3.5/5 ★ – Altair57's review of Resident Evil 4.

I have not played the original game at all but I recognize and see how it was extremely influential at the time of the original release. RE4 inspired a lot of future titles and it still does to this day. The remake is my first playthrough of the RE4 and I've got to say I'm disappointed as a Resident Evil fan. The game starts off very strong in the village section, letting the player explore a few side areas and learn the combat mechanics and the general gameplay loop. It resembles the early parts of RE2 in a good way. This is in my opinion the strongest part of the game. The enemies pose a reasonable challenge and the areas are interesting enough for the player to explore. Collectibles are also valuable and allow the player to meaningfully upgrade their gear early on. Later sections betray this design and delve much harder into shooting galleries and locations become very linear. The player may think they are free to explore the entire village by Chapter 4 but there is an unannounced point of no return which makes 1 or 2 side quests impossible to complete and hidden collectibles unattainable. The cabin fight with Luis in Chapter 4 was the turning point for me, there is a huge difficulty spike. The house is very small, there is no room for Leon to keep his distance from enemies, the resources are very scarce and Luis is not very helpful. From this point on the game was not very enjoyable to me and a lot of my frustrations from this part apply to later enemy encounters and are generally true for the rest of the game. CONS -The game throws too many enemies at the player at the same time while not giving nearly enough space to fight them (especially the Castle sections). There is no way to outmaneuver most of the enemies. -Leon's movement is too clunky and too slow. Almost every time Leon takes damage he will be locked into an animation. Very often as you are recovering from that animation another enemy may already start swinging at you and you are again stuck watching another animation. This can often result in getting stunlocked and it kills the pacing of encounters. This game seems like it was designed and balanced around player having a dodge button like Jill has in RE3 but it is not present in this game. Leon controls like an RE2 character but the enemies are way faster and more dangerous. -Aiming is inconsistent on a controller. Turning camera speed to max value while aiming and aim acceleration to 0 did not help at all. It is almost impossible to reliably shoot anything when the enemies swarm you up close. -Lootable boxes having seemingly "dynamic" loot is just a baffling design decision. How did the developers think this to be a good idea at all ? In a linear single player game with scarce resources. You can find a green herb in a box, reload the checkpoint and there will be 600 coins in the same box. This makes looting and exploration inconsistent and unreliable. PROS -I applaud the developers for letting RE4 be "gamey". They did not try to overly "modernize" the overall design of the game to be more realistic or grounded. According to the OG fans the same goes for the storyline, dialogues and cutscenes. They are almost as cheesy and campy as in the original game. This is refreshing in the AAA gaming space. -There are some enemy types that require the player to use their surroundings to their advantage in order the beat them. They are a welcome addition to the roster of enemies but they are encountered rarely sadly. GRAPHICS/SOUND The graphics are good but not great. The RE Engine in my opinion needs some overhauls at this point. The baked lighting is largely inaccurate in this game and there are a lot of lighting errors indoors. HDR implementation is unfortunately subpar with lots of crushed blacks. Character models on the other hand look very good and are high resolution. Resolution mode on PS5 (without RT or Hair Strands) with a VRR display is smooth 99% of the time and framerate drops are not noticeable. Loading times are minimal and the game does not feature squeezing through tight spaces :-) . I cannot speak too much on sound quality or the 3D audio implementation as I have not played the game on headphones. I can say for sure though that the gun sounds lack punch and the proverbial "oomph". They very much sound like peashooters. CONCLUSION 3 weeks after the game's release they also added microtransactions to the game. They are largely optional and do not hinder the core experience but still have absolutely no place in a full priced game release. As a first time player of RE4 I've got to say the RE4 remake is incredibly overrated. The game starts off strong and the early experience is very promising but sometime around Chapter 5-6 the overall design quality starts to decline rapidly. There is a very good game buried underneath glaring balance issues and clunky controls and sluggish movement that drag the experience down. 3.5/5