Capcom continues to be the king of the remakes with this spectacular retelling of Resident Evil 4, one of the best games of all time.

The game is fundamentally different from the original, and yet, it still manages to stand side to side with it. The developers certainly understood the assignment and delivered a game that feels familiar, but earns its own merits.

Every change feels meticulously crafted to offer a unique experience for both new and veteran players without jeopardizing the original game.

RE4 Remake manages to carve out its own identity apart from the original by nailing the careful balance of re-imagining itself for modern audiences while clearly understanding and hitting all the principal beats fans of the original would expect, ultimately creating an experience that feels respectful to the essence of the original while not being afraid to make changes that put it better in line with the gameplay expectations of a modern game.

Let’s consider combat as an illustration of this balance. In the original, you moved around with a variation of the “tank” control scheme, except with a camera locked close over-the-shoulder, unlike its predecessors. This camera would then zoom in further when aiming your weapon and would root your character in place, unable to move and shoot simultaneously. These limitations on your character’s movement, coupled with the enemy AI tendency to flank you from the sides, made for extremely tense and frenetic combat, forcing you to constantly reposition as enemies tried to surround you. Context-based melee attacks also served as effective crowd control if enemies ever got too close, activated with the press of a button after a well-placed shot, and most animations for actions such as dropping down from higher ground granted lots of invulnerability frames. All of these choices made for tense third person shooting combat unlike anything people had ever experienced before, and it served as a foundation upon which the industry iterated over the years.

What this means for RE4 Remake, however, is that many of these design conventions are no longer novel, and in some ways feel outdated by modern standards. In order to live up to the legacy of the original, they opted to tap into the essence of combat, the moment to moment experience rather than simply bringing forward the same systems with higher fidelity.

In Remake, movement and camera control is now omnidirectional, with the over-the-shoulder camera only locking behind you when aiming your weapon, and even while aiming you are capable of moving around, albeit with a penalty to accuracy; this all puts it in line with design conventions expected for a 2023 action game. You also still have all the tools you previously had, such as context sensitive melee attacks for crowd control and invulnerability during those same attacks. Remake manages to retain the same sense of tension during combat as the original by implementing much more aggressive enemy AI, they are more likely to surround you on all sides (including from the back) and they do so faster and more often. Charging attacks have greater range and they stagger much less often, even when taking a headshot, which used to guarantee a melee attack afterwards, so clearing the space around you with roundhouse kick is not as reliable as it used to be. Even animation invulnerability is not as much of a given: dropping from a rooftop directly into a crowd will have you swarmed and cut to pieces the moment you touch ground. And to account for the chaotic pace of the new combat you have new defensive options as well in the form of an improved knife with a parrying system that will give you the edge in almost any situation if you have the mind and skill to master it.

This results in the same type of frenetic, desperate combat situations that make famously memorable encounters such as the Village battle at the beginning of the game land with almost the same level of impact as they once did back in 2005. It really is an incredible achievement that should not be understated. In fact, I would say the only downside to the game is the “almost” in my previous statement above; for all of its achievements as a remake, RE4 will not be revolutionizing the industry a second time, and while I wasn’t really expecting it to it is nonetheless THE BAR that was previously set by the original, and for that I can’t honestly say they stand equal in their importance to the medium as a whole.

That being said this is EASILY one of the best action titles of the year and worth a playthrough by anyone, and whether you are a series veteran or complete newcomer, RE4 Remake will be a game you remember for years to come.

Perfect, but the original already was.

I imagine that my reaction to hearing about a Resident Evil 4 remake was pretty similar to most: confusion. What about Resident Evil 4 needed to be remade, really? The game was about a decade ahead of its time when it dropped in 2005, and virtually every third-person shooter made since then has had some of Leon Kennedy’s sharp-jawed, Bingo-quipping DNA inside of it somewhere. Moreover, the idea of trying to do Resident Evil 4 but again — or God forbid, better — is still kind of laughable. You’re going to remake one of the greatest and most influential games ever made on a lark to see if you can do it too? Good luck.

But, lo and behold, they did it. Resident Evil 4 Remake is a fucking phenomenal game. The combat is heavy and satisfying, it’s a delight to look at, the characters are all enjoyable, and I put thirty hours into it over the course of about a week and a half without really even noticing. I finished one playthrough, finished Separate Ways, and then immediately started another run on a harder difficulty. When I'm done with that run, I'm going to play it again, and again. It’s perfect.

How much does it deserve to be celebrated, though, when what it’s based off of was that good to begin with?

I’ve heard people talk about “remake culture” quite a bit in recent years in relation to video games, and I don’t think it’s an entirely wrong observation that the same games seem to be releasing a lot lately. Naughty Dog is perhaps the easiest studio to point and laugh at over this — The Last of Us is a series that’s about to have a higher number of remakes of its original games than the actual amount of original games — but it is something of a trend in the industry right now. Granted, we’ve been getting high-profile remakes and remasters of games for about fifteen fucking years now, so it’s hardly new, but people seem to be, for whatever reason, noticing it more lately. Common criticisms drifting up now are that remakes are lazy, and overly safe, and cash-grabby. I agree insofar as the fact that I’d vastly prefer if more games could look forward, rather than back. There are a lot of very talented creators out there with a lot of fresh concepts that ought to be allowed to flourish, and it’s stifling the maturity of the medium to insist that we just keep playing the hits every night with a different band.

Despite this, it remains evident that not all remakes are created equal. I found the Dead Space remake to be a complete bastardization of the original, with slippery, weightless gunplay and animations, and little actually improved aside from bringing back Gunnar Wright and some more technically impressive lighting effects. By contrast, I was surprised at how much Resident Evil 4 Remake impressed me, introducing much more committal combat into the original’s stage design and vastly expanding a lot of the systems that went woefully underused back in 2005. Both games have exceptional scores in both popular games coverage and right here on Backloggd, so either I missed something major in Dead Space, or people are just so predisposed to celebrating something good and old being new again that they just hand it a high score without really thinking about it. I’m sure it’s reductive, but I’m willing to bet it’s the latter. If you don’t trust me to say it, I’m certain that these high-profile, mega-budget companies making the fucking things would take my position; why would they be cranking these things out with the massive budgets and marketing campaigns that they’ve had if they weren’t confident people were going to drop everything to get a copy on release day? Saying you’re going to take something that people enjoyed and just make it again is an almost surefire way to guarantee a boatload of sales from those so caught in the hype cycle that they won’t even wait to see if it’s been fucked with before they buy it.

Anyway, I’m getting off-track. The point to make here is that I think there’s a single element that really makes Resident Evil 4 Remake stand out from among its more cynical contemporaries.

It was very clearly made by people who love the original.

“Yeah, yeah, the multi-million dollar game was made with goddamned love”, I know. But there are so many small changes here that I seriously doubt you’d be able to make or notice without having a deep appreciation and understanding for what the original was doing. EA never had a clue what made Dead Space great. Yasuhiro Anpo and company down at Capcom, however, get it.

Early on, during the village fight, there’s this tall tower standing down by the church entrance. There’s not much in there — just a herb and a ladder leading up — but this was an immensely safe spot to hide in the original. You could climb all the way up to the top, hang out for a few seconds, hop back down before the ganados started throwing molotovs at you, and then repeat. You could wait out the entire fight just by doing a simple loop of climbing up, dropping down, and then climbing back up again, and they couldn’t do a thing to stop you. Naturally, knowing about this safe spot, I went up the ladder and prepared to dig in. It was at this point that the floor gave out under Leon’s feet and dropped him right into the middle of the crowd congregating at the bottom.

To come up with a trap like this requires a few things on the part of the developers:
a) to know about the safe spot in the original game,
b) to expect the player to also know about the safe spot in the original game,
c) to bait the player into attempting to use the safe spot in the remake (by making the fight significantly more demanding)

It doesn’t sound like much, but take a second to consider the amount of understanding you need to have about Resident Evil 4 to be aware that the safe spot actually existed in the first place. It’s a decently-known exploit — enough so that the original developers accounted for it when they put out the game — but it’s nothing that a casual player would be aware of. It’s a remarkably small change in the grand scheme of things, but there’s a constant stream of these equally small changes throughout that add up to truly distinguish this from its predecessor. It’s just enough to keep old players disoriented while still being able to recognize what’s here. It’s a bit less of a remake and more of a remix. It feels like a very high-budget fangame, and I mean that in a good way.

With the release of Separate Ways adding back in a little more story context and some previously-excluded areas that I missed — the sewers, my beloved, are back — Resident Evil 4 Remake feels like a complete experience. I imagine that you’ll have a worse time without the DLC, and that kind of sucks when that shit came free with the original as long as you didn’t buy it on Gamecube. I managed to cop the base game and Separate Ways on sale for about fifty bucks, and they added Mercenaries mode to this in a patch at some point in the past couple months; this is definitely a game that is significantly better now than it was when it came out, which I think is kind of regrettable. It’s barely been out for eight months and I’m having a way better time for less money than people who picked it up on day one. This is a broader condemnation of the industry, I suppose. I like it when games come out feature-complete, and I'd argue this didn't. But hell, what does, anymore?

I do have my quibbles with the game. Unarmed enemies are the most dangerous fuckers alive because of that unblockable lunge they do that covers about two miles of distance and has to be ducked under at a precise time if they don’t flinch from being shot, which happens a lot on the harder difficulties. Knife parries are exceptionally overpowered and essentially give you a “get-out-of-bad-positioning free” card for a significant portion of the game. A lot of the music has been changed from its original synth-y sound to more of a Hans Zimmer-esque orchestral score, and that’s a major disappointment; the sequence where Mike comes down in his chopper is easily the worst offender of the lot, sounding like something pulled directly off of the Dark Knight Rises soundtrack. The reticle sway when Leon aims is a little extreme and definitely should have been tuned down a little. There’s something intangible that I feel was lost in getting rid of the tank controls and the stationary aiming; Resident Evil 4 definitely controls a bit more like everything else now, rather than controlling like what inspired everything else.

Even with those complaints, this is still a phenomenal title. I think the developers of this remake understood way more about what fans of the original wanted than anyone was expecting them to, and they’ve created something that stands alongside one of the greatest games ever made. By no means does it replace nor exceed the original, but it’s on the same level, and that alone is a borderline unthinkable achievement.

And they didn’t “make the mine thrower good” in this. It was always good, you cowards.

absolutely amazing from a technical and gameplay standpoint, but i was left a bit disappointed. it definitely didn't hit as hard as the first game for me.
although combat still being super fun and traversal better than ever, same can't be said about the narrative. the story isn't even that bad but it's characters are. and the writing too. i swear i couln't care about any of those people and havind peter and miles be this souless, devoid of any charisma ain't right. and why tf did MJ have to become a super soldier like... that's not what makes her a strong character.

insomniac are great, but as we could also notice in the ratchet game, their writing and world building simply is not interesting enough to make me that invested on their stories.

It is so fucking bonkers.
Campaign is perfectly paced with some incredible combat encounters.
Game stays fresh through it's 6h runtime and I just wanted more when credits rolled.
Not only that, Ada and especially Wesker are so damn fun in Mercenaries.
You can parry chainsaw with your bare hands and as ult you go one hit anything close to you, ofc with bare hands.
Gaming has never been that truly back.

Capcom could sell me on a whole ass Capconsole if they keep dropping 2 GOTY contenders a year. No point writing up a novel for a game this simple and this good. Is there 60 dollars of content at launch? Absolutely. So don't miss out on that new game scene and get it ASAP. I know its still honeymoon phase and all, but I've already sampled the whole platter and know it's everything I ever wanted as a casual player. The box art is fucking stupid though.

5 stars for knowing what it needs to be and doing that thing perfectly.