Resident Evil 4 double feature: Comparing two great action horror games

Lately, I've been clearing my backlog of Resident Evil games, and I finally got around to the remake of RE4, which is one of my all-time favorite games. My first experience with the game was on the Wii, but I was new to horror and not very good at games, so I never beat it despite really enjoying it. Eventually, I returned to it on PC and beat it, and I was struck by just how well it held up.

This also makes the RE4 remake the first of the remakes where I actually played the original and can see a lot of the little differences. Combined with my love of the original, I thought it would be worth using that opportunity to do a double feature review of both games.

For context: This will only cover the main campaign on Normal/Standard difficulty and without any mods or unlockables. I also play the original with a controller and the remake with mouse + keyboard, so I can't comment on any potential issues that the other option has with either game.

Not quite a weekend in Ibiza

At a high level, the stories in both games are very similar. Following the events of RE2, Leon becomes a government agent and is eventually tasked with finding Ashley Graham, the missing daughter of the United States president. She was last seen near a remote village Spain, and it doesn't take long to learn that the villagers kidnapped her and are violently hostile to outsiders. They are also part of a cult called Los Illuminados, led by the power-hungry Osmund Saddler. This cult worships a parasite called Las Plagas that, among other things, gives Saddler considerable control over the host. Early on, both Leon and Ashley get implanted with parasite eggs, so they must not only escape but also find a way to remove the parasite. Helping them with this is the suave Spaniard Luis, a former Umbrella researching looking for atonement, and the returning Ada Wong.

Despite this shared premise, the tone is very different between the two games. The original is shamelessly cheesy. Leon is an action-movie tough guy who loves one-liners, and the other characters, while simple, play off that energy very well. In the remake, Leon and most other characters are far more reserved, and the change is so immediately obvious that Leon's iconic bingo night joke before the title card feels completely out of place in the remake. Unfortunately, this removes a significant amount of the original's creepy-but-silly charm, and it's also not a particularly deep horror story either, so the overall lack of gusto leaves a very significant void that's never truly filled.

To be fair, the remake does try to flesh out Ashley's and Luis's characters more. Ashley, like most characters, is a lot more reserved and soft spoken, but her and Leon have more significant interactions this time. This can lead to some very heartfelt moments, like when Leon comforts Ashley after reuniting in the castle, but it can also lead to sillier ones, like when Ashley gets flustered at Leon saying he appreciates her company. Luis, who is perhaps the only character who retains his original charm, doesn't get quite as much attention, but he does get more screen time, even joining Leon during the chapter in the mines. In both cases, it is an improvement over the original characters, though I still liked both for what they were in the original.

Sadly, Ada and the villains are significantly worse in the remake. The original Ada took seductive charm to a silly extreme, but the new Ada is a generic spy who sounds perpetually bored. Salazar, whose constant bickering with Leon made him iconic, is now just a generically snobbish aristocrat who barely interacts with Leon. Saddler goes from a (figuratively) moustache-twirling supervillain to a generic cult leader, though his new harem is at least unsettling during what little screen time they get. I guess the village chief and Krauser aren't worse, but they were never as charismatic as the other villains. Regardless, it's an all-around downgrade.

As for the horror, both have some fantastic atmosphere but approach it somewhat differently. The original had to work with a lot of technical restrictions, so it made good use of things like fog and less complex assets, like removing leaves from trees, to create a very eerie and "dead" feel that was enhanced by the flat lighting and grimy touches. The remake loses a lot of the "deadness" with things like dynamic lighting, lack of fog and fully alive trees. However, it makes use of the more advanced lighting for very creepy periods of moving through pitch-black environments, and better animations allow for some terrifying touches like how Plaga C controls its host. Enemy design is generally strong across both games, and both also make great use of sound design, with cawing crows and wheezing Regeneradors adding an unnerving edge to both games. Personally, I slightly prefer the more "dead" appearance of the original, and I don't think the remake makes quite as good use of darkness as RE2R or Village, but both are very solid in their own ways.

Thematically, the two games are a bit weird in relation to each other. The original was essentially Alien in a folk horror setting. Las Plagas is an undiscovered species loosely inspired by behavior-altering parasites and the parasitic wasps that inspired the Xenomorph, and it's worshipped by a violent and isolated cult. The sequel also has these elements, but it injects a lot of supernatural horror influences. For instance, when Ashley and Leon get separated early in the castle in the original, it's because Ashley gets agitated and carelessly runs off, which is believable for a behavior-altering parasite. In the remake, though, she seems demon possessed. With this, there's also a noticeable shift of focus away from a fairly healthy mixture of Alien and folk horror into much more heavily pushing the cult angle and Saddler's control.

Personally, I really didn't like this change. I'm not against supernatural or cult-themed horror, but I do prefer the m

The biggest change for me in the remake is indeed that I don't have to go into my bag to change guns every 5 seconds. It makes the combat flow so much better, which makes the remake one of my favourites of all time.

On PC, RE4 Tweaks actually adds support for that, but I don't know if it's keyboard-only.

Otherwise, yeah, that's probably the best improvement of the remake, especially with the slightly faster combat. That said, I don't swap regularly enough for it to be a huge issue in the original.

Thanks for the detailed writeup!

RE4 was one of my mainstays on the gamecube. Coming from REMake and expecting more of the same, the opening village battle was truly mind-blowing, and yeah, the game keeps that intensity up remarkably well the whole way through.

I've not played the RE4 remake precisely because I was wary of losing all the charm and quirks of the original, so your review does not fill me with hope, but I'll probably still pick it up eventually.

I think you're right that the tank controls are key to the game experience. The fact that you are often trapped in small spaces with enemies while having limited mobility is key to the fear of getting grabbed (or chainsawed, or whatever). RE1 does this brilliantly - so many times you need to get down a corridor with a zombie in the way, and although the zombie is slow and lumbering, so are you! Nonetheless, with practice you get really good at juking them and it feels great (until you get grabbed).

Good breakdown, though I don't necessarily agree with all of it ;) I think you're not being fair to the remake's stealth. While, yes, stealth often goes out of the window when facing large numbers of enemies who will alert the entire lot to your presence, there are many areas where it's useful as a mixed strategy (start with stealth, take out a few enemies, then move to open combat once detected) - thinking of areas like the farm or your second visit to the village (with Ashley), when you can take out many enemies without being detected, or sneak into a favourable defensive position. This also applies to the Island, where in addition to the initial stealth-focused section (unmanned turrets - you can fully ghost the area before triggering the boar head) there are multiple opportunities to backstab a machine-gunner or climb to the top of a nice, defensible platform before everything starts trying to murder you again.

>stealth is impossible in the double-Garrador fight

not my beloved double-Garrador fight! Yes, you have no way of hiding from the monks since they can actually see you, but that entire fight is an exercise in "make noise > Garrador turns nearby monks to mincemeat while you sneak away > reposition without getting hit > repeat". You can probably just shoot them to death, but why deny yourself the joy and saved ammo?

I confess I have yet to play the OG as I'm Spanish and unsure I'll survive the terrible accents ("LEWWISS"). I'll give it a shot eventually, once I've run through the other RE games... maybe.

I do wish RE4r took more chances to make the player feel properly anxious, as opposed to just tense. Leon being so well-armed is part of the reason for this, and why Ashley's stealth section and the Regeneradores both work so well. The latter in particular are incredibly upsetting no matter how many times I play, 11/10 awful creatures, and they work because 1) you can only use one weapon to take them down, making ammo and reloads a real concern, 2) you cannot take them down in one shot, and unpredictable movement makes the required shots harder to land, but 3) they're not ammo sponges, so keeping a cool head is crucial to taking them out... which is hard when you're panicking because 4) the animation and movement is REALLY UPSETTING. (Contrast with the various plaga-headed enemies, which can be dealt with in a variety of ways, including simply doing a lot of damage.) Fantastic mechanical design, wish they'd made it a hat trick.

As someone who absolutely loved RE4r, try it! The combat is incredibly fun and fluid. Rather than being limited by your controls, the main danger here is being overwhelmed by enemies, because even though you have a lot of mobility (jump fences, climb ladders, knock down ladders, dive through windows) you can still get cornered with relative ease, so you need to pay a lot of attention to where your enemies are (or might be) as you move - and the game expects you to be on the move, because standing still for too long is a good way to get grabbed, punched, and then blown up with dynamite. But running a clever loop around a dozen enemies feels incredibly satisfying. Especially when they blow each other up with dynamite.

I particularly enjoyed the sections with Luis. From what I've heard his AI in the original was not fantastic; here, he's deeply sympathetic as a character and a real help in combat. (In the mines fight, we did a synchronised melee kick finisher on a chainsaw enemy and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.)

I was the guy who first played it on VR....which was a mixed experience. Imagine switching weapons in VR- it's quite hard. But I went back and tried it with the remake, and I remember that it was a better experience but couldn't put my finger on why.

Turns out, you're absolutely right. I didn't even realize how much this was a quality of life improvement- this comment made me realize that it's the weapon switching!

For me, I was kind of hoping stealth would work similarly to modern Wolfenstein: You could go in guns blazing, but stealth would be an optional challenge for those who preferred that play style. Too often, though, the RE4 remake would put a lookout somewhere that immediately broke stealth, and places where stealth was viable, like the initial visit to the farm, it was often because enemies kept their backs to you just waiting to be stabbed, so there was no challenge. There's exceptions, like right before the chainsaw sisters or the initial island encounter, but those seemed too rare for how long the game is.

Even within RE, I think Revelations 2 did a better job integrating stealth, even making it the focus of Barry's chapters while letting Claire inadvertently impact his stealth options based around how and where you killed certain enemies. It wasn't spectacular and lacked a lot of typical stealth mechanics, but it was clearly a bigger part of the overall level design. There's also been some notable stealth sections in recent games like RE2R and RE7, but those were more Amnesia-esque.

>I confess I have yet to play the OG as I'm Spanish and unsure I'll survive the terrible accents

That's just part of the silly charm!

Yeah, that's a fair criticism. RE4r was a pleasant surprise to me as most non-stealth games I've played are terrible at incorporating stealth mechanics, whereas in RE4r it felt fairly seamless from a mechanical standpoint - however I do agree it would have been nice for more levels to incorporate stealth as a valid alternative. (Then again, given that stealth is incredibly powerful, one-hit-killing as opposed to sinking multiple headshots per enemy, it would have needed a pretty extensive rewrite to keep the challenge satisfying. Good stealth IMO requires a very non-linear approach to levels, like you see in Deus Ex or Dishonored, and RE4r is pretty damn linear. Not sure if the original was that way too.)

Remake really does just improve on the original in nearly every way. I understand how powerful nostalgia can be, but replaying it now definitely feels dated.

I recently finally got the remake and loved it, but the original still has a place with some different encounters. I still enjoy the original almost 20 years later. Can't say the same for most games. The remake was like adding some new flavor profiles to an already favorite dish.

there is not a lot to say about RE4 OG, we know that there are some FPS games that set the standart like Doom, Goldeneye or Halo, RE4 its like one of those games but for TPS, it shown what a third person shooter can be, it pretty much saved RE from stagnation (after 6 years and 6 games of a very similar formula it was time to move forward, if you dont mutate you die), its a longer game that the usual RE but doesnt overstay its welcome, it has the patented RE combination of horror and comedy that has been so succesful for them, has a lot of side content apart from the main campaign, i consider this game to be the best game ever made at least to this point.

the remake had maybe the biggest shoes to fill in terms of remakes, it wears the name of a game that was a milestone in the gaming industry, anything less than excellence would have been an insult to the legacy of it.

and they did it, they remade RE4 and were succesful at it, the game feels like a modern game meanwhile the beating heart of the original its felt on it, it isnt a 1:1 remake, but what it adds its great and what removes its substituted by something else so it doesnt have the same problems that RE3 remake had.

i would dare to say that this is a remake in the league of the remake of the first game, this is how a remake should be made.

Og RE4 is a 10/10 game but the story is pure horseshit. Writing isn’t Capcom’s forte. The closest they came to serviceable where I felt something was RE6 despite being a terrible game.