The best way to play Resident Evil 4.

There’s a lot to talk about with the HD Project, but most of it has already been said, and certainly better than I could hope to. What I will say is that the story behind it — of taking eight years to find all of these lost textures, of flying out to locations across Europe to take real photos to port back into the game, of re-adding the silencer in a dev room tucked away in a famously-inaccessible area — is nothing short of inspirational. The final product is a ridiculously thorough recreation of what you remember Resident Evil 4 looking like, rather than how it actually did. The 45-ish gigabytes of texture files that come with this slot into the base game’s sub-10 gigs so poorly that you need a patch just to get it all running. It’s the impressive kind of work and dedication that will rightfully be remembered in the highest echelons of fan projects.

What was most interesting to me, though, was the fact that the aforementioned patch came bundled with the texture pack, and included a suite of options within. “re4_tweaks”, as it calls itself, is exactly what it claims to be; a wealth of options for the player to fiddle with, all made up of sliders and buttons, each one letting you change the game just enough to make some obvious changes without feeling like you’re playing something different.

The new FOV slider is a big one; the base game of Resident Evil 4 has a claustrophobic camera angle, cozied right up against Leon’s juicy delts, and it makes it genuinely kind of difficult to see what the fuck is going on. There’s an artistic intent here, and it’s an obvious one — Resident Evil had defined itself though claustrophobia for three games leading up to this, so it’s practically a series mainstay — but I never felt that it worked all that well here. Bringing the camera out a bit helps immensely in letting you get a better understanding of what’s going on around you, and it actually helps to deepen the tension when you can see just how massive the swarm of enemies closing in on you actually is.

“Balanced Chicago Typewriter” was one that I needed to check out immediately. It doesn’t do much besides nerf the damage of the thing and require you to find ammo pickups, but it’s an immensely interesting way of adding a new weapon for new game plus players who aren’t interested in breaking the game completely in half. Capcom already locked the Matilda behind NG+, and that thing was a complete piece of shit, so there’s at least precedent for it. I’ve always thought it was a bit of a missed opportunity that Resident Evil 4 had all of these different ammo types and so few weapons that actually used them; only the TMP takes TMP ammo, only the the mine thrower takes mines, you’ve only got two rifles and the semi-auto is almost a strictly better version of the bolt-action. The remake did a decent enough job of adding in new weapons, but both there and here I find myself reverting back to a handgun/shotgun/sniper core even when I’m trying to experiment and play around with the more neglected weapons. It’s a problem of power versus fun; the TMP is probably the strongest gun in the game, constantly giving you easy access to suplexes and kicks, but it’s fucking boring to pop an enemy once, hit them, back off, and then do it again. Anything that allows you to shake it up a little, such as the balanced Chicago Typewriter, is a more than welcome addition.

Of course, the Typewriter itself is locked behind Separate Ways, which is fucking boring in this. It’s an absolute slog of backtracking and mowing through wave after wave of enemies without really experiencing anything new. It takes a long, long while before you start hitting new areas with new bosses, and trudging through the muck to get to that point isn’t at all worth it. The remake blows this version of Separate Ways out of the water — and it should, considering that it costs an extra ten bucks.

But the main campaign is as fun as ever, still complete with all of the areas that the remake omitted. Certainly for the worse, I’d say. The lava room in the castle is an obvious highlight, along with the giant Salazar robot and Ashley driving through walls in a bulldozer. The setpieces aren’t the only thing I think are done better here; the writing is a lot sharper, which is funny when you consider how fucking corny it is. There are a lot of digs at the War on Terror, at poking holes in the great American fantasy of swooping in and saving the day and leaving everything right with the world. Of course, it’s all played pretty straight, and Leon naturally saves the day and leaves everything right with the world, but it’s refreshing to see how quick a lot of characters are in this. Everyone is so sassy. Leon accusing Salazar of being a terrorist and him shooting back that terrorist is “a popular word these days” is so perfect. The main villains in this just laugh whenever Leon gets a good dig in at them, often recognizing the fact that he got their asses. It’s a lot of fun. The music is more varied and textured, the acting is generally a lot better, Ashley still has her big monkey ears, everything about this is still as fresh and as perfect as it was eighteen years ago. But I’m just gushing at this point. Of course it’s all good. It’s Resident Evil 4.

Really, I just wanted an excuse to review this again now that I’ve played the remake. I think it was clear from the outset that the team remaking Resident Evil 4 never actually had a chance to succeed the original, but they did a really good job. After all, they had this to follow, and what an absurdly tough act it is. In the end, the original is still one of the single greatest games ever produced, and it’s a testament to how ahead of its time it was that it still feels inimitable to this day.

Ashley should be able to glide down from the tops of ladders and ledges like Dumbo instead of waiting around for Leon to catch her.