These sites are ad—free
A remake after 18 years
When Resident Evil 4 was released on GameCube and PS2 back in 2005, it was a massive success. The game had overhauled gameplay mechanics and graphics. There was no game like Resident Evil 4 and it was obvious that they would continue the upcoming games the same way. It was true, because when Resident Evil 5 came out, it had the almost exact same mechanics.
Capcom had been making Remakes from the older Resident Evil games for a while now and it was only matter of time that Resident Evil 4 Remake was to be released. Can the Remake beat the original game, though?
Overhauled mechanics, again
Resident Evil 4 tells story of Leon S. Kennedy, who is the main character from Resident Evil 2 game, and now he is an US goverment special agent. The president’s daughter was kidnapped and her trails lead to a rural European village (somewhere in Spain). Leon was sent to rescue her at all cost.
The story starts very simple, but quickly Leon finds out that there is a parasite that had took over the villagers and making them lunatic killers. Then, he finds out how the villagers and other enemies are led by evil Saddler who had put the parasite into the president’s daughter Ashley. How the story starts and progresses, introducing new characters, is very well built and there was no a dull moment with the storytelling. It was pretty much as the original, but some of the content were cut but a lot had been added to fill up the Resident Evil lore even more.
The gameplay was overhauled, again. It was still a third person shooter, but this time Leon can move and aim the same time. He can also do more melee attacks and the knife had a bigger role this time. The knife can be used to parry and block enemy attacks, block chainsaw attacks, do sneak up kills, do final blow to killed enemies before they could turn into monsters, even some of the boss fights had live knife fights. This time the infamous Krauser boss fight was non-QT, so the knife fight was much more thrilling. Otherwise the gameplay was almost the same as the original, of course the whole experience was updated to 2023.
Graphcially Resident Evil 4 remake looks amazing. It is truly the best looking game from the whole Remake-saga. The game runs 60fps and there are some graphical settings player could choose, the one was to favor performance and the other favor the fps. The game also had a setting for hair. You could use the normal hair look or something called “hair-strands” which made the characters hair look like they were in shampoo commercial. It was overly flowly and nicely dry, even though they went through water and heavy rain.
Overall the game was nearly as the original, but all the areas, and basically everything else, were overhauled and made to look like a game that came out in 2023. Of course I noticed that some little places or details was different, but it wasn’t anything game-changing. Even the horror aspect was pumped up, because the original was more action emphatic. The game supports Haptic feedback and Adaptive triggers that were nicely used.
The Last survivor
Resident Evil 4 remake was a great experience. I played this through in about 12 hours (three sittings). It also has a great replayability value, because as hard as I tried I couldn’t do all the side missions or collect every collectable in the first playthrough. The game also has points mechanics, so every playthrough gives players points that can be used to collect statues, new clothes or weapons, so there is a lot to play with.
Resident Evil 4 was a nice surprise and I do recommend it to everyone who likes these types of games. Resident Evil 4 is available on PS5 (reviewed), PS4, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
SCORE:
5/5
“Even the horror aspect was pumped up, because the original was more action emphatic”
One More Level 