The Resident Evil 4 remake got announced at the June Sony State of Play event, leaving many gamers excited worldwide. The original Resident Evil 4 is one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time and still is seen in most top 10 games of all time lists. It’s a game that, despite being a AAA title released in January (a thing that was rather uncommon for the time) the game still won most Game of the Year awards. It also laid the template for third-person shooters going forward. Resident Evil 4 is a great game, but some improvements can still be made and some things that the remake definitely needs to keep. Here are the 5 things the Resident Evil 4 remake must have.
On the Fly Weapon Switching
One of the few annoyances in the original game was constantly having to switch weapons via the inventory during fights. You had to bring up the inventory, select the weapon, equip it and then return to the game. Since you switch weapons frequently in this game, that time adds up.
This screen will be a big chunk of your playtime.
This is an issue that actually could have gotten remedied on the original release. The GameCube controller did have a D-pad that could have allowed you to switch weapons on the fly. Unfortunately, most GameCube games, including Resident Evil 4, didn’t use the D-pad. Considering that most modern games do have on the fly weapon switching now and have been a feature of the Resident Evil series since the fifth game, this feature will most likely get added to the remake.
Better Puzzles
The puzzles in the original game are deceptively easy. Almost all of them look challenging on the surface but, in reality, have really simple solutions. It’s surprising how straightforward they actually are.
This is not as hard as it may look.
The door puzzle has a 2 step solution, and the painting puzzle’s solution is literally 1234. The slide puzzle seems hard at first, but you can just make a simple loop around, and the puzzle’s finished. Shouldn’t the slide pieces be a bit more mixed up? This might have happened to make playtesting easier, but the remake should definitely beef up the difficulty of the puzzles. Be more akin to the puzzle difficulty of the Resident Evil 2 remake with something like the chess pieces puzzle.
One of the Things the Resident Evil 4 Remake Must Have is The Mercenaries
One thing that needs to stay faithful to the original is The Mercenaries mode. The Mercenaries in the original game was an incredibly fun bonus mode that focused on killing enemies while keeping both your timer and combo up. It had a decent roster of characters to pick from, and the stages were really fun to play.
Title screen with all characters unlocked.
It had an addicting gameplay loop and was a great companion to the main game. The Mercenaries need to return for the remake with all the characters and stages returning. Resident Evil has not had a good Mercenaries mode since RE6, and the one in Resident Evil Village was lackluster for many RE fans. Village’s iteration of the mode lacked that addicting gameplay loop of 4, 5, and 6. Hopefully, with the remake’s potential inclusion of the mode, RE fans will have another Mercenaries mode they can sink their teeth into.
Rocket Launcher Price
Playing Resident Evil 4 on Professional mode can be quite challenging. However, there is one balance issue that does break the game a bit. The Rocket Launcher is an incredibly powerful weapon that will one-shot many bosses, but it only costs 30,000 PTAS.
30,000 is chump change.
For this game, that is an incredibly low price considering the weapon’s power. A player can continually buy the weapon to make certain fights a cakewalk because of how cheap it is. This makes Professional mode a lot easier. The remake should make the Rocket Launcher far more expensive to match its level of power. With that, players should only buy a Rocket Launcher when they really need to, instead of buying them in bulk to get past fights easily.
Better Story
One of the things the Resident Evil 4 remake must have is a more fleshed-out and improved story. The story in the original game is quite bare-bones. It’s more of an excuse to take the game from location to location, like many games of the era. I will admit the written dialogue is a total blast. However, it’s more of a result of the American game localization. The original Japanese script and Japanese subtitles for the game are far different.
“Where’s Everyone Going? Bingo?”
For example, the classic bingo line from the beginning of the game is not in the Japanese subtitles in the Japanese version. Instead, it’s an Ethan Winters style “What’s Going On?” which is far weaker. The fun in the game’s story is more from the localization team doing their best with the material given to them. Even game director Shinji Mikami hopes that Capcom can make the story better in a potential remake in an interview with Newsweek:
I just hope that they make the story better…The game itself is close to perfect, but we only had two and a half weeks to make that story and so I have a different view.
Given the development time of the remake, hopefully, the developers had a longer time to focus on the story and heavily improve on it.
The Resident Evil 4 remake will launch in March of next year for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
