Resident Evil 4 Remake is a Masterpiece, but the original RE4 is Greater

Resident Evil 4 Remake, for some reason.https://youtu.be/aY_IwwdZGBk

If there’s any one game that defines my experience as a gamer, it’s RE4, a game about the boy next door with good hair that goes on vacation in Spain looking for love, only managing to piss off all the locals instead. I’ve played it more than any other game, completing it close to 100 times over the past 17 years, and consider it to be my favorite game of all time and, interchangeably, the best game of all time — like so many others that have been privileged enough to play it for themselves. I was a youngster back then in early 2006, when I first stumbled upon the gem on the PS2 and got to slide into the jacket of Leon S. Having played some of the more popular RE games of the time, I had familiarized myself with the fixed camera angles that the series made famous, but little did I know that until RE4 came around, I hadn’t seen nothing yet. Reflecting on the change from fixed camera to over the shoulder at the time, I strangely didn’t think much of it. What I did think is that RE4 brought forth an entirely new form of stylish action experience and replayability that the medium never thought possible to that point.

It says a lot about how much RE4 revolutionized gaming that still, almost 18 years later, perhaps the best game of the year is not only directly influenced by it, but, well, it’s a whole ass remake of RE4.
When I first heard about Capcom remaking RE2 and following that up with RE3, I thought to myself, “please don’t even think about doing this with 4,” because that would be blasphemy, right? How do you, and more importantly, why would you, decide to redo something that was already done perfectly? You don’t fix something that ain’t broke. (Luis broke cart)One does not colorize Citizen Kane, or remake Scarface (show Leon).
RE4 is, to me, on the same level of those achievements, but not just as the video game equivalent, as simply a peer, perhaps the peak form of arts and entertainment this century, bringing a level of cinematic tension, poetic storytelling and personalized expression through action-oriented gameplay to offer a unique experience unlike anything else possible in interactive media. But I’ve said enough about it already, here, in my heartfelt retrospective. Today I’m tasked with reviewing the ambitious remake of one of the all-time classics, because they decided against conventional wisdom to do it anyway. (she really pushed it).

I had come to a compromise in my own mind that if Capcom had set out to do this remake, and if only they remained faithful to what the original source material brought to the table in terms of atmospheric level design, heart-pounding encounters and uncompromising brutality, that they may very well end up with a near-masterpiece by default. My conventional wisdom (Salazar sagacious) would prove correct, because RE4 Remake is not only an amazing game in-and-of-itself, it’s one of the few games other than OG RE4 to truly nail down a synthesis between horror and action, the cross section between the surreal and the sublime. After beating RE4 Remake 6 times in the first week and nabbing the platinum, I feel confident and unbiased in saying that this is the best Resident Evil game that Capcom has made since the original RE4, and in some ways, feels almost like an equal to RE4. But is RE4R really the best game ever made? “Not Quite”
It feels disingenuous to review one game by comparing it to another. I try to avoid referencing other titles when critiquing a work, but it proves impossible to appraise a remake of RE4 without giving the original a word in, edge wise. One could, of course, experience RE4R as a stand alone and walk away being mightily impressed by what’s on offer. But by inspecting, on a deeper level, what makes RE4 work so well, we need look no further than the very blueprint that so many games have merely imitated until this moment when, ironically, Capcom would return to the source to make what is now the closest thing to a true sequel to RE4 — in the form of a remake. A sequel to RE4 has always been my most anticipated game, but I grew to discount it as a possibility, the naive hope of a young fan that didn’t quite understand how the industry worked. It turns out what I’ve always wanted, like most, has been more RE4. It seems as though they needed to make games like RE Village, another imitation of the OG, as a homework assignment in order to get back into the groove of making the game they had already made in 2005.

In addressing the artistic justification for making RE4R, the developers took to a common complaint — one almost exclusive to newer fans of the series — that RE4 feels “dated” due to its reliance on tank controls for moving, aiming and shooting. In the immediate aftermath of Shinji Mikami’s masterpiece, games would incorporate RE4’s over-the-shoulder perspective in the same way that filmmakers would learn how to do editing and camera composition from witnessing D.W. Griffith’s films. But those successors would, according to most, “evolve” by allowing the player to move while aiming and shooting, and even switch shoulders to better attack targets from cover systems, turning what was once an innovation into a commonplace standard with greater variability — but not necessarily refinement. In an attempt to bring RE4 to “modern” standards — an ironic term if I’ve ever heard one, seeing as though all modern 3rd person games still draw from the well of that game from 2005 — RE4R now allows you to side step attacks while maintaining aim, shooting and even reloading. Surely, this would make the original game seem somewhat archaic by comparison, right? Not quite. (finger wag)

I don’t come from the perspective of nostalgia when continuing to praise RE4. Although I am the game’s biggest fan, I am not blinded by rose-tinted memories of youth. I play the game regularly, and have owned it on every console since the PS2, as it is the most ported game of all time (and one of the original cross-platform games, if I might add), and it is plain as day that it still holds up. I just went back and played the OG 3 times in one day, and here are my findings. To counter the claims that I’ve seen over the years about RE4’s controls being “bad,” I’ve always reasoned that they were designed intuitively, if not intentionally, in order to bring a feeling of tension that could only really be found in pursuit of precision. By making the player control Leon in such a way that sees him pick his spots to pick his shots, it is the idea behind precision and placement that puts emphasis on survival. A momentary miss can lead to sudden death, in grotesque fashion. Hitting your target on the nose and busting their brains out is a feeling that makes you want to physically bust in a similarly explosive way, and it also sets up a chain reaction of follow-up attacks that can knock down assailants like bowling pins, pushing enclosing enemies back to create more breathing room to alleviate the feeling of claustrophobia, which is not only created by Leon’s lack of footwork, but by enemy behavior and level configuration, such as barricading yourself behind a door, which could be used as a weapon in the OG. Now enemies will ignore invisible checkpoints and just turn their back on these points of no return which can be exploited by the player.

Although OG RE4 Leon can only move forward or backward along the y-axis, his movement speed is surprisingly nimble and his actions buttery smooth. New Leon is the one who feels stiff and lumbering, as if the years have not been kind to him. To compensate for Leon’s new understanding of geometry and lateral movement, enemy AI is more rabid and treacherous, or to use a word that gets thrown around a lot, clunky (awkward or unsophisticated). In the OG, enemies had a rather orderly way of lining up to go after Leon to give him time to snap to a target, always giving i-frames during and after an attack. Now, enemies often tank shots to the head and other vital parts, and rush at Leon with reckless abandon, giving inconsistent frames when dodging or performing basic actions, leading to unnecessary damage through design oversight. Look at how cumbersome the grab attack animation is in the remake, and how frequently it occurs because the enemies won’t give you proper spacing, and reflect on how fluid it is to shake them off and deal a killing blow, with a destructive front kick or perhaps a bloody elbow, in the original.

I find the gameplay to be much faster and more responsive in the dusty game from 2005 than the high-def photo realistic version from 2023. Elements like quick-turn made their way into the remake, but it doesn’t feel as useful as in the OG, since the meta involving micro-management is now all about aiming on the go and moving around the enemies to manipulate their placement rather than moving into the herd. It’s a much more defensive-minded, reactionary style of play, hence the inclusion of parries and knife-durability, a head-scratching feature, considering the knife was so reliable in OG RE4, offering more than just a supplementary combat mechanic. More than just a box cutter, the knife was, indeed, its own infinite resource that worked in nearly all situations. To me, the glaring poor design choice is this breakable knife, that also comes with a shortened hit box, damage and stagger reduction. What’s even more redundant about it is that there is an unlockable infinite knife, which the OG has by default, that is of course much more fun to use, especially when it’s actually needed in mandatory fights that resemble the simplest of Sekiro parry battles. Apparently, RE4R is not only inspired by games from 18 years ago, but by games made in the same year, since I had just got done playing Wo Long in the same release month.

The pro of this new knife gameplay is that along with parrying comes slicing off body parts and deflecting attacks that normally would make their way through. RE4R of course makes better use of dismemberment, albeit with lackluster headshot physics, which is a nice touch that helps to elevate the level of gore detail which is a welcome enhancement. I like being able to slice open enemies and see the creepy parasites flailing around inside their bodies. I grew to enjoy the integration of this new parry mechanic and now feel that it plays naturally, and does offer some cool ripostes. But I do want to remind everyone that the OG had deflections as well, and a very underrated mechanic that I dub the “bait and switch,” which I assume speaks for itself. What was possible in the old game, by capitalizing on enemy behavioral patterns, and the potency of the knife, was that Leon could swiftly wade in and out of enemies’ space, baiting their forward swinging attacks, and then counter with a knife to the face, or through a shield, to set up a powerful stagger. I tried replicating this against enemies in RE4R with little to no success because the ganados really must be zombies now with how much punishment they can take.

To take out shield guys, now you have to move around in a circular motion, trying all the while to not get grabbed by flanking enemies. To suplex, one of the most iconic features in the game, you now have to rely on the enemy facing away from you at the time the prompt appears, which unnecessarily complicates things, ensuring you will rarely ever see this glorious animation which was, admittedly, OP in the OG. QTEs are another “dated” feature, according to the critics and lead designers, and so they were largely scrapped from cutscenes and even some combat encounters, replaced by the ability to duck and dodge. Although I think this plays well in several situations, such as being able to evade the garrador thrust attack at the last second, the QTE design inside of fights in the OG was intelligent, tense and there was even a feature to get auto-reloads during QTEs, such as this flip here. You would also get max i-frames during QTE attacks and prompts, incentivizing fast paced, aggressive play styles. I loved the QTEs during cutscenes, as they heightened tension and heart rates, making the scenes feel like true interactive movies. The greatest ever example is the Krauser confrontation with Leon, in which Leon becomes Scarface and nearly loses all the remaining nerves in his face if not for swift timing by the player and Ada Wong’s intervention. How about the surprise of being tossed off the boat by Del Lago, having to panic press to get Leon to swim back to the boat, or the absurd Salazar statue chase sequence, a monument to Salazar’s vainglorious excess. QTEs were always apropos when done right, and no one understood them as well as Shinji, who continued to use them in his next 3rd person shooter, Vanquish, which did innovate upon RE4’s movement system further.

Another aspect of so-called modern game design seems to be focused on padding games with hidden loading screens masked as exposition and copy-and-paste fetch quests as side content. One of the greatest strengths of classic games like RE4 and DMC3 is that they were truly all killer and no filler. In the OG RE4, the pacing was breakneck, with the game letting you off to the races from the first step Leon takes, maintaining this momentum throughout the entire game with only periodic respites to allow the player to collect resources and to listen to the divine save music. Exploration is still immaculate in RE4R, with more treasures than ever and a streamlined way to pick up collectibles, even though they are now obnoxiously marked by yellow paint. But I liked the idea of being able to see what item you’re picking up in the OG, and in the case of low HP, picking up the herb paused the action allowing for you to heal simultaneously.

In RE4R, the game is undeniably longer, even with cut content, because they have both meaningfully re-worked certain gameplay sections to make them beefier, and also pointlessly extended certain parts of the game just to give the impression of more content, which, of course, there is. But was it really necessarily to extend the brilliant opening to such an extent that it simply becomes boring upon replaying the game?The old way of game design, excluding the need for checkpoint and cutscenes triggers, was the best way. The new opening felt tense and mysterious at first during the demo, like the opening of RE8, but for speedrunning and subsequent runs, it’s not great pacing. OG RE4 let u off to the races without all the cutscene/checkpoint triggers, but that’s the “modernization” I guess everyone keeps talking about. Or how about this end-game section carrying Ashley where you have to do a slow crawl with Leon to Luis’ lab? Look at how brisk these sections are in the OG, where it takes all of 30 seconds from the jump to enter into the house, neutralize the subject and break out.
Even the new Ashley sequence which everyone raves about, which looks undeniably gorgeous in the light of the latest and greatest RE Engine, and does have good moments of fright, plays overlong and tedious on subsequent runs, because it is largely scripted, and even buggy at the moment if you decide to try to do the steps out of order. Is it scarier? Well, I’ll just say Ashley now has to find the right key for the lock while being hunted by knights, but the game pauses to let you guess without penalty, and she can just freeze everything in place with a lantern. I like it, but the original worked just as well. Or the shortened minecart section, now ft. Luis, which feels like an anti-climax, increasingly a scripted Uncharted style Sony set piece rather than an engaging death trap with a horde of chainsaws and ganados dropping directly into your cart that you have to use real ammo and reflexes to ward off as they hitch a ride with you toward a certain collision course.

No, RE4R is not as bad as something like GoWR which really does feel like a slow crawl to the finish from the opening moments. I think RE4R still has excellent pacing for a modern achievement, but the original plays faster and, IMO, is still more replayable by design. It’s a simple difference of the actual a glitch to run faster AND shoot faster and wall break, but you can’t have nice things anymore glitch vs. an RNG charm that gives you 8% running speed increase. The difference between being able to skip all cutscenes and sprint to the finish vs. waiting on the AI to trigger the next sequence of events. In many aspects, it’s the same as the original, and even better in some ways, but the game constantly feels like they took one step forward and one step back. Such as removing an important feature, present in 2005, which allowed you to direct Ashley where and when to go. Now, Ashley must be up Leon’s ass at all times, leaving her prime for capture. In the OG, you could position her strategically and even use her to block incoming attacks, distracting enemies. They seemed to have attempted to expand her capabilities as an AI in certain areas, while also making her a more redundant escort as she now conveniently tip toes around hazards such as bear traps. Is this a good thing? I suppose. One thing I like is how she now returns to your flank instead of simply cowering in fear, even though that was realistic and challenging.

And, to be fair, I think they improved the aspect of her AI that keeps her out of the clutches of the enemy. As long as Leon is moving without stopping, she will be, too. But in the original, you could keep Ashley as far from harm’s way as you saw fit, though she would cower down in fear until you took out the surrounding enemies. Still, when she did get grabbed, you had as much time as you needed to retrieve her as you needed, so long as the ganado didn’t find the nearest exit. In this game, even when you’re close behind, but the timer runs out, she’s gone. To talk about what really helped to solidify OG RE4’s charm is to praise the story, plot and funny, cheesy dialogue that endears so many. Leon was a walking one-liner machine that delighted the audience instead of inducing cringe like so many modern characters, because we got the sense he was enjoying the ride as much as we were, giving himself a smile on the inside even as he would deadpan shit talk into the face of adversity. He had the audacity of youth. The fact that the original RE4 has intimate face time with the enemy where they exchange barbs and threats is so fucking funny and unique for a game in 2005, and they managed to remove not all, but most, of this banter in the remake, especially some of the conversations that actually revealed character motivations and subtext of morality along the way. Much of RE4 is thought to be a B-movie where the hero can’t speak the language well enough to say hello, but certainly knows how to say goodbye (hasta luego) and call it a day as being goofy.

But as much as RE4 is renowned for its daring and sometimes raunchy humor, much of which is stupidly removed from the remake for false reasons, such as no ballistics line even though titty jiggle physics are present in the game (our sincere thanks, Capcom), RE4 had a dark and gripping story about the modern world. RE4 has a serious, profound message about perseverance, personal responsibility and justice in the face of depravity through the dynamic of Leon’s backstory of failings and his success during the pressing nightmare with Saddler at the helm. One of the most egregious cuts in RE4R is Saddler’s screen-time, his imposing diabolical figure being the knot that ties everything together as the orchestrator of pure evil. His maniacal laugh, sarcastic yet foreboding delivery courtesy of Michael Gough, was truly creepy and sinister, an aura that hangs over the entire game like his portrait in every house. The goofy nature of the villains served them well as it distanced themselves from the devious nature of their cruelty, hence making them even more sinister because they are so far gone they cannot grasp the severity of their demented actions. Now, Saddler’s just a generic bad guy with no clear motivation that we see for one or 2 scenes at the very end at which point every other villain has upstaged him. Too little too late. He’s also misinterpreted in the remake as he’s not truly invested in the religion he’s using it to indoctrinate for control.

In the original RE4, Saddler was the master manipulator who used his influence as a religious cultist snake oil salesman to indoctrinate the population into doing his bidding for world domination. It’s here that RE4 becomes a parallel image of the modern world, with the almighty United States finding itself at the mercy of a lowly religious extremist who hopes to extort the country by force, all the while undermining its authority by snatching up hostages and planning a massive terrorist attack on its soil to weaken it from within. For a game that was finished in 2004 and worked on all throughout the early 2000s, this harkens back vividly to 9/11, an event I witnessed in real time on television. Terrorism is the operative word. A popular word these days, such as Bush’s unlawful “War on Terror.” The truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction is sublime.

“U.S. can no longer think it can police the world forever.” Is this really just goofy bad guy speak or a quote that rings true today with the very real decline of American imperialism and the increasing hypocrisy of the so-called democratic world order that is tearing the world apart? Life imitating art. If you have any doubt how evil Saddler is, consider the masterful ending credits that play the music Sorrow as the montage of wickedness ensues in unbending fashion. Just imagine this music begins to play as you one day wake up, kill all the children and thereafter submit yourself to slavery. This is the work of Osmund Saddler in RE4, which is hardly seen or felt in the remake. Even his final form is a letdown, at least in terms of how the monster reveals himself to us cinematically, with an over-the-top ridiculous villain monologue and the beautiful, dark, twisted transformation into evil personified done with some of the most fluid camerawork and epic OST we’ve ever seen.

And that brings me to the overall production values of RE4R, which unquestionably pale in comparison to the OG. Much of the orchestral OST has been replaced with some generic, Michael Bay sounding mix that isn’t quite memorable and doesn’t feel gritty or atmospheric like infiltration or serenity, for example. The cutscenes lack the stylistic technical flair of Capcom circa 2005, where motion capture was being used to the fullest in games such as RE4 and DMC3 to create action sequences that rival anything in Hollywood. Of course, one thing RE4R manages to do is stun visually through the photo-realist engine that makes some of the characters look better than ever, and you know who I’m talking about. But looks aren’t everything, and the way the characters all sound and behave has been a point of disagreement.

Much of RE4R’s script has been butchered by excising the humorous charm of the original, and the sharp, silver-tongued writing of Shinji Mikami is now replaced with a more generic, so-called “mature” tonal approach, even though much of the script is simply paraphrased and some lines are relegated to trophy names or put in out-of-place situations. But the original RE4 had something called subtext, which is lost on most audiences today. To many of you I will sound silly in repeating my thesis that, in fact, a game like RE4 is more serious and more philosophical than some of the modern-day pretenders — but it is. Consider the first meeting with Luis, which plays out infinitely better in the original. In every great story, there is a scene that can be explained as being the entire reason for making the story. In the OG RE4, Luis accidentally gives it all away in his first meeting with Leon when he says: this is a reference simultaneously to Luis’ shady nature as the rogue researcher who’s inadvertently yet directly responsible for the biohazard and to Leon who was the one who always wanted to be the hero but failed miserably on his first day on the job. This establishes Luis as not only the ally, but the foil to Leon in the story, a role later filled alongside Krauser and even Ada. Where the cowardly Luis fails to positively impact the world through his genius or do the right thing until the moment of his comeuppance, this twist of events sets Leon up for one of the all-time great redemption arcs in which he will overcome the impossible odds to save the girl and save the world, and still not get any of the respect he deserves in the end, because true heroes grin and bear it. He gets offered the spoils of red panty night from no less than the President’s daughter, and virtuously turns it down. All the while, he gets rebuffed once again by the elusive Ada Wong and even by the nerdy Hunnigan, culminating in the immortal “the story of my life.” The original ending was so poetic due to “part of me I can’t let go” and had a bit drama with Ashley falling off the jet ski. It’s a deserved happy ending, sure, but one with a mellow cautionary tale.

The new voice acting for Ada has been the point of criticism in English. While I don’t think Lily Gao is horrible, she is wildly inconsistent as a cast member, and often sounds like she is bored or has just woken up, which is not how the sassy, sultry, seductive spy Ada Wong, an international woman of mystery, should be portrayed. Certainly, some of her lines were simply inserted as bad takes and needed to be re-recorded entirely. Compare here with the one and only Sally Cahill. Ada and Leon don’t have as much chemistry or dynamic as in the original, although maybe some of the cut content will return in Separate Ways, along with the missing U3. The game even spoils Krauser’s identity as well as Luis backstory early on instead of building up to the betrayal. Krauser killing Luis is nonsensical because part of the effect of the OG was that when Saddler violently impales him in a way only Saddler could, like the death of Mike, it’s building up your animus toward the big bad, which culminates beautifully when you toast him off with the special RPG. Krauser killing Luis has no buildup, no organic reasoning, no cathartic death scene where Luis reveals his motives to you, all in a risk to save your life. Luis’ death turns into a MGS4 Big Boss rip off and feels cheesy to me, but not in the way I like.

Krauser himself is not as imposing or mysterious as in the original, nor does he have the essential connection to Ada and Wesker which helps to tie everything together. No more iconic “bitch in the red dress” showing the symbiotic alliance with Leon and Ada, even though they added some lines to Krauser for greater context of his relationship to Leon. People are saying that Luis and Krauser have more fleshed out characters this time around, because they have slightly more screen time and dialogue, although more doesn’t necessarily mean better, especially when some of the masterful scenes from the OG are replaced. Krauser now has more dialogue, but I feel like he teeters on the edge of talking too much. The same with Luis who seems less serious and to me less likeable than the man who only had 7 minutes of screen time in the OG but stole every scene.

I still think Luis is a great partner character, and Krauser is a masterful villain, the greatest last-minute entrance of all-time in a game, where he appears almost out of nowhere to steal the show as Leon’s foil, juxtaposing the failures of Leon’s past with the potential for redemption, all in an elaborate test to see if Leon is truly worthy of being the hero. It’s too bad the game wants you to bring knife durability in a knife fight, and make it harder to dodge out of his ridiculous hitboxes during the actual fight. I do appreciate the way that Leon has to put Krauser done and the remorse they both share for this fact, though, again, the original had subtlety that paid off just fine.

Now for some things I mostly like about the remake: I feel ambivalent toward RE4R, because I’ve always had the game I wanted, but there’s a part of me that recognizes it as the game I’ve been waiting for since 2006. It turns out, the true sequel to RE4, at the moment, is its own remake. Surprisingly, it is rather faithful to the OG. in ways that are sensible and warm. The jovial merchant, gaming’s most iconic NPC, is as sketchy and hearty as he’s ever been. Although an imitation of Paul Mercier, who also voiced Leon, the new voice has expanded his arsenal of quips 30x as well as his systems, now allowing you to sell more treasure and buy more items. Now you can save weapons instead of having to sell them for space, although this somewhat trivializes inventory management and is silly that weapons just fly to the inventory, but as a quality of life feature, it’s nice.
The shooting range gets a stylish overhaul with new rewards, even though RNG collectibles is a terrible idea. The new movement feels great and does improve certain situational battles by allowing you to move, or more accurately, wobble by aiming. The new inaccurate shooting increases the game’s difficulty and perhaps its realism, even though the original with the red dot sight is more iconic, more satisfying and tighter.

Supposedly, the lore is expanded, but the files lacking the photographic detail that made them feel personalized in the original. I like how bodies now remain on the ground long after death, and can be ragdolled and riddled with bullets at your leisure. Even items that have been missed will linger almost indefinitely which is a good upgrade from the clear lag of the original. Stealth makes an appearance here, but never forces the player to overly rely on it. I actually have no complaints about this feature, as there were always sections in the OG that teased stealth as a possibility.
Some parasites are more challenging like the crawlers who leech onto the backs of ganandos giving them a speed and power boost and are a real threat that must be taken care of. Not as many i-frames when grabbed, but enemies do more friendly fire which is a real tactic to be used. The new garrador fight is impressive for this reason building off of the idea of friendly fire, even though the knife stab prompts are wildly unresponsive.
Ashley helps in knight section.

RE4 succeeds where RE8 failed to convincingly tie together the outlandish with so many numerous iconic moments of what will they think of next? packed into 3 distinct areas. Some sections have been altered in ways I might even prefer, and there are plenty of alternate strategies to dealing with areas that can streamline the game in meaningful ways, offering for easier or harder experiences. Remember in my original review I said this is the game that epitimizes what will they think of next? RE4R still retains much of the outlandish, survival horror hodge-podge that feels so fresh and unique.

As the critic Anton Ego once enlightened us, the work of the critic is often easy, depending on negativity at the expense of those brave enough to put forth their work for us to criticize, and ultimately, often useless compared to the so-called junk that others have made for our enjoyment. But in one case as a critic, and in my case as a critic and as a fan, we can make ourselves useful and put ourselves at risk for the discovery of something new and, as I’ve done here, come to the defense of something old. I believe that Capcom has done an incredible job here, all things considered, in RE4R. In many ways, what RE4 was then is what it is now: the pinnacle of survial horror and action, as I’ve said at the beginning, the cross section between the surreal and the sublime. Although the original RE4 had an elegant art style, the RE Engine has produced one of the best looking games ever made once more.

It’s a testament to the work ethic and ability of Capcom that they have their finger largely on the pulse of what people want, and do not cave to the demands and the broke ideology of Western design that female characters have to be boring and ugly, that we can still have strong, sexy characters like Ada Wong and now Ashley, and a strong male character who simply kicks ass, unapologetically, and takes no prisoners. That a game can eschew censorship in favor of entertaining brutality that serves as both a narrative device condemning extremism and as a wonderful blend of spectacle.

Only a few video games ever made can be called masterpieces. Only a few games are truly timeless. A game like RE4 which is still sought after for its charm and replayability will always be a masterpiece, and this new interpretation sees most of our faith rewarded. RE4 is not the cliche but the actual expression. Whether or not Capcom put its faith in money in making this remake and leaving some content purposely cut at launch is maybe not a question I want a direct answer, but they delivered a very solid package that as a diehard fan, I quite enjoyed, and I know a lot of others will too. RE4 Remake is both better and worse then the original, which was to be expected. But it’s easy to see how much better RE4R is than the imitations, and how great it is in and of itself, and for that, I feel compelled (use clip) to give RE4R the rare 10/10 phenomenal, extraordinary, next level art. In order to be called a masterpiece, a game must not only be exemplary in every single aspect of design, but it must also dare to go beyond what has been possible before. I think RE4R isn’t perfect, but it tries to combine elements that have never quite been combined before, and it’s both a source of celebration and frustration. What is perplexing is that Capcom has had the blueprint in their back pocket for this game for almost 20 yrs, and it’s as if they had to remake the game they already made just to get back to making the kind of game they should have been doing since 2005. So what’s next? Will we get an entirely new adventure with similar production values and mechanics?

For now, I know RE4 is the story of my life, as Leon would say. The old needs friends, and RE4 is a part of me I can’t let go, and never will.
Is RE4R a “wise choice?” To that I say, glory a las plagas