One of the greatest strengths of Spyro the Dragon lied in its simplicity — one that complimented its whimsical tone and aesthetic wonderfully, making it my go-to 3D platformer to play through whenever I just want to relax and have some fun. Ripto's Rage (or Gateway to Glimmer) retains and often expands upon the charm of the first game, however there's a catch.

It's easy to see why this was the Spyro game I had the most fond memories of as a kid; every single level has its own intro and outro cinematic which adds flavor to each world, the voice acting is comical and breathes a lot of life into the experience, and the entire thing feels a tad grander in scale than its predecessor. In addition to this, there are a handful of additions to Spyro's toolkit, the most notable being the hover and swimming, which makes Spyro feel better to control and also allows for more variety in its levels. I feel that if the new implementations had stopped there, Ripto's Rage would have been an outstanding sequel, but unfortunately it suffers from feature creep and has issues maintaining momentum.

In Ripto's Rage, there are two new forms of collectables: talismans and orbs. There are several orbs that you can obtain from each stage and the way you obtain them is through minigames that often switch up the core gameplay loop. I don't have an issue with this idea in theory as long as it's done in moderation, but here it's done in excess. The layouts of every stage are often designed with these minigames in mind, leaving the general parts of each stage to feel less intuitive than the levels of the first game on top of turning the process of collecting orbs into an exercise in tedium at points. While I enjoyed most of the minigames, the extraneous amount of them feel like additions for the sake of additions. Then there are the talismans, the MacGuffins of this game that you receive as a reward for clearing through each stage. In order to unlock the boss fight of each home world, you need the talismans of each level... until Winter Tundra, that is. I'm not sure what the logic is behind making it to where the stipulation for unlocking Ripto's Arena are orbs, but it leaves me wondering what the point of adding talismans into the game in the first place was.

There's also bloat in the form of the climbing and headbash mechanics, which you unlock in Autumn Plains and Winter Tundra respecively. I don't necessarily mind the idea of adding more tools to Spyro's toolkit (apart from climbing ladders being a strange mechanic to implement in a game where you control a dragon), however with these new mechanics comes a necessity to backtrack if you want to aim for full completion, momentarily hurting the momentum of the game in each instance this is required. The most egregious example of this the alchemist escort quest in Fracture Hills, which is not only one of the most obnoxious minigames throughout the whole game, but if you didn't know you had to come back to this level once you obtain the headbash from Winter Tundra, you would have to come back to this level later and escort the alchemist all over again just to unlock the part where you defeat the earthshapers with the assistance of Hunter. Thankfully the amount of backtracking in this game is kept fairly minimal, but I still think it's a shame that there's any at all considering that there wasn't in the first game.

Ripto's Rage is a distinctive sequel with a myriad of ideas brought to the table and while I do appreciate the experience for what it is, there's no doubt in my mind that it could have been so much more.

Given the impressive array of formats that the Resident Evil games have adopted over the years, one would be forgiven for assuming that RE2 Remake and RE3 Remake are birds of a feather with the original RE4 given that they are both third person shooters. However, these games have their particular idiosyncrasies that make merging them a more conflicted affair than one would think, and in terms of mechanics it turns out there are a number of second order effects that come with tweaking a combat system as refined as RE4’s. The biggest affront is that the combat has taken a turn towards the sluggish rather than the snappy, even though it should in theory be faster due to the ability to shoot and reload while moving. This is caused by changes to the targeting reticle, as well as player movement and enemy stagger animations, and it results in less cathartic and rewarding game feel. Additionally, knife degradation robs the player of a dependable tool for preserving resources and instead adds an additional drain on them. Yes, survival horror is founded on the principle of combining scary imagery alongside the accumulating stress of managing interlocking systems, but this takes a step to far towards the frustrating, and of the system the new knife gives in return, only parries are worthwhile, purely on the grounds that they are sick as shit. Even then, anybody who thought it was a good idea to have a parry focused boss fight with a limited parry resource should be summarily barred from making video games now and forevermore.

Another change that dilutes the delicate balance of the original is the attache case customization, which provides opportunities to manipulate the AI Director towards favoring particular item drops. The trouble is that this brings the Director front to mind as it becomes part of the player's planning, which saps the joy of simply working with what you're given. These customization options are provided as randomized gacha rewards for achieving certain scores, and Capcom, buddy, it’s okay if the mini-games are just for perverts who enjoy chasing high scores. You don't need to extrinic motivations that affect the main game! At least the new treasury system is an improvement, as it allows you to pick what gems you want to slot into what items as opposed to punishing you for not finding every treasure, but I sorely miss getting big cash drops from bosses and mini-bosses.

Yet another discrepancy created by the merging of the original and previous remakes is tone. Simply put, the original is one of the best gonzo blockbusters out there, and this remake is not of the best lowkey campy stories in games so it’s hard not to be a little disappointed. I genuinely would have preferred a few blown pivot into dour and macabre horror than the middleground we got, even though Resident Evil normally thrives in that sweet spot between the two, because it would at least feel fresh. Still, beefing up the subtext by adding more text is appreciated; RE4 Remake explores similar themes as previous titles but targets new institutions, such as old money European aristocracy, capitalist ventures such as mining and drilling, and of course, the religious institution of the Las Plagas cult. Furthermore, Ashley’s redesign and character development are thoroughly appreciated, but I must note that making Luis not hot anymore is a crime punishable by [redacted.]

As such, we've reached a point where RE4 Remake is largely good because it inherits a bevy of all timer setpieces, and adds at least as many neat new ones as it botches or removes (looking at you, mine cart sequence). Subsequently, perhaps this game's most notable quality is its ability to inspire dreams of lost futures. What if this team got the game resources to make an original game instead? What if we got an RE2 Remake and RE3 Remake in the style of RE1 Remake? What if we got a 2023 RE4 Remake with fixed camera angles? What if we got hookman? What if we got hookman? What if we got hookman?

the ground truth

there's a tension in game critique between analyzing a game's mechanics in the abstract and incorporating the historical context it exists in. good critique often starts with the former and bleeds into the latter, viewing the raw systems at play using the critic's preconceptions of "good" game design as the ground truth before moving into the wider context of the genre it resides in and the state of the industry. some lean fully into the former and some the latter. however, these two are inherently intertwined; the critic's previous engagement with the wider context taints their preconceptions, and it's impossible to extract any axioms from the ground truth that haven't been tainted in the same way. given that critique is an art and not a science, we can accept this as inevitable and move on. after all, the variety of people's individual preconceptions produces discourse in both its beautiful and toxic forms. if we seek to share critique and provoke the thoughts of others, then having a unique ground truth is meaningful.

this is not favorable to resident evil 4, unfortunately. around its neck is another resident evil 4 which so greatly shaped the medium as to create its own overwhelming ground truth without any path to overturn it. this applies to all remakes of course, but this new resident evil 4 simply begs these comparisons out of the gate. how can I potentially rip the abstract mechanics out of this game and view them without bias when the original product is so closely grafted to its back?

I delved into the simplicity of the original resident evil 4's combat in my previous review of that game. its stagger system and context-sensitive melee options form a crowd-control methodology that remains one of the most memorable aspects of the game to this day. that its remake utterly repudiates these mechanics is shocking at first glance. the context-sensitive melee input's timing is tighter, its area of effect is smaller, and its invincibility frames fail to protect leon quite as effectively as in the original. the inconsistent stagger further complicates this, as I'll get into the next section. these elements of the crowd-control loop structured all combat encounters from the original, and without it the game teeters dangerously close to becoming just another modern zombie game. this was my original impression in that opening village fight, which took me nearly 45 minutes of attempts on hardcore. why did the precision and definitive outcomes get thrown to the wayside in favor of this squishy mess of slow response time, inaccurate aiming, and erratic enemy behavior?

what I had to do as I continued was reframe the ground truth. the original resident evil 4 boils everything down to the above loop in a way that linearizes it. it certainly presents options for the player, but the vast majority of ganados and cultists should be dispatched through this herd->stagger->melee approach. in that way, the game offers complete control over your surroundings virtually all the time. the remake rejects this in favor of widening the option pool, creating further checks and balances on each tool, and fermenting a greater sense of uncertainty and chaos. it captures the experience of being overwhelmed, drowning in a sea of transformed villagers while running low on resources and health. changing the original's combat loop was necessary to conjure these situations.

probably most of you reading the above are going to recoil at that... but stay tuned, I'm setting this up as the ground truth, but I'm going to tear it apart later as well. however, it's necessary to give the game the benefit of the doubt this way in order to observe what it does right as well as understand where it falls short on its own terms.

determinism vs stochasticity

the stagger system in re4r builds something much knottier than its predecessor through a conflux of multiple factors seasoned with a bit of RNG. in other words: it's inconsistent. I doubt we'll ever have a clear idea of how it works until it gets reverse engineered some time from now. in any case, it's a far cry from the deterministic staggers of the original, which could be consistently induced from a headshot or other weak point.

we can view determinism and stochasticity (or randomness) as a continuum for mechanics and games as a whole to fall within, where the former is a pure puzzle and the latter is gambling. let's say that the original falls closer towards the deterministic end while the remake is closer to the stochastic end; of course, each game has elements of both, such as the semi-random enemy AI and plagas spawns in the original and the parry mechanics in the remake. in many action contexts, it makes more sense for move outcomes to be deterministic. we need consistency in order to observe patterns and form strategies with a guarantee of efficacy. if I were playing a game such as souls or monhun and had attacks with heavy commitments fail or produce confusing effects, any outcome that I find myself in could potentially be unavoidable at no fault of my own, and if all my escape options also have heavy commitments or long startups, I may have set myself up for failure through random chance.

however, both versions of re4 are shooters, and by their nature most actions are near instantaneous; point the gun and shoot. if an enemy lasts a bullet or two longer before teeing up a melee attack, the reaction needed to fire off another round to get them into that state is much more negligible. abstractly, this kind of uncertainty actually can create interesting types of decision-making and intentionality for the player. attacks with uncertain outcomes can be planned in such a way that option selects occur, where each potential outcome results in a situation that the player can also take advantage of provided they can react appropriately. it also facilitates quick decision-making with gun selection. if not inducing stagger with the handgun could potentially result in damage, the shotgun may be a better tool; weighing these options becomes more challenging when there is a need to factor in percentage chances of success, especially in the way this interacts with limited quantities of ammo. the new reticle mechanic drawn from the previous two remakes also influences player choices in how it forces the player to remain still in order to let the reticle close and cause more damage/stagger. these all coalesce into a toolkit that creates ambiguity for the player on what options may be best at any given point, often leaving the player to act on instinct in a frenzy and then live with the outcome.

furthermore, re4r extends its knife mechanics in order to create a secondary set of tools for the player to grapple with the uncertainty of gun actions. the knife primarily provides a near-universal option for dispelling enemy attacks when used to parry, which comes at the cost of both knife durability and a small player stagger (though a perfect parry effectively nullifies this). it also can be used to push enemies off when they do a forward grab, backstab enemies, instantly kill some spawning plagas, and fight directly to induce stagger in combination with your other tools. this creates two primary spheres of play: the uncertain long-distance area where the player is more-or-less safe but lacks definite control over their actions, and the short-distance area where the player can definitively control the parries and other close-range actions but is in direct danger from every enemy in the game. compared to the original re4, where running into the fray was encouraged thanks to the high safety of melee actions, the remake creates ambiguity in the choice of range for the player. kiting is an option but the ammo use is inefficient, while parries can highly useful but drain durability and potentially set the player up for damage if they miss a perfect parry while another enemy approaches. both of these areas of ambiguity - for options specifically in the long-range as well switching between long-range and short-range - help instill a sense of claustrophobia as enemies swarm leon.

this interpretation isn't without its flaws. the primary issue is that the parry actually drains very little durability compared to some of the other actions (assuming that you aren't using it against certain instakill attacks, which often destroy an entire knife), and as it works on all but a small subset of enemy attacks (such as the hammer or the scythe), it centralizes the other mechanics around itself. perfect parries guarantee a stagger for melee and thus become more appealing than the other options to the point of occasionally just letting enemies approach to get a parry off rather than even considering long-range actions. there are elements that still counterbalance this such as the inability to block attacks from behind (sometimes?) and the uncertainty involved in parrying attacks such as plagas tendrils, but some of this abstract ambiguity becomes lost given the obvious superiority of this mechanic in many instances.

the modern zombie game

last year I reviewed the last of us, a game that in retrospect seems to be one of the many midway points between the original re4 and this remake. in my critique I discuss how the game primarily morphs between three styles of action: cover, stealth, and horde. re4r does add in light stealth elements (specifically in the village chapter), but the most obvious point of comparison between these two are the horde sections.

in that tlou review, I singled out the hotel basement as the best horde section in the game thanks to its non-prescriptive level design and the flexibility of the room layouts. at its best, tlou captured the scramble of running past zombies and efficiently dealing with groups; at its worst, horde encounters would devolve into endlessly running into circles, swapping your various indistinguishable guns around to deal with limited ammo. many months out from my playthrough, several of these fights have congealed together in my brain, with the game's more fleshed-out cover/stealth hybrid sections dominating the majority of my memories. although it had the potential to excel in terms of horde combat, it falls rather slight in execution.

re4r seizes upon this without all of the drawbacks of tlou's lackluster gunplay and overall horde encounter design. in particular, the ammo economy feels skewed away from the original's bountiful reserves to something more akin to tlou. while handgun ammo drops regularly even without the attache case that boosts it, the handgun is the most uncertain of all the weapons, making ammo for your more consistent powerhouses like the shotgun and rifle all the more precious. the new gunpowder system that gives the player the ability to craft ammo at their leisure undermines this somewhat, but the difference between the 20-40 shotgun shells one is likely to hold in the original game to the 5-15 that's more common here makes any shells expended on gunning down basic mooks even more consequential.

more importantly, re4r builds interesting encounters using staggered enemy types, much like the tlou hotel basement encounter does with its bloater and various infected. the most notable instance of this for me during this playthrough was the twin garrador fight, which has been expanded with many more ganados than in the original. the absence of the famous cage fight is disappointing, but the added wrinkles to this garrador fight make up for it, especially in the way that parrying within earshot of a garrador will cause them to charge. throughout this fight the constant influx of enemies forces you to keep moving and stay on the lookout for ways you can chip away at the garradors and silently kill the adds, with tricking the garradors into slicing down reams of enemies being the most satisfying solution for culling the herd. the chainsaw sisters fight also achieves this in an even bigger environment, where you're chased along wooden scaffolding by enemies in growing numbers as you trap your pursuers with lit lanterns from above. both of these fights are great examples of moments where the original game is legitimately expanded through infusing already excellent fights with more complex spaces and enemies pouring in from all sides. by giving the genius sections from the original the flair of modern, more dense zombie games, the designers here effectively breathed new life into these scenarios.

wide breadth and shallow length

something I neglected to mention in the prior section on stochasticity was the laser sight, which seems to maximize stagger on every shot and improve accuracy. if you do want to play more like the original and its stagger-focused crowd control, the laser sight will let you do that from early on in the game. conversely if you'd rather incorporate some stealth, many of the areas have interconnected pathways and ways to sneak up on enemies with the backstab takedown. the bolt thrower now appears much earlier than before with the mines relegated to an additional ammo type, allowing players more interested in creating traps to focus on that weapon. while many of these choices existed in the original, the wealth of gameplay styles has been expanded here, from differentiating and balancing the handguns even further to adding an assault rifle.

in a way, this variety dovetails nicely with the previously mentioned de-emphasis of the stagger and contextual melee in the way that players can choose what aspects of their kit to invest in over the course of the game. this pairs especially well with the overhauled treasure system, which gives the player more strategic methods by which to maximize their earnings via the new multipliers for color combinations with inlaid gems. in theory this is exactly what I had established the intent for the game as earlier: to delinearize combat and make the optimal choices more ambiguous.

however, I have largely ignored the specifics of the encounter design outside of the previously mentioned twin garrador and chainsaw fights. these areas are excellent to be sure, as are others such as the opening village and the catwalks over the precipice after meeting the merchant, but much of the rest of the game becomes less interesting than its predecessor by way of more tempered enemy layouts (or in the words of my previous review, less of a frenzy). compared to the literal hordes of the original, the remake ends up following a more modern pattern of obstacle escalation when constructing its fights. look at the wrecking ball fight and its strict phases that pace out the most dangerous enemies and end with a round of the bug plagas. an even more egregious example is the water room, the first half of which has been thinned and spread out across an upstairs and a downstairs section. by reducing the flow of enemies in these areas, the chaos the game fosters through its mechanics becomes less apparent through the rigidity of the scenario pacing.

the variety in playstyles intersects with this, specifically in how many enemies are often on-screen at once. with smaller groups, the anxiety of constantly juggling foes from many sides melts away, and one can autopilot with whatever strategy they've invested in. this particularly becomes noticable by the island chapter, where encounters in general tend towards mere handfuls of enemies in-between a few bigger areas such as the AA turret or the wrecking ball. after learning the game on its own merits for the first half, I found myself trending towards simply recreating the original game here, with a fully leveled-up silver ghost and its laser sight becoming a stagger machine and melees/parries dominating much of my approach. in the larger encounters this fell apart, with a greater need to scramble and switch between weapons, but the predominance of smaller encounters pushed me towards just playing a clumsier version of the original.

in its own way, what I previously referred to as "linearized" combat in the original really forms the "arcade-like" nature that many have come to love about it. the frenzy of the original and its anti-obstacle escalation doctrine created an incredible spread of scenarios to apply these mechanics to. the original re4 is about observing radically different ideas and designs for encounters and framing them in such a way that you can pull off that herd->stagger->melee loop, just as tetris is a game of turning different stack shapes and tetramino sequences into line clears, or qix is about navigating around the titular entity to find areas to slice away. the small pool of mechanics get stretched in such a way that they never feel rote. meanwhile, the remake takes its wider breadth of options and sacrifices the depth across the length of its campaign, creating more homogenous scenarios overall. there are throwaway rooms in the original that feel more dynamic than major setpieces of the remake, and by the second half I can say it approaches mediocrity. slam-dunks like the double turret section end up feeling like they've run out of ideas. if there's any justification of the original ground truth, where re4r fails while the original succeeds, it's here.

the review

that's a relatively abstract view of the game as a whole though, and obviously I have a lot more thoughts on it from front to back. so let me fire off some random other thoughts that didn't quite fit into my higher-level critique.

bosses overall probably have an equal hit rate to the original. mendez is a good example that I thought improved thanks to a little more structure between the two phases and some extra room; I was never really into meat-and-potatoes bosses like many found in the original. gigante somehow gets worse thanks to exaggerated hitboxes and a jittering, small plagas. the double gigante fight is the opposite, being basically just scripted (throw a flashbang, drop the unarmored one in, wait for luis to come back with the dynamite, blow it up, drop the other one in). krauser is some trial-and-error bullshit and then just a parry fest. salazar stresses leon's clunky movement and the need for camera control far too much... saddler is actually pretty good! the adds in that one give it a nice bit of flavor.

the whole of chapter 11 is just bleh. double gigante, the shockingly boring minecart section, and the one-at-a-time bugs, all of which feel rather slight compared to their original incarnations. and ending with that new krauser fight... this is where I stopped feeling as hype on the game.

side quests are there but thankfully skippable. I didn't really trade for much from the shop since I stuck with silver ghost and ignored all the extra stocks and shit, so I didn't feel the need to touch them much once you hit the castle. backtracking for some of these things is most doable in the village and then feels tacked on later down the line.

the regenerators were never my favorite part of the original, but the way they act here is just ruined by the parry. my roommate had her hands over her eyes the whole time they were chasing me until the fifth time I parried them, and then even she realized that they didn't really pose a threat. the electricity puzzles they plopped in here are obnoxious and tedious; I solved every one just by a simple brute force method. the wrench was cute though, that'll stay burned into my brain even when some of the rest of this game fades away.

I'm fine with slow leon but oh my god some of the aspects of this control scheme are dire. quick turn was butchered not only by being incredibly inconsistent but also by giving three bizarre options for it: back and run (which causes accidental backwards runs), back and crouch (which is basically a death sentence if you end up crouching in place), and back and the left stick button (the fuck were they thinking?). just let me put it on cross... also it seems like I wasn't able to crouch in the middle of a run? confusing oversight. combined with frequent flubbed ground stabs and the weird valid angles for parries... just rough all around.

can't believe how many evade QTEs they stuck in here after it seemed like they were going to excise them overall. why would you cut the salazar statue chase (the fire breathing is cool though) in favor of giving random-ass scythe enemies an unparryable attack with a QTE evade? and the bosses are still so reliant on it... at the same time I get the reluctance to add a dodge roll to this. a general dodge would've required a complete design overhaul, and it's sort of overkill with the ability to strafe, but the overreliance on them especially when it comes to boss battles feels like a major case where a reimagining would have been greatly appreciated.

I have a hard time digesting a remake of something that was already so perfect, I literally have to keep reminding myself this is a reimagining which it is and that it's not Resident Evil 4, it's a whole new game. RE2 and RE3 had leeway since they were genuinely so old and it was welcomed by most, but with 4, for me it's just not the case.

The game starts off with the right foot for the most part, we get a great recap like in the original game from Leon, and The Drive plays and you know the rest. It's good but it's still not as good as the original, they even changed the lines and the police voice actors are not that good.

A lot of the charm such as the funny dialogue and moments are gone for the sake of making it more "grounded" and "horror" so why are suplexing and kicks still mechanics? It just seems like they are embarrassed of what made RE4 good at times. Don't get me wrong alot are still there and it has a few good new ones but not much. But it's like the game only commits half way of trying to be something new because they know if they cut stuff and change too much we won't like it, so it ends up feeling unfaithful and is kind of cheating itself. No art on loading screens is also stupid, little things like that add up.

Ada's va line delivery is awful. Krausers va is alright. Overall other than Luis, Ashely, Leon, and maybe the Merchant the voice acting is super mediocre.

Merchant is an improvement in terms of buying and selling and upgrading and while not as iconic as the og he's not bad, he's pretty good. Leon's new va is good but I just couldn't help think of Paul Mercier. It's werid, all the voice acting just doesn't feel that good. Even all the enemies it's just not as good as the original, and maybe it's not supposed to be but what did they give us in return? In my opinion what we got in return wasn't that good. So much was cut and changed for worse than better it's actually insane.

The gameplay feels smooth, insane attention to detail. It's a pretty good reimagining of RE4 and a newer modern direction of the original game. However aiming feels annoying, crowd control is not there, and things are just not as thought out as the original. And it just pisses you off sometimes, like when you run by enemies you might get stunned or Leon does this werid jerk movement it's so stupid, and the crouch button is so pointless.

The controls are pretty good, but I much prefer the strategic and more thought out controls of the original, it was more thought provoking and fun and you just felt like you were in control, like an experienced Leon, don't get me wrong though some of that feeling is still here.

Unreal graphics, great sound design in its own way, art direction is great too. I still like the original better and it's aged like wine and I think it's more scary, but again it's good here too they did the best they could while keeping some of the originals soul.

Parrying mechanic is awesome. Great idea to change it up from the original. But what's the point when your knife breaks every 5 seconds.

The dialogue is nowhere near as good as the OG. And I don't understand why they had to change a lot of it, like I get it but they're changing it and giving us something not as good in return.

I also absolutely hate the fact that the notes are so trash, in the original I was always intrigued and wanted to read more and was invested but in this game they just feel generic and you kinda have no motivation to read them, like I still remember Luis's research from the OG.

The reload animations and animations in general are really good, they're a treat to see.

I liked the remixed soundtracks it adds an authentic feel at timed and I enjoyed the soundtrack for the most part.

Crafting overhaul is nice it's similar to RE2R, but it's nothing crazy.

Quality of life stuff is cool and instant switching is nice but I don't like it. Takes away from so much of the strategic elements of the og.

Amazing ai at times, but it gets annoying at times. Especially Ashley, although her character is great in the remake and I still prefer the original, the commands are stupid. You have less control and she's constantly running and more annoying in this one. In the original games the commands were perfect and they should have kept them that way. The addition of her hiding and stuff is cool though.

Big cheese fight was good. The second phase kind of sucked tho. Salazars design sucks too just to mention it.

Tutorial section for the knife was so dumb, you already learnt how to use the knife yourself before that.

Dialogue with Hunnigan is ass and overly serious, and it just takes it self so seriously and I hate how Leon is such a hardass. His characterization in the original is so much better and he's literally a CHAD.

All these improvements are great but I FEEL next to nothing.

Sections feel like modern gaming at times, just walking around or getting something or whatever it's so boring at times and isn't as intriguing as the original or even the RE2R.

I feel people are being dishonest or have their glasses on where they can't see flaws, or are having recency bias because the game has issues it's not perfect like people say. This is NOT a generational game like the original and other games. There's nothing jaw dropping or revolutionary about this game like the original, not one new amazing innovation. Like how does this game have better reviews than something like RDR2, the original, some of the greatest games ever? This is not even the best remake. This game is not even close to them, it's a good game, but at the end of the day it's a knockoff I feel, the best Resident Evil 4 knockoff you can buy.

But why would you wanna buy a knockoff? When you can enjoy the original thing. Capcom should have used this energy on a game that actually needed it or made something original entirely. Modern gaming I guess.

RE4 remake impresses, its a fun game, a great game at times, it carries over parts of Resident Evil 4s soul, but it doesn't manage to capture me or make me FEEL what the original did, and what it offers is just subpar especially compared to it...

I know I may sound negative, I enjoyed the game still, and my standards are high. But it's just that the original Resident Evil 4 means so much to me and was so freaking amazing and revolutionary. It's one of my favorite games ever, and I love it so much. So Resident Evil 4 Remake was set up to fail for someone like me.

7/10

I have very mixed feelings about this game. On the one hand, I enjoyed every minute of it, but on the other hand, I have quite a few complaints about the changes.

The sluggish control from the RE2 remake doesn't match the fierce combat of RE4. The aiming of the weapon is very weird while the enemy is particularly flexible. The addition of many side quests broke the pacing. The tone of the entire game has also become soulless.

But the excellent refurbishment of the original RE4 level design, the new description of Ashley and Luis, and the complete upgrade of the graphics are all great.

It's pretty fun but anyway it's just a safe remake, CAPCOM did it as I expected.

its better than the zeebo port, i guess.

this remake is an exercise in futility. almost everything new is bad and everything good about it is from a 20 year old game that remains superior to this. part of what made the original special is that it was isolated from the rest of the franchise, and in every sense of the word this remake's number one priority is to homogenize it with everything else while still being "resident evil 4" in the most half-hearted, pathetic way possible.

the tone of this game wants so desperately to be melodramatic and self-serious in line with the other remakes but understands that it loses all appeal if it doesnt still portray RE4-isms, so in one scene nu-leon will say "Fuck... this has to be different... shit..." and in the very next he'll do The Bingo Line or go "Whoopsy daisy, looks like I just kicked you in the head" a million times during combat because otherwise it won't get a 4.6 average on Backloggd. it wants to be new but feels to obligated to be old because it is literally a remake so the entire thing feels wholly disingenuous.

resident evil 4 was also an action game and the modern RE remakes are more of an exercise in frustration than anything, so nu-4 tries to mix both worlds without really having the engine to back it up. the amount of times leon would be stunlocked by an enemy breathing on him is enough to make a man insane, and the enemy states in this game are also much more vague than the original. the idea is that if you should them in the head or leg you can perform a melee, but sometimes enemies just wont be affected by these things at all and the player is left entirely out of control.

there are plenty of new additions that fans of a PS2 action game are sure to love also, such as
- Cut content sold later as DLC
- Weapon degredation, and speaking of which
- Stealth Kills (who asked for this)
- Parries (but dont use them, because your knife will break. also the game makes it super unclear what you can and cannot parry besides having a brief parry prompt in the corner, so its as if the game still has quick time events)
- That thing where instead of mashing to get out of grabs, you just stab them. This is really pointless since it also breaks your knife but enemies grab you so much more here that fuck it, you can have my knife
- Iconic new Side Quests such as "kill 3 rats" and "kill 3 snakes"
- Unlockable charms that give wonderful bonuses like 5% higher chance of enemies dropping green herbs or shotgun bullets
- A crouch button(??)
- A new enemy thats practically the same as Salvador but more frequent and nearly unstaggerable so hes really just an ammo toll, thanks

this game is just so phony in so many ways. lots of little things are worse. the regenerator music is louder and they become a standard enemy instead of having their own special moments. characters talk more and have less to say. arguably every single boss encounter is more "cinematic" instead of being dynamic, like Mendez hiding in the background to pick up big red barrels for you to shoot instead of just being a boss fight. the game in general is more cinematic and even has one of those fucking sequences where you just hold up on the left stick while a psuedo-cutscene plays. in MY resident evil 4

i fail to see any way that this remake is trying to do anything besides rewrite history, let alone one of the most historically significant games ever made. i shudder to think of the amount of people who will say "resident evil 4" in reference to this and this alone. it does wimpily try to emulate the original, so it can still have its moments, but otherwise adds positively nothing to the industry and has effectively only harmed the reputation of the 2005 game. im glad people love it as much as they do, and i wish so dearly that they would be inspired to see what the original is all about too, but chances of that are low. this is new, and thats old. morir es vivir, morir es vivir