User Review : Resident Evil 4

Fear Reborn. Only not of in Game

Fear Reborn. Only not of in Game
When Capcom announced it was going to be bringing one of the most beloved games of all times back to life with a "fresh" HD remake fans of the series rejoiced. And when Capcom actually released said game, those same fans cringed at the game's "HD" remake. BEFORE YOU CONTINUE READING YOU NEED TO KNOW THAT I AM NOT REVIEWING THE BASE GAME. I AM REVIEWING THE HD REMAKE.

Graphics- 4/10

This is the biggest disappointment of the game. The "HD" revision is really quite sad. It's extremely difficult to describe how a game goes from being Standard Def to High Def, since most of us remember a game with better graphics than it actually had looking at an HD remake night not actually look any better. So for this review I'm just going to say the good and the bad. Most of the characters look good, and Leon actually has brown hair on the Island. This is where most of the HD went. However while the characters look relatively good the rest of the game still looks extremely out dated and poorly textured. The wooden stock on the guns is a combination of four or five square patches of different shades of brown. Guns are solid gray squares with different shades of gray to outline different pieces. But with no sharp and defining lines the guns mostly look like solid squares of a single color. Everyone's hands look like oven mitts. There's not sharp lines to define borders and the square pixels used to make objects bleed outside of the object and into the environment. There's screen tearing, texture pop in, and blurry images. As far as HD remakes goes this is relatively poor graphics wise. This fact is proven by Capcom skimping out on retexturing the cut scenes in Separate Ways. Capcom just copy and pasted the same cut scenes straight in this "HD" remake. These are in fact the same cut scenes from the original version, not updated, not retextured, and not recalibrated for a different aspect ration. Let me talk on that for a min. The game is set to a 20" aspect ration, always. I tried it on my 17", my 32", and my 55" tv and every time I started the game for the first time it was a 20" aspect ratio. This can be changed in the settings menu and stays that way, but when you change it, it stretches the Separate Ways cut scenes until they are unrecognizable blobs.

Sound 7/10

Lucky they didn't mess with the sound. All of it is the same as it was the first time around (Hear that George Lucas, not changing things is good.) I would have liked to see this game get put into surround sound so when your wearing gaming headsets you could listen for the enemies. My biggest complaint in this section is that there are no subtitles and no way to turn them on. I know some gamers like them on, some gamers like them off, but when the developers don't even give you a choice it angers me.

Story NA/10

I can't rate this as it didn't change from the base game, and as I said in the intro paragraph I'm not reviewing the base game. I'll just give a brief the story is good but a little cliche.

Game play 5/10

The game play hasn't changed much from the base version. They did add a new control scheme that makes the game play a little more like RES 5, a positive in my opinion. You would think that with the "update" they would up the Frame rate and stop the shuddering. But again, they just ported the game straight over. The Frames are still terrible, the controls are still stiff, and the game still has noticeable slow down and shuddering when to much stuff is happening on the screen. This is not good. The Xbox360 and PS3 are much more powerful than the Nintendo GC and the PS2 were. The HD remake shouldn't be having these problems. On the subject of the Base game I can't quite figure out what the Base version is. On the GC version you got tons of ammo but not enough money, and on the PS2 version you got tons of money but not enough ammo. However on the HD remake you didn't seem to get much of either. I liked this because it made the game much more of a survival horror rather than just a straight action game.

Online- 10/10

Ok, let's get this straight. I'm not giving this a 10/10 because it has a super awesome, COD killer, multiplayer mode. In fact the game doesn't even have a multiplayer component to it. It didn't in the base game and doesn't in the HD remake. What it does have is an online leader boards. This is a good way to include competitive multiplayer without needlessly adding a multiplayer.

Overall- 5.5/10

This "HD" remake is less of a remake more of just a straight port of a good game. It's really sad what happened to this game. Capcom took a good game with a good reputation and used that to make a quick buck selling a terrible port. At $20 I can't recommend this remake to anyone. For the PS+ people $10 is still a little more than it's worth but acceptable. The only saving grace of this HD remake is that it's Resident Evil 4. If it wasn't this HD remake would be unplayable. If you've never played RES 4 you owe it to yourself to play it, but only if you can find it for under $20.