THE RESIDENT EVIL KICK CONTINUES. Also I'm writing this in a toilet cubicle at WASD, so excuse the brief intro. Time to talk Resi 4 remake.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Right, let’s just get the main question out of the way - Is the Resident Evil 4 Remake (REm4ke, as it called on Twitter and, for the sake of my sanity the rest of this newsletter) better than the original?

Who cares? Does it even matter? It’s like a really good cover version of a favourite song. It may do some things better and it may be a bit more new and fresh but do you really need it to hit the spot in the same way the original does? I’ve seen people saying that it “isn’t as good as Resi 4” and I don’t think that something not quite living up to the standard of one of the best videogames ever made to be the burn they may think it is. It is an exceptionally good videogame. Unlike the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3, this delivers exactly what I want from a remake, by putting a new, modern spin on things but crucially maintaining the same feel of the original.

Leon is a bit slower and more cumbersome, as you’d expect going from the snappy digital movement in the original to full dual analog controls and the Ganados are a lot more aggressive, rushing you down more regularly and taking a bit more damage to take out. At first, this seems like it might end up being a frustrating mix, something akin to the issues I had with Resident Evil Village’s first-person combat and movement. It isn’t though because of one key new addition - the parry. Adding a parry to any game is always going to be something that wins me over because I genuinely think there’s no game that wouldn’t be improved by the addition of a nice risk/reward parry. Tetris? Stardew Valley? Metal Gear Solid? Stick a parry in them and you’ve got a better game, I guarantee you.

The genius behind the parry is that it is almost too good. You can parry almost EVERYTHING - enemy weapon strikes, projectiles thrown at you, mutated Ganado tendrils… It’s a near catch-all solution for whenever you’re overwhelmed or can’t get out of trouble in time. If in doubt, mash the parry button and Leon will deflect most strikes and buy yourself a moment to get out of danger. The parry timing window is MASSIVE too, so any review you see complaining about it ‘not working’ or being ‘inconsistent’ is 100% a skill issue with the reviewer and you can sack that one off immediately. Survival horror is built around resource management and this adds another plate for you to keep spinning - how much do you value these parries and the other utility the knife affords you, when you have to pay the merchant to have it fixed when it breaks? At first, I was using it loads - like you do when you’re decent at Resident Evil 4, of course - but quickly I found it to be best utilised when needed, same way you’ll conserve magnum ammo or first-aid sprays. This stops the parry being far too overpowered and also stops you defaulting to the knife to deal with basic enemies.

This feeds into another thing I absolutely love about this remake - the build variety. A little change to - of all fucking things - the shooting gallery minigame has added a surprising extra layer of depth to the way you can play REm4ke. Performing well and hitting certain goals grants you tokens that can be used in a gacha machine, where you can win little keyfobs that you can equip. Each one has a different perk - raising movement speed, offering bigger sale values on certain items, upping drop rates and the like. Of course, you can ignore these, but the randomly gained selection I found shaped the weapons and choices I made. I was able to get more money if I sold healing items and gained more rifle ammo when I crafted some, so I was always selling First Aid Sprays instead of using them and focusing on upgrading my rifle as I had loads of extra ammo. I'm looking forward to seeing what perks I get on new runs of the game, seeing if these also shape my playthrough in a meaningful way.

Obviously, there’s been a fair few changes to the structure of some of the environments and - amazingly - it is mostly for the better. Of course, things like the iconic Ganado village at the beginning is accurately recreated but things like the fishing village now has more verticality, with enemies attacking from a high scaffold that runs along one side of it. The canyon, a section just after the first merchant meeting and just after you can acquire the long range rifle is no longer a straight line to fight through but now loops around on itself, again with far more verticality and areas that enemies can come from, as well as be used by you to gain an advantageous position during combat. Later on, in the castle, it is a lot less linear than the original, requiring a little more exploration than before to get through each section, whilst familiar sections are given a remix, retaining key elements but changing things up to give them a new spin. There are wholesale changes to some puzzle sections whilst some get little twists to play on the expectations of those who played the original, much like the remake of the first Resident Evil game, which as I discussed a few weeks ago is a cast iron belter. The final few chapters on the island fortress have used the significant increase in graphical fidelity to really make what is supposed to be a giant action-packed finale into a SPECTACLE.

There’s a few things that didn’t do it for me. The addition of stealth seems largely pointless and is only really necessary for the first Garrador fight. There’s a real overreliance early game on ‘monster closets’ and spawning enemies in behind you to force you into an encounter, which is always cheap. The Ashley section sucked in the original and, although admittedly accurate in this regard, also sucks in the remake too. The item box now has an auto-arrange button, which although can be ignored is just one of those concessions to modern gaming that just makes me sign and wonder if we’ll ever get anything as weird and creative as Resi 4’s inventory Tetris in a AAA game ever again? None of these are deal-breakers though and, across the board, most of the changes are either improvements or, at worst, different but good in their own way.

The main disappointment I felt about this remake is not what they’ve changed but in fact, what they’ve chosen to leave out. There’s loads of little encounters and setpieces that didn’t make the cut. Normally, elements like these are left out for pacing reasons, or perhaps they haven’t aged very well for a myriad of different reasons. I finished Resident Evil 4 last week and, unfortunately, that simply isn’t the case for any of these. Be it the sequence where the truck barrels down the hill towards you and you have to snipe the Ganado driving, or perhaps some of the trap rooms in the castle with the spiked ceilings? What about the brilliantly daft moments involving the room with the gattling gun or the bit where the painting drops to reveal a booth housing two lads with rocket launchers? Or, the part where loads of different groups of enemies keep appearing behind a metal shutter every time it rises? They’ve managed to maintain the over-the-top action and the way things escalate as the game progresses to its finale but there’s a playful… cheekiness to some of the combat encounters that seems to have fallen by the wayside.

Sure, some of these might be a bit ridiculous and silly and a bit jarring when it comes to the narrative side of things, but they’re all fun encounters and because of the genuine quality of the changes made to the sequences that ARE in the game, it is disappointing that we don’t get to see the way these bits could’ve been interpreted in this REm4ke. There’s a slight shift in tone (and I do mean slight, because the back half of REm4ke is still absolutely wild) that means some of them just wouldn’t fit what they’re going for. Perhaps they could’ve structured them differently or maybe even just had a nod to them? For this reason - for me personally - it just falls short of the original and it is a shame because I do believe that if all of these were in the game in some way, I think this could be the better game. As it is, I think your preference is going to come down on how you regard the playfulness of the original. For me, it’s a huge part of why I love that big, daft game.

Predictably, I’ve already seen people online taking one side or the other. I get it, this is a very precious, beloved title and videogame reviewers have shown their collective arses many times when saying a game is a ten out of ten. Then, you’ve got reviews that state ludicrous things like “the original game has aged a bit”. There’s a lot of reasons to be sceptical about the opinion of both sides when there’s so much dumb chatter out there. What we have ended up with is about as good a remake as you could want without it outright replacing the original release. They’ve modernised it but kept the core mechanics intact. They’ve changed key elements to give it its own flavour but ultimately it still feels like Resident Evil 4. They’ve changed things but every change is meaningful and - if not better - works within the rules of this new interpretation of the game. Put bluntly, both games are brilliant - there’s just more brilliant bits in the original.

This is a worthy tribute to one of the finest videogames of all-time and, regardless of which one you end up enjoying the most, it’s fitting that it took its own remake to find a game that is can reach the high standard it set back in 2005. Personally, I love that two of the best games I have ever played are called Resident Evil 4.