Resident Evil 4: The 2005 classic enhanced with the fan-made HD Project feels like a fresh release and almost makes me miss tank controls. I've played RE4 multiple times over the years (and chances are you have, too), but this time around I actually had a few firsts: trying it with KB+M, playing through Professional difficulty, and checking out the impressive RE4 HD Project. This game has been talked about to death (and back to life, now, with the Remake), so I'll keep to these few new things for me.

My 4.5 stars is an overall rating for the game, not necessarily these new things. If you haven't played Resident Evil 4, my review won't be very insightful, so I'll just say this now: this game is simply a must play. RE4 leaves a lasting imprint on everyone who plays it and it is truly a special, monumental moment in gaming.

KB+M: I tried playing with a controller first but ran into some input issues that I believe may've been caused by the HD Project, though I'm not certain of the cause. Regardless, when I switched over to KB+M, I was pretty shocked at how natural it felt. I'd simply always known the game with a controller ever since playing it on a PS2 seventeen or so years ago, but the aiming is undeniably better with a mouse.
With a controller, it's harder to look around your environment as the camera's adjustments are locked in where they can go. You can snap to your left and to your right and that's pretty much it: jerky, limited movements. Useful in emergencies where you need to know if you're being surrounded, but it's not precise and almost useless for actually looking around to take the world in.
With the mouse, you can look around in a more natural manner and compensate for Leon's shaky aim with ease. The keyboard controls are not a big shift from over a controller, either, as the game has very simple inputs. The only downside is you may find managing your inventory easier with a controller as opposed to a keyboard: rotating items is more natural fit with bumpers than with Del/Ins/PgUp/PgDn. Not a huge downer, but it's noticeable. I still recommend the swap for the far superior mouse experience.


Professional Difficulty: I see why this is locked behind beating the game first on Normal. It's painful and, frankly, absurd most of the time. Ashley will be dying in one hit often and you'll be lucky to survive two (before any health upgrades). Enemies hit like a truck from the get-go and even as you upgrade your health, you won't ever become a tank. You won't be hurting for ammo, strangely enough, there's plenty if your aim is decent and you know how to down enemies then finish them with the knife. I naturally conserve in games like this as much as possible and hate the feeling of knowing I could have done something smoother and with less waste, it almost always leads to the temptation of trying it again.
On Professional, it makes sense to do that because of the scarcity of healing items more than anything. If you get hit by some jagoff with an axe, not even a heavy hitter but just a normal guy in an otherwise clean run, the herb usage will feel foolish here. Nobody's going to do it for you, bud: you've gotta make yourself git gud. This creates a pretty poor sense of pacing for the game as it wasn't necessarily built around this difficulty, again it's why it's not even available at first; but for your Nth playthrough, this added tension creates an entirely different, likable (except the Krauser fight, that's just bullshit), masochistic structure. When a game you've already played before has you panicking at the crowds, checking windows for ladders like a madman, and thanking the Grenade Gods after a successful, life-saving, Ganado-clearing toss? It's instant replay value. Prepare to become Leon: The Professional.

RE4 HD Project: Breathing new life into the game, the RE4 HD Project is something I can highly recommend. The size of this thing is nuts and you'll have to download it in 18+ parts (unless you pay for Mega like some psycho), so it's not the fastest thing in the world to acquire, but once you've got it it's an easy install process and you're off. Your eyes will now see Resident Evil 4 how your brain remembered it way back in the day: the whole game gets a fresh coat of paint and every texture will feel crisp.
When you boot this up you should see some text in the upper left corner of your monitor saying 'Press F1 for settings.' Go ahead and do that so you can do what you've likely wanted to for years: widen the FOV. With the high def and vibrant textures you can now easily see thanks to the enhanced range of vision, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it'll look like a recently released game. We've all heard “old is gold” and while gold may never rust, it could do with a polishing. The gameplay has held up on its own just fine, but graphics age. Even the indestructible meme of Crysis got a remaster.
Also, something that's nice and worth mentioning: you don't need to “start over” at all. When I booted up the HD Project for the first time with Steam bringing my saved games from Cloud storage, I was able to boot right up into Professional because I had beaten it years prior. So if you're worried about your previous saves not working with the HD Project, I can confirm they carry over just fine.
The only gripes I can think of with the HD Project: some characters have a bit of a “thing” going on with their eyes. Most notably a couple cutscene Ganados, Hunnigan, and Saddler. Their eyes are open a bit too wide, definitely wider than the original had them, and with the sharper resolution it just has them looking strange. Admittedly, this may actually help Saddler's character as he looks even creepier. Also, the semi-auto rifle reload is for some reason only like 8 frames, making each reload with it a visually jarring moment. Like the keyboard's inventory controls, these aren't game-breaking, but they're there.

Resident Evil 4 isn't perfect: every single quick-time event, be it flashed at you milliseconds before impact during a fight or for some insane reason during the cutscenes, sucks; you're at the game's mercy of whether or not a 'dodge' is even offered, and again, it's a QTE; the inventory system could be so much better with minor QoL improvements (I know the Remake addresses this); the difficulty curve could be more finely tuned and the game ends weaker than it starts; Ashley is written in such a way that eventually you'll hope your rescue ends in failure. Yet all these years later, I truly think this game is incredible. Play through it again with the HD Project for a fresher experience and you're bound to have a blast!

i could go on for hours about why i think the older animal crossing style is more interesting and unique.
the original animal crossing and wild world are all about making the best of a shit situation, savoring what precious time you have since no one/no thing waits for you. not the shops, not the people, you arent the center of your own world, you arent this omnipotent mayoral god like all the newer games try to push so hard. the game starts of literally putting you in debt and forcing you to work it off showing life can be hard and unfair, sometimes all you can do is grit your teeth and push onward until later, you can finally enjoy the payoffs, all the work you put in making it all the more satisfying. You also learn to enjoy your free time and the little things more like doing some light fishing or gardening listening to the somber soundtrack. the villagers being rude is also a huge contributing factor to why i love it too because fun fact, not everyone in life is nice/ black and white fitting into one archetype. not every villager needs to be cycled out for the perfect village comp people seem so hinged on nowadays spending real money to buy their perfect lineup. it also makes you learn to appreciate the nicer people more. animal crossing and its sequel wild world are some of the best most accurate portrayals of modern every day life, that no other title has really seemed to grasp in quite the same way, new animal crossing is all about you being the center of attention, nothing happens or moves unless you directly do it. in the new game villagers cant even move in unless you delegate and build theiur houses. old animal crossing villagers would move in and out however they pleased "i like this spot so i wanna live here, this isnt your island or life to dictate"

NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE ORIGINAL WII GAME. This is a terrible demake of the original No More Heroes, which is a masterpiece. With the original version being ported onto Switch and PC in recent years, there are finally more suitable versions for people that simply want to play the game with traditional controls. Below is my handy list on why this awful, janky, glitchy, ugly port is one to avoid.

Reasons why Heroes' Paradise is dogshit;
-Nobody at GhM worked on it
-Horribly ugly texture replacements on literally everything, most character models look like laminated turds
-The blood effect when killing enemies looks particularly awful. Instead of the spraying liquid effect from the Wii version, it looks like PNG files falling out of their bodies
-Terrible sound design (fucking with Fukuda's sound design should be considered an act of treason on humanity)
-Horrible framerate, it's like 20 with constant dips (original game had unlocked framerate that would sometimes be 60, Switch and PC have much more stable 60 fps consistency)
-Gameplay is literally slower, and has asinine mechanics added to make it drag even more
-The extra bosses are just poorly programmed NMH2 bosses
-The premium they put on "QOL" changes go so far as lopping off like a quarter of the Santa Destroy map
-There's stupid-ass glitches, most notable one is how the execution move likes to randomly miss
-All the extra DLC stuff is cosmetic junk, most that will probably get modded into the PC version

Please don't allow newcomers to play this version with PS3's horrible loading times.

A game I know isn't perfect, but I don't care. It's perfect in my eyes. No More Heroes is a great hack-n-slash game with gratifying visuals, visceral combat, and a supremely interesting story that has a lot for both people that want a fun, simple adventure, and people that want a deep, profound narrative.

The game has a lot to say about how witnessing death can change you as a person, and it's firstly disguised as a goofy action game. This and the director's previous game "killer7" heavily influenced me as a teenager and what I look for in a video game's story.

The Wii version is the most authentic experience, but the Switch version is mostly competent while sporting a better framerate. PC version is very rough and doesn't even include kb+m controls.