It might sound strange to say but I think that the Resident Evil 2 RE2make actually felt more true to the original the the Resident Evil 4 REmake does. Part of this is, amusingly, that the RE4make feels like a much more natural followup to the RE2make than the original RE4 did to RE2. This starts with the new intro, which acts as a much more reasonable bridge between the two games than the original did, but continues with RE4make’s darker, somewhat more serious atmosphere. But a large part of this is also that, while RE2make took in elements from across the series to construct something that captures Resident Evil as a whole, RE4make feels much more directly influenced by the modern action game milieu than RE4 is the grandfather of. Parrying, stealth, silent takedowns, crafting, sidequests—RE4 has elements of or precursors to all of these things, but RE4make’s versions of these systems would slot neatly into any pretty much any current high-budget action game. Don’t get me wrong, these are very polished, work well and mostly work very well with RE4’s existing systems, it’s just it can feel disappointingly generic at times, especially diving into menus for the crafting systems (and the treasure system is kind of annoying) or equipping trinkets for dull little incremental bonuses.
The basic plot has not been changed much, less than RE2make’s was I would say, and keeps the B-movie charm while taking the characters more seriously and pushing aside the very post-9/11 America, world police angle. Ashley and Krauser stand out as the biggest improvements. The former acts less like a teenager and is made into a genuinely fun character (her enthusiasm in the shooting range minigame is great), and Krauser is much better integrated into the overall plot and pacing of the game instead of just showing up out of nowhere towards the end, and his awful QTE cutscene boss fight is instead turned into a really great test of the player’s mastery of parrying.
I am not as fond of RE4make extending its attempts to make the plot make more sense extend to the merchant, though. He is (they are?) intriguing as a character in the original in so far as he is a gameplay contrivance that makes no real attempt to justify itself. He is just this weird bog pervert who buys treasures off you and upgrades your guns. RE4make attempts to justify him as an agent actively working against Los Iluminados, cheering you on and giving side quests to clear up various messes made by the cult. This really just raises more questions than it answers, none of which are ever going to have sensible or satisfactory answers. Ada’s new voice direction is also quite jarring.
The game suggested that fans of the original play hardcore mode and I obliged, but I think I might have actually preferred a lower difficultly. It’s a tough game and often much more hectic and reactive than the original. Enemies are more complex and more unrelenting than the original and it feels like different types of enemies with their own concerns and mitigation strategies are thrown at you together earlier and more frequently. While combat in the original was often about careful positioning and crowd management, the RE4make was much more often pushing me into panicked, reactive, survival mode. That is to its credit, it’s in many ways more of a horror experience, but the fear of dying is blunted quite a lot by actually dying over and over again.
