Videogame remakes are on the rise. Like Hollywood and its penchant for reboots and remakes, videogames are taking it beyond just the serviceable remaster (basically the same game with high-res textures). Now games are being completely redone (or remade as it were) from the ground up, and surprise surprise, people are buying them.
Last year we had The Last of Us Part I. Just this year already I’ve already picked up Dead Space (2023) and Metroid Prime (technically a remaster). The next part of Final Fantasy VII Remake is expected this coming year, and that much-delayed Advance Wars 1+ 2 Re-Boot Camp collection is mighty tempting…
But before I get carried away, after a string of Resident Evil remakes from Capcom, Resident Evil 4 from 2005 finally gets its due.
The year was 2005. I was in my penultimate year of college (that’s what Kiwis confusingly call “high school”’). I was trying to get in some Resident Evil 4 (or RE4 as it was lovingly abbreviated) before my part-time checkout job at a local supermarket. I was up to the Castle area where the enemies now sported full-length shields and wielded maces. But that wasn’t my main concern. I also had an ant problem. They were crawling along my bedroom wall behind the TV, as coordinated as those hordes of black-cloaked Ganado.
I held down my trigger finger on the fly spray nozzle until the line stopped dead in its tracks, but I had no time to vacate the premises as the instructions recommended. I didn’t want to waste a minute of my precious RE4 time. So I stayed in my room and continued Leon Kennedy’s terrifying adventure, the smell of fly spray blasting out my sinuses. “Odourless” is a lie. Now whenever I smell fly spray I have sensory flashbacks to that moment. That moment where I am taken back to Resident Evil 4.
Resident Evil 4 follows Leon Kennedy, one of the two playable characters in Resident Evil 2. We first met Leon as a Raccoon City rookie cop, now he’s a Federal Agent investigating Los Illuminados, a cult in rural Spain, suspected of kidnapping Ashley Graham, the US president’s daughter. Instead of T-virus zombies, this time around the Las Plagus infected are much smarter. They can spear you with pitchforks, fire guns, toss lit dynamite, and even operate chainsaws (as weapons, naturally).
As the above synopsis might suggest, this title continues the series’ camp aesthetic, with Leon’s one-liners and over-the-top villains. It’s silly and it knows it. But it also doesn’t hold back on the horrors either (now unsettling in high definition). A terrifying romp if you will.
As with Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, great reinterpretations of these old PlayStation games, Capcom has gone back to where the series took on a whole new direction (literally). While the original games had fixed camera angles, Resident Evil 4 on the Nintendo Gamecube (and the PlayStation 2 port where I played it) took a behind-the-shoulder approach modernizing not just the series, but videogames as a whole.
While I still regard RE4 as one of my all-time favourite games, I actually never finished it. Instead, I watched as my friend (and our homestay student) played much more proficiently than I, dispatching Las Plagus-infected enemies with ease as I wasted ammo, failing to get headshots. Today that friend is posting humorous compilations of Resident Evil 4 (2023) over on his YouTube channel. True (video game) love never dies. Recent free DLC also brought back “The Mercenaries”, a timed wave mode my friend adored, running around an enclosed area in Leon’s Pinstripe suit and fedora.
While having replayed the village opening level many times on various platforms it has been a good while since I played the game in earnest despite intentions of doing so. When this remake was announced I decided it was finally time to tame the untameable beast. And I did it! On Normal difficulty and without spending real money on weapon upgrade tickets.
I mostly stuck to upgrading my handguns and knife, as I quickly blew through the higher-powered ammo, leaving me to dash around rooms hunting for hidden gunpowder and ammunition in barrels, with infected villagers biting at my heels. I tinkered with the crossbow that lets you pick up your arrows after firing them at villagers (or in my case, fence posts). But without upgrades, it was terribly slow and had limited capacity. The recent Dead Space remake also left me high and dry when it came to ammo. Perhaps I’m just terrible at resource management?
Speaking of resource management—the divisive inventory system of RE4 makes a comeback. Your inventory is an attaché case made up of a grid, with each item taking up 1 or more block spaces. I never felt the need to move things around manually, as it now has an auto-sort system, letting the game do the hard work for you. I also upgraded the size of my attaché case whenever the opportunity was presented. Only later on in the game did I actually run out of space, needing to craft items, and reload weapons to clear up my inventory.
The remake throws in some nice bonuses, like a shooting range at multiple points now (previously only in the castle), letting you cash in tokens for some attaché case adornments offering various bonuses. That part felt a bit flimsy to me, the best bonus I got was generating more handgun ammo, which as mentioned above, was sorely needed. The rest were duplicates, which I sold back to the merchant. Better sharpshooters might have more luck.
The hidden blue medallion targets are also expanded here, with multiple locations where you can shoot to collect yet another type of token. There are new Merchant quests you can complete too, like clearing rats from a library or scavenging for a gold chicken egg. These tokens are used in a special section of the shop for items like weapon stocks and laser add-ons.
This time around, despite my aversion to stealth, you do have opportunities to perform stealth kills. Your knife is a major resource, letting you get out of tight situations and parry enemy attacks, but it will break down and need to be repaired by the merchant. There is a moment early on that feels problematic, with you taking out a woman just casually pitchforking some hay before she can reveal she is, in fact, an infected zombie and not just an ordinary villager. It’s a moment where I felt icky and The Besties pod muses on this perfectly. When enemies start sprouting barbed tentacles it’s a little more obvious.
Resident Evil 4 (2023) is a worthy remake. Capcom has yet again managed to squeeze more juice from these games (and money from our wallets). It’s perfect for newcomers to the series and for those looking to recapture that initial RE4 magic. Things like the inventory have been streamlined, there are more bonus objectives and of course, it has that next-gen 60fps sheen.
Resident Evil 4 is available on PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.