The video games industry's obsession with remakes and remasters is pretty obnoxious. I feel like I'm stuck either playing no new games at all, or playing nothing but games that I played 20 years ago. Of all the remakes that have been made, Resident Evil 4 might be the most unnecessary. Resident Evil 4 is basically the game on which every modern over-the-shoulder shooter is based. The original Resident Evil 4 still plays like a modern game. On top of that, it's been remastered and ported to newer consoles, including having VR versions.

But I never played the VR version. In fact, I haven't played any of the VR versions for the new line of Resident Evil games. I keep hearing that they're some of the best VR experiences on the market today, but I didn't have a VR headset when 7 or Village released, and I just haven't gotten around to going back and replaying those games now that I have a headset. So I decided to give the VR version of RE4's remake a try, after a friend of mine was done with his disc.

So this review is going to be almost entirely a review of the VR version of the remake, since that's how I played the game.

Slower, and more methodical than I remember

I never liked Resident Evil 4. It's frantic, explicitly challenging gameplay full of "gotcha!" encounters, and its parodic tone never really gelled with me. Moreover, I've always blamed Resident Evil 4 for single-handedly killing the classic survival horror genre, which happens to be one of my favorite game genres. It took well over a decade for proper survival horror games to start coming back, but even so, they still aren't quite the same. The slow, methodical pace, and emphasis on resource-management and logistics has been minimized in favor of fast-paced shooter action and frequent checkpointing.

I went in expecting to be overwhelmed and frustrated, which was largely my experience in the original game. I expected that the frantic nature of the game, and all the running around would quickly make me dizzy or nauseous in VR. I honestly did not expect that I would get through the first few chapters before giving up due to the game being annoyingly difficult to the point that it would make me literally sick.

Areas that gave me a lot of trouble in the original game were much easier this time around.

Much to my surprise, that was not the case! I was really enjoying the opening hours of the game. I even starting to wonder why I ever hated Resident Evil 4 to begin with. The VR visuals look good. It was controlling well. I felt in control of the character, and perfectly able to handle the threats the game was throwing at me. It initially felt much easier than I remembered the original being. I breezed through parts of the early game that I remembered struggling with for hours in the original.

Village seems to be positioning itself as a sort of "greatest hits" of earlier Resident Evil games. I'm not sure it all comes together as well as Capcom must have hoped it would. Resident Evil VII Biohazard did an excellent job of modernizing the design philosophies of the original Resident Evil game. Map design, inventory and resource constraints, and the "fight or flight" nature of enemy encounters all perfectly re-captured the feel of the original PS1 classics, without all of the clunkiness.

Village maintains the exploratory map design of the original Resident Evil and of Resident Evil VII, but it also tries to port concepts and aesthetics from the Resident Evil 2 remake and from Resident Evil 4. The RE2 stuff fits well enough, but the RE4 influences just don't feel compatible with classic design philosophy.

The setting instantly reminded me of Resident Evil 4.

Clash of philosophies

Right off the bat, the general aesthetic screams "Resident Evil 4". The game begins in a small, rustic, eastern European village at the foot of a gothic castle. Just like in RE4, you're quickly ambushed by the monstrous villagers and have to desperately fight your way out. Resident Evil 4 replaced the traditional zombies of the series with semi-aware "ganados"; Village similarly breaks away from the traditional zombies, but this time, the monsters are werewolves.

Not long into the game, you'll start smashing crates to reveal hidden loot, and pixel-hunting along the walls and ceilings for obnoxious sparkling gems to shoot down and collect. Also just like in Resident Evil 4, you'll routinely get rewards of items and money from defeated enemies. That money and loot is used to buy items or upgrade your equipment at a shop, just like in Resident Evil 4. This is where the game started to break down for me.

Loot, ammo, and cash can be recovered from smashed crates or defeated enemies.

Giving the player rewards of in-game cash for defeating foes (and for wasting bullets to shoot glowing gems off of walls) completely changes the motivations of the player in how we deal with enemies. I'm no longer carefully considering whether to try to sneak past an enemy or run away, nor am I ever firing off a single round at an enemy's knee to stun or cripple it so I can get away without consuming more resources, the way I might in REmake2. Since every defeated foe returns some of the resources that I invest into killing it, there is no "fight or flight"; only "fight". The enemies stop being threatening or frightening, especially on the standard difficulty setting, in which ammunition is readily available and the monsters patiently await their turns to charge and attack.

Even inventory management is mostly thoughtless. The more linear, more action-oriented, and less puzzle-oriented design of the game means that key items and treasures are not put in your limited inventory, and there isn't even a storage box to keep excess weapons or supplies. Only weapons, ammo, and healing items go into your briefcase. Everything else has unlimited storage. Even crafting components have separate, unlimited storage (the only exception being the animals meats needed for the Duke to cook meals -- more on this later).

I played the demo of Nemesis that came packaged
with Dino Crisis, but never played the full game.

Right off the bat, I have to say that Resident Evil 3: Nemesis was never my favorite Resident Evil game. In fact, I never even played the whole thing. I played the demo that was included with Dino Crisis (back in the day when game publishers released playable demos before a game even came out). The original Nemesis erred more on the side of fast-paced action, which just doesn't appeal to me as much as the slower, more thoughtful design philosophy of the original Resident Evil, along with Silent Hill and Dino Crisis. This is why I love the original RE and its GameCube remake, why Resident Evil 4 rubbed me the wrong way, and why I never really got into the rest of the Resident Evil franchise beyond the first game. I tried playing all of the Resident Evil games up through 5, but the only one that came close to holding a candle to the masterful original was 2.

So even though I was excited to play Capcom's remake of the PS1 classic, I went in with tempered expectations. If they stayed true to the original, then RE3make (or whatever we're calling it) would be far more high-octane and action-heavy than the Resident Evil 2 remake that was released a mere year ago. As such, I expected that I just wouldn't be quite as into RE3make as I was into Resident Evil 7 or RE2make. I could only hope that it hit some happy medium between RE2make and Resident Evil 4. But that's really just personal preference on my part. Your tastes may vary.

So now that you hopefully understand where I'm coming from, what do I actually think of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis in 2020? Did Capcom learn any lessons from the few mistakes that were made with RE2make?

Resident Evil 3 is more reliant on spectacle action set pieces than on slowly building atmospheric tension.

The different nature of "Hardcore" mode

If you remember my review of Resident Evil 2 remake (and my lengthy YouTube critique), then you know that one of my core issues with that game was the fact that Capcom locked the Ink Ribbon save system behind that game's hard difficulty. Resident Evil 7 actually had the same problem, but it didn't bother me in that game because RE7 wasn't a remake of a game that included Ink Ribbon saves as a core component of its design.

In summary, the hard mode made death come much swifter in RE2make. Resource-management wasn't as important as skillful aiming and shooting. Instead of taking a bite or two here and there and having to decide when to fill your scant inventory with a healing item just in case (in the original Resident Evil games), RE2make's hardcore mode made you have to heal pretty much every time you took damage because you couldn't survive a second hit. This low tolerance for mistakes and strict punishment for death felt considerably less fair for someone in a first-time playthrough.

The fact that your knife could break and you could literally be stuck with a save file in which you have zero damage-dealing potential certainly didn't help the feeling of fairness in my book.

My recommendation was for Capcom to separate the hard difficulty setting and the hardcore save system into two options. You should be able to chose whether you want to use Ink Ribbons, and then you should also be able to chose whether you want to play the game on easy, normal, or hard difficulties.

Typewriters are still here, but Ink Ribbons are completely absent.

Instead, Capcom opted to just remove Ink Ribbons for its Nemesis remake. Entirely. They are not locked behind hardcore mode. They are not locked behind New Game Plus. Typewriters are still here, but Ink Ribbons are not in the game at all.

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Devil May Cry 5 is a lot to take in. It's a very weird game, that may be a bit overly-complicated, and which might be starting to suffer from a degree of "Kingdom Hearts syndrome".

It's a tough game to review. The core gameplay if fantastic, but almost all of the supporting features and production surrounding the gameplay is ... "odd" if we're being generous; or "bafflingly stupid" if we want to be overly critical. As such, this review is going to come off as unduly negative because I have a laundry list of complaints and "what the fuck?"s to go through. Long story short, the game plays very well. It's peak Devil May Cry and a satisfactory follow-up to Devil May Cry 4. Now read on gor all the weird shit.

Who are these new characters? What is their relationship? The game doesn't allow us to get to know them at all before throwing us into the action. In the case of V, we're given control without any real clue who he is, where he comes from, why he has monsters from the first game as magical animal sidekicks, what his relationship with Nero is... anything. The non-linear mission and story progression seems designed for no other purpose than to hold back information for a "surprise twist" that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

By the fourth mission or so, I was betting that V turns out to be Vergil, back from the dead ... again. Was I right? Is the story that predictable?

Tutorializing multiple characters means the training wheels stay on for a long time.

The fact that the game has to re-tutorialize a new character only four missions in (and then again a few missions later) means that the training wheels stay on for a long time. It feels completely unnecessary though, because V's controls are basically the same as Nero's (which are basically the same as Dante's): triangle for melee attacks, square for ranged attacks, L1 for a limited-use super attack, circle for long-distance grapple/teleport attack. The only real mechanical difference is that V can only kill enemies by using his special action assigned to the circle button.

Strategically, V plays very differently because he's basically a squishy mage or summoner. He hangs back, avoiding damage, while his minions do all the actual fighting. This does have the downside of putting V very far away from the action. I had trouble judging distances in this game in generally, but it's especially problematic when V (and the camera) is standing around half a city block away from the actual fighting. Is Shadow close enough to use [R1+BACK ATTACK]? Can't tell. Which direction do I need to press on the stick to make Shadow execute that attack, since it's relative to Shadow's position and not V or the camera? Also can't tell. Not that it really matters anyway, as I don't have direct control over Shadow's movements, so I just have to push the button and hope Shadow is in proper position for the attack to land.

V is far away from the action, making it hard to see what's going on, and encouraging button-mashing.

I think Capcom really should have fundamentally re-thought how the camera should work with V, rather than sticking with this boilerplate over-the-shoulder, third-person action cam. Perhaps more cinematic camera angle similar to the first Devil May Cry would have been more appropriate? Or the Raptor News broadcast angles used in DMC? They could have kept the action as the focal point in the center of frame, with V off on the edges. Alternatively, the camera could position itself on the far end of the enemies, pointing towards V.

Cinematic camera angles similar to DMC's Raptor News broadcast might have been welcome for V.

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Getting started with this game was rough. First of all, streaming the game initially seemed to be blocked by Capcom, which sent me down an internet rabbit hole of trying to find a work-around. If I couldn't stream or capture gameplay, then it would be awfully hard for me to get decent screenshots -- let alone any video for possible YouTube content. I even Tweeted @AskPlaystation whether I could get a refund, so that I could instead purchase the game on Steam (where I knew I'd be able to record footage). @AskPlaystation never responded.

It was moot anyway, since the next day, I found that the problem was only associated with having High Dynamic Range (HDR) enabled in the PS4's settings. After disabling HDR, I was able to stream the game and capture video footage as normal. Of course, the game's colors didn't look so good -- but whatever, I could live with it. I guess this is a glitch. Maybe Capcom will fix the HDR streaming issue at some point in the future? I can't imagine that they deliberately disabled streaming with HDR, but left it enabled when HDR isn't being used.

You'll need to disable High Dynamic Range (HDR) on the PS4 if you want to stream REmake 2.

But even when I got the streaming and capture functionality working, I lost another night having to troubleshoot my PS4's network connectivity. I kept getting a DNS error. My PS4 has had internet connectivity issues off and on for years, so it might just have a bad network card. Or maybe my ISP is throttling it? It's hard to tell. The console regularly connects to the router and obtains an IP, but then fails to connect to the internet. Or it can connect to the internet, but fails to connect to PSN.

After several hours of troubleshooting, I had to manually enter the DNS addresses of my router's second and third DNS as the PS4's primary and secondary DNS, then sign out of the PSN, then boot up the PS4 in safe mode, then run a database rebuild (which took a few minutes), then reconnect to the PSN. That seems to have worked ... for now. We'll see how long the fix lasts...

In any case, these streaming and network issues cost me the first full weekend with the game. I'd have to play it on weeknights after work instead. Hopefully the game's quality would make up for these early frustrations...

The failure of REmake2's "hardcore" save system

Years ago, in the early years of this blog, I wrote an opinion piece called "The Genius of Resident Evil's classic save system". In that blog post, I wrote about how the way in which classic survival horror games (and Resident Evil in particular) limited the player's ability to save actually helped to amplify the horror atmosphere, while simultaneously facilitating open-ended exploration and creating the genre's trademark resource-management gameplay. I love the old Ink Ribbon method of saving, and I was thrilled that the brilliant REmake maintained these old systems to excellent effect. Other games like RE7 and Alien: Isolation also brought back more traditional survival horror save systems, but without the added complexity tying it to a consumable item (at least not by default).

Unfortunately, REmake 2's save system doesn't fare so well. By default, the game apparently uses autosaves and checkpoints, and you can manually save at typewriters without an Ink Ribbon. It all works similar to RE7. However, you can play on "hardcore" mode (which is available by default) to get an experience more similar to the original save system. Except, it doesn't work as well. In fact, it seems to be fundamentally broken.

It would be nice if the game would use Ink Ribbons from the item box,
rather than having to put it in your inventory, then put it back in the item box after you save.

Part of the reason for this is that the "hardcore" mode also doubles as the game's "hard" difficulty. On the "hardcore" mode, there are no autosaves or checkpoints, and you must consume an Ink Ribbon to save at the typewriters (just as in the original release). However, enemies also have more health and deal more damage, and resources are more scarce (Ink Ribbons apparently replace ammo pickups in certain places). This screws with the balance of the game such that the manual save system becomes less viable for a first-time playthrough.

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