I still remember the glorious year of tears when RE fans moaned and bitched about the action approach of RE4 (wonder how they felt about RE5) but RE4 managed to capture just as much of the same horror vibe as its predecessors with a new control scheme that worked fantastically. Well Capcom has finally decided to bring RE4 to the downloadable battlefield in what they say is an HD update (it’s not). Honestly, if you’re going to shell out the $20 (seriously Capcom?) for this it’s because you haven’t played it before, or you seriously loved RE4.
Resident Evil 4 HD
Developer: Capcom
Price: $20.00
Platform: PS3 (reviewed), PC, & Xbox 360
Resident Evil 4 follows the pun filled adventures of Leon Kennedy, one of the survivors of the Raccoon City incident which got him promoted from first day cop to bodyguard of the president’s daughter. He travels to most likely Spain a wonderful Hispanic village full of charming folks. Somebody in that place kidnapped the president’s daughter on your first day of your new job (Leon just doesn’t get a break) and he needs to rescue her before he gets fired. You’ll go from fighting regular farmers to sea monsters, weird worm/larva, a Gigante (giant), and learning why your friend told you to fear the Regenerator. RE4 really is one of those memorable games with fantastic pacing, great gameplay, and a brilliant cast of characters that you just can’t help but smirk when Leon pulls out his cheesy one-liners.
If you have been living under a rock haven’t played this game before then you’ll probably be quick on the controls if you played Resident Evil 5 or Dead Space since RE4 was the game that basically popularized that control scheme. I still think Dead Space perfected the controls of that tank control, but I had no problem sinking back into RE4 especially since it offers multiple control schemes if you don’t like one of them. You’ll still go from area to area shooting (or running) from the hordes of villagers and scavenging for ammo while you’re trying to decide whether the enemies endlessly respawn or if there are just a ton of them. Every so often you’ll come across one of the memorable boss battles and the environments vary from a peasant village, mountainside village, an ominous castle, and a couple more to keep things surprisingly fresh yet still creepy. You’ll occasionally find a puzzle that varies from insultingly easy or somewhat clever and there are tons of weapons you’ll be able to purchase from everyone’s favorite weapon dealer with upgrades to reload speed, strength, capacity, etc. Here’s a tip: Don’t buy the second shotgun you find or upgrade the starting one, you’ll quickly find the third (and I think final) shotgun quite quickly and it’s worth the wait. Also, the grenade launcher is shit, fuck your opinion.
This release contains all the extras from the previous versions which is of course expected, but Capcom could’ve been a dick and not included them. This means you’ll get the Assignment Ada where you play the game through her point of view while Leon was busy flipping his hair and coming up with puns. Mercenaries is of course back which has you play as Leon, Ada, HUNK, Wesker, or Krauser as you kill as many Ganados to hit that highscore before the timer ends. There’s also New Game+, new costumes to unlock, the bottlecap minigame, and an infinite rocket launcher to go through.
The “HD” part of this port seems a bit exaggerated. The game looks like it was just up-scaled into HD with no textures redone or anything. If Capcom had said they were just releasing RE4 just for shits and giggles, it’d be fine. The fact that they’re advertising this as an HD port seems like a slap to the face when you play the game and see just how ugly everything still looks. When I play an HD game, I expect it to look better than the original like the God of War or Sly Cooper collections. There are only a few parts where a friend mentioned “Well the character hands look a little smoother” to which I would reply with “Yea man, glad I spent $20 for smoother fingers”.
The Final Word
All in all if you haven’t played RE4 before or want to relive some nostalgia then this seems like a good buy, but $20 seems a bit much for a game that’s obviously not an HD update and has no gameplay updates either. Also, first I hear that MH3G isn’t coming to America and now you give the 360 version of RE4 a full 1000GS but the PS3 doesn’t get a platinum? That’s fucked up Capcom.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
