12 Years Later, Resident Evil 4 Remains the Most Important Third-Person Shooter Ever
(N4G GameCube)

Released in January 2005, the fourth item in the long-running horror series was a different beast than what had come before it. The original Resident Evil, influenced by the likes of Sweet Home and 3D Monster Maze, put survival horror on the map, casting players as a group of trained operatives trapped inside a mansion filled with deadly secrets. The tenets of Resident Evil would go on to become the core pillars of the survival horror genre, challenging players to carefully manage their resources, know when to evade rather than fight an unwinnable battle, and solve devious puzzles. Nearly a decade later, series creator Shinji Mikami and the rest of his team would almost kill off the very genre they had popularized by heavily revising those tenents and creating the first truly great modern third-person shooter, inspiring developers of both shooters and survival horror games to try and capture some bit of its magic for their own purposes by aping its innovations.