This game is rated M for mature, no major spoilers below. 

“Resident Evil 4” is a third person over the shoulder action adventure horror game made by Capcom. This game lets you play as former cop Leon S Kennedy, who is hired and trained by the government to help find the president’s daughter Ashley Graham who has been kidnapped by a mysterious cult infected with a strange parasite called the las plagas somewhere in Spain. 

“The Resident Evil 4” Remake is the fourth installment in the Resident Evil series that has gotten a remake. The original was made in 2005 and took the gaming world by storm. With its great story and cheesy but good voice acting, “Resident Evil 4” inspired many other award winning games such as Dead Space, Gears Of War, and The Last Of Us. 

As someone who is a big Resident Evil fan and has played seven of the many Resident Evil games, I had high expectations for this game and When I started my first playthrough of the remake my mind was blown away in the first 30 minutes by the graphics, world design, voice acting, and combat. 

I played this game on the Xbox series S and The graphics for the remake looked absolutely amazing. compared to some of the past resident evil games Capcom really stepped up their game with this one.

 The world design in this game blew my mind because it added so much depth to the levels in the game, specifically the village. For example in the remake they added new cutscenes that weren’t in the original that threw me off and left me unexpected of what would happen next.

The combat in the remake uses aspects from the original but expands upon it 10 fold and creates a good rhythm with the gunplay and melee combat. Leon has one main melee attack which is his knife that has a durability bar. Leon also has a variety of guns and grenades  to choose from such as pistols, shotguns, hand cannons, light machine guns, crossbow, flash grenade and hand grenade, and even a rocket launcher. Capcon even added a parry system where you can block attacks but at the cost of your knife’s durability but all your weapons can be upgraded at the merchant’s shop for coins. 

The controls for this game are fairly simple and someone who doesn’t play a lot of video games could learn how to play the game easily. To move left, right, forward, and backward, you use the left joystick. To move the camera you have to use the right joystick. To attack an

enemy with your knife you have to press the right trigger button or the right bumper button on the controller.  To use a gun all you need to do is hold the left trigger button down and press the right trigger button to fire.  

Throughout the story the player must protect Ashley Graham from the infected villagers. To help you protect Ashley there are two commands that you can tell Ashley what to do, tight and loose. The tight command tells Ashley to stick close to you and it is mostly used when running past incoming enemies. Loose makes Ashley back away from the enemies and gives Leon space to fight but it also allows enemies to sneak by and take Ashley. If Ashley is picked up by the villagers and too far away from the player that results in a game over. 

The voice acting in the remake still has its cheesy one-liners, but adds a more serious tone to the game. Nick Apostolides (Leon’s voice actor) and Nicole Tompkins (Ashley’s voice actress) both work very well as Leon and Ashley, they both make it seem believable that they both truly care and look out for each other as their relationship grows in the game.

The story itself is a very fun adventure that lets you traverse through many different areas such as the village, the lake, Roman Salazar’s castle, the mines, and many more places. The main enemies that you have to face as Leon are people infected with an ancient breed of parasite called the las plagas. The parasite essentially controls the host and turns them into zombies that the main villain Osmund Saddler can control.

You also get to meet other allies along the way like Ada Wong, a cold mercenary who worked with Leon in the past in Resident Evil 2 to fight a similar zombie outbreak called the T-virus.  and Luis Sera, a mysterious but charismatic scientist who just wants to help Leon and Ashley escape their captors.  If you take your time with this game the average playtime of the main story is 15 hours and 39 minutes. Even if the playtime seemed long I still had a blast and never had a dull moment throughout my playthrough.  

In the remake Capcom has added new bonus content to give the player more things to do such as requests which act as quests to give players special currency called spinel which is used to buy special items like a treasure map to find treasure located around that designated area,special firearms, and many other items that can help you fight the infected villagers. Capcom also just released their first DLC called mercenaries mode. In this gamemode you are able to play up to four different characters each with their own weapons and special abilities That help you fight against the ongoing hordes of enemies.  

The four different characters you can play are Leon S Kennedy, Luis Sera, Jack Krauser, and the unstoppable masked mercenary Hunk. in the future hopefully they add more characters to the roster Such as Ada Wong. It is also rumored that Ada will get her own dlc called separate ways. 

Resident Evil 4 is an amazing game with a fun story that could have a good chance at winning game of the year 2023. I love action packed story adventures so this game was a perfect purchase for me. My only complaint about the game is that they didn’t add my favorite one liner in the original game “no thanks bro”.  With fun levels and bosses, I can’t wait to see what Capcom has in store for new Resident Evil games going forward. 

10/10