Resident Evil 4 won’t be out until next week, but it appears that Resident Evil fans will have a pretty good time with the game. The first reviews for Capcom’s latest survival horror remake began rolling out today, and the majority of them appear to be quite positive, with some critics describing it as one of the best and satisfying remakes ever, featuring superior visuals, gameplay mechanics, and more. And while some of the tougher critics have claimed that the remake can’t hold a candle to the original, which remains one of the greatest games ever made, that hasn’t stopped Resident Evil 4 from being ranked the #1 best PC game of 2023 so far on Metacritic, where the game currently sits with a 92 Metascore. Resident Evil fans who want to get in some shooting practice with Leon ahead of the game’s release on Friday, March 24, can grab the Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Demo, a free trial that offers what Capcom has described as a thrilling slice of the game.
From a Metacritic review roundup:
NME (100): Resident Evil 4 is as good a remake as you could hope for, one that clearly understands what made the original great, makes considered alterations where it deems necessary, improves the parts of the game that didn’t work so well, and of course, makes the whole experience easier on the eye. It may not be as necessary a tune-up as Resident Evil 2, but it’s nonetheless a fantastic excuse to revisit one of the best games ever made.
Giant Bomb (100): I don’t know what more you could ask for in this stunning remake of Resident Evil 4. It’s obvious to say that a great remake should satisfy both returning fans and total newcomers, but this goes so far beyond that. The original game is one of my favorites of all time and now the only reason I’d recommend anyone play it is purely for historical value. And if you’re a complete newcomer to the series, this is bar none one of the most thrilling games ever. It shines as the ultimate Resident Evil experience and the greatest remake of all time.
Jeuxvideo.com (90): No doubt: Resident Evil 4 Remake is simply an excellent horror action game and Capcom proves, for the umpteenth time, its ability to produce a controlled adventure with an exemplary finish. The basics of the original game couldn’t be more solid, but the firm has been able to modernize the whole thing to make the adventure more intense, deeper in its game systems and even more thrilling. Was a remake necessary? Maybe not, but impossible to spit on this impressive version, which knows how to honor the original material as well as to bring it a rejuvenation that is ultimately very relevant. Finally, if we have a mad desire to finish Resident Evil 4 as soon as possible, it is to start it again immediately.
Discussion (18 replies)
Join Discussion →I guess this is hwy I don't pay much attention to game journalism.
Most of what gets attention in journalism is completely and totally irrelevant to me.
I recently heard a mainstream news report on gaming, and they talked about the following titles, none of which I have ever heard of, or have any interest in:
And I'm not sure if it is ME who is out of touch when it comes to gaming, or if it is journalism.
I mean, sure, Metroid was great on the 8bit Nintendo in 1986. That's the only Metroid I've ever played or ever will play. Same with the Zelda franchise. I played the original Zelda and Link on the 8 bit Nintendo, but I'll likely never play anything in the franchise again. Same with Kirby. I vaguely remember a Kirby game on the NES, but I didn't even know this was a franchise. I just thought it was one oddball title with a pink blob.
Hogwarts Legacy I ave at least heard of, though it is not for me. I'm in the "too old for Harry Potter" age bracket. The rest sound stupid at best.
I've also never played anything in the Resident Evil franchise. It seems completely uninteresting.
In 2023 I am looking forward to:
- Starfield
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 (if it ever comes out in spite of the war in Ukraine)
- The Outer Worlds 2 (if it stays on time)
- Atomic Heart (Interested, but concerned about rumors of data harvesting in game)
- System Shock (Remake)
- Countr-Strike 2? (Maybe, I am kind of over Counter-Strike at this point, but I'll still probably buy and try it)
I can rather easily list the only games of any relevance to me since 2010, and they are as follows:
2022 - Dying Light 2
2021 - Far Cry 6
2020 - Doom Eternal (haven't gotten around to it yet, but I will at some point)
2020 - Cyberpunk 2077
2020 - Black Mesa (for old times sake)
2019 - Borderlands 3 (Sort of, I played it, but it wasn't a favorite)
2019 - The Outer Worlds
2019 - Metro Exodus
2019 - Far Cry: New Dawn (This one was actually kind of bad, but I forced myself to finish it)
2018 - Far Cry 5
2017 - Prey
2017 - Wolfenstein: The New Colossus (Sort of, played it, but I wasn't a huge fan)
2017 - Player Unknowns Battle Grounds (Briefly, it was less bad in beta than the final product)
2017 - Dishonored: Death of the Outsider
2016 - Far Cry: Primal
2016 - Doom (Sortof. Probably wouldn't have played it if it didn't come nearly free in a bundle)
2016 - Deus Ex Mankind Divided
2016 - Homefront: The Revolution
2016 - Sid Meier's Civilization VI
2016 - Dishonored 2
2015 - Fallout 4
2014 - Far Cry 4
2014 - Wolfenstein: The New Order (Sort of, played it, but I wasn't a huge fan)
2013 - Metro: Last Light
2013 - Bioshock Infinite
2012 - Far Cry 3
2012 - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (sort of. I have played it at least)
2012 - Borderlands 2 (Sort of, I played it, but it wasn't a favorite)
2012 - Dishonored
2011 - Red orchestra 2
2011 - Deus Ex: Human Revolution
2011 - Portal 2
2011 - Homefront
2010 - Singularity
2010 - Sid Meiers Civilization V
2010 - Metro 2033
2010 - Bioshock 2
2010 - Fallout New Vegas
And that's pretty much it. Games are one of my few remaining hobbies, and if it isn't on that list, in the 14 years covered since 2010 (inclusive) I didn't play it, or even have any interest in it at all.
I don't get the Japanese games. They are completely irrelevant and uninteresting to me. I also don't get most things non-First Person, and fantasy genre and I have outright "eww" responses to things like Final Fantasy.
The thing is, I'm a member of many PC Gaming groups and forums. Most people there talk about and are interested in the same games I am. Yes, they are also interested in the Hogwarts Game which I am not, and also many are into those "Call of Modern Battlefield" titles which I am not. I als0 expect to hear people talk about Fantasy games like World of Warcraft and the like, which I am also not into. But for some weird reason the games that I am into, and that everyone I talk to are into, generally get very little coverage.
Instead the media talk about things like Final Fantasy, Pokemon Go, this Hi-Fi Rush game, Animal Crossing, etc. etc.
It's just so weird, because whenever game segments come up in the news, I almost expect to know what they are going to talk about, because, hey, this is kind of my hobby, and then with very rare exceptions they just come out of left field with all these weird casual and/or japanese titles, and completely neglect to cover all of the "real" games.
I never actually played the original RE4, but I did try RE7, and it was one of the worst gaming experiences of my life, everything I hated in RE2 and RE3 dialed up to 9000, and nothing that I actually liked about the early ones, which were already kind of borderline games for me. I never finished any of them, they are way too tedious, slow and frustrating.
I'm not in the age bracket either, and never even saw the movies let alone the books. I still enjoyed the game, but yet to finish it, It's been weeks since I last played it. I love the visuals and the mechanics of the game, the attention to detail and stuff, but the story failed to draw me in, so I have no real motivation to keep coming back to it. When I do launch it I enjoy it, just getting hyped up enough to launch it is the problem.
I've played a lot of the same games with a few exceptions. Then I also played some games not on your list.
2023: Nothing so far, looking forward to Starfield and Test Drive Solar Crown, and the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion, not much else. I was kind of interested in Diablo IV, but looking at beta gameplay turned me away. I'd also play Last of Us on PC if it had a realistic price tag, say sub $40.
2022:
Marvel's Midnight Suns - Weird game mix of an RPG and a turn based arena fighting strategy game, it was better than I expected.
Train Sim World 3 - I'm a fan of train sim games since the og MSTS in 2001, but this is a bad cash grab, worse than TSW2 in almost every way.
Gran Turismo 7 - The disappointment of the decade is putting it mildly.
2021:
Far Cry 6 - Not the worst game I played, I actually enjoyed it more than FC5
The Ascent - indie cyberpunk ARPG, balance issues forced me to quit playing it despite loving the genre
Outriders - Probably the worst game I have ever played, it offers nothing of value.
2020:
SnowRunner - Off road game, that you either hate or love. Perfectly playable with Keyboard so it is easy to get into, hard to get out of
Train Sim World 2 - actually the best entry in the train sim legacy series, too bad they de-listed it when TSW3 launched.
Cyberpunk 2077 - One of the best games I ever played, despite its flaws, goes on my top 10 list.
AC: Valhalla - I re-discovered the series with Odyssey which I loved, this is not as good, but I still enjoyed it very much.
Star Wars Squadrons - Not the spiritual successor to X-Wing / Tie Fighter, poor game design, even worse campaign.
Mafia Definitive Edition - Graphically and mechanically stunning remake, that botched the easiest part the story which they should not have touched
The Last of Us Part 2 - I loved this game, it just nailed me to the screen well into late nights, another top 10 game.
XCOM: Chimera Squad - Horrible little woke experiment
C&C Remastered collection - Not really a remaster, just badly upscaled cutscenes and a mild graphics overhaul, otherwise contains even the bugs of the original . I love the games to death, but feel like this was a waste of my money.
Heck it turns out I played more games than I thought, will have to resume this list later because it is getting late. TBC with 2019
Never played a RE game; the survival horror thing doesn't appeal to me. If I have a gun in the game, there had better be ammo.
Never ever cared for the RE games. I tried to play a few, definitely not for me. I just could NOT get into them, and I hated many aspects about them, such as the extremely limited resources you have to scrounge for (like ammo and health packs), the horrible controls, their pacing and flow, even need to spend a resource just to f*cking save the game. I don't play horror games, and survival-horror games are even worse. Zombies have also been overdone to death. The most time I spent with an RE game was the original version of RE4 on Gamecube. When it came out I kept hearing it was the Resident Evil game for people who don't care for the RE series, a more action-focused, better-controlling game. Still wasn't for me, and while it controlled much better than the RE games that came before, the controls were still @ss. I played through the first disc before I finally just stopped playing it (not even sure how I got that far). I played some RE5 in co-op with a friend, that was okay I guess. I know it was the co-op experience carrying that one. I watched a friend play through most of Code Veronica, that was more interesting than playing the game myself.
I do have friends that play them (or at least some of them), and they really liked the remakes of RE2 and RE3, so they are very interested in the remake for RE4. I did hear the RE2 and 3 remakes were well done, so I guess people are expecting the same from 4. I tend to hear most fans listing 4 as their favorite in the series, so they must have high hopes for this remake.
I played the demo for it. Yyeeaahh looks like it's gonna be more of the same sh1t I don't care about with RE games. Also I see that they still want to continue a tradition of not having great controls. With a f*cking mouse I struggled to get head shots at very close range. The game just feels so off.
No doubt due in large part to our age. If I recall correctly you are in your 40s, and I too have over 4 decades of life behind me. I've been gaming since 2nd-gen, as I am a lifelong dweller and explorer of the 3 corners of the video game universe (arcades, PCs, home/hanheld consoles), but I see what today's "gamers" are like, and what/how things are marketed to them, and I realize that the video game industry has become quite unrecognizable to me. I'm just like "what the f*ck."
Hahahahahahahaha wooooooow.
When has that ever been good for anything, especially video games? If you want decent video game news and coverage, you need to go to a real video game news site. Let me know when you find one, cuz they don't seem to exist anymore, and magazines died out eons ago.
I was late to the party with the RE games and despite friends who were into them the first time around telling me I'd like them, I never got into them. I did begin getting into them eventually with the remakes but mainly because I really liked the quality of graphics and audio. So far, I've gotten all of the remakes and enjoyed them to varying degrees. However, at this point, I'm getting a bit burned out but we'll see. I did replays of 2,3, and 7 last year when they rolled out those updates. I enjoyed the village/monsters dynamic of RE8 but was totally burnt out by the last two parts of that game (the factory and wannabe military missions) and the DLC felt like it should've just been an included side mission somehow.
I'll probably still get this one but it'll be far down the line, maybe at the end of summer or early fall. I'm still playing Witcher 3, really want to get back to Hogwarts and Dead Space, and that's not even including that I'd like to do replays of HZD and GOW, plus I'm hoping the Miles M. goes on sale sometime so I can pick it up, and then there's always RDR2 that I can never seem to get very far into before getting sidetracked by something else but is finally playable in 4K at max settings by all my rigs and looks great to boot.
I've come to realize in the last 3-5 years that thanks to mobile gaming, there's a gigantic market outside of PC gaming that gets far more coverage. For decades we've seen the battle of PC vs console, which is still there, but even that is beginning to pale in comparison to the revenue in the mobile sector, hence a lot of stuff we've never heard about. Some of the mobile stuff cross-pollinates over to consoles, especially Nintendo, but PC enthusiasts seem less likely to buy into them with their desktop gaming.
This is absolutely true.
Here is an interesting read:
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.cultofmac.com/777811/mobile-gaming-rakes-in-far-more-money-than-pc-and-console/#:~:text=Mobile%20brings%20in%20the%20lion's%20share%20of%20gaming%20revenue&text=A%20report%20from%20Data.ai,total%20%2486%20billion%20this%20year.[/URL]
Gaming even makes Hollywood look small.
Buried in the linked story a few links is this (the colors suck, but you can suss it out if you squint). This was as of May '22.
Two more points that make this even more staggering:
Apple, alone, only accounts for about 25% world wide of mobile market share, but is 67% of revenue: which means Apple, alone, is pulling in ~$91B in revenue on that, which is more than both PC and Console and Handheld -- combined.
And that's before you consider the $336B+ in mobile ad revenue - the number in that graph above is just app purchases and in-app spending.
This is a large part of of how Apple is the world's most valuable company. And just as sobering - "Services" revenue is only about 20% of Apple's total revenue.
I still don't consider shit like Farmville, Candy Crush, Angry Birds, Pokemon Go or even Animal Crossing to be "real games". Even mentioning Mobile crap like that in the same breath of "real games" seems denigrating to real gaming to me, especially since many of them have taken what we all hated about microtransactions and loot crates in PC gaming and turned it up to 11, making it their only reason for existing.
Maybe we need new terminology to distinguish between these things, because right now it is all lumped together in one big group, and that is not doing anyone any favors.
I don't mean to take away from the mobile gaming industry. It is certainly its own thing with all kinds of revenue, but it is not the same as what we traditionally consider to be gaming. We should have terminology to distinguish these things from each other.
I tend to agree. How about screen greasers, for mobile games.
I don't want it to be demeaning in any way. Its a big market (judging by the chart above apparently the biggest market in games today)
I just feel like they are distinct categories that are very far from each-other and have very little overlap in the way of fan bases. There should be more clarity in terminology.
This certainly explains why so many of the big game companies are increasingly wanting to move to these light games based around loot boxes, trading marketplaces, microtransactions, and NFT's. Developing a blockbuster AAA game is a huge project, requires lots of talent and is very costly, in some cases reaching the levels of producing a blockbuster film.
A mobile game takes comparatively very little effort, and seems to pull in even more money.
It's actually kind of disgusting that the market is letting them get away with getting so much revenue with so little effort.
This - in my mind - explains the likes of Square Enix moving in the direction they are moving. Who doesn't want to slack off and reel in the cash?
It makes me concerned for the future of "real" games. How long until one studio after another just drops off and starts making NFT games because its easier and makes more money? IMHO, this is the real threat to gaming. Not hardware costs or anything like that. Not the studios going out of business or disappearing, but games slowly becoming increasingly bland and all microtransaction-based NFT nonsense.
It might pull in the mindless sheeplike masses, but if that happens I'll just stop playing games. There is nothing about that stuff that appeals to me.
If I were king for a day, I'd ban loot boxes, game marketplaces and micro-transactions, advertising and data collection in games, or any "purchasing virtual items with real money" as all it is doing is distorting the market, addicting young kids and the feeble-minded into throwing real money after stupidity, and overall just negatively impacting everything, but that isn't likely to fly.
I don't see that it matters. It's not like gaming platforms are a zero-sum choice. And if anything, having all those "other" things in the pool helps reduce the stigma that gamers had to endure for a long time. I don't see any drawbacks at all really to having it included, and including it makes the overall game "pool" look bigger, which helps it draw more investment and attention in general.
If you segregate it out, then the PC gaming pool starts to look awfully small - which means fewer AAA games, less investment and interest, fewer developers, and fewer games -- and we are already seeing the effect of this. I don't want to accelerate it any more than it's already occurring.
This F'n crap with insane hardware costs isn't helping anything at all either. I can't believe nVidia doesn't see that it's shooting itself in the foot here.
Maybe I am just crazy, but I kind of miss the stigma. :p
I liked being somewhat of a counter-culture figure :p
The truth is PC gaming is a larger market than it has ever been. As annoying as the "PC Master Race" kids with their RGB lighting and questions about "will this bottleneck" are, they represent an absolute renaissance in PC gaming. It's just that Mobile has grown even faster.
I find this infographic rather interesting:
As you can see PC gaming is the biggest it has ever been. It's just that mobile has REALLY grown.
I honestly don't think they care. They have moved on to being a crypto-mining (at least when the market is strong) and AI company. Gaming is just a cash cow they hold on to on the side.
I feel the same. Even among PC gamers, I've always been within my own niche but now between consoles and mobile, I feel more like a niche within a niche within a niche. Pretty sure I fell off the counter at this point.
This just proves what I always thought secretly: Apple users aren't very bright.
There should be a registry of offenders who spend on mobile games, but if you get clean and don't have dark thoughts for a year it is expunged :p
I got both RE2 and RE3 remake, I played RE2 for 4 hours, but gave up when I was forced back into the same police station for the nth time. I can only take so much tedium. RE3 I just have, I barely even started it yet.