it's so funny to me that most people here complaining about RE4make's more serious cinematic tone and homogenization seem to like such gaming marvels as RE Village which was exactly the epitome of homogenization both in its tasteless presentation filled with RE4 pandering and its non-existent mechanical complexity. no proper inventory and resource management, absolutely braindead puzzles and combat - Village had it all, as well as a bunch of semi-interactive unskippable walking sequences.

and i honestly don't get the complaints about the lack of campiness here because, well, RE4 OG is one of the most widely available games today, you can get it on any platform you want and it's not going anywhere. it's not like Demon's Souls which is forever doomed to stay on PS3 while the ugly nextgen remake is probably the one Sony will port to next consoles and PC in the future. the tone of RE4make is more in continuity with RE2make which i don't mind even though it's definitely missing a lot of the OG charm. i miss the arcadey feel of the OG too especially because you don't see much of this stuff in games anymore but what Capcom accomplished here is still worth of praise in my opinion.

let's be real, RE4 didn't need a remake at all, this is probably the most pointless one they've done so far but i can't stress enough just how good it feels to play. it might lack the methodical and tactical feel of the original but instead just goes nuts with everything and cranks it up to 11, for better or worse. enemies throwing dynamite everywhere and blowing themselves up, Salvadore sawing up random villagers that get caught in their own bear traps - just pure chaos in every encounter while Leon is trying to stay alive parrying hatchets, ducking to avoid grabs and backflipping. overall there's a lot more interactivity in this sense, the only clunky part is actually at the beginning where a villager can grab you in a certain spot and a short cutscene is played where Salvadore destroys a part of the level. cool idea that feels too scripted and artificial. one time Salvadore actually was just behind me before the cutscene triggered and so it forced him to teleport which was pretty dumb. but then there's the farm where animals can interrupt enemies and knock them back, the canyon part with a bridge that's actually destructible now - all that stuff is just great and makes fights much more dynamic and distinct.

i also like how your resources here are much more scarce than the original and overall the game seems to lean more into the survival horror than pure action in this particular regard which plays nicely into the knife being more versatile and having durability to balance it out. i felt like i'm always on the edge because everything i did used up some sort of resource.

i would argue that many sections that they've redone are much better here like the minecart, the salazar fight etc. and honestly some streamlining here and there, some new puzzles and a couple old rooms mixed together into one encounter are welcome, i always felt like the pacing of the OG wasn't ideal and on replays especially i always found myself going "oh no, not this part". here i don't get that kind of feeling at all. every single encounter and boss fight is very memorable and enjoyable. also got some suprises for the OG fans - there was one particular bit in the later half where a certain item was placed in a completely different spot which made an already beatifully recreated sequence become much more tense.

as with RE2make, this new RE4 doesn't replace the OG and it doesn't need to - that's what is so great about both of them. my only criticisms are the camera which zooms in too much when aiming (weird that it's actually better in RE2make) and a very short walking sequence near the end which should've been just a skippable cutscene instead.

i certainly will miss the lasers but hey, at least the throne room is still here.

Perhaps I'm a little biased towards this remake considering the cut character interactions, a mediocre Alligator setpiece and Ada/Sherry segments but I'm just floored by how elegantly it mixes gameplay mechanics of REmake and RE4 to create such an intense survival horror experience.

Your knife is not only a very effective option for ammo conservation and dealing damage like in RE4, but also a defensive item like in REmake which gets balanced by making the knife breakable so you have to think wisely where and how to apply it.

Zombies are just as deadly and persistent as in REmake, taking huge amounts of resources to kill, but you can shoot off their arms so they can't grab you anymore or shoot off their legs to make them move much slower - locational damage options of RE4 get reinvented to suit a survival horror title. At the same time it streamlines some stuff that I didn't like about the older games in the series - the ability to split stacks of items and marking locked doors on the map showing you what key they require AFTER you've already interacted with them are welcome QoL additions that make perfect sense and don't trivialize the experience.

Even the movement limitations of tank controls are still kind of there because Leon and Claire have a certain weight to them and aren't the most responsive protagonists to control. Also if you completely stop moving while aiming, it allows you to focus your shot for more damage/crit chance. It's genius.

My biggest gripe is pretty much the same as with the original. Even though the original game did a better job of implementing A/B scenarios thanks to the zapping system, I'm still not a fan of the concept. It just feels dissatisfying to beat the game with one character and get an incomplete ending. I heard that initially the RE2make devs didn't want to make A/B scenarios in the first place and honestly I would've liked to see how that would turn out - maybe something closer to RE1's character select.

Also, the beginning of the G2 fight sucks.

Still amazed at how they marketed the game featuring Mick Gordon on the OST and then the Soundtrack Vol. 1 officially comes out on streaming platforms not having a single track by Mick Gordon. But it has a lot of music made by Geoffplaysguitar - you know, the youtube guy who does covers in the style of Mick Gordon? 200 IQ move right here.

I'm not saying that Mick didn't work on the game but it seems as though he's done maybe 2 tracks in total. The genius of it is, if you don't know beforehand, you probably will believe that Mick wrote all the songs and remixes in this game, just because Geoff did a really good job. That Ezhiha boss fight theme? Yeah, it was him, not Mick Gordon.

As for the game itself, it's bad. Don't let the first 20 minutes of walking around in the beautiful and detailed enviroments trick you - it's as generic and hollow as the main protagonist's design. Perhaps the tall robot ladies and horny fridges are here just to distract you from paying attention like it was in RE Village. No one's gonna notice that the level design is bad, the combat lacks depth and the inventory management is non-existent if we put a giant woman in our game, right?