A near perfect update of the original Resident Evil 4, and I must say I enjoyed playing this one a bit more. It looks gorgeous, runs flawlessly, and the narrative is more compelling here. It retains some of the weirdness of the original while making it a fresh and more cohesive gameplay experience.

While combat is really fun, I was left missing a true dodge option for controlling Leon. Quick movement and trying to escape close encounter combat got too janky at times without an option that wasn’t context sensitive. This and some pretty hard difficulty spikes in Normal difficulty (which involve having to care for Ashley, though her improved AI makes her an enjoyable companion this time around) are my only gripes with the game.

I very much enjoyed the twists added in there for returning players of the original, and the overall expansion of character moments and stories. The side objectives that are scattered throughout the game are solid enough to offer more game-time for players looking to stretch their campaigns, or gather more resources in higher difficulties, but stay non-essential and unintrusive for the players who would rather mainline the story.

Best Resident Evil release since RE2 Remake.