Capcom raises the bar for what a good remake is and simultaneously preserves Resident Evil 4's legacy as a genre-defining experience and one of the greatest games of all time.
By Kurt Indovina on
How do you remake Resident Evil 4, an experience that changed the way action games are made today? It is, at best, an unfair challenge and, at worst, an impossible task. So, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel a second time, developer Capcom has doubled down on the brilliance of the original's design--elaborated on it, and finely tuned the experience. The result is a stunning remake that reminds longtime fans like me of its brilliance, while also introducing an all-new generation to a modern classic and one of the most important games of all time.
If you're not familiar, the premise of Resident Evil 4 is straightforward: Leon S. Kennedy, the cool and handsome rookie-cop-turned-government-agent who you may remember from his escapades in Resident Evil 2's Raccoon City, has been sent to rural Spain to track down Ashley Graham, the US President's missing daughter. Yes, it's a «save the princess» trope but, even 18 years later, its juxtaposition against the survival-horror genre serves as an immaculate setup for the game's over-the-top set pieces. In this case, the princess is in another castle, but it's a castle besieged by parasitic infections and mind-controlled cultists, so you'll have to blast your way from a rundown village to a military island to get her back. While the core pillars of tense, up-close-and-personal action and careful resource management remain welcomingly unchanged, improvements to character development elevate the story as a whole. Now more than ever, Capcom is aware of the tone and humor of the game after
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