First released: January 11, 2005 (GameCube, PS2), 2007 (Wii)
Now Available On: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
No fewer than 24 Resident Evil games have been released since the series first infected PlayStations in 1996, but it took almost a decade to reach its full potential.
Resident Evil 4 celebrates its tenth anniversary today and is still yet to be bettered by any subsequent zombie offering that has staggered out of Capcom's doors.
Despite its numbering, the game was the sixth main entry in the series, released for Nintendo GameCube in North America and Japan in January 2005 before being ported to PlayStation 2 and later other platforms.
The story marked the return of Resident Evil 2 protagonist Leon S. Kennedy and picked up six years after the events of the second instalment, following the former cop on a mission to rescue the president's daughter from the clutches of an arcane cult in a rural European village.
There are many reasons why Resident Evil 4 is considered the franchise pinnacle, not least the way it brought a fresh approach to the table by introducing fans to "a new kind of evil".
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Resident Evil 4 replaced the series' omnipresent zombies with Los Ganados, human hosts to a mind-controlling parasite; and after five games' worth of dispatching animated corpses, this was a refreshing change of pace. Zombies are a rotten business, but Los Ganados were something far worse.
This brand of nasty posed new challenges, retaining much of their intelligence and sentience. Complex tasks such as hygiene were beyond them, but coming at you with chainsaws and turning your driver into a burning effigy were other matters entirely.
Players had never come up against anything like Los Ganados before, and that made them a perfect fit for a horror-themed game, preying on our fear of the unknown.
The game differentiated itself from a formula in danger of going rotten itself, and Resident Evil 4's influence was more infectious than the t-Virus, quickly spreading beyond the survival-horror genre.
It helped redefine the third-person action game by giving us the over-the-shoulder viewpoint, now a standard feature of everything from the Gears of War series to the Batman: Arkham titles.
Capcom's aim was to provide offset camera angles that fail to obscure the action, cracking what was previously a troublesome nut for developers working with the third-person perspective.
Resident Evil 4 also brought more of a tactile feel to the game's action and combat, placing the emphasis on reflexes and precision aiming.
This led to claims from some critics that Capcom had abandoned the genre it shaped, but other survival-horror series, including Silent Hill and Alone in the Dark followed suit with their latest instalments.
It certainly had a different feel to the early Resident Evil titles, but that was no bad thing; its immersive style and action focus attracting droves of new fans to the series.
We could discuss Resident Evil 4's technological achievements all day, yet for me, it was the ability to make simple interactions exciting that made the game what it was.
Picking up ammo boxes is rarely something to shout about, but doing it with a horde of murderous Los Ganados on your tail really sets your pulse racing.
This triumphant blend of action and tension continues to inspire developers to this day, with Naughty Dog citing its gameplay as a source of inspiration for the sublime The Last of Us.
Resident Evil 4 topped many 'game of the year' lists back in 2005 and third-person titles have changed for the better since its release.
It's a game everyone should play, and if you missed this heart-racing epic the first time around, you can't go far wrong with the HD remake for PS3 and Xbox 360.
