Welcome to the first in a series of articles that are going to be called “Miss Me With That Bullshit” or MMWTBS for short. This series of articles is going to be about topics that might not result in everyone agreeing or even liking what is said. Consider this a “hot take” series with a side of Controversy, but as Eric Bischoff (Former head of World Championship Wrestling in the 1990s/2000s) used to say: “Controversy creates Cash”, so let’s get to it.
This week is going to revolve around the recent rumor about Resident Evil 4 being the next game to receive the remake treatment after the financial success of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 remakes over the last 2 years. According to the gaming site Video Game Chronicles, Resident Evil 4 got picked over games like Resident Evil: Code Veronica or other franchises like Dino Crisis as the next game to get outsourced to be given the remake treatment.
Now before I start getting all grumpy and negative about Resident Evil 4 and why it’s a piece of trash, etc; I’m going to praise the game for one thing and one thing only: the gameplay mechanics behind the game. Resident Evil 4’s over the shoulder, more 3D style of game has created a much better-looking world for people to get invested in. Moving to this new perspective opened up the world around the player and made things a lot more interactive than it previously had been. Without such a change in gameplay mechanics, we wouldn’t be seeing this new era of remakes happen.
Ok, with the pleasantries out of the way, let’s talk about why Resident Evil 4 doesn’t deserve to be given the remake treatment.
The game has received too many ports already
Resident Evil 4 came out on the Gamecube back in 2005, and since then it has had 8 ports since then. (PlayStation 2 in late 2005, PC & Wii in 2007, Mobiles in 2008, PS3/Xbox 360 in 2011, HD PC version in 2014, Ps4/Xbox One in 2016, and Switch in 2019) Each port since 2011 has been a more HD presentation of the game, making it look better and better over time. Given that long multi-year and multi-console release, there isn’t a need to give Resident Evil 4 a remake.
The story is trash
The story of Resident Evil 4 was such a departure from the previous Resident Evil series (Though it was topped by Resident Evil 7 years later) that it took another 2 games (and some animated movies) to bring things back into a somewhat canonical order with the rest of the history of Resident Evil. Hell, the intention behind Resident Evil 4 was to remove just about everything from the previous stories, but CAPCOM put pressure onto the developers to add Leon into the game so they could use the title… And as we know from the recent failures of Star Wars, removing what made the original series good creates something that people won’t enjoy
I understand that a Resident Evil 4 remake could streamline the story and change things to work into how Resident Evil 3 remake ended, creating a much better flowing story, but I highly doubt that we would see such care taken with the story unlike what CAPCOM did with Resident Evil 2 remake. Remember the rumor is that another outside company would be handling the development of a Resident Evil 4 remake, thus cannot be trusted to give the proper care and dedication that Resident Evil 2 remake had due to it being an internal CAPCOM developed title.
Escorting Ashley
Oh good god, remember this bitch?
Rose-colored glasses
A lot of people out there will praise Resident Evil for being such a departure from the series that it is some sort of masterpiece. Having recently played the game once again, I can tell you first hand that Resident Evil 4 has aged terribly, and that’s coming from the HD PlayStation 4 version. The dull browns of just about every location looks terrible and a stark reminder of that era of gaming where everything needed to be dark, dull and depressing. The enemy AI has aged too, very easy to predict and take out from a distance. The introduction of cheap instant-death mechanics. Quick Time Events during cutscenes. This game is as 2000s as it gets and shows all the issues of gaming at that point. Add that with a camera system that took so much of the survival and horror out of the survival horror series and replaced it with a safer, more action-based look at the series which killed the franchise till they got around to doing things properly with Resident Evil: Revelations (You thought I was going to say Resident Evil 7 huh? Nope! RE: R brought the series back to its roots first).
So as you can tell I have a somewhat personal dislike for Resident Evil 4 and the blind praise that people give it to this day. It might look cheap but honestly, Resident Evil 4 has become one of those games where you cringe when you hear about it in media. It’s like people going crazy for Death Stranding because it’s the first game Kojima put out since being fired from Konami. People praised the game as being innovative and creative and being such a departure from Metal Gear Solid. But the honest truth is that Death Stranding was a boring, long-winded, walking simulator that people bought based on a marketable brand: Kojima. Resident Evil 4 is the same way. People praised it for being this big departure from the series standard, which would have happened anyway as we had much better consoles on the market at the time and everything was getting a technological upgrade anyway, and how it created so much difference that it still happens today.
But honestly, I wonder how many people out there praising Resident Evil 4 have played it in the last few years? How many people have gone and played the game after Resident Evil 2 remake or even Resident Evil 3 remake? I bet next to none. But you’ll still see Resident Evil 4 being praised as an innovator and a great nostalgic game that hasn’t aged at all. I’ll bet $20 a lot of that praise comes from playing the Gamecube or PlayStation 2 version over 15 years ago.
Something else I want to talk about, mainly so this whole article isn’t just bashing Resident Evil 4, are some of the other CAPCOM titles that deserve to get the remake treatment instead of Resident Evil 4.
Resident Evil: Code Veronica
The next logical step in the remake series would be the game that came after Resident Evil 3 right? Well, that was Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Code Veronica was originally released on SEGA Dreamcast in 2000, then ported to PlayStation 2 as Resident Evil: Code Veronica X a year later. It’s Resident Evil: Code Veronica X has been the version used in all other ports of the game since then, and it’d be the version I’d personally recommend to be remade or at least used as the story base since it was a bit deeper, had scenes changed to fit the larger story and overall Resident Evil story, corrected references and all of that other fun stuff. Now Code Veronica has aged BADLY since it was the last Resident Evil game to have traditional “tank” controls but also the first to use fully 3D environments, which when combined was nothing short of a complete mess. Though Code Veronica itself isn’t a bad game as the story was good, the action was well-paced, the puzzles were challenging; it really is the last of the “old guard” in terms of mechanics and graphics, so a remake is not only logical but badly needed.
Dino Crisis
If there is one game that I’ll scream from the mountain tops that deserves a remake, it’s Dino Crisis. Sure, it was nothing more than Resident Evil with Dinosaurs, but it was more than enough to not only scare the shit out of me but my parents, friends and my friend’s parents. I have fond memories of playing Dino Crisis at a friend’s house on his PlayStation and his mother came into the room and was amazed at the game too. We entered the room where the T-Rex bursts through the window, and thanks to his surround sound set up, his mother jumped so badly that she threw her coffee all over the walls behind her. It’s moments like that where the developers took our expectations of what could and could not happen with Dinosaurs involved and just threw everything upside down which created a great game that still holds up with the terror today. Hell, take a look at the fan-made remake of Dino Crisis from Team Arklay (The fan team who also did some great Resident Evil 2 remakes) and tell me a Dino Crisis game remade using the RE Engine wouldn’t scare the shit out of you, the kids, the family and everyone who saw it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=309T2KKh7_s
Onimusha
This demon-slaying series didn’t exactly have a good story, and the third one was a trash pile, but it would be nice to see this Samurai slaughter-fest come back in some way or form. Maybe this could be one of those games that would benefit not only from having a third-person, over-the-shoulder perspective, but also some sort of VR mode where you can swing the sword yourself and experience demons losing limbs firsthand. Onimusha is one of CAPCOM’s forgotten franchises that actually sold really well with the first few iterations, but later entries didn’t really leave much of an impression. Going back to the original games and giving them a look with fresh eyes might give CAPCOM something DARK that we could sink our SOULS into… huh? huh?
Devil May Cry
I know Devil May Cry has had the remake treatment before, but that was DMC and it sucked major ass. What we need is the original battle of Dante and Mundus as it happened in the original game. Give me a deep dark castle with lava spider monsters, huge ghosts with scissors, creepy puppet dudes on strings, all that good old school Devil May Cry shit. Imagine all that gothic-looking stuff in proper HD while fighting the messed-up creatures in a nice mixture of action and horror. Modders have already shown that this type of HD quality can be obtained by putting the DMC5 Dante into Resident Evil 2 remake. So get to it CAPCOM! Give us an official DMC remake… but maybe skip DMC 2 and go right to DMC 3.
At the end of the day, this is going to be CAPCOM’s decision based on what they think is going to sell. If they think Resident Evil 4 is going to sell more copies than the most logical choice of Resident Evil: Code Veronica, then so be it. Hell, they could remake the original Resident Evil all over again if they think the time is right and it’ll sell. My opinion here is more from a fan’s point of view, not marketing. Twitter blew up upon the rumor hitting the internet with more people talking about Resident Evil: Code Veronica than Resident Evil 4, all asking the same question that I did here: Does Resident Evil 4 deserve to be remade over other titles or franchises. I guess we shall know the answer when CAPCOM releases information about which one is going to be remade next, or if Resident Evil 8 is going to come out first.
Do you agree? Disagree? Want to call be a basement-dwelling fanboy who needs to shut the fuck up? Then comment below. I’ll be more than happy to debate people to just shut down trolls if the need calls for it. Till the next time: Miss me with that bullshit!
