Resident Evil 4 Remake is a great game. It's incredible just how much Capcom put their whole pussy into making this game be what it is and the fact that this can be in the same ballpark as the original is commendable in it's own right. It's fun, has some genuine surprises for people who have played the original to death, and still keeps enough about the gameplay of Re4 that I can feel comfortable saying that you could go with either version and get mostly the same experience.

However I don't think this game is necessary in anyway or a game that even should exist. The original Resident Evil 4 was a lightning in a bottle game. It was a mess of many development issues, years of failed prototypes(to the point that Devil May Cry spawned from the ashes of the versions of Re4), and was being tossed around by it's entire studio on what the game should even end up as. Despite all of that, it ended up being one of the most tightly designed, well balanced experiences a video game ever had and it permanently changed the landscape of the medium.

Resident Evil 4 could not be made again. All of it's qualities were a blend of 00's B-Movie edge, cathartic violent action, tight well balanced level design, a constant flow state with forward momentum always being preserved, and ridiculous out of nowhere breaks of the main gameplay loop.

I knew this game wouldn't be Resident Evil 4, the moment I met the merchant and the game alerted me to a quest were I had to backtrack and kill some rats in the area right before. I instantly picked up that this game could not have the gull to let the player leave it's tragically redesigned areas without you being suggested and pushed towards staring at the floor again to find fucking rats. All of it's "new" elements are unnecessary to the pure arcade fun of Resident Evil, and the few genuine improvements to gameplay like parrying are limited by a durability system that only serves to stop you from having too much fun or to be completely neglected when you upgrade and find other knives.

I don't even think this game is soulless. It would be disrespectful to the polish and effort that is on display for this game. It's just that it's Resident Evil 4 but with all of the rough edges sanded off. All of this effort went into remaking one of the most influential games of all time, that gets ported every single console generation. It's not like the original Re4 was stuck on the gamecube. Capcom has made sure that the original will live on. This also isn't me trying to take the game down or act like Capcom committed a betrayal, I already came to the fact that none of the remakes were going for anything that the originals had. I just felt that this was something necessary for me to get out there because it's an undeniable feeling I have with this game. I'm sure I'll come back to this later in my life and wonder why I ever thought what I thought. For now, this is what I have to say.

Atleast the Ashley redesign is cute.

feel like you either completely get what this game is going for when it opens up with an ariana song or you don’t and you hate it. it’s so light and airy and campy while still managing to be tense and cinematic and that feeling doesn’t stop till the credits roll with a monkees needledrop. whole thing is very of the mid 00s american horror film scene, most stuff from that era has this beautiful corporate gloss and sheen to it that just doesn’t exist in modern film much less so modern horror films. everything now has to be obliquely “about” something and has to be dark and depressing, they want you to feel clever about getting the twist ending. horror movies of the aughts were much less so trying to do anything like this, they were trying to be dynamic with the lens not the pen. and a lot of them managed to say something important about the times we were living in but you could also wholly enjoy them purely as campy escapism. think the quarry is much more so of that era of filmmaking than its creators probably want to admit, deeper themes exist here but it’s not at the forefront nor does the game ever try to make you feel smart for picking up on something like that.
idk played this every night with my boyfriend when I came home from work and for a solid week it has completely replaced tv as a medium in our house which is like unheard of. also was reading david kushner’s masters of doom book while playing this and that kind of just got into my head like the idea of being at the beginning of something not the end. I truly do think film has just been completely replaced with games and television, anyone who might have anything interesting to show or say is doing better work in mediums that are actually constantly progressing and moving forward and doing actually impressive things and not just regurgitating the same values in the same ways.
this whole thing probably comes across as more of an incoherent rant than anything else but I do just wholeheartedly love this and I think it’s coming from a very genuine and real place. this thing is just very impressive and dense I love it and I love CW shows lol