Resident Evil 4 (Spoilers)

Favorite Hero: Leon (Ada is such an f'n bitch, dude)
Favorite Villain: (Lord) Osmund Saddler
Favorite Weapon: Chicago Typewriter
Favorite Monster: El Gigante
Favorite Scene: When Ada empties a full machinegun round into Saddler and it does shit.

Basically, I feel it's an improvement over the decaying storyline of RE. The T-Virus, then the G-Virus, then the T-Alexia and T-Veronica virus... It was basically going downhill at a tremendous rate. The introduction of the Las Plagas and their capabilities was much needed, in my opinion.

Only criticism is they failed to give much backstory to people like Mendez and Saddler. They gave info on Birkin, Wesker, Spencer. Why not these guys? There were little tidbits that gave the general idea, but Wesker's and the other's past is well-detailed indeed. Hardly a huge criticism, but it would've added a nice touch to a remarkable game.

Honestly, there didn't need to be much background on Mendez or Saddler. Mendez was the Village Chief, and was offered a certain amount of freedom and power in exchange for servitude to Saddler. Saddler was a tyrannical nutcase that manipulated and connived his way into controlling Las Plagas, and Los Illuminados. Learning about their abusive parents, or the cliched "horrible tragedy" that drove Saddler to a life of villainy would have been pointless.

And you're abolutely right that RE4 was an improvement upon the RE series' dying plot. The story started out great in the first game, got better in the second, then suddenly stalled and went nowhere in the third, then took a massive nosedive in Code: Veronica, followed by several piss-poor sideplots in the Survivor/Dead Aim/Outbreak games. The series was quickly bowing before the impending superiority of the Silent Hill games, and it needed the jumpstart from RE4 to regain it's dominance.

Oh, and the only really cool thing about Ada was that she looked great in that red dress. Other than that, she was a lot of talk and not much walk. At least Leon backed up his trash-talking by beating everybody's ass in the game. Ada had a handful of cool scenes, but she never really accomplished anything extraordinary.