When I played this game three years ago I just remember being thoroughly uninvested for most of the game. It's hard to be objective since I'm relying on memory but I think I can summarize this as being a gorgeous looking game with a lot of promise but undermined by some key issues, namely the poorly thought out combat system. I quit playing once the credits started because I was thoroughly done by the end of it, but the credits aren't even the end of the game as you have to make your way back home to witness a final scene in an MCU style fashion.

It's okay overall and well polished, but I feel like it had a ways to go.

I played this coming off of the RE2 and RE1 remakes, so I was a little disappointed that (aside from one section) there wasn't much in the way of "survival horror" here. There's an abundance of money and resources so I was never once worried about running out of anything, especially with enemies dropping those resources at a rate so high I could almost compare this game to Doom. However, the game makes up for this by being a blast to play. I was picking this game up every spare moment I had to see what comes next in both story and game, and while I can't say I was never disappointed (in the story, anyway - there were a lot of boneheaded decisions made and quite a bit of cheesy dialogue) the game still satisfied me enough that I can look past it. Capcom did not pull any punches with the presentation, because the game is beautiful, even with my brick of a graphics card producing the visuals. There were a ton of really cool set pieces and locations, and the UI was efficient yet minimal, allowing for easy immersion. Although I personally prefer OTS Resident Evil, first person wasn't bad at all and I think it was pulled off amazingly well.

EDIT: Forgot to mention there's no backtracking allowed in this game. That made me sad.

At the top of this review, I don't know if I have much to say about this game aside from the fact that it'll definitely be one I'll be talking about again at the end of the year (right up there with Hi-Fi Rush).

Resident Evil 4 is widely considered to be one of the best and well-aged games ever made, and whether or not you agree with that the influence it's had in video games has been undeniable, so this remake's announcement seemed to have been received with an understandable head-scratching by most (myself included), but this game is able to justify its existence by just being Resident Evil 4 but somehow even more fun. These remakes seem to be Capcom's method of making Resident Evil's story have any coherency, but it also offers a chance to learn from these games and what makes them so much fun.

Much of the world design is the same, with the biggest changes done to improve the pacing. All the memorable set pieces are still here, but it seems like most of the tedious parts plaguing the original are gone and replaced with expanded versions of some areas, which I found were a pleasant surprise. One example of this is the lake now being fully explorable after killing Del Lago — albeit for an unnecessary new fetch quest — but I had a great time cruising around wherever I pleased until I found all the treasure in the area. The gameplay is improved simply by being twin stick on controller (even better with motion aim, and if you're cool like me you'll have that turned on), allowing for more movement options which goes a long way to making the game feel fair. However, RE2's magnet zombie hands are back, and this led to some frustrating moments especially given the lack of RE3's dodge roll.

Speaking of frustrating moments, I wasn't a fan of the return of the parts of the game where you find yourself fending off a horde of enemies while waiting for something to happen. It feels like the purpose of these is to make you use up much of your ammo to keep things tense, but it just makes the game grind to a halt to show you something cinematic. This is just my opinion, but I would have preferred to keep only the cabin fight and change the others so they aren't dependent on defending Ashley while she tries to do something.

Without getting into spoilers, while the general story is still the same, a lot of the character moments from the original RE4 were changed or cut completely, which made it feel more dependent on coming into this game having already played the original game, and while Capcom has done an admirable job keeping it accessible (more than can be said for their treatment of the original RE1-3), if this is the definitive way to play RE4, than those should have been kept. Salazar appears maybe twice before you fight him, and while his new boss fight was one of the most fun fights in Resident Evil history, it's hard not to miss the bratty, whiny manchild he once was.

The presentation is probably the best of the modern RE games. Capcom has elected to bring back music for this game instead of relying on diegetic sound as they have recently, and not only is it very good, but it works wonders making the game more atmospheric, something Resident Evil has been struggling with lately. The RE Engine continues to deliver one of the most gorgeous and visually pleasing games you've ever seen, although I think Village edges it out in art direction here.

This should absolutely be one of the games you play this year.

It's basically a Yakuza game so it already gets a decent score for me. I think this was the best take on the brawler combat yet, it was a lot of fun to just be always bouncing around, kicking off walls, leapfrogging over enemies, etc. Plethora of minigames too, but not as many as you'd expect.

Not going to spoil the plot, but I liked it until I didn't. I felt like it fell kinda flat towards the end, and the two main antagonists (I don't mean Hamura) turned out to be really uninteresting, and it felt like an obligation to fight them rather than just let the plot continue normally which would have cornered them anyway. I enjoyed the main cast, but they were somewhat shallow too. Yagami feels very much like a stereotypical tough guy most of the time but Kaito was cool, Mafuyu was great too when they weren't throwing her into bad damsel-in-distress situations (they could have easily made her as kickass as Saeko in Like a Dragon), but she had pretty good chemistry with Yagami and I liked watching them interact. The other "party members" are alright but nothing too special.

There was also not enough detective stuff. I wanted to present evidence more than like two times through the whole game (what's the point of even having case files if you're not going to use them??), and actually have a part in solving the mystery with more deduction stuff like in Ace Attorney. Instead, most detective stuff is either chase missions (QTE fest) that got old pretty quick and weren't dependent on any kind of skill, stalking missions (those were fun, at least), and occasionally going into first person view and scanning the environment (or doing the same thing but with a drone). Again, it never really felt like I was solving a mystery aside from just watching it play out and I hope they do that better in the sequel.

Overall, I'm excited for Lost Judgment, but I'm more excited for the next true Yakuza game.

I'm actually surprised too that I''m giving this a near-perfect score, but honestly writing this made me realize that's how I feel about it. The level design in the story campaign is some of Nintendo's best, and of course the multiplayer rules even more now (aside from it being a Nintendo Online Game, which should tell you that it's probably made of dry spaghetti noodles and some marshmallows), but it feels like what Splatoon should have been from the start. I'm really excited to see what else we get in this game because I honestly think I'm going to put a ton of time into it.

If you weren't convinced before that Splatoon deserves to be a Nintendo mainstay, this game should do the trick.

I enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as RE2 Remake. There wasn't much puzzle solving at all which disappointed me, and it was mostly limited to exploration and combat. There never was a sense of terror when playing this game, which disappointed me, but it was still fun overall. Nemesis was just a series of scripted events and boring boss fights and I would consider him to be easily the worst part of this game. Mr. X's novelty as a stalker wore thin pretty quickly, but mercifully you only had to fight him once (although you had to fight Birkin multiple times, but he would go down fairly quickly). Exploring Raccoon City was fine, but you basically saw all there is to see in the first hour and the locations you're in feel very cramped, so I kind of wish they let you see more of the city.

It's fine, I enjoyed this game and would recommend it to any Resident Evil fan, but I don't know if this would be a good game to start on for newcomers. Definitely wouldn't recommend getting at full price, but it's a good game to wait for a sale if you're looking for an RE fix.

After playing this game I can definitely see why it's considered one of the greatest games ever made, because this game does so many cool things! It has an excellent story (which establishes itself as a proud member of the Chrono Trigger family along with Xenogears), excellent music, excellent art direction (I never would have thought a PS1 game could seemlessly fuse FMV with gameplay), and the only parts that really left me dissatisfied were basically a result of aging and being outdone by future games. This is definitely a game I'm going to replay eventually on my own terms, because I want to explore more of the battle system and overall gameplay which I didn't engage with much; I was too hooked on the story.