Earlier in 2025, I played RE4 for the first time. As someone who enjoys action games, third person shooters, and gaming history in general, it was a game I had been looking forward to. But, there's always the worry, isn't there? The worry that a beloved piece of media that changed the landscape of an art form you admire doesn't hit you in 2025 the same way it did in 2005. Times change, attitudes change, and games most certainly change. Trends and development ideas that were perfectly acceptable in 2005 could simply feel outdated and underwhelming in 2025. Thankfully playing RE4 reminded me that sometimes, rarely, the hype is to be believed and sometimes art doesn't age like milk but instead like fine wine.

Resident Evil 4 isn't just a good game, it's a great game. Dare I say, it might be a perfect game. A game that redefined the third person shooter, and the third person action game in general. To this day Leon's adventures through “Europe” remains a joyful action romp with tons of nut smacking action and gleeful campy energy. In many ways, the game hasn't been beaten by its many imitators. So many games came out in the wake of RE4, bolstered by the inspiration of making their own action shooter and so many of them failed. What was the secret? What was the smoking gun that cemented RE4 as a bit of gaming royalty? It wasn't any one thing, to be honest. That's not how art works. It wasn't just Shinji Mikami's talent for tightly designed action gaming, though that was a big factor. It was also the unique circumstances of its development, which began in 1999 and was notoriously troubled. From 1999 to 2005 RE4 was iterated on numerous times. Iteration being an important part of any creative process, the long development time allowed RE4 to gestate for far longer than your average game. With each iteration the game got that much better, smoothed out by each new director, producer, coder, art designer, etc, until the perfectly polished gem we now have before us was unleashed upon the world.

And so I played RE4 over and over until the credits rolled for the last time and my experience came to an end and I moved on with my life, as one does. But I knew I would get back to RE4 eventually. You see, during my playtime, I had already made the decision that RE4 was a work of art, and happened to notice the 2023 remake was on sale. I snagged it for a decent price and let it sit in my Steam library for some time. I wasn't ready to take on the remake just yet. I wanted to savor RE4 a bit. Let it weigh on my brain the same way all those gamers did from 2005 until 2023. Why this self inflicted melodrama? Partly because I'm insane, yes, but partly because RE4 truly did have that hold on me. I ended up replaying RE4 multiple times over the summer instead of the remake, simply because I wanted to, and would rather experience that game again in all of its glory than try and give the remake my full attention.

But soon that time finally came and I was ready. I was ready to scrutinize the shit out of RE4Make. Biased? I sure as hell am! This isn't a discussion, this is a dissection. An analysis of a video game from someone who doesn't make games but sure does write a lot of words about them. Going into RE4Make I wasn't really concerned with how “good” the game was. The track record of the other Resident Evil Remakes as well as RE7 and RE8 told me that the possibility of this game being anything less than good was probably slim to none. No, I wasn't interested in whether or not the remake was good, I was interested in finding out what changed and what didn't. What parts of RE4 did the team at Capcom think was worth changing. What was worth dropping? What was worth keeping? What did they feel had aged poorly and what did they feel aged well? It was these answers I sought, and have presented here, as one opinionated nerd to another.

The (Initial) Verdict
So let's start with the broad strokes: Is RE4Make good? Yeah, of course it is. I would be remiss to discuss my issues with the game if I didn't make my intentions and initial thoughts very clear: RE4Make is a good game. But the hows and the whys of what make it good are where things get interesting. The reason I feel very confident in stating RE4Make is a good game is because, quite simply, it's 85% the same game. This is actually quite interesting to me. Compare the changes in raw, minute to minute gameplay from RE2 to RE2Make and RE4 to RE4Make and the differences are staggering. RE2Make had to adapt a game with fixed camera angles and fixed aiming to purely three dimensional space. As someone with only surface level understanding of game design, I can't even fathom how hard that was. Just figuring out how Leon and Claire are supposed to *move* through a room must have been a pain. How fast are they going? How big are the models? What's in the room? Where is the player looking? Does the player even understand the totality of the space they are in? Did they spin the camera around enough to even see the entire space? And then there's the aiming and ugh my brain hurts just thinking about it! Which is why it's so impressive to me that RE2Make is so tightly designed. I haven't played the original RE2 but from what I can gather the vibe around the remake is it is more about remaking the *feeling* of RE2 rather than a strict adherence to specific level layouts or gameplay design. Which is why the comparison to RE4Make is so interesting to me because as someone who has played both RE4 and RE4Make, I can now tell that so little of the base game has actually changed. There's expansions here, some cut spots there, but again, from a minute to minute gameplay perspective, this is RE4. Same camera angle, same enemy types, same damn animation where you get a headshot but they palm their heads like that's gonna help anything while I desperately try and hit them in the head again because even though I miss it nearly every time, I'm him, dammit, and I have to try!

So little has actually been changed, and I am of the opinion that that was a good call. Like I said, RE4 is an excellent game and changing as little of it as possible was the smart move. But this isn't me gearing up to call Capcom lazy, this is me gearing up to make my actual point, which is that RE4Make is a good game, but I'm not sure how many points it deserves when all it was doing was coloring inside the lines really well. Which is why to save us both plenty of time, I have reached in and extracted 3 key changes that RE4Make makes to the original and have presented them here. One change is good, one is more middling, and one is negative.

The Krauser Knife Fight
I was initially skeptical of the new knife mechanics. The ability to do things like parries and escape grabs at the cost of durability sounds fine on paper but in practice I felt the durability was a bit extreme and limited the player more than it should have. I got over this hump, however, as my time with the game went on and a few durability upgrades later, I was happy to conclude that those worries were merely a skill issue. I think what really pushed me over the hump, however, was fighting Krauser. Now, in RE4 original, the first encounter with Krauser is merely a cutscene with button prompts. QTEs, we used to call them, and in my humble opinion, they were about as meaningful to gameplay as water was to a drowning man. RE4Make turning this scripted fight into a real fight with real gameplay was already going to win it some kind of award but I think the real kicker was how the knife mechanics really shine in this encounter. Most encounters with the knife in RE4Make are pretty situational if still useful. Parry an enemy, they get stunned, melee them. Nothing too crazy. Krauser, meanwhile, has a pretty intense string of slashes you have to parry individually, and they get more elaborate as the fight goes on. Coupled with a few Evade prompts to keep you on your toes and suddenly you have a very tense boss fight that is actually still pretty close to the original idea of “scripted fight bolstered by button prompts” but because they require an actual degree of reaction and engagement from the player, it becomes a much more engaging fight than simply sitting there waiting to press X when you're told to. It was such a compelling fight, I actually reloaded my autosave a few times just because I wanted to do it again, but better this time. The same can be said for the second fight with Krauser, which requires all the above knife skills but has the added layer of him becoming vulnerable during stages of the fight allowing for Leon to get a shot off here and there. And on top of all that, both fights have the added layer of knife durability, making the chances of losing your ability to parry and escape his grabs mid fight a real possibility. It's a kind of tension bolstering the fight that simply wouldn't be there if the knife mechanics weren't as elaborate as they were. It's the most clear improvement to RE4 that could have only come about from a remake, ie, expanding upon a mechanic in a way that may not be 100% true to the original, but is at least in the spirit of the original concept, and makes use of it by actually having a fun gameplay excuse to give it a work out.

Why Are There Stealth Mechanics In This Game?
RE4Make has a few stealth mechanics. For most of the game I was absolutely baffled as to why. Don't get me wrong, if this was an original property, I'd get the idea. It's another form of combat decision making: Do I stealth around these enemies, picking them off one by one? Do I immediately start blasting and waste the resources fighting them in the process? Do I try and meet the game in the middle, picking off a few quietly, evening the odds before I go full Rambo? All perfectly valid options when your goal is to flesh out the combat, but I just can't get rid of that nagging question: why are the stealth mechanics here to begin with? Like I actually can't figure out the thought process here in the context of remaking something, though I do have a theory, but we'll come back to that. Someone at Capcom, somewhere, looked at RE4 and said, “you know what I would like to be able to do? Sneak up behind every enemy individually and press one button to instantly kill them instead of shooting my sick as hell guns all the time.” And, get this! Instead of immediately tossing his ass out a window, his idea was taken, formed, molded, tested, implemented and shipped.

Ok, so the stealth mechanics are in the game, nothing to be done about that now. So now that they're here, how well are they implemented? It's a mixed bag, I think. See, while the stealth mechanics are there, they're not particularly robust. Enemy sight isn't marked anywhere but generally, if you stay out of line of sight enemies won't see you (though some areas seem to ignore this rule for no reason.) Leon has a few stealth weapons that I personally didn't use but do serve the purpose of having a ranged stealth kill option. When spotted, there isn't any solution to stay stealthy like running away or fighting off a single enemy, as every other enemy in the encounter will instantly know where you are and charge at you regardless. And while the stealth mechanics are a little underbaked, only a few areas actually require them. When I say a few, I mean like three encounters in the whole game. And when I say required, I mean barely required, as pretty much all of them can be bypassed by simply shooting an enemy or walking into line of sight and immediately fighting off the remaining enemies. So the mechanics are there but can be completely ignored, if the player chooses. It's just odd to me. Why make all these mechanics if they aren't strictly required? I suppose if the game failed me for not playing stealthy I would be whining about that as well. Once again, I don't play RE4 for subtlety and sneaky tactics, I do it to suplex cultists.

I don't want to sound like I think the stealth mechanics are bad or poorly implemented, I just feel they're not very robust and not really something that ultimately benefits the game... save for one area. Late into the original game, Leon makes his way to a remote island to save Ashley yet again. Once you reach the first real combat area, with search lights and whatnot, it appears you can stealth it, but in the original you pretty much couldn't, it was smoke and mirrors. Once you jump over a magical crevice, the entire area knows where you are and you get swarmed. In RE4Make, however, the added stealth mechanics mean that the entire encounter can actually be done stealthily. This leads me to the theory I mentioned earlier: someone on the dev team noted that you couldn't actually stealth this sequence and thought “wouldn't it be cool to actually have that as an option?” and worked backwards from there, implementing stealth mechanics to make that sequence work, and now that the suite of stealth mechanics existed at all, why not make use of them throughout the entire game?

This is something I appreciate, even with my petty grievances of the stealth mechanics having been noted. Again, this is an instance of the remake adding mechanics and actually making use of them to bolster a flaw of the original: the island sequence is clearly inspired by every infiltration scene from any action movie ever made, but due to money, time, or just plain incompetence, it was not fleshed out to its fullest potential in RE4, so wanting to expand upon that idea brought about new mechanics that were then implemented into the entire work. As of this writing I haven't done the island sequence perfectly stealthily yet, partly because, again, I don't care to play quietly in this game, but for what it's worth I think implementing these mechanics wasn't all that bad of an idea, even if I can ignore it for most of the game.

It's Not Lacking Soul, But It Is Lacking Schlock
Upon RE4Make's release there was a small but nonetheless vocal minority of players whose opinion was that the game was lacking soul. Soulless, if you will. Soulless in this case meaning, lacking any charm or wit or other such markings of a piece of art made by actual artists instead of an unfeeling corporation pushing out a product. Having played the game myself, I feel confident in saying that those dissenting voices were over-exaggerating... but they weren't 100% off base. While I wasn't personally paying attention to the conversation at the time, hearing the discourse over the amount of soul RE4Make had nagged away at me a bit. Because, quite frankly, RE4Make lacking soul wasn't out of the question. Simply put, that is the nature of remaking art. When you iterate upon an already proven idea, the blemishes and scratches and scuffs that were made as a result of the initial process get buffed away. This means the end result is sleeker and more refined... but I don't think that makes it automatically better.

This is a problem that extends to the very core of making art: artists struggle to make something and upon finishing a project, sometimes it still has flaws. Sometimes all they can see are the flaws. The same could be said for the audience, who hyperfixate on the few issues the final product has rather than celebrating its many positives. Being an artist myself, I already see the pattern. What artist wouldn't jump at the chance to do their masterpiece over again? To take away those nasty little flaws that they couldn't fix at the time. To buff out those scratches and fully realize the potential of your art with more money, time, and better technology. Hell, the concept of remaking art in this context isn't even unique to video games or movies. Have you ever heard a re-recording album? They're pretty common in thrash metal, for some reason. A group releases an album during their early years when they listened to too much Black Flag or whatever, and it comes out not quite as perfect as they might want, only to take those same songs and re-record them years later. This time, with a new line up, new equipment, and the experience that comes with having a career in the music industry. The end result might “sound” better from a purely clinical, sound engineering point of view, but is often times lacking that amateur side that comes from the act of inexperienced but passionate artists making art.

It is for these reasons I view RE4Make as a re-recording of sorts, and outright reject the use of the word “soulless” when describing how I feel RE4 has been changed. Soulless implies a lack of effort or sincerity in the creation of art that I would only feel comfortable using if I truly agreed with that sentiment and I simply don't. What word I would use, however, is sexless. The immaturity and brashness that fueled a chaotic B-movie romp through medieval castles and cursed woods has been replaced with a sleek, highbrow spy adventure. Of course I'm referring to RE4's more scandalous and, let's be frank, stupid, moments. Things like being able to look up Ashley's skirt, or Salazar calling you up to brag about how his right hand comes off. Some of these moments have been moved around or hidden in achievements, but I feel their lack of presence front and center creates a game that wants to be taken more seriously. Or, at the very least, creates a game that doesn't want to be seen as schlock. Consider this though: schlock isn't a negative word, to me at least. Schlock, to me, is a word used to describe art free from conventional sense or even good taste. A piece of art fueled by raw id. The kind of thing that might alienate a huge swath of people but nonetheless connects with others on some primal, animalistic and maybe even a little juvenile level. To me, that is what RE4 is. Beautiful, glorious, schlock. And RE4Make *isn't* schlock, it's just a well made video game.

The thing is though, I don't think there was any way for RE4Make to *not* be highbrow in the realm of modern AAA development. It's the nature of the beast. Art by its very nature is something made by someone at a particular point in time. The way a musician sang a tune came about because of the way they lived their lives until that point. The way a painter stroked their brush was influenced by their arm strength, their knowledge of strokes, their willingness to experiment with one angle vs another. And a game designer creating games was influenced by what they played before and what they wanted to see in a new piece. I say all this to point out a sobering fact of reality: even if RE4Make was made with Shinji Mikami at the helm and given carte blanche over every decision imaginable, RE4Make still would have turned out like this. Why am I so confident in this? Because as mentioned previously, art is a representation of who someone was when they made it, and Shinji Mikami isn't the same person he was in 2005. You aren't. I'm not. None of us are. Even if you feel some bizarre form of impostor syndrome over your own hang ups about yourself that you've been holding on to since you were 10, you're still not the same person you were. Even if you think you haven't changed at all, I bet at the very least your tastes have. Just a bit, no? You used to like Power Rangers but maybe now you like Kamen Rider. You used to like Face/Off but now admit it's nothing compared to Hard Boiled. Whatever magical elves that live in your brain that drive your body like an organic mecha, the ones that take everything that make up You and allow you to concentrate for five minutes to produce a piece of art, are going to be different than how they were 20 years ago. Hell, they're going to be different from yesterday.

And that to me is RE4Make's greatest failure, that it's not RE4... but nothing will ever be like RE4 again, and maybe that's OK. Maybe it's OK that RE4Make is simply a really really good game and not anything more than that. Time will tell if I'm wrong, I suppose. You'd be surprised how influential things can be. And I suppose the nature of media, especially video games, being lost to time means that one day RE4 won't have the influence it once had. Hell, I was alive when RE4 came out but didn't play it until I was an adult. It influenced other works I enjoyed but not me, personally, directly, for decades. I suppose the important thing is that RE4Make can't take away RE4's influence. Even if Capcom did the unthinkable and took away every copy of RE4 to make way for RE4Make, it still wouldn't have stopped RE4 from being the influential piece of media it once was. And now in 2026, we have two RE4s, both capable of influencing a medium I adore for the next 20 years and beyond.