Well, the RE4 remake has arrived aaaaaaand....I was kinda right.
I'm about halfway through the game right now-hip deep in the castle-and there is a lot that has been done right! The primary gameplay loop is in tact: shoot enemies, get loot from downed enemies. They've kept plenty of the good aspects of the initial game; the suitcase management, a light crafting system, treasure hunting and, Very Importantly, you get to save the dog. They've also improved on things: you can change game prompts from being a 'repeat press' to 'press and hold' which I vastly prefer. The pacing is tighter: you are very much in a: You go forward, mode, a la the best elements of Doom. Doubling back isn't something that is necessary, and when you do have to revisit an area, the trip is brief.
Unfortunately, there's a few drawbacks as well.
First: Jesus christ this game is fucking dark! Why do I need to turn the brightness up so high just so I don't run into walls? I get it, the game is an action/survival horror and takes place at night but c'mon. I have this problem all the time and I don't know why. It's only videogames that do this.
Second: Jesus christ this game is dark! And by this I mean that it has taken a more serious tone. They didn't go full throttle serious but...like I can hear Leon pant now, and he rolls his shoulder like he's in pain. He's just a normal dude, right?
There's a lot of little touches like that making the game less wacky and as I noted, I believe that's to RE4's detriment. It's not enough to ruin the game but it is what makes this a remake, instead of a straight up improvement.
Third: your knife breaks. I don't care why, breakable weapons suck. This mechanic even sucks in Bloodborne, and I love that game.
Fourth: The RE6 problem. My biggest issue with Resident Evil 6 was that I spent more time punching, suplexing, or otherwise meleeing zombies in the face instead of shooting them. With my gun(s). Which I have a lot of.
I do not care to play Zombiepucher the game, I want to play Resident Evil and in the original RE4, there was enough ammo that I didn't have a need to melee an enemy often.
Now, it's practically mandatory: the ammo drops aren't frequent enough to just keep shooting, and the enemies are quite tough, compelling me to get up close and, siiiiiiiiiiiiigh, punch a dude in the face. This takes me out of the flow of the game-instead of tracking my shots, I now have to look for a melee indicator, race up to an enemy in what I hope is in time, and then watch a cutscene of me kicking or worse, suplexing an enemy. Why are suplexes worse? Because they are disorienting and I don't always know where I am in space-in relationship to the enemies- when I recover from such a move.
But how is this fun in relationship to the rest of the game? I'm genuinely curious why this mechanic is so fundamental. Shooting enemies in the leg to stagger them and then punching them is the kill-why can't I just plug someone center mass three times and be done?
Headshots are discouraged, so what's left?
What's left is sayin' fuck it and doing headshots anyway. If they mutate, well that's what shotguns are for. Don't overthink it, my dude.
Still, they game rewards you for doing the opposite (in close punching) of what you want to do (distance gunfights) and that's a problem. Is it enough to capsize the game? No. The RE4 remake does a great job building on the bones of the original and making it a hell of a ride. Does it equal the original?
Yeah, I think it might.
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