They say that you can't go home again, that you can never recreate a certain time and place and any attempts just tarnish the original experience. Well that seems to be the case for "Resident Evil 4 HD", a once great game that the past 11 years haven't been kind too.
So why don't we start with the good news, the story still holds up. For those who have been living under a rock it follows "Resident Evil 2" co-protagonist Leon Kennedy. Leon now a special government agent and is tasked with finding and bringing home the missing daughter of the President, seems they'd send a few more people then just one for a job like this but no matter. Anyway the Umbrella Corporation is no more, turning a whole city into zombies and then blowing it up tends to have a negative stock and legal consequences. Instead Leon runs into a cult names "Los Illuminados" whose members are infected with the "La Plagas" parasite. Sure its a form of zombie but one that is far quicker, smarter and more aggressive then before. From there it goes off onto the usual "Resident Evil" conspiracy path but still holds itself together. I don't want to give away any plot spoilers for those who are new but there are many twists and turns to be had before the end, including a few old faces returning. There are the ridiculous elements to be sure, the trench coated vendor being the most obvious example, and the story does go crazy at times but that's always been apart of this series and i dare say some of its charm.
Other bright spots include the environments, enemies and level design. Sure they're not the open world variety we're used to now but the game does a good job mixing it up between large, multi-tiered areas more compact and claustrophobic ones. You're also kept on your toes by QTE events that pop up from time to time. This series has always done a good job in changing up enemy types as you go and ramping up their difficulty as you progress and "Resident Evil 4" is no different. By the end you'll have fought quite the rogues gallery of enemies and that's always a good thing for a game. Not to mention you'll have felt like you've been on a journey as all the acts are different from one another, saving you from the sense of boredom that might set in. Sure there's some backtracking involved, this is a "Resident Evil" game after all, but this game is definitely geared more towards combat then exploration. It was a big change at the time to put the emphasis more on action then survival. looking back it was the wrong way to go for the franchise but in this case it works like a charm.
So what exactly is the problem with the game then? Well pretty much it all has to do with it being basically a port of a very good 2005 game that only the graphics were touched up on. It seems to me that if you're going to do a remaster that you have to do more then just a minor upgrade to the graphics. This series has already done an amazing job with the original "Resident Evil" remake by updating graphics, game play/control scheme and even adding entire areas to the classic mansion to make a more modern game that fans and newcomers could both enjoy. What we have here is none of that finesse. The environments, while varied, often feel empty and somewhat soulless. There's no real secrets to find as the whole game is fairly linear so you'd imagine the areas would be densely packed with stuff. That's not the case however as most places have a few crates or baskets to destroy but that's about it. That made sense with the limited power of the Gamecube but here in 2016 on modern consoles its very noticeable. The graphics too will leave you expecting much, much more. For an HD remake everything looks very muted and even gross at times. Textures look fuzzy and pixeleated even from a distance and the closer you get the worse it becomes. Everything also has a "blocky" problem as many of the character and weapon models seem to have sharper edges and corners then one would not expect to see nowadays, especially when looking at the hands and feet. This is an old problem developers were dealing with for a long time but seemed to have worked passed, which is why seeing it here was so glaring to see it now. I'm not saying rebuild the code from scratch but if you're offering an HD upgrade things have to look better then they do here. In fact no parts of this game jump really scream HD at all. I found myself more feeling like i was simply playing the Gamecube version on a new console, not at all what i was looking for.
All that could have been forgiven though until we get to the biggest issue with this game, the controls. Yup they pretty much took the exact control scheme from the original and left it on here without and updates or options to change it and said "good luck". Maybe I'm just bad at games all of a sudden but i could not re-wrap my brain around the old tank controls. Even the aiming system i remember so fondly back when i first played this at first release was serviceable but barely. The not being able to move while aiming may have added tension a decade ago but now it just adds frustration. Its basically just find a spot with as much distance as you can and aim for legs and heads til they get close and you have to move again. That and the fact you can't look around with the camera as its stuck just your front POV is also unforgivable in the modern gaming times. Again these are mechanics i didn't mind 11 years ago but now they sucked me right out of the game. Games like "Dead Space" used similar mechanics but they also adapted as time goes on. Maybe a new control scheme would have slightly broken the game and made it easier but frankly that would have been preferable to the mess it was to play now. I don't know how many times i died simply because the controls either seemed so obtuse or i had to actively remember in the moment how to do something, neither of which are feelings or thoughts you want to have for a game, especially an action one.
What a disappointment this game was. I remember playing the original on my Gamecube and imagining how if this was the future of gaming i was all in on it. However after playing this one i look back at my old self and wonder what the hell was i thinking? I suppose for the story if you haven't played "Resident Evil 4" give this one a try but if you have and are looking for a nostalgia trip just leave this one alone and stick to your memories.
**4/10 Stars**
Leave the past in the past
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