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Resident Evil 4 is the best game Capcom has made since, uh, Resident Evil 4

3K View2023-04-02

Capcom has been doing Resident Evil remakes and doing them very well for a long time now. 2019’s remake of Resident Evil 2 and 2020’s remake of Resident Evil 3 were in many ways no-brainers; they updated games that had first come out in the late ’90s and, despite being critically acclaimed, were hard for modern gamers to return to. Capcom took these classics and turned them into modern survival horror/shooter hybrids that even gamers who hadn’t grown up on the originals could appreciate.

Resident Evil 4 is a totally different story, though. The core gameplay mechanics of over-the-shoulder shooting used in the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3? Those were first introduced to the series and immediately perfected in 2005’s Resident Evil 4. And while a lot of time has passed and the graphics aren’t as nice as they once were on the GameCube and PlayStation 2, that game still holds up and is still perfectly playable by modern standards. And it’s still an absolute masterpiece. How do you improve on that?

Remaking one of the most beloved games of all time is no small task, but Capcom has somehow pulled it off effortlessly. This new vision for Resident Evil 4 not only lives up to the original but actually surpasses it by tightening up the game’s few weaker segments and focusing in on the tight gunplay and horror that made it an all-time masterpiece.

For the uninitiated—and oh, how jealous I am if this will be your first time playing this game—Resident Evil 4 follows Leon S. Kennedy, one-time rookie cop co-star of Resident Evil 2 and now an agent of the United States government. Leon has been dispatched to a remote, rural village in the mountains of Spain. His mission? To rescue the daughter of the president, as she’s been kidnapped and brought to this region by a mysterious cult.

It doesn’t take long after arriving in Spain until Leon realizes that something even darker and more sinister than a kidnapping is going on here. In the first village he enters, he is attacked by rage-filled villagers who are also inexplicably able to take multiple gunshots to the head before dying. Luckily, Leon has come prepared, armed with his trusty pistol and ready to grab more weapons and ammo around the village.

Unlike many survival horror games, Resident Evil 4 is about action first and foremost. Whether using that starting pistol, a shotgun, a bolt thrower, or even a rocket launcher, I was constantly facing down enemies and actually going head-to-head with them. Combat is tense, exciting, and so damn satisfying in this game. Both ammo and healing supplies are limited, so I was encouraged to play smartly, targeting weak points, separating enemies to take them out one by one or grouping them to demolish whole packs at once, and running away when I had to. Pulling off headshots would kill bad guys faster, but targeting their hands might make them drop their weapons, or targeting their knees might cause them fall to the ground, letting me get in a powerful melee attack.

I can think of very few games where the combat feels as front-to-back fantastic as it does in Resident Evil 4. And it manages to keep that feeling across the whole fifteen to twenty hours that it takes to complete, in part because the game keeps adding new enemy types. By the time I’d mastered taking out villagers, I got introduced to the possibility that giant, creepy tentacles could burst out of their heads, creating a new threat even after they were “dead.” As soon as that had stopped freaking me out, I started running into big, tough, hammer-wielding variants. And enemies that initially seem like one-off bosses, such as the terrifying chainsaw-equipped villager, often end up popping up many more times throughout the adventure; these scenarios challenged me, but they also offered proof that my skills had improved.

Another reason that the combat is so great in Resident Evil 4 is that players are given so much freedom in how to approach each encounter, and in which weapon types they want to focus on. Want to stick with your pistol most of the time? Buy the best version you can from the game’s merchant and spend most of your money on upgrading it. Want to conserve ammo at all costs? Use the bolt thrower weapon, which allows you to pick up and reuse bolts after an enemy has died. You can even toss eggs at enemies to stun them, giving you an opening for further attacks—assuming you aren’t using your eggs for some other purpose.

While this remake doesn’t wildly change the original, it does feature some smart additions that actually build on that aforementioned freedom in clever ways. For example, Leon can now purchase and equip a variety of different attache cases, which can provide little passive boosts, like increasing the drop rate for handgun ammo or healing herbs.

Further, the case can be equipped with up to three charms, cute little tchotchkes given via a gacha-style system, with pulls purchased using tokens that are earned by playing the merchant’s practice range gun game. There are thirty different charms that can be earned, and once again they offer small passive bonuses, like improved healing or more money from selling certain items to the merchant. And once again, these little tweaks don’t completely change the game but allow players to lean in to a certain style of play. There’s even a legendary charm that increases Leon’s run speed, letting him zoom up to enemies for melee strikes or rush away to avoid attacks from bosses.

All of the additions and changes made to Resident Evil 4 follow this similar style: They’re relatively tiny on their own, but they either build on what made the original great or pull back on some of its weaknesses. Leon has improved stealth abilities now, which allows players to sneak into certain set piece zones and take out enemies silently, evening the odds a little before a pitched battle begins. The small handful of demanding (and annoying) quick time events from the original have been replaced with, well, actual gameplay. For example, the notoriously frustrating QTE battle against Krauser later in the game is now a test of how well you’ve mastered the new knife parrying system.

The biggest change by far, though, is how the game handles Ashley Graham, the hostage Leon has been sent in to rescue. In classic Resident Evil 4, sequences where Leon is escorting Ashley got aggravating quickly, as players suddenly had to worry about a fairly brain-dread AI-controlled character who constantly seemed to place herself right in the way of danger.

Not only has Ashley’s AI been greatly improved in the remake, but she also no longer has a health bar of her own to manage. Instead, if players attack her once, she is incapacitated, and a second attack kills her. This may sound harsher, but enemies target Ashley less—they’re trying to take her alive, after all—and she no longer needs to babied in the same way. This comes across in how the character has been rewritten as well, with the game playing up Ashley’s quick growth from a seemingly helpless young woman to someone who is holding her own in a horrifying situation and genuinely helping Leon get through.

The subtle but meaningful script changes point to just how much thoughtfulness has gone into Resident Evil 4. There are fixes, tweaks, and upgrades here that I never even realized I wanted until I was playing the remake and enjoying them. The worry with remaking a classic like Resident Evil 4 is that the new version couldn’t live up to the original, that it couldn’t recapture what made that game special when it came out almost twenty years ago. But the developers at Capcom who worked on this remake clearly have a deep understanding of and appreciation for what worked in Resident Evil 4, alongside a keen eye for what elements could stand to be polished further.

Given all that love, Resident Evil 4 didn’t just overcome my concerns about the necessity of a remake for this classic. It actually does the original game better, to the point that I think going back to play the 2005 version would feel like playing something inferior. It’s an incredible trick to fathom, making one of the best games ever twice in as many decades, but Capcom has pulled it off.

SCORE: 5 STARS OUT OF 5

PLAY IF YOU LIKE:

• Shooters. Seriously, even if you don’t normally go for horror games but love shooting things, you owe it to yourself to give Resident Evil 4 a shot (uh, so to speak). The depth of the shooting mechanics, the satisfaction of how different weapons feel, and the freedom to approach combat in wildly different ways all make this one of the best shooters ever.

• Absurdity. Resident Evil is a series that’s known for going over-the-top, and Resident Evil 4 does not disappoint. The plot goes on a lot longer than I initially suspected, and every time I thought it was wrapping up, the game introduced some wild new plot twist to keep me moving along. And despite all the wackiness, everything actually comes together in a pretty satisfactory manner.

💬 Have you played the Resident Evil 4 remake yet? Do you agree with me that it’s one of the best games of all time? Or are you skipping this one? (And if so, why?!) I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

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