in many ways this is a true representation of modern spongebob: self indulgent and constantly referential towards “the good stuff” taken from over twenty years old media. it clearly cannot stand on its own two legs without the original show and indeed the original game to lean on either shoulder, stealing jokes from one and direct gameplay and assets from the other without putting forth much effort to create anything itself. what new ideas do exist are half baked at best and buggy at worst, like the karate kick that can either speed up platforming or throw you down an invisible pit despite its fully automated nature. much like the show, again, this game does not understand when to stop with the obnoxiously exaggerated animations or incessantly droll if not purely regurgitated dialogue. i’ll relay to you now what this game took several hours to relay to me: just watch the first three seasons and movie of the show, and replay battle for bikini bottom (the original, not the watered down, over saturated garbage this studio tried to peddle.) tom kenny is so fucking old now

it is with a heavy heart i report that this resident evil game fucking sucks but after the absolute wildfire that was Resident Evil 2 (2019) i cant blame them for trying to follow up on it. this game does the bare minimum to evolve the gameplay and even then what it adds is pointless (the dodge and mashing during grabs that do nothing) and everything else is reduced (Nemesis never appears dynamically despite that being his whole gimmick and RE2 already having AI for it, levels are barely interconnected and instead more linear and with two or three times as many zombies as the previous game, etc.) i hesitate to say this is all the work of “the b team” since thats not how that works but nevertheless, i can understand where the sentiment comes from. a very halfhearted game coming off the heels of one of the best games of all time. jill valentine is so fucking hot though

this game is a time machine of 2008 video game newgrounds parodies and gaming culture at large that i honestly greatly appreciate. god talking about beating oblivion and guitar hero spoofs bring me to a simpler time when the simpsons was cute and not a cruel reminder of father time’s iron grasp on our lives and culture, and going through it again was a pleasant romp. play it with a friend that remembers the feeling and enjoy how quaint it is when lisa says shit like “i cant wait for the xbox 720 to come out”

its better than the zeebo port, i guess.

this remake is an exercise in futility. almost everything new is bad and everything good about it is from a 20 year old game that remains superior to this. part of what made the original special is that it was isolated from the rest of the franchise, and in every sense of the word this remake's number one priority is to homogenize it with everything else while still being "resident evil 4" in the most half-hearted, pathetic way possible.

the tone of this game wants so desperately to be melodramatic and self-serious in line with the other remakes but understands that it loses all appeal if it doesnt still portray RE4-isms, so in one scene nu-leon will say "Fuck... this has to be different... shit..." and in the very next he'll do The Bingo Line or go "Whoopsy daisy, looks like I just kicked you in the head" a million times during combat because otherwise it won't get a 4.6 average on Backloggd. it wants to be new but feels to obligated to be old because it is literally a remake so the entire thing feels wholly disingenuous.

resident evil 4 was also an action game and the modern RE remakes are more of an exercise in frustration than anything, so nu-4 tries to mix both worlds without really having the engine to back it up. the amount of times leon would be stunlocked by an enemy breathing on him is enough to make a man insane, and the enemy states in this game are also much more vague than the original. the idea is that if you should them in the head or leg you can perform a melee, but sometimes enemies just wont be affected by these things at all and the player is left entirely out of control.

there are plenty of new additions that fans of a PS2 action game are sure to love also, such as
- Cut content sold later as DLC
- Weapon degredation, and speaking of which
- Stealth Kills (who asked for this)
- Parries (but dont use them, because your knife will break. also the game makes it super unclear what you can and cannot parry besides having a brief parry prompt in the corner, so its as if the game still has quick time events)
- That thing where instead of mashing to get out of grabs, you just stab them. This is really pointless since it also breaks your knife but enemies grab you so much more here that fuck it, you can have my knife
- Iconic new Side Quests such as "kill 3 rats" and "kill 3 snakes"
- Unlockable charms that give wonderful bonuses like 5% higher chance of enemies dropping green herbs or shotgun bullets
- A crouch button(??)
- A new enemy thats practically the same as Salvador but more frequent and nearly unstaggerable so hes really just an ammo toll, thanks

this game is just so phony in so many ways. lots of little things are worse. the regenerator music is louder and they become a standard enemy instead of having their own special moments. characters talk more and have less to say. arguably every single boss encounter is more "cinematic" instead of being dynamic, like Mendez hiding in the background to pick up big red barrels for you to shoot instead of just being a boss fight. the game in general is more cinematic and even has one of those fucking sequences where you just hold up on the left stick while a psuedo-cutscene plays. in MY resident evil 4

i fail to see any way that this remake is trying to do anything besides rewrite history, let alone one of the most historically significant games ever made. i shudder to think of the amount of people who will say "resident evil 4" in reference to this and this alone. it does wimpily try to emulate the original, so it can still have its moments, but otherwise adds positively nothing to the industry and has effectively only harmed the reputation of the 2005 game. im glad people love it as much as they do, and i wish so dearly that they would be inspired to see what the original is all about too, but chances of that are low. this is new, and thats old. morir es vivir, morir es vivir