Resident Evil 4 Remake Review: A Horror Classic Reimagined

Depending on who you are, January 11th, 2005 represents one of two things for you. If you’re a survival horror purist that believes in psychological horror instead of tension and action, it’s the day that survival horror died in your eyes. Some people are even tired of Resident Evil 4 because of how many times it has been remastered and ported to different consoles.

On the other hand, if you’re a fan of the more modern take on survival horror and third-person action, it is the day that survival horror evolved.

Resident Evil 4 was released on January 11th, 2005, and regardless of your opinion on it, survival horror, third-person shooters, and gaming, in general, changed forever when they did. 18 years later, Capcom revisited its most polarizing, and arguably most important game when it released the Resident Evil 4 remake. This article will be reviewing the remake, comparing it to the original, and asking whether or not the remake holds up to, or even exceeds the high bar that Resident Evil 4 set all those years ago.

Resident Evil 4 Remake: Bringing A Classic Into The Modern Day

Resident Evil 4 needs no introduction. If it hadn’t been for Resident Evil 4, gaming wouldn’t be what it is today. The advent of the third-person shooter in the late part of the early 2000s led to “stop and pop” third-person shooters. Games like Gears of War, Uncharted, Dead Space ( another survival horror classic ), and The Division wouldn’t have happened without Resident Evil 4.

Its over-the-shoulder camera and revolutionary focus on moment-to-moment intense action gameplay changed how the gaming industry, which was largely focused on historical first-person shooters at the time, worked. In many ways, narrative-focused games were still in their infancy in 2005. Resident Evil paved the way for many of the storytelling and cinematic techniques that we enjoy today in games like The Last of Us.

Why Remake Resident Evil 4 At All?

I’m sure lots of people have asked why a remake of Resident Evil 4 is necessary, or even worthwhile. The original game exists and an HD remaster of it is available on just about every console. Even VR headsets have Resident Evil 4 on them now. And the answer is that eventually, things need to be redone.

Resident Evil 4 is and always will be a classic, but the gaming industry has evolved in the last eighteen years. Controls that were tight and responsive back in 2005 are stiff and hard to work with now. Controlling Leon feels like you’re controlling a tank if you go back and play the original. Gameplay could also use an update to make things feel faster and more responsive to add to the immersion and the tension of the survival horror experience, to say nothing of what a visual upgrade can provide.

Surviving The Horror: Resident Evil 4 Remake Gameplay Review

Gameplay in Resident Evil 4 Remake is fast, frenetic, and terrifying, especially in the early game. You start with a pistol, ten rounds of ammunition, and a knife. Leon moves and responds well as you control him, nothing feels slow or sluggish, but movement does have a weight to it. Instead of the typical third-person shooter where you’re running around frantically spraying bullets as fast as your finger can pull the trigger, combat requires some extra consideration.

Ammunition is scarce, so the spray-and-pray approach that you may take in other shooters doesn’t work in Resident Evil 4 Remake, you’ll be out of ammo quickly with hordes of enemies closing in on you, and no way to defend yourself. You have to make every shot count and aim for the head as often as possible. Because headshots do the most damage, they can save you ammo by helping you kill enemies more quickly. But on the flip side, enemies are responsive and move quickly instead of just letting you blow their heads off, so going for a headshot can be a risky proposition that could end up costing you ammo instead of saving it depending on your level of aim.

It’s easy to say that you’ll be able to clear out a horde of enemies before you experience the intense combat situations the game throws at you. But when you’re standing in the middle of a village and a man with a chainsaw is running at you and screaming, and you need to reload your weapon, or you realize that you just ran out of ammo, you can start to panic. That panic can make you try and retreat frantically to a place that you think is safe, only to be grabbed from behind by someone that you didn’t see in your haste to get away and lead to you losing health, or even your life, and having to start over from a checkpoint.

Stealth is also a large factor in the gameplay. Leon has a knife that he can use to damage enemies whether through a frontal assault or by sneaking around and taking them out quietly. Stealth allows you to preserve precious ammunition and get through some sections potentially unseen. But you have to be careful because Leon’s knife has a durability meter, so using it will cause the knife to degrade and eventually break. So you’ll either have to get a new one or repair the knife you already have, which can cost some of the resources you use to upgrade your weapons and gear.

I love the changes that Capcom made to the gameplay when remaking Resident Evil 4. In the original, the gameplay was tight and responsive for that period, but nearly two decades later it doesn’t feel fluid and responsive anymore. When aiming and shooting as Leon in the original you’re stuck in place and can’t move. You have to find a good spot to try and engage your enemies, aim toward them, and start firing. All the while hoping that you’ll be able to hit all of your shots and prevent your enemies from sneaking up on you, or rushing you to take a big chunk out of your health because you can’t dodge enemy attacks when your weapon is drawn.

In the Remake, you can move around as much as you want even when you’re in combat, and that gives you a huge advantage over your enemies. It feels so good to be able to dodge out of the way of incoming projectiles like axes and planks of wood. Or to be able to quickly disengage your enemies and run away when you notice that someone has lobbed a stick of dynamite in your general direction. Being able to move during combat seems like such a small change, but it feels so good and enhances the gameplay in so many ways that I can’t imagine ever going back to the original.

Boss fights especially benefit from this. The Jack Krauser fight in particular shines because of the gameplay tweaks. In the original Resident Evil 4, the Krauser fight was a glorified quick time event. If you pressed whatever button was on the screen fast enough, eventually you’d win. There wasn’t much thought or strategy to it, just button-mashing. In the Remake, you have to quickly be able to parry, dodge, and respond to Krauser and his strikes. You’re an active participant in the fight instead of feeling like a bystander that only pushes buttons to win, and it feels so much better than the original ever did.

Resident Evil 4 Remake Crafting:

Like other Resident Evil games, Resident Evil 4 Remake has a crafting system that lets you combine items to make something useful. Different herbs can be combined to make more powerful healing items. Gunpowder and resources can be combined to make different types of ammunition. Several possibilities allow gamers to tailor their playstyle to their liking based on the weapons they choose to buy and upgrade, and how they like to dispatch their enemies.

The crafting in Resident Evil 4 Remake feels so much better to me than crafting did in the original because the system is much more robust. In the original Resident Evil 4, the most you could do was combine herbs in a few variations to create different healing items. In the Remake, you’re able to combine herbs, but also Gunpowder, and Resources to create ammunition for weapons. And the crafting trees are extremely streamlined, so it’s easy to understand what you’ll be crafting when mixing different items.

Sound Design:

The audio design in Resident Evil 4 Remake is immaculate. The reports of your weapons as you pull the trigger and they fire are incredible, every weapon sounds distinct, powerful, and deadly. The audio design is so strong that you can even hear the bullets impacting their targets if you have headphones on, and the sound of the impact is enough to make you wince and imagine that you’re feeling the blows yourself.

Walking around the environments in Resident Evil 4 Remake is a treat because of the audio design. Leaves and trees rustle in the wind, gravel, and bones crunch underfoot, doors creak and groan as you open and close them and they all serve to immerse you in the place you’re inhabiting at that moment, terrifying as it can be. Enemies moan and groan as you walk around, alerting you to their presence, or they start screaming right behind you as they grab you and shock you because you had no idea anyone was there just a second before.

The game’s soundtrack heightens the intensity by constantly managing to match the action on-screen, while also providing original tracks that tastefully represent the culture of Spain where the game is set. For me personally, the audio experience in Resident Evil 4 is some of the best that gaming has seen in years, right up there with Battlefield 5, the remake of Dead Space, and 2022’s Modern Warfare 2. The audio design is immersive, and the way it’s layered throughout the world is so clever and nuanced that it adds to the experience. Comparing it to the original Resident Evil 4 doesn’t feel fair because of how weak the original’s sound design feels compared to the Remake.

Resident Evil 4 Remake Graphics Review

The visual upgrade in Resident Evil 4 Remake is astounding. Everything in the game is so vividly detailed it’s amazing. The environments are richly detailed and painstakingly put together, and it shows, because of how lived-in the entire world feels. Walking through villages makes you feel like people genuinely live and work there because of the little details about the homes that signify their occupants' personalities.

The enemies are gruesome to look at and become even more so after they take damage from Leon and his weapons. Limbs start to fall off, and holes appear in bodies. If explosions happen near an enemy, you can see their torso separated from the lower half of their body and watch them crawl around on the ground, with blood leaking from their entrails before they die.

Heads pop with a satisfying spurt of blood when you land a headshot, knives send blood spurting through the air when you plunge one into the neck of an enemy and violently pull it out before sending them tumbling to the ground in a pool of blood. I found a striking difference when comparing the visuals of the Remake to the visuals of the original game because of how detailed and grotesque they are. Instead of blood pooling awkwardly underneath enemies and animations feeling stiff, blood leaking out of bodies looks hyperrealistic at times.

Boss encounters are especially well done, with multiple transformations that take place and showcase just how gruesome and grotesque Resident Evil 4 can be when it’s firing on all cylinders. Heads start turning to the side and snapping, exposing broken bones and blood. Limbs break, and enemies start shambling towards you, typically with substances oozing from their bodies that splatter all over you and the environment. It cannot be understated how fantastic of a job Capcom did remaking this game for modern consoles.

I love what Capcom did with the Graphics in Resident Evil 4 Remake, and I’m so excited to play the game again in VR when it releases for the PSVR 2 in the future so I can analyze all of the visual details from a first-person perspective. The graphical upgrades enhanced my enjoyment of the game in every way because they made me feel more immersed in the events of Leon’s story, and more horrified at every new traumatic twist and turn.

Story

The story in Resident Evil 4 Remake is surprisingly even better than the original. It’s well-told, well-scripted, well-acted, and well-paced, always managing to keep the tension and intensity high while making sure to add new details that weren’t in the original. Characters like Ada Wong, Luis Sera, and one of the major antagonists all get additional dialogue that fleshes their characters out and explains their backstories to make more sense of their reasons for being involved in the events of the game. And it’s wonderful because now Luis doesn't feel like someone that’s out of place,  and a major villain doesn’t feel like someone purely added in as an 80s action movie stereotype.

As a gamer, I focus more on storytelling than gameplay. I can excuse some pretty bad or mediocre gameplay as long as the game is telling a fantastic story, and Resident Evil 4 has one of the best stories of the last few years gaming-wise. The writing is sharp and witty, but funny at the same time. Leon is a tragic and traumatized character after the events of Resident Evil 2. His near-death experiences shaped the way that he sees the world and informed his now at times extremely sarcastic personality that shows when he’s having conversations with characters like Ashley and Luis. Without the writing is so strong, I wouldn’t have been as invested in the game as I was. The story was tightly paced, gripping, and extremely well told, and the mystery made me want to keep playing just one more chapter by keeping me on the edge of my seat with suspense.

Fear Levels:

Fear is a subjective thing, some people scare easily, and some people don’t scare at all. Resident Evil 4 Remake does a wonderful job of offering something for everyone. Jump scares are in the game, and some people may find them the worst and or weakest kind of scare, but some people love and adore them because of the rush or the chill that they can provide. Other people prefer a thick atmosphere of tension and dread, and Resident Evil 4 Remake provides that easily with its high-quality enemy and encounter design and long stretches of puzzle solving.

Because even when it’s quiet in Resident Evil 4 Remake and you think that you’re alone and out of combat, there’s no guarantee that you’re safe. An enemy can come up and hit you out of nowhere and either take a good chunk of your health away or kill you together.

Resident Evil 4 can also be just as terrifying in combat, because you can get tunnel vision and focus on the enemy, or groups of enemies in front of you. That tunnel vision can lead to you forgetting to check your surroundings and being attacked from behind, or from the sides, and when you have a chainsaw-wielding maniac with a bag on his head charging at you, it’s hard enough to stay calm. But having that chainsaw-wielding maniac charging at you while someone has grabbed you from behind and they’re trying to hold you in place so you can get cut in two heightens that terror. Resident Evil 4 Remake does a fantastic job of consistently heightening the tension of the encounters you’re experiencing as a player.

There are a lot of survival horror games out there. But it has been a long time since a game was able to engage me the way that Resident Evil 4 Remake has when it comes to eliciting a fear response. I’m used to playing First Person Shooters where Ammo is plentiful like Doom Eternal or Call of Duty Vanguard. Not games like Resident Evil 4 where ammunition is scarce. Every time I missed a shot I felt it in my chest because there would be a pang of anxiety as the enemies that were trying to kill me would inch closer and closer to me. I’d be mentally beating myself up for missing shots because that meant I’d wasted resources in terms of ammunition and healing items if the enemies got close enough to hurt me. The audio design was constantly creepy, and more than enough to make my palms start to sweat from anxiety and keep them sweating for the duration of my playtime.

Final Thoughts

Resident Evil 4 Remake is a fantastic game that meets the high bar set by the original and then exceeds it in many ways. The action of the gameplay is fast, frenetic, and brutal. The moment-to-moment gameplay is suspenseful because you never know whether you’ll be in a shootout, solving a puzzle, or learning more about the world you’re inhabiting through dialogue or environmental design. Tension is high throughout, and Resident Evil 4 Remake never takes its foot off the gas when it gets its hooks into you.