Resident Evil 4 HD Review

Resident Evil 4 has been hailed as the best game in the series, the best game on the GameCube, even the best game ever made. It’s been over six years since it was released in 2005. Capcom has ported it to just about everything imaginable: PC, PS2 and Wii. Now an upscaled HD port is making its way to the PS3 and Xbox 360, the first time that Resident Evil 4 has appeared on next-generation hardware. Does it still hold up? Yes, but with an asterisk.

You play as Leon, the cop from Resident Evil 2 whose first day of duty took place when Raccoon City got overrun with zombies. Umbrella, the company behind the virus that led to the outbreak, was exposed in the media and the stock tanked. Not everything is honky dory though. The president’s daughter has been kidnapped by unknown assailants. Leon is out to save her by following a lead in a remote part of Spain. What he finds is a town that has seemingly gone mad, but these are not zombies.

One of the more striking parts of Resident Evil 4 always was the variety of enemies that you get. I still panic when I hear that chainsaw in the background, knowing that one mistake could lead to a fatal end. Some of the best boss fights in the series are featured with staples like El Gigante and the lake creature that would put anything on the TV show River Monsters to shame. In this respect, even by today’s standards Resident Evil 4 is competent, if not better, than most games on the market.

The most annoying part of the game continues to be babysitting Ashley, the president’s daughter. Thankfully she does not tag along with you most of the game, but when she does you have to defend her from enemies and treat her like a little princess. She refuses to climb down ladders. Instead you will hear an annoying “where are you going?” and will need to catch her as she jumps down. Clearly that’s a lot easier.

If you have already played Resident Evil 4 like I have (both the original GameCube version and Wii), you would like to know what’s new. The graphics are spruced up in the sense that they have been upscaled to HD standards, but that has not really improved the look by a considerable amount. In some respects it shows glaring weaknesses such as low-texture objects and walls. The sound quality is also oddly off. I am not sure if it is a compression issue or what.

Disappointingly, the PS3 and Xbox 360 both lack motion control support. You would think that with the PlayStation Move it would have been simple enough to port the Wii game over, which was already tweaked to support motion controls. It might have been more difficult to do that with the Kinect, and perhaps that’s why they decide to not even bother, but nonetheless it is a real disappointment. I sincerely hope that in a future update they add motion controls as I would definitely play through this game a fourth time just for that reason.

This is probably the only game that’s been on both Wii and PS3/360 where the Wii version is superior. If you own a Wii and can find a copy of Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, go for that one over this. It’s only $10 brand new on Amazon. In my mind that’s the best port of the game. The Wii motion controls add quite a lot to the experience. If you only own a PS3 or Xbox 360 and haven’t played Resident Evil 4 in the past, this port will do, but it does not do this classic justice.