Resident Evil 4 (REmake)

[NerfedFalcon]

Also, I definitely wouldn't call RE4R "soulless". It does have a soul. A different kind of soul. A soul that more than respects it's original counterpart.

I've noticed a similar pattern in how some people talk about 2R, that because it doesn't replicate the original exactly like REmake did, it's 'unfaithful'. What I think, and I think the same applies to 4R, is that they took the same basic ideas, but implemented them in a modern way. For instance, in the original 2, you can get surprised by zombies you couldn't see because of bad camera angles; in the remake, you can't immediately see every zombie because a lot of rooms are dark. And the station being dark outside of certain central areas also has the advantage of adding to the atmosphere in a way that the original doesn't have, because almost everywhere is perfectly lit up.

The generation gap between 4 and 4R is smaller, but there's still the same throughline of executing classic ideas in modern ways. I think the best example of that in 4+R is in the part where you play as Ashley. In the original, you have to solve puzzles while evading cultists (or using lanterns to deal with them) and Armaduras (including QTEs to dodge some instant-kill attacks). Fairly basic stuff, having to focus on evasion because you have no weapon. The remake giving you the blue lantern, which had already been set up to be effective against Armaduras, as a way to defend yourself against them - but not a perfect one, often requiring you to run away and evade attacks - still forces you to get into Ashley's mindset, while actually making it engaging and even scary rather than just an obligation.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I could see both of them just fine. I don't know what you had your darkness level on, but I put my brightness up to about 75% and have my TV set to Game Mode. Well it can be too dark in some places, my main issue is that certain items or ammo pickups blend in with the background at times.

You can obviously set the brightness to when you can see everything just fine, but that just makes the screen super washed out and grey. I used the brightness indicators the game provided me, and which tell me when I have achieved the correct setting. If things are then still too dark then that's on the game. The game obviously wants to be dark and dreary, but it doesn't know how to do that without straight-up making things dark and hard to see. Capcom either didn't bother, or the RE engine isn't capable of having its lighting bounce around to grant volume to even the areas that aren't directly lit.

If this was just a survival horror game (like RE2 Remake) it wouldn't be as much an issue, but RE4 Remake is an action game, and the smudgey graphics and dark sections of many of the levels really don't work well for it. The Castle has some moments where enemies just flat-out vanish in the black background while you're in the middle of fighting them. The main hall of the Castle where you first meet Salazar, where he sets a bunch of priests on you, is a perfect example.

No coolness factor is loss, but a different kind of coolness.

RE4 is a game from 2005 that borrows heavily from cheesy machismo action movies from the 80s and 90s, so spectacle was to be expected. Plus, this was mid-to-late 2000s Capcom; any spectacle was to expected. While RE4R is a game from now that borrows heavily from early 2000s action movies (the good ones before Bourne Supremacy fucked everything up), that are more grounded/semi-grounded. Plus, there are things in the remake I find way more creepy and atmospheric than the original. Especially the cabin sequence. God damn, was I actually scared!

Sure, but that means something is still lost. And the way the remake frames certain monster introductions just isn't as visually interesting as it was in the original. And I wouldn't say OG RE4 borrows from 80's and 90's action movies, really just The Matrix. Capcom was quick to jump onto that even with Code Veronica. I'm not a big fan of what Shinji Mikami has made recently (if he even is making anything anymore), but the dude knew how to add strong and stylish action to the cinematics. The remake tries to go for a more subdued tone, due to its realism I guess, and that's fine, but I don't think it manages to have as much confidence in this tone as the original had with its.

And the only thing that really got me tense in the remake was the OST for the novistadors, but I still perfer the original track. And it's really the music in the OG RE4 to brought a sense of eeriness and foreboding. The music in the remake does very little to actually fill the space of the levels.

 

[BrawlMan]

You can obviously set the brightness to when you can see everything just fine, but that just makes the screen super washed out and grey.

Hence why I have my brightness set to about 70-75% and the TV set to game mode. Seriously, that really helps and prevents the screen from being washed out. I know everyone has different TVs, but most come with a game mode setting.

Capcom either didn't bother, or the RE engine isn't capable of having its lighting bounce around to grant volume to even the areas that aren't directly lit.

Which is weird, because DMC5 already solved this issue and Monster Hunter World & Rise from what I've seen.

The Castle has some moments where enemies just flat-out vanish in the black background while you're in the middle of fighting them. The main hall of the Castle where you first meet Salazar, where he sets a bunch of priests on you, is a perfect example.

I never had this issue. The enemies I could tell exactly where they were. Then again, I didn't use the default setting.

Sure, but that means something is still lost. And the way the remake frames certain monster introductions just isn't as visually interesting as it was in the original.

Highly debatable. Some are done better than others, and vice versa, but Remake has cool enemy introductions.

And I wouldn't say OG RE4 borrows from 80's and 90's action movies, really just The Matrix. Capcom was quick to jump onto that even with Code Veronica.

Oh yes it did borrow from 80s and 90s action movies! The tone is something you would see out of Commando (Krauser is basically a combination of Bennett and Jack Bauer) crossed with Evil Dead 2! I never said it didn't borrow from The Matrix, but so many game companies were copying that film in the late 90s and early 2000s, it was ridiculous. Capcom being one of the front runners. Look at DMC3. Capcom was stealing from Matrix, Equilibrium, and Drive (1997) throughout the 2000s.

I'm not a big fan of what Shinji Mikami has made recently (if he even is making anything anymore), but the dude knew how to add strong and stylish action to the cinematics.

There is truth to that, but he's not a good story teller. He just wanted to make cool monsters. He regrets RE4's story, and how he changed Leon and Ada. Leon pretty much became DMC1 Dante, and Ada might as well been a completely different character especially. She's Trish and a Bond girl. BTW, Shinji's retired now. It's part of the reason why he stepped down as director of Evil Within 2. Even he knew the first game was another RE4 hashed together. He left it to a new generation to try something different and better. They all succeeded.

The remake tries to go for a more subdued tone, due to its realism I guess, and that's fine, but I don't think it manages to have as much confidence in this tone as the original had with its.

Huge disagree. The remake struts plenty of confidence.

And the only thing that really got me tense in the remake was the OST for the novistadors, but I still perfer the original track. And it's really the music in the OG RE4 to brought a sense of eeriness and foreboding. The music in the remake does very little to actually fill the space of the levels.

Also a big disagreement there. The soundtrack in both are awesome, but I love the music in the remake even more! The Novistadors Remake music kept me on edge and still does every time I enter. My vibe is "get the fuck out of that ballroom now!". It's a good thing I had default pistol upgraded to near max on my first playthrough.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

6 and a half hours to beat Assisted on NG+. The Minimalist and Frugalist trophies were a pain. It's nice that you automatically regen a bare minimum of health but that's outside of battle. In battle at minimum health you can only take a couple of hits - even on Assisted, even with a full suit of body armor. I had to be way more careful playing on Assisted and going for Frugalist than I ever did on Standard. To boot I was only using the Red9 and Primal Knife, which fully upgraded are all you really need in Assisted NG+. Only the Regenerators made it unfun.

Saddler was another pain. I ended up saving before the fight and basically splitting the two trophies - first I just Infinite Rocket Launcher'd him to get Frugalist out of the way, next I fought him again with just the pistol for Minimalist while free to keep healing.

Now I'm poised for NG+ Pro with the infinite rocket launcher and like 90 health sprays stored away. No talking to the Merchant next.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

As for the argument about the Remake losing the tone of the original (which at this point I can't be bothered to quote any specific post on), my main counterargument is that trying to invoke the kind of 'B-movie' quality that the oldest Resident Evil games had on purpose is a recipe for disaster. Part of what makes them enjoyable now is knowing that they were trying hard to be like a serious Hollywood horror movie and missing the mark by a lot. When someone intentionally aims for 'so bad it's good', it's pretty easy to tell they're faking it, and that tends to make it even worse, other than to laugh at their attempts to invoke it.

Given that Resident Evil hasn't been B-movie tier at least since 7, which besides pulling back from action horror to survival horror also changed the tone of the series to match the high-budget horror movies of the 10s, I don't think it's fair to expect 4R to rewind when the previous two remakes didn't, and were both well received (one more than the other, admittedly). And while I know that a lot of people look down on modern high-budget cinema, I disagree that it's all inherently bad, and I disagree that the game shouldn't have gone for that. Especially since it did a lot better at being a modern high-budget action-horror flick than it would have done at being a mid-00s B-movie.

 

[BrawlMan]

As for the argument about the Remake losing the tone of the original (which at this point I can't be bothered to quote any specific post on), my main counterargument is that trying to invoke the kind of 'B-movie' quality that the oldest Resident Evil games had on purpose is a recipe for disaster. Part of what makes them enjoyable now is knowing that they were trying hard to be like a serious Hollywood horror movie and missing the mark by a lot. When someone intentionally aims for 'so bad it's good', it's pretty easy to tell they're faking it, and that tends to make it even worse, other than to laugh at their attempts to invoke it.

Given that Resident Evil hasn't been B-movie tier at least since 7, which besides pulling back from action horror to survival horror also changed the tone of the series to match the high-budget horror movies of the 10s, I don't think it's fair to expect 4R to rewind when the previous two remakes didn't, and were both well received (one more than the other, admittedly). And while I know that a lot of people look down on modern high-budget cinema, I disagree that it's all inherently bad, and I disagree that the game shouldn't have gone for that. Especially since it did a lot better at being a modern high-budget action-horror flick than it would have done at being a mid-00s B-movie.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! You, I, a few others on this thread, and most online YouTubers/reviewers seem to realize this. Max Dood, Pat, Woolie, Matt, and Suzie (Omega Sphere) appreciate the changes and weren't expecting every single thing to be the same nor 1-to-1 in the remake. They all know they have the original, if they want that cheese factor that badly. While we have nobodies like Electric Underground and ScorePN being assholes, because of the old "it's popular/new, now it sucks". Or you're "mindless sheep" for getting interested in anything new by Capcom. I am more so referring to ScorePN with that second sentence, and I suggest anyone stay clear from that asshole and don't follow him. The mother-fucker tried to encourage his audience to attack certain YouTubers (one of them being Omega Sphere) for the "crime" of being excited about RE VIII at the time, a few months before it came out. Calling them "fake fans". Thankfully, a majority of his followers weren't having it, and said no (In fact, no harassment occured thankfully on the three people he targeted)! It's one thing not to like something, but when a person goes out of their way to others for no reason other than to be petty. That is an instant, automatic, you're on my fuck you list.

 

[BrawlMan]

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[BrawlMan]

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[Johnny Novgorod]

 

[BrawlMan]

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/ResidentEvil4Remake

• Shown Their Work: Leon's weapon handling is top notch, showing realistic tactics that are used by professional police and military. The gun reloads are also handled properly.
  • Leon uses the CAR stance (Center Axis Relock) when he's at close range with enemies. The CAR stance provides numerous benefits, and is a good idea for close encounters. The 45 degree angle allows for quicker sight acquisition on targets, and allows for faster switching between targets. The 45 degree angle plus the cupping of both hands over the length of the handgun provides better recoil control. The extra tension put in the elbows plus the gun being pulled back towards the chest makes it harder for the enemy to wrestle the gun out of the shooter's hands. No stance is perfect, but it's a realistic technique for someone of Leon's training to actually be using.
  • During a partial reload, Leon will put the old magazine away, and then place the new one into the mag well of the handgun. Leon wouldn't dispose of a perfectly good magazine that still has ammo in it. This partial reload also reflects that there is still one bullet left in the chamber, so Leon has however many bullets are in the magazine plus one bullet extra in the chamber to fire. Sadly this +1 feature does not apply to other magazine fed weapons like the rifle or the submachine guns, which would allow for the same result.
  • The pump action shotgun does not have the pump pulled back during a partial reload, because that would simply extract the current shell loaded in the shotgun's chamber. Only when the shotgun is fully empty does Leon rack back the pump action, in order to load a shell contained inside the magazine tube.
  • The knife fighting between Krauser and Leon is handled much more realistically compared to the original fight. Attempts to stab are not unknown in a knife fight, but professionals prefer to use quick omni-directional slashes in order to hit as many vital points as possible to bleed the opponent out. The original fight relied too much on stabbing attempts and had their knives clash, which is remarkably rare for such a small target. Krauser did have ambush attacks from behind in the original, but most of his attacks were from the front. In the remake, Krauser is much more persistent about trying to maneuver around Leon to flank him on his more vulnerable side or back regions.
  • The Regeneradors' healing factor is treated with a little bit more realism (insofar as such a creature can be), since heat is factored into the equation. The exposed regeneration cores glow in the dark, suggesting that the Plagas cores are producing vast quantities of energy to enable the high speed regeneration. When the Regenerador regenerates a body part, huge amounts of steam pour out of the freshly grown limb, something that would only happen if the flesh was producing an enormous amount of heat. If hyper fast regeneration was ever a real thing, the heat produced by regenerated body would look very similar to what's presented in the game. On a physics level, the amount of energy needed to regrow a body part at those speeds would likely boil to such an extreme degree that the blood inside the person would expand and explode. This is to say nothing of the hyper fast blood pressure the Regenerador would be undergoing, because the new limbs would receive their nutrients from the blood carried through the body. The Regenerador exploding upon death is one of the most realistic depictions of what would happen to a fantasy healing factor. Where the Las Plagas gets the nutrients necessary to sustain this regeneration is another matter altogether, and that issue borders on magic.
  • When Saddler mind controls Ashley to use Leon's handgun on Leon, the gun jams. This is not plot armor, but a reasonable occurrence. note Guns are recoil operated, and use an internal spring mechanism to pull back the slide of the chamber, which then ejects the old round and then pushes forward a new round into the chamber. This kind of jam is to be expected when the ejection mechanism has worn out due to repeat firing, let alone if the gun has taken blunt force trauma. This jam can also happen if the shooter is "limp wristing it", meaning that they're not letting the recoil hit their hand properly. The entire point of the recoil spring is that the recoil felt by the explosion of gas from the bullet is supposed to hit the gun, so that the recoil can put pressure on the spring and cycle the action. If you don't hold the gun properly then the recoil doesn't hit the gun properly, and the already fired bullet gets jammed in the ejection port. In short, Ashley is an inexperienced shooter and her hand quite visibly wobbles around in fear; perfect conditions for a "limp-wristing" malfunction. Leon also checks the gun in textbook fashion when he gets it back.

 

[BrawlMan]

Currently on my 7th playthrough on RE4R; Chapter 7. First time on Professional NG+. So far, my playthrough has been great, and I only died once, because of a dumb move on my part. I am loving the Bolt Thrower right now. I already got it to max upgrade, and it is such an ammo saver. Do not sleep on this weapon. At least on a NG+ run, but it's useful, even on a new save file. On my 6th playthrough, I used the Red9 as main handgun. It's great, but the default pistol, SG-09 R, is way too good at max upgrades. 5x the critical hits is a god send, and one shot most early enemies; nearly making the first few chapters a near breeze. So SG-09 R sticks with me on Professional!

 

[NerfedFalcon]

On my 6th playthrough, I used the Red9 as main handgun. It's great, but the default pistol, SG-09 R, is way too good at max upgrades. 5x the critical hits is a god send, and one shot most early enemies; nearly making the first few chapters a near breeze. So SG-09 R sticks with me on Professional!

Normally I'm a Blacktail enjoyer but the SG-09R definitely sold itself to me early on with the laser sight. Not that I dislike the focus system, but the laser sight, cheap upgrades, and the surprisingly powerful unique make it a great investment with its own niche over the other handguns. Which is a great thing in both games, how all the different weapons give it so much replayability as you try different things out.

 

[BrawlMan]

TRUTH!

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[NerfedFalcon]

A thought just occurred to me and I wanted to write it down:

The original game's opening monologue is mainly an account of how the setting got from Resident Evil 3's state of affairs to 4's. After a zombie outbreak in Raccoon City was caused by Umbrella, the government destroyed the city and then the corporation responsible. Notably, Leon doesn't even mention that he was in Raccoon City at the time, and for someone with no prior knowledge it's easy to assume that he just remembers its destruction from a distance.

In the remake, his account is far more personal, talking about what he experienced in Raccoon City and afterwards. Umbrella doesn't rate a mention now that it's dead and gone, and Leon instead focuses on his subsequent experiences, throwing himself into his work even though he hates it because the alternative is worse. The more personal focus makes it easier to empathize with and support Leon even for people without prior knowledge of the series.

The change feeds into the rest of the story too, being a lot more character-driven than the original, where most of the events just happen. Making the story more complex and the characters more rounded is overall a great change in my opinion, and it all begins with the first spoken dialogue.

 

[BrawlMan]

Umbrella doesn't rate a mention now that it's dead and gone, and Leon instead focuses on his subsequent experiences, throwing himself into his work even though he hates it because the alternative is worse. The more personal focus makes it easier to empathize with and support Leon even for people without prior knowledge of the series.

Actually, Leon does mention Umbrella, and its bioweapons, but for the one sentence. You're right though, Remake Leon's monologue is much more personal, and the effects on his psyche.

 

[immortalfrieza]

I think the best example of that in 4+R is in the part where you play as Ashley. In the original, you have to solve puzzles while evading cultists (or using lanterns to deal with them)

I remember killing all the cultists in Ashley's section by throwing lamps at them and it was hilarious. I couldn't take those guys seriously again after that.

 

[BrawlMan]

Some parts of the original do have better aesthetics and styles. But character models do look a bit outdated in comparison

Leave it to Crowbcat to once again make a video more entertaining than the game itself.

Another thing: what does disappoint me is that Crowbcat would intentionally downplay the good or only put up bad examples of the remake. While at the same time artificially inflating the positives and down playing the negatives of the original. It's one thing to not like something, and it's another thing to manipulatively edit or intentionally leave out good examples. I know he shoots for comedy at times, but I don't like that type of crap. If that's all he's going to do from now on, then I might as well not bother with his content again. This is the last time I'll ever bother with the naysayers, because they don't matter much in the grand scheme of things. They want to live in a past that badly, then they can have it. It's a shallow way to live, but they have no one to blame anyone, but themselves.

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[NerfedFalcon]

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Side note on this one: To my knowledge, Skill Up has only ever *very* strongly recommended one other game, at least since he started using that format, and that was Elden Ring.

 

[BrawlMan]

Professional Mode has been beaten! That was tough, but was able to make it through with not too many deaths. The mine cart section kind of sucked on this difficulty and gave me the most trouble. I guess I will goof around with Mercenaries some more later on.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Side note on this one: To my knowledge, Skill Up has only ever *very* strongly recommended one other game, at least since he started using that format, and that was Elden Ring.

I made the comment on his channel about this, that funnily enough Resident Evil is Elden Ring backwards, and vice versa.

Another thing: what does disappoint me is that Crowbcat would intentionally downplay the good or only put up bad examples of the remake. While at the same time artificially inflating the positives and down playing the negatives of the original. It's one thing to not like something, in another to manipulatively edit or intentionally leave out good examples. I know he shoots for comedy at times, but I don't like that type of crap. If that's all he's going to do from now on, then I might as well not bother with his continent again. This is the last time I'll ever bother with the naysayers, because they don't matter much in the grand scheme of things. They want to live in a past that badly, then they can have it. It's a shallow way to live, but they have no one to blame anyone, but themselves.

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I did kinda raise an eyebrow that he chose this as his latest topic, considering how rarely he makes new videos. Maybe he was just one of those passionate/borderline obsessive fans of the original, but yeah I get what you mean with the cherry picking type of double standard being in bad taste.

Best comment from that rebuttal video -


Lenny 3 days ago
Bro, covering the last of us remake would have been the easiest slam dunk and he screwed it.