The Weekly WTF: What the Hell is Up With Resident Evil 4’s Iron Maiden?

Resident Evil, as any fan will tell you, has had its share of hideous flesh-things from the depths of the devil's ass. Man-sized acid-spitting locust freaks, a zombie elephant, that creepy turtle dude with its skin on back to front... they've all come out to play at some time or another. It's not pretty.

The bar of creepy weirdery has been set pretty darn high. Nevertheless, there's one beast that hurdles straight over it, with its rubbery balls akimbo and no effs given. Meet the Regenerator, and its spiky buddy the Iron Maiden.

These angry buggers appeared in Resident Evil 4, when Capcom ran out of moldy-ass zombies to throw at us. In lieu of the ol' genre favorite, Leon Kennedy faced mostly human foes infected by the Las Plagas parasite. Albino monks and beardy farm-dudes alike would hunt you down intelligently, by smashing your barricades and raising ladders to upper floor windows. These were not the dumbass undead shufflers of old.

Despite this, there's always room for a quick mutated monster throwback. The Regenerator was the closest the game got to its shambling roots, quite late in the adventure. It was another experiment conducted on unfortunate 'research subjects,' in a seedy facility in the game's Island area. The place was all Doom-esque creaking doors, ambiance and shit-your-pants suspense, due in no small part to the Regenerators themselves.

Just what was done to these poor once-human bastards, we can't imagine. But as you can tell from that top image, extensive dental work wasn't included. The first herald of the Regenerators' approach is their creeptastic rattling breathing. This is a scare technique favored by crazy dudes on the phone who know you're alone and/or know what you did last summer, and it sets the tone perfectly for these things.

Unlike most enemies in Resident Evil 4, they're slow as balls, preferring to limp towards you flailing their magic extend-o-limbs. Naturally, this gives ample time for your bullets to get all up in its effing business, but it's not as simple as that. True to their name, these things can regenerate their limbs and head, making them as resilient as that liquid metal dickbag from Terminator 2.

Not many creatures become more terrifying after you blow both their damn legs right off with an angry shotgun, but these guys do. Have you seen that tooth-y dive thing they do? Holy balls.

To take them out, you'll need an infra-red sniper scope to detect and target the parasites in their body. That, or some good ol' fashioned explodey firepower. To sum up, they're freaking creepy, they lurk in dark/confined/dark and confined corners to make you foul yourself, and they're an all-round pain in the ass. They can regrow their own ass, come to that, which is beyond the pale of usual douchery.

Finally, just when you thought you were done with them, Capcom drops the Iron Maiden on us. This is another variant of Regenerator, encountered after you take a dive down the trash chute. They're all the fun of the usual one, with an added trick: the pincushion-y, porcupine-y stab you every-damn-where at once attack. Check it out below, if you're mantastic enough.