I started my playthrough of this game at the start July in the hopes of finally seeing what the fuss is about. We are now in the middle of August and I still haven't reached the end. Why? Because this game is an absolute slog and a failure in pacing. The gameplay ranges between underwhelming to downright badly designed, the enemy AI is annoying, and its influence from Half-Life is a disadvantage more than anything because half the time the game expects you to shoot enemies while important plot information is given. There are so many great ideas and such a phenomenal art style to be praised here, but its gameplay is so aggressively not fun that I can't bring myself to even try anymore. Every time I boot it up, I turn it back off after 20 minutes because I'm tired of dying all the time just to be sent 10ft back to die again.

I'm keeping this review neutral because I want to make a blanket statement about the upcoming remake:
I support the idea of it becoming something completely different!

The original is my favorite game of all time, and the fact that the remakes of the previous 2 got the treatment of 4's gameplay style was a warranted edition. I found the idea of remaking the game that basically set the stone for that exact gameplay to be a weird idea, but I see lots of interesting new directions they can take with the story. The original was a action-centered, campy, adventure with horror elements in it, and that was perfect for what it was, but I nonetheless felt intrigued by its earlier shapes and forms before it became what we know it as now. The idea of using this story to set a whole new tone and reinvent what it could've been sounds wonderful to me, like we get a chance to play the modern equivalent of the Hookman version. Something really spooky, more subtle, and just overall more serious.

But my biggest reason for it to be this way is because I don't want the remake to be compared with the original. There are lots of people in this world who are unwilling to get used to the controls, and I'm scared that if the remake serves as a substitute, it will be their only excuse for claiming it to be better. If this ends up happening, then we are going to forget what made the original what it is, which to me is the peak of all gaming. I prefer to have it be a widely different experience not only because it makes it so much more exciting and unpredictable, but so we can see it more as a reimagining than a remake, because that's what the creators always had in mind. We just assumed them to be remakes and now that's what we have definitively decided to call them. Would I have prefered it if this new version didn't end up happening in the first place? Admittedly yes, but I think there is still hope left so we can finally have this be a good final note of this remake legacy. Capcom may be a hard company to work with, but they're not the type to take the lazy way out.

I was about to give it 4.5, or maybe even 5 stars...
Then the third act dragged it down to a 4 with all the pointless action sequences, tedius enemy encounters and these stupid-ass robots that you have to shoot with missiles that miss half the time.
Things seemed to get back on track with the climax building up to something great, but that part also took down a point with how terrible and underdeveloped the villain is.
AND THEN the game just suddenly ends without conclusion. It's not even a cliffhanger, it's just an arbupt stop to the emotional highpoint of the story.

Genuinely as dissapointing as a game has ever gotten.