• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Resident Evil 4 aged like milk and plays like trash

.Pennywise

Member
To all the people saying that RE4 is perfect as it is and that it doesn't need a Remake at all, are you out of your mind? Or do you play with your ass?

So I was in the mood to do some gaming but didn't know what to play. For some reason I've started craving for some Resident Evil, and 4 came to mind, since I didn't play the game for a loong time and I'd figure it would be cool to do a replay just before the Remake to have it fresh in my mind.

OH MOTHER OF GOD THIS GAME AGED AWFULLY.

Seriously, I get some people are fans of the game and will defend it no matter what. In fact, I'm not in the "RE4 is not RE" crowd. I'm in the "RE4 was a fucking awesome game that revitalized an aging franchise and revolutionized the gaming industry", despite not being so horror and more action wise.

However, I'm not blind levels of fan like this game usually has. And this lets me see how poorly this game has aged.

First, Mouse+Keyboard? NOPE. You might be better at aiming with a mouse, but you woudn't be better at tank controls with it, where it doesn't matter where you point your camera, Leon will just walk straight wherever his character is looking to. So, controller it is, no biggy. Aiming is not that bad with a stick, obviously if you don't count how Leon Kennedy got so traumatized from Raccon City events that he started having Parkinson at a young age. He wouldn't let his aiming straight no matter how close the target it's to him, a highly trained special force dude that's in charge of a black ops to save President's daughter that cannot properly aim. But whatever.
Oh wait, I missed a shot due to Leon's parkinson and a bad dude is approaching to send me to a visit with God, better to back up while I shoot... But oh no wait! I cannot walk and shoot! I either walk or shoot, because, well, 2005, the technology just wasn't there.
Using the knife? Oof, I've felt like I was using the RE3 knife, point up/down and swing, your feet are now planted like a tree.

So yeah, all in all, pretty awful controls for a once great game, but not well enough for a 2022+ game.

Ok, controls aged bad, due to happen to almost every game the more time it passes, we get that. But, people saying it has the perfect pacing? WHHHAATT?

The game starts as a cool terror experience with slasher vibes. Village section, *cheff kiss*, top notch. After that? LOL. In my mind I thought the game was bad in the Island section, but I was wrong. Castle is already a Vampire Survivors levels of bullshit with swarms and swarms of dudes coming after you and Ashley's ass. The argument that the Island was absolutely necessary because at that point you're swimming in bullets and guns IS A PLAIN LIE. You're already motherfucking Rambo in the Castle. Dodging catapult rocks on fire like you're playing Age of Empires 2 and the game already becomes laughable, the campyness goes above and beyond and becomes a comedy musical.
Just in the Castle section the game absolutely shines in how the terror slasher you were playing a few hours ago becomes the worst side quest we all hate from any and every game: the escort mission. This game is literally an escort mission going after Ashley's ass. Everyone in the world would burn escort missions to the ground, but for some forbidden reason this game is the best in the world and it doesn't need a remake right? LOL. Seriously, with the awful controls and how you have to be after Ashley all the time, oh my.
Island... Well, at least this one a lot of people already hate. Rambodent Evil 4.

A side note on how every "puzzle" has been totally stripped apart from the RE tradition and it's just straightforward there for you, absolute no need for thinking. Same with documents, they just put the documents right in front of you, no need for exploration for story, we better hide some pesetas rather than cool lore stuff.

I'm just finalizing by saying that people saying this game has the perfect pacing is 101% wrong about it. Resident Evil 4 overstays its welcome waaaay too much.

Inventory tetris is cool tho.
 

Doom85

Member
Frustrated Whats Wrong With You GIF
 

lachesis

Member
I recently played from beginning to end 2 times on with HD Project. It was awesome to visit back, and the whole experience was just as good.
However, in the beginning, it did bother me to go back to older controller scheme, but I got quickly re-adjusted to it.
I do however have issues playing Wii version of the game though. Not liking the Wii controls & also it's really hard to look at due to such low res mess on modern HD display (playing via Wii U...)
 

Kacho

Member
I finished another playthrough on Switch and the only thing I can’t stand are the unforgiving QTEs. Other than that the gameplay holds up phenomenally.
 
My biggest issue is the camera. It just wants to snap back sooooooooooooo badly. Like trying to pick up a cat that doesn't want to be held, lol.

I get used to it as the game goes on but it's a really awful product of its time.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
the tank control aiming scheme works because it makes shooting and moving strategic. now you can't use both at the same time. you have to choose. that adds to the tension when swarms of enemies are slowly making their way to you to tear your insides out. Play Resident Evil Revelations for a minute and see how much less tension there is in the zombie/monster encounters. How much less you fear them. That's what moving and shooting does to a game. It's even the case with RE2 Remake, and i absolutely adore that game. less is more, sometimes.

as for the pacing.... i don't have any issue with it. The game transitions from the opening forest to the castle seamlessly, and the area with the lab and the regeneradors is fucking terrifying. the gameplay, weapon pacing and enemy pacing are all good as well, transitioning from just mobs of brainless ganados to parasite mutated abominations, though i wish Leon and Ashley suffered from the effects of the parasite more rather than just cutscenes. It's a great plot point and all but that gameplay possibility is just left in the dark.

the visuals are stellar for 2005 on 6th gen hardware and the game's cutscenes are fucking amazing for their time, plus the characters are all extremely memorable and funny, Leon with his one liners (ones he delivered against Salazar were absolutely brutal), ada being that sexy badass she is, Bitores Mendez strikes fear into the hearts of everyone who sees him (he twisted fucking steel door handles with EASE for fucks sake), and Luis Sera is an actual fucking chad, best character in the game, they should never have killed him MY BELOVED. I don't like how the soundtrack is all ambiance though, for being a much more action oriented game than the predecessors the soundtrack would actually fit in more with the classics
It's 17 years old game, of course it's gonna age Einstein.

That being said, it aged much better than 99% of games of the same era.
Nahhhhhhhhh
6th gen games all aged like fine wine. revisiting them in comparison to todays stuff just reminds me of how ahead of the time and phenomenal a lot of them are. unless youre talking about 7th gen which i also disagree on
I don't think games age personally, the experience never changed or got worse with time, you just played newer games which exposed the flaws of the current one you liked
 
Last edited:

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
the tank control aiming scheme works because it makes shooting and moving strategic. now you can't use both at the same time. you have to choose. that adds to the tension when swarms of enemies are slowly making their way to you to tear your insides out. Play Resident Evil Revelations for a minute and see how much less tension there is in the zombie/monster encounters. How much less you fear them. That's what moving and shooting does to a game. It's even the case with RE2 Remake, and i absolutely adore that game. less is more, sometimes.

as for the pacing.... i don't have any issue with it. The game transitions from the opening forest to the castle seamlessly, and the area with the lab and the regeneradors is fucking terrifying. the gameplay, weapon pacing and enemy pacing are all good as well, transitioning from just mobs of brainless ganados to parasite mutated abominations, though i wish Leon and Ashley suffered from the effects of the parasite more rather than just cutscenes. It's a great plot point and all but that gameplay possibility is just left in the dark.

the visuals are stellar for 2005 on 6th gen hardware and the game's cutscenes are fucking amazing for their time, plus the characters are all extremely memorable and funny, Leon with his one liners (ones he delivered against Salazar were absolutely brutal), ada being that sexy badass she is, Luis Sera is an actual fucking chad, best character in the game, they should never have killed him MY BELOVED. I don't like how the soundtrack is all ambiance though, for being a much more action oriented game than the predecessors the soundtrack would actually fit in more with the classics

Nahhhhhhhhh
6th gen games all aged like fine wine. revisiting them in comparison to todays stuff just reminds me of how ahead of the time and phenomenal a lot of them are. unless youre talking about 7th gen which i also disagree on
I don't think games age personally, the experience never changed or got worse with time, you just played newer games which exposed the flaws of the current one you liked
This.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Sometimes you just gotta get rowdy and dump on a classic.
I absolutely agree with this though, a lot of classic games have a giant cult status on this forum. The OP's take is shite IMO but i welcome it because it challenges people's perceptions and gets them to actually explain why they like a game. The fact the OP went out of their way to describe every single issue they had with the game is good tbh. There are quite a lot of classic games i would want to take a dump on myself
 
Last edited:

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
It has great controls for reasons mentioned. If you don't want to have to think/time when to press the trigger (I guess you also hate sniper sway in other games?) you can play the Wii version which maintains the rest of the controls but has no aim jitter with the pointer controls. That said it makes the game too easy. I choose the control scheme in any RE that allows for it, it feels like you're controlling a character rather than almost the same as any old floating camera FPS with some graphics ahead of it, badly animated at that since strafing all over the place just looks ridiculous and like torsos are detached from hips. The camera is just to slightly look at the sides, not to manipulate it around the character to look all over the place, you don't even have to use those controls and just play with the left stick alone, I don't see how that's problematic or why all games need to be the same 🤦‍♂️

Tank controls (as any fixed camera RE but with a nicer view since 4) are just FPS controls without strafing, I don't see how it's so hard to adjust for some folks. It's how Doom controlled in old system ports, with strafing on the shoulder buttons or whatever and yes it was finishable on Nightmare 🤷‍♂️
 
Last edited:

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
We need neogaf shit next to gold
So someone can give you the shit award.

Turn your avatar into shit and every video thumbnail on gaf just links to shit.
All the fonts will be brown and
If you refresh a page the website will fart.

jurassic park deal with it GIF


Sjieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet
 
I always thought of it as a just OK game, even back then. I much preferred REmake over it.

I tried to play the modded HD version but the game is literally uncontrollable for me. It requires total rewiring of the brain to get used to, which i'm not willing to do.
I know the feeling.

I hope you get the chance to play Goldeneye on an actual N64, lmao. It's almost unreal how wonky the controls are. Blows my mind that it feel so great back in the day.
 
No, he's right. This was my 3rd Playthrough in 7 years. The game does have trash controls and a pretty bad plot. The rest of the action is S-Tier. Its more fun if you just play it like a game and not take it seriously.
100% agree on the bad plot and am glad that Mikami acknowledged that it was kind of an afterthought. I hope Leon has a more well-rounded personality in the remake and the story incorporates prior plot points.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
I always thought it was funny to read reviews for RE4 and RE5, so many comments about the improved controls but yea, they are literally the same tank controls that were always there, just a different camera angle.
Pretty sure RE5 has strafing by default. If you chose and played it without with RE4 style controls I guess you also subconciously prefer it.
 

laynelane

Member
I recently played from beginning to end 2 times on with HD Project. It was awesome to visit back, and the whole experience was just as good.
However, in the beginning, it did bother me to go back to older controller scheme, but I got quickly re-adjusted to it.
I do however have issues playing Wii version of the game though. Not liking the Wii controls & also it's really hard to look at due to such low res mess on modern HD display (playing via Wii U...)

I've been replaying it too and Chapter 1 was not the smoothest experience lol. It felt like I could not move Leon well at all, but I adjusted from then on and it's been a great time going through the game again.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
On 360 not ps3 I own it on pc/360/ps3
Didn't know PS3 version was any different, that's weird, I had the PC port and instantly switched to RE4 scheme.

Damn that game looked SHARP back then and performed great. DMC4 & Lost Planet too. To a lesser extent Lost Planet 2. Their games had a special look and feel, it seems Capcom lost something in art/direction later and just became very similar to any other high end stuff.
 
Last edited:

Barakov

Member
To all the people saying that RE4 is perfect as it is and that it doesn't need a Remake at all, are you out of your mind? Or do you play with your ass?

So I was in the mood to do some gaming but didn't know what to play. For some reason I've started craving for some Resident Evil, and 4 came to mind, since I didn't play the game for a loong time and I'd figure it would be cool to do a replay just before the Remake to have it fresh in my mind.

OH MOTHER OF GOD THIS GAME AGED AWFULLY.

Seriously, I get some people are fans of the game and will defend it no matter what. In fact, I'm not in the "RE4 is not RE" crowd. I'm in the "RE4 was a fucking awesome game that revitalized an aging franchise and revolutionized the gaming industry", despite not being so horror and more action wise.

However, I'm not blind levels of fan like this game usually has. And this lets me see how poorly this game has aged.

First, Mouse+Keyboard? NOPE. You might be better at aiming with a mouse, but you woudn't be better at tank controls with it, where it doesn't matter where you point your camera, Leon will just walk straight wherever his character is looking to. So, controller it is, no biggy. Aiming is not that bad with a stick, obviously if you don't count how Leon Kennedy got so traumatized from Raccon City events that he started having Parkinson at a young age. He wouldn't let his aiming straight no matter how close the target it's to him, a highly trained special force dude that's in charge of a black ops to save President's daughter that cannot properly aim. But whatever.
Oh wait, I missed a shot due to Leon's parkinson and a bad dude is approaching to send me to a visit with God, better to back up while I shoot... But oh no wait! I cannot walk and shoot! I either walk or shoot, because, well, 2005, the technology just wasn't there.
Using the knife? Oof, I've felt like I was using the RE3 knife, point up/down and swing, your feet are now planted like a tree.

So yeah, all in all, pretty awful controls for a once great game, but not well enough for a 2022+ game.

Ok, controls aged bad, due to happen to almost every game the more time it passes, we get that. But, people saying it has the perfect pacing? WHHHAATT?

The game starts as a cool terror experience with slasher vibes. Village section, *cheff kiss*, top notch. After that? LOL. In my mind I thought the game was bad in the Island section, but I was wrong. Castle is already a Vampire Survivors levels of bullshit with swarms and swarms of dudes coming after you and Ashley's ass. The argument that the Island was absolutely necessary because at that point you're swimming in bullets and guns IS A PLAIN LIE. You're already motherfucking Rambo in the Castle. Dodging catapult rocks on fire like you're playing Age of Empires 2 and the game already becomes laughable, the campyness goes above and beyond and becomes a comedy musical.
Just in the Castle section the game absolutely shines in how the terror slasher you were playing a few hours ago becomes the worst side quest we all hate from any and every game: the escort mission. This game is literally an escort mission going after Ashley's ass. Everyone in the world would burn escort missions to the ground, but for some forbidden reason this game is the best in the world and it doesn't need a remake right? LOL. Seriously, with the awful controls and how you have to be after Ashley all the time, oh my.
Island... Well, at least this one a lot of people already hate. Rambodent Evil 4.

A side note on how every "puzzle" has been totally stripped apart from the RE tradition and it's just straightforward there for you, absolute no need for thinking. Same with documents, they just put the documents right in front of you, no need for exploration for story, we better hide some pesetas rather than cool lore stuff.

I'm just finalizing by saying that people saying this game has the perfect pacing is 101% wrong about it. Resident Evil 4 overstays its welcome waaaay too much.

Inventory tetris is cool tho.
Good thing they're remaking it, I guess.
 

nkarafo

Member
I know the feeling.

I hope you get the chance to play Goldeneye on an actual N64, lmao. It's almost unreal how wonky the controls are. Blows my mind that it feel so great back in the day.
Goldeneye controls fine though. All you have to do is to select 1.2 solitaire and hold the controller from the left side.
 

Reizo Ryuu

Member
Didn't know PS3 version was any different, that's weird,
It was the 360 version that was the different one, they changed the default to strafing because of gears.

I had the PC port and instantly switched to RE4 scheme. Damn that game looked SHARP back then and performed great.
Because it wasn't a port ;], it was the primary platform they developed for, the console version were ports (capcom started this approach with dead rising and their mtf engine, and still work this way)
 
Top Bottom