Resident Evil 4 Remake
Resident Evil 4 Remake asks the bold question of whether you can perfect what many already consider perfection. While fairly competent at the basics, Capcom’s latest remake has the least creative energy of its series revivals, leaving you wanting for much more.
- The main cast have life-like fidelity
- A perfectly functional survival horror ride
- New things I can’t tell you about because of intense embargo restrictions!
- Clearly struggling in Performance mode, even on a Series S
- New Leon is a bore
- Controls are oddly stiff and poorly explained
When Capcom announced their next Resident Evil remake would be Resident Evil 4, there were many fans wondering why the studio would perform a redux of their greatest success? Leon Kennedy’s race to save the president’s daughter from a twisted Spanish village-turned-hellhole is iconic for a reason. Resident Evil 4’s original vision has been ported to everything under the sun, from the Switch to the darn Zeebo.
Few games are as universally beloved, or as remarkably timeless. Sure, there are a few sexist moments that are cringeworthy, and a level of fidelity that can only be fan-patched so far, but it’s Resident Evil 4. Few games have so fundamentally altered an industry, let alone a franchise – it’s the Terminator 2 of gaming. How do you top that?
I don’t know, and seemingly neither does Capcom, because Resident Evil 4 Remake is far from the jaw-dropping reimagining we all hoped for it. It’s fine – overly dour, at times monotonous, other times feeling even more like an action-game than the original, but perfectly serviceable. Except “Serviceable” and “Resident Evil 4” shouldn’t even live within a hundred yards of each other.
This feels less like a warranted remake, and more of an encore victory lap of the last two Resident Evil remakes. Except even by contrast to those that came before, Resident Evil 4 Remake is oddly lacking in the enthusiasm that the original is known for. The Evil Dead-esque, brooding yet comedic horror is gone, and in its place is a self-serious plot so lacking in someone to care about that I can’t tell whether to blame the acting or the direction, because the writing is perfectly competent.
What’s stranger still is whenever Resident Evil 4 Remake isn’t drawing from the past, it’s desperately chasing Shinji Mikami’s future. The new stealth mechanics, a new bolt weapon that’s blatantly similar in function to The Evil Within’s crossbow, a similar aiming system in lieu of the laser sight aiming of the original game – it all uncomfortably reminds me of The Callisto Protocol trying to one-up ideas from Dead Space’s sequels.
Other returning mechanics, like crafting and barring windows, work perfectly fine, but won’t redefine your experience. As for the new parrying and dodge moves? They’re glorified quick time events, which is hilarious given how it was advertised that the game would lack any QTEs, unlike the excessive number in the original game. I wouldn’t even mind, but adding knife degradation tied to this split-second reaction timing isn’t ideal. It’s a necessity to max out your primary knife’s durability as soon as possible.
Where Resident Evil 2 Remake gave you a brief moment to process sacrificing such a valuable resource, Resident Evil 4 Remake expects you to already identify each prompt and know exactly what to do. This is all the more infuriating given there is an encounter midway through the game that does a much better job of tutorializing how to use the knife combat system than earlier encounters, with longer response windows than some basic enemies.
The levels themselves vary from gorgeous to cluttered messes of over-detailing. I understand the incentive to go above and beyond the humble limits of the original GameCube release, but if I’m genuinely questioning if something is interactive or not at a distance, you’ve gone a step too far.
The solution? Slap yellow onto important things like it’s an Uncharted game. It works, but it also leaves me wondering why so much visual noise was necessary. The original’s barrels and crates are here, but many of them are non-interactive background material, while the only ones worth engaging with have a literal “X marks the spot” of yellow on them. You used to just be able to tell the difference.
Yet what remains most profound is the sheer lack of fun for significant portions of the game. The first half of the game feels so divorced from the latter sections in tone that it’s like you’re earning the right to enjoy yourself, especially with regard to the narrative. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game misunderstand the tone of its source material harder than this.
Sure, protagonist Leon Kennedy spouts one-liners, but his actor sounds like he’s counting the seconds till he can leave the recording booth. Returning femme fatale Ada’s not much better. I applaud recasting her with an Asian actor, but her delivery comes across as cold rather than what seems to be meant as aloof?
On the flipside, the Remake tries desperately to make Ashley Graham, the president’s daughter, more likable. While this is initially the case, an inconsistency with her dialogue barks mid-combat tend to make her gratingly tone-deaf rather than endearing. Not since Battlefront II’s Takodana campaign level have I been whined at so much by someone I’m saving in the middle of a firefight.
The villains meanwhile are mostly understated or shouting. There’s no real middle ground, even with Ramon, who’s trying way too hard to present himself as a viper waiting to strike rather than an eccentric tiny tyrant. Remarkably, out of the entire cast, it’s Luis who has probably the best acting of the bunch – a rare boon of charisma in a sea of deadpan.
Speaking of dead, despite all the infected you’ll be fighting, what’s truly caught between life and death are the visuals, particularly the lighting. With no explicit loading screens, areas transition seamlessly, except when they don’t and have a jarring shift in the preset color range. Sometimes an area is so gorgeously lit that it’s some of the best environmental art in the series, only for another area to feel unfinished. Some level layouts are beautifully intuitive, while others left me infuriated as I tried to track down the last step in a sidequest.
Nothing’s ever quite ideally balanced on any front. Several immediately recognizable elements are apparent, but sometimes they’ve tweaked them for no other reason than seemingly to toy with expectations. What narrative changes are made can range from subtle to eyebrow-raising, but never consistently to the game’s benefit. Perhaps the most infuriatingly inconsistent part of all though, is the aiming.
The aiming an absolute chore on a controller. Having just come off of multiple horror games on a gamepad, I could not have been more ready to dive in – I even had the benefit of an Elite controller with the underside paddles for comfort. I spent over five hours constantly adjusting those aim sensitivity and acceleration settings, trying to find a happy medium where both your standard weapons and precise weapons function optimally. It didn’t have to be this way.
Why do I say that? For one, your binoculars handle just fine. More damning is my experience when playing the PC demo. Wouldn’t you know it, on a mouse and keyboard, even with some of the strangest keyboard bindings imaginable (i.e. Space Bar to wield your knife, E to crouch), it handles like a dream by comparison. There’s simply no good reason for aiming this cumbersome on a controller in an action-flavored Resident Evil game in 2023.
On that same note, as far as performance is considered, PC may also be the optimal route. I set my Series S to Performance mode to get the highest frame rate possible, and some textures loooked like they’d come straight from 2005. While there is a quality visuals mode, this is a game where reaction windows are vital, so you might just have to take the hit if you don’t have a top of the line hardware.
What’s frustrating is how you can see a brilliant new vision for Resident Evil 4 nestled between all these thorny aspects. It’s caught between all these changes that vary from interesting to wildly unnecessary – it’d be great to be able to give more elaborate examples. There are set-pieces that are wonderfully updated, including some classic foes. It’s not all to waste, but the jump in quality takes place in the latter hours of the game.
What I am pleased to report is that the attaché case remains, with various alternate case modifiers for unique perks. There’s an automated sorting function for those not interested in fiddling with it, but it truly remains as satisfying as ever to organize. Some old familiar favorites like the sniper rifle and shotgun remain absolutely devastating all these years later, even if the pistol’s new sound effect is disappointingly muted until upgraded.
That’s what it feels like to play Resident Evil 4 Remake. It starts off dull, disinteresting, and takes a considerable amount of investment to get the most out of it. It’s functional, and you’ll get somewhere interesting eventually, but was it worth all of Capcom’s money being viscerally thrown around? Did, in my entire playthrough, any moment truly justify a top to bottom remake of one of the greatest games of all time? Not really, no.
Resident Evil 4 Remake exists, and I’ve little doubt by its name alone will sell decently. I’m sure there will be some who prefer it for being more modern and moody, but does everyone need to run out and get this, day one? Only if you’re the sort of Resident Evil devotee who picks up every single entry. Where Resident Evil 4 is timeless, Resident Evil 4 Remake is profoundly a product of its time.
