Resident Evil 4 is a more mature spin on one of the greatest games of all time

Let’s get this out of the way, first and foremost: Resident Evil 4 (2023) is an excellent video game.

Paced like a bullet train, supported by some of the most satisfying shooting gameplay in recent memory, and even, occasionally, a little bit scary, RE4 (2023) ticks every box you’d want from Capcom’s Resident Evil series. In the 16 hours that made up our first run through it (which we do not anticipate will be our last), we felt occasional bursts of frustration with a few of its choices—but far more often, we were simply reveling at the confident craft on display, or the sheer ass-kicking pleasure of being propelled through one of the best action movies that gaming has ever produced. It’s one of the best games we’ve played this year, and it’ll take a fairly considerable effort from any of its rivals to unseat it by the time December rolls around.

It feels important to get all of that on the record, before we say anything else.

Because the thing about Resident Evil 4 (2023) is that it’s also a game that’s impossible to discuss in a vacuum—which is why we have to keep sticking that little (2023) behind its name. We’re in Big Budget Video Game Remake Land here, which means Resident Evil 4 (2023) is forced to exist, not just on its own merits, but in conversation with its predecessor/source of inspiration/existential organ donor, Resident Evil 4 (2005). Which is also, as it happens, one of the greatest games of all time, the single best installment of its long-running franchise to date—and a game that you could go out and play on pretty much any modern system or PC right now.

That places the new Resident Evil 4 in the perilous position of justifying its existence versus one of the most influential games of the last 20 years—and one that, unlike previous franchise remake targets Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, remains vividly front-of-mind for millions of players. So, we gotta ask: What kind of remake are we actually talking about here? And does it make the case for actually ponying up and playing it, instead of just booting up Resident Evil 4 (2005) for the dozenth or so time in the last two decades?

As it turns out, RE4 (2023) is neither a glorified remaster, slapping gussied-up visuals over an aging skeleton, nor a radical departure, trafficking only in the flavor of its source material without reckoning with what made it truly great. No, Capcom has miraculously charted the middle course here, preserving most of RE4 (2005)’s most iconic moments, and its endlessly addictive headshot ‘n’ scavenge gameplay, while tightening things up relentlessly along the edges. Sequences memorable enough to exist now in the lexicon of video gaming shorthand—the village fight, the cabin defense, The Part Where Mike Is There—all arrive right on schedule, serving up incredibly satisfying chunks of game. Meanwhile, the original title’s excesses have been reigned in considerably; for better or worse, this is what Resident Evil 4 looks like with a filter of maturity applied over the top.

From a certain perspective, that’s a shame: Part of the reason Resident Evil 4 is beloved today is because it’s genuinely fearless, often to the point of silliness. (And maybe even outright stupidity.) Cheesy and skeevy dialogue, giant statues run amuck, performances going so over the top that they scrape the bottom clouds of Over-Actor Heaven: It’s all part of the camp appeal of a game that frequently played like a parody of American action flicks. The designers of the remake clearly enjoy that stuff—gun-toting hero Leon S. Kennedy still can’t resist a classic quip-and-kill as he quests for the president’s kidnapped daughter—but when asked to choose between the smart choice and the gleefully excessive one, their instincts clearly trend toward the former.

Where they’ve been laser-focused in their recreation, meanwhile, is in Resident Evil 4's shooting gameplay, which remains deeply addictive even 18 years later. There are still few basic video game tasks more thrilling and nerve-wracking than lining up a third-person headshot on a parasitized villager who’s running at you, pitchfork in hand, and with a dozen of their equally deranged best friends in tow. And, yes: Leon still deals out some of the beefiest kicks and suplexes in all of modern gaming—just one of several ways both games have always allowed players to ease up those seemingly overwhelming odds. (Managing to get the drop on a group of Ganados, tossing a grenade into their midst, and then watching them all explode into fountains of loot and ammo? Never gets old.)

Where there have been tweaks to the combat, they’ve generally been in favor of more tension, not less: The biggest obvious change is that Leon’s trusty knife now breaks with use, forcing you to rely on scavenged blades or regular repairs if you want to keep your melee options open. But the knife’s utility has also been considerably widened: You can now use it to insta-kill enemies in stealth, parry a wide variety of attacks, and eliminate downed enemies before they transform into something…worse. The end result is to transform the knife from an all-purpose damage-dealing tool into a resource to be deployed thoughtfully—while also adding another hook into the game’s compulsive upgrade economy, which remains largely unchanged from the original version.

(On that “Whattaya buyin’?” note: The addition of a secondary store with more prized goods, powered by rewards earned by doing subquests, does add some variety to the shopping decisions on hand; meanwhile, the ability to get almost all of the money you spent on upgrading a gun back when you sell it reduces some of the bad “trapped by impulse purchases” sensations the original game could sometimes invoke.)

And all of that shooting feels great: better than the original, honestly, what with 18 years of improvements and refinements operating under the hood. The weapons all feel satisfying in the hand, while the approach to encounter design—bombarding the player with veritable hordes of enemies, forcing you to relocate and re-strategize on the fly—is still blessedly intact. (As is the tendency for combat to suddenly escalate as a seemingly normal monster mutates into a far more lethal threat.) Enemies are smarter, controls a bit more responsive: This is Resident Evil 4 combat very close to perfected, and that’s no small thing to say. Even in the game’s closing levels, an encounter with a crew of regular enemies can be tense, full of moments of shock, misery, and triumph—no small feat for a game of this length.

Let’s be clear: Resident Evil 4 (2023) is not a revolutionary game. There’s nothing in its high-octane run through the Spanish countryside that we haven’t seen before, sometimes literally—and so it’s always going to pale a little bit in comparison to the gleefully creative original. But it is an impeccably refined game (and, yeah, that is a somewhat odd thing to say about a game where man-sized bugs can puke acid down your throat). It has been tweaked and tuned down to the atom to satisfy, to propel, to delight. From its opening moments to its final cutscenes, it delivers fun with a consistency that sometimes even manages to outshine its source material; we might miss the goofiest moments, but Resident Evil 4 (2023) proves that sometimes a little maturity can be a very good thing.