Resident Evil 4/reception

Resident Evil 4 has garnered critical and popular acclaim. It has received dozens of awards from various organizations (see below), and stellar reviews from various video game websites.

The GameCube version was released in the US on January 11, 2005 with US sales exceeding 320,000 copies in the first 20 days. The European release on March the 18th mirrored this success, selling its entire 200,000 unit allocation within the first month. As of January 2006, reported sales of Resident Evil 4 show that it has shipped over 3,000,000 copies world wide. Sales totals include the PlayStation 2 port that was released on October 25, 2005.

The decision to port Resident Evil 4 for the PS2 was a successful one from Capcom's part as the PS2 version of the game managed to outsell the GameCube version in a few months. According to the last Capcom software sales charts, the PS2 version had sold 1.8 million units as of May 2006.

The drastic changes paid off, and the game was considered by industry insiders and the casual gaming public as a top contender for 2005's Game of the Year. The fourth iteration (although it is the sixth game in the main series, which includes Code: Veronica and Zero) has reportedly made fans out of players who would not otherwise have given the Resident Evil series a second glance. Both versions of Resident Evil 4 scored over 95% on Game Rankings, a review aggregator site.

Nintendo Power also gave it a perfect 10, and also ranked it their 2005 Game of the Year. It also ranked #2 on their NP Top 200 list (featuring the best games ever on Nintendo consoles), behind only The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Later they ranked it the second best game in the past decade, beaten only by Super Mario Galaxy, also saying the game was not only one of the best of the past decade, it is one of the best games of all time. Resident Evil 4 was 230th reason to love Nintendo. The Official PlayStation Magazine named it the Game of the Year on the PlayStation 2. Game Informer gave both editions of Resident Evil 4 a perfect score, and ranked it their 2005 Game of the Year. It tied with Kingdom Hearts II as Famitsu's Game of the Year 2005.

Subsequently, Resident Evil 4 was named Game of the Year at the 2005 Spike TV Video Game Awards.

In addition, it is the only game to receive two 5/5 ratings from X-Play (one for the GameCube version and one for the PlayStation 2 version). X-Play also declared it the best game for the Nintendo GameCube in a Top Ten countdown after the release of the Nintendo Wii.

In addition, it won Game of the Year at the 2005 GameSpot Game Awards.