Resident Evil 4 Hands-On Impressions

So, let's start this off with a mea culpa: some reporting I did about Resident Evil 4's remake early this year was wrong in spots. Specifically, the bit about the early game setpieces being changed to night. I am not sure if my sources were wrong or things were changed back, but it was my bad for printing something that was not 100%. Multiple people I talked to at the time confirmed that was a change, but it may have been more tenuous than I thought or everyone could have just taken me for a ride. Either way, it's my bad.

Now for the impossible transition to actual impressions. Capcom brought me to their offices recently to play Resident Evil 4 — every time I tried to append the word "Remake" to the title, I was gently corrected — and be one of the first people in North America to do so.

I have played Resident Evil 4, across its GameCube and subsequent ports over the past decade and a half, somewhere north of 20 times from beginning to end. Maybe it's because of that game's indissoluble legacy that I was keen on seeing what a remake could, and would, do differently. After about half an hour with the reimagined Resident Evil 4, I'm eager to see more.

The demo I played is ostensibly the opening of the actual game, complete with a narrated intro cutscene where Leon explains that he is part of a secret operations team. After that, you are dropped into gameplay to begin your search for Ashley.

The beats are pretty much identical to the original: Leon enters a house, he gets attacked, he wanders through the woods to the village clock tower, and a big fight ensues. On paper, Resident Evil 4 remake follows this same structure for its pre-title card gameplay. In practice, it's different enough to keep you on your toes.

The initial house where you ask a villager about Ashley and are subsequently attacked is differently shaped and has more enemies. It's not a major revolutionary change, but it's lit to be a bit dimmer and spookier.

But the real dissonance is in how a Resident Evil 4 veteran approaches combat in the remake. In the GameCube original, ammo was plentiful, so it's easy enough to go through the entire game guns blazing. In later ports and revisions, ammo dropped less often, making it so you had to be more judicious in how many shots you take at a villager walking toward you with a pitchfork.

So at some point, the strategy in RE4 becomes a leg shot or headshot, a kick for melee, or running up to the enemy and slashing them over and over with your knife. It's the most efficient way to use your ammo.

Resident Evil 4 (Remake) hews far closer to the latter revisions than the GameCube version, with ammo being rather precious. You can still kick people hard and they make a simultaneously gruesome and gratifying crunch against the walls, too. But the knife strategy is no longer feasible for every enemy. Like Resident Evil 2 Remake, the knife is a consumable (though presumably repairable) durability resource.

Its primary use is going to be fighting off enemies who grab you by stabbing them and pushing them away. But every swing of the knife and every stealth kill using it diminishes its durability a certain amount. So if you were planning to cut apart every villager from here to Saddler, that's probably not very likely. 

This is a big change to my RE4 combat loop, but I will admit it also made the village fight section a lot more tense. I could not rely on my old strategies of holing up in the shotgun room, shooting a dude in the knees, and running up on him like I'm a D&D rogue. It worked for fifteen years, it does not work here.

The addition of a crouch also makes sneaking around more tense and allows you to even duck some thrown objects.

I'll close out these impressions by mentioning that my main worry with RE4, being viewed through a RE2 Remake framework, is that it would lose a quippy Leon. Sure, it was corny then and is cornier now, but Leon cracking action hero jokes at unimpressed villains has been part of the soul of the game. I'm pleased to say that, at least in the demo, Leon is still a smartass.

He says "I'll see myself out" moments before jumping out of a two-story window. He still asks if everyone is going to bingo. I imagine he will once again ask Salazar if his right hand comes off.

I don't know if this demo is going to be commercially available — hell, it might be as of writing this, honestly. If it is, I suggest giving it a shot. It's RE4 through a different lens, but that's exciting in its own right.

Resident Evil 4 releases on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on March 24.