. RE4 delivers these and a whole lot more.

You now have the ability to upgrade your guns with higher firepower, bigger ammo clips, scopes, stocks and firing and reload speed. This is made possible by merchants that Leon stumbles upon. For some reason - and it never does get explained - there is a few people hanging about willing to take the treasure out of your hands for a pretty penny, and it's with this money - and the money you scavenge from dead bodies - that will help you pay to upgrade your pistol to the ultimate death machine you can end up with.

Don't want to upgrade? This is also where you can buy new guns that slowly become available as well as health spray (it's back), treasure maps, and attache cases. Graphically, you will find no better on the GameCube and you will be hard-pressed to find better on other consoles - for now. RE4 delivers outstanding graphics with hardly a drop in frame-rate, but what can you expect when you have ten villagers on screen and grenades and dynamite going off leaving beautifully rendered explosions and dust behind. You can tell a lot of effort was put in when you notice small things like dust particles in the air as they pass through beams of light.

There is only one issue as far as graphics go, and that's clipping. It can briefly destroy the tense moment you are in when you can see the arm or leg of someone showing through a door. It allows you to know what's going on and any suspense may be stolen from you. It doesn't happen too often, but you will notice when it does. A minor flaw in an outstanding achievement.

Obviously the big change for this game is in the controls. Movement is still controlled with the analogue stick and the B trigger (like one of the R triggers on other systems) brings up your weapon, with A doing all the firing. It would have been nice for Capcom to have swapped these around for a more authentic gunning simulation, but it manages to make you feel like you're still holding a standard controller, when you aren't — which might help gamers that are still a bit skeptic of the Wii.

But what makes this version better than any other before it is in the aiming system. No longer do you have to struggle with the slow or inaccurate aiming of an analogue stick - just point and shoot. The ease in which you can pull off headshots, or more specifically the target practice areas, is something that needs to be played to believe. Finally, collecting those little figurines won't be so hard, and pinpointing enemies from a distance no longer requires the use of a sniper rifle each and every time. Don't worry, you will still use the sniper rifle.

For the most part the aiming works beautifully, but it is far from perfect. You will find yourself expecting Leon to rotate once the reticule hits the edge of the screen, but instead you still have to do that with the analogue stick. It's not that doing it this way doesn't work, it's just it feels a little counter-intuitive. You will get used to it, and you'll end up loving it, but it's still something that could have been fine tuned.

It's also nice to see that Capcom have got themselves such a decent graphics engine that they felt they could successfully not use any pre-rendered footage. All cut-scenes are in real-time graphics and probably one of the most effective visuals in the game would be the rope dynamics. You might not pick up on this right away, but it's there, and it's impressive. Every aspect of RE4 shines, from the detail on the bear traps, through to the cave trolls they stole from Lord of the Rings. If you can't see the beauty in this game, you may need to give up gaming.

Dolby Pro Logic II pumping out all the music and sound effects is all that was needed to help wrap this game up into an amazing package. And it's there. There is truly nothing more terrifying than running up to the second story of a villagers house while they themselves are knocking on the walls right behind you, knocking down a ladder so they can't climb up, turning around to see villagers climbing through another window and then just - as you think you're safe - a chainsaw starts up right behind you. You hear it it in your ears, you spin around and a sack-wearing maniac has put the ladder back up, climbed up and is about to saw deep into your neck.

This game is all about suspense and fear. While the fear aspect dies down, the suspense is always there. Capcom have given a versatile amount of creatures/enemies for you to deal with and right when you think you must be nearing the end, you remember you haven't even started on the second disc.

This game is huge for a Resident Evil game. You may be finished in 20 hours, but considering most other RE games are finished just over ten hours and that the action in constant the whole way through, you may be relieved to have the game finished, just so you can start it all over again. With unlockable items available, all of the mini-games and bonus missions found in the PS2 version, new weapons, new difficulties, and a plethora of collectable figurines, the game has uber-replayability. You will play this more than once, you will show it to everyone who visits even if it is just to show naysayers that the Wii is a capable machine. Buy it! Buy it now.