Resident Evil 4 Remake is NOT a Masterpiece, it's PEAK Remake Culture.

Resident Evil 4 Remake is NOT a Masterpiece, it's PEAK Remake Culture. It's one thing for Capcom to constantly churn out mediocre remakes, it's quiet another though for IGN, the Twitter-sphere, and most other gaming journalists to claim that Resident Evil 4 Remake is somehow a "Masterpiece" better than the original. In this video I do not focus on the story, or the voice acting, or politics, or Ashley's skirt, I discuss the actual elements of this game's composition like the combat changes, parry, movement inertia, gunsway, level design, camera system, stretched out pacing, lame stealth, and how by throwing together a bunch of trendy mechanics over the top of a shell of what was once an amazing combat system, the devs are not "remaking" anything and they certainly are not improving it.
In this video I also talk about what I call "Remake Culture," which is the attitude I see all over the place that games of the past were designed with certain restrictions or elements because they are "outdated," like Resident Evil 4's original camera system is Windows 98 and modern generic camera system is Windows 11. The effect of this Remake Culture is the full on acceptance of creating fan fiction versions of already existing games and believing them to be objective improvements because they now abide by generic current gaming design, even if the shift to generic design completely obliterates the core of the game play. The end result of this Remake Culture attitude is to remove any unique game play elements a game may have (like Resident Evil 4's camera and hitstun), and to hammer down all great games of the past into a generic sludge of the same game with a different coat of paint. Somehow Capcom have taken Godhand with guns and turned it into the the Last of Us Part 3, Knife Parry Edition. Visually they have taken art direction inspired by Stanley Kubrick's The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut and replaced it with a lame Marvel Saturday Morning Cartoon aesthetic.
As of right now you can get the original Resident Evil 4 on Xbox, PS4/PS5, Steam (PC), and Nintendo Switch. If you want to play the Remake, it's on PS4/PS5, Steam, Xbox Series X, but NOT Xbox 1 X (which I own) because Microsoft could care less about the 1 X.
Awesome thumbnail created by: @boghogSTG

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STG Revision 2020 Discord:

00:00 Remake Culture is Out of Control
07:00 What Makes a Remake Artistically Valid?
13:55 We are Losing Arcade-Bred Japanese Game Design
17:23 Movement Inertia and Gunsway are L.A.M.E.
22:12 Throwing a Bunch of Trendy Mechanics Into a Blender is Not Great Design
25:50 The Game's Pace is Lopsided, Stretched Out, and Missing Content
29:45 Art Direction Has Gone From Kubrick Masterpiece to Saturday Morning Cartoon
35:50 I Do Not Respect This Remake (and You Don't Have to Either).

#residentevil4, #residentevil4remake, #ign

[Galaxyk]

I agree with you so hard here. While RE4R is a pretty good game in a vacuum, the remake culture surrounding it and all these other recent remakes drives me up a wall. Peoples most hyped up games are remakes instead of new ideas, and they treat every deviation away from the original and towards this homogenous blob of modern design sensibilities as some "objective" improvement. They talk about original games as if they're "outdated" now. I thought for so long that video games were art, but if people are willing to toss out an original the second a slightly shinier and newer version of it comes out, then it ain't art: It's a disposable toy.

[Myth_or_Mystery]

People used to complain about remakes. Now, they’ve accepted them wholesale. Like everything else.

[Ostnizdasht]

The original RE4 honestly didn't need a remake imo.

[jankmedia]

It's pretty gross that IGN painted the OG as unplayable. I've never been a huge fan of RE4 because I grew up with the classic games and just preferred that style. I still play through RE4 once a year though, the game is timeless. Too many talking heads lost the ability to play old games. Some of us never stopped, and can pick up and play these games with ease.

[granpaNurgle]

Gamers seem to have practically zero respect towards the classics of their medium, or they can only recognize such things as a "stepping stone" leading towards (current era).

Authors don't do this, and nobody in cinema gets excited for remakes. But gamers? They eat this up, thinking "finally, now I can enjoy this thing I enjoyed 10yrs ago - but for REAL this time!"

And then 10yrs later they'll buy the remake of this remake and call it a masterpiece too. Infinite tolerance for regurgitated franchise slop.

[MamoMark]

All RE4R did was show me that people didn't really like RE4 and apparently disliked most of it.

[johntitor]

I have noticed that compared to other mediums, gamers tend to disrespect their classics much more. They don’t accept concepts like authorial intent and act as if game designers back in the day were cavemen banging on rocks until someone invented the wheel. They talk about games like they're made of swappable car parts and view the entire medium as an endless chase for a new toy. If you prefer and old game over a new one (such as preferring the original over its remake) they will quickly dismiss your opinion and accuse you of being “blinded by nostalgia.”

It's okay for our classics to be classics, to be examined with historical lenses instead of treated as machines in need of repair. Imagine movie buffs telling you not to bother with the iconic original Cape Fear and instead just watch the shiny remake.

I honestly don’t believe that video games “age” as common as people think they do. I think what most people mean when they say that a game is “dated” is that it’s not homogenised. The original RE4 today is just as well designed as it was 18 years ago. Same thing with games like Super Metroid and Super Mario Bros. Good game design never dies.

[Spongebob-lfdn]

I thought the Remake was better until I actually played it. One thing I wanna add is that the original RE4 had a "show don't tell" approach, and the REmake just hand holds the player through everything. The voice acting in the original to me is better & so is the castle. The castle is my favorite part, its so unsettling, engaging, etc. In the REmake its just...there

[Hiushisan]

The original was made in an era of linear games. The remake was made in an era of open-world games, leeching mechanics from other games that don't exactly fit into an already great game. Spices that work great for some recipes are not guaranteed to work in every dish.
We've just gotten used to the open-world style of things so much that a lot of games really don't have their own style of play anymore.

[Relugus]

The "stop to shoot" mechanics were baked into RE4's gameplay, they were not a bug, they were a feature.

[scalliano]

Alien Resurrection on the PS1 was critically panned at release for its "absurd" controls - you used the left stick to move and the right stick to aim.

[Efgand]

Even the devs said it didn't need a remake. RE4 it's a timeless classic

[tumulovermelho]

What really is absurd is seeing how many people are saying RE4R is the best remake when the RE1 remake exists. That game is so faithful, so respectful and improves so much on the original it became the standard for RE remakes before this new age of remakes that cut content arbitrarily, and people are forgetting that just because RE4R is more fluid and prettier.

[vpxffmp]

I still felt like I was sacrificing my flank when I went to shoot, I got hit in the back or pressured a lot in the remake. I often would kill what was in front of me and run forward to reposition just like the old game.

[anon.nobody]

It's odd how something like Doom 2016 was seen like a modern homage to the original whilst RE 4 remake is being hailed more like a perfect replacement. RE 4 was never meant to be replaced

[DeFactoLeader]

I'm glad that you highlighted the fact that one of the consistent problems with this 'remake culture' mindset is that devs are too afraid to remake a product that was bad or mediocre. There's something irritating about the arrogance that sometimes comes from people who make claims that a revolutionary game like RE4 is now outdated; blown out by a remake. The reality is that Capcom stood on the shoulders of giants and these games now feel like glossier replacements for the old RE system of "decent numbered game, worse spin-off title." The exception here is REmake, which did improve RE1 in ways it probably needed.

The remake deserves praise and particular focus should be given to the areas where innovation and actual originality strike, but a real test of these devs would be to remake the troubled games; update them, make them proud additions to the franchise. Why not remake Code Veronica? Or maybe even RE0? Unlike RE4, there's a better argument to be made that these games _deserve_ remakes. Will they really do RE5 as some have postulated? Will we get an RE7 remake within 10 years? The rate that they've pumped out the last three is pretty crazy.

[rudy]

When I first played the original I was taken back by the wierd tank controls. Then after like an hour or two of learning I got used to it. Shockingly, playing the game to get better at the game, takes time.

[princessrescuermk]

Jed Pressgrove, in his "Game Bias" blog, recently made a series on remakes. He prefaced it with the talking point that "audiences of other media groan when a remake is announced but gamers are excited?" and then proceeded to review several historically disappointing remakes. Even if a remake's good, it has no reason to exist if it isn't as good as the original. And it should never outright replace the original.

[Charles-jjsu]

REmake is still the greatest example of a video game remake. It was made by many of the original team who did the game it’s based on, and with the express goal of “we have more experience, better tools at our disposal, and we don’t have to cut corners this time. Let’s make the game we really wanted to make back in 1996!”

That’s how you do a remake.

[devonmiller]

I think the issue is that games are being remade not to improve or revitalize an entry, but to simply milk the fanbase and reimagine old projects to fit in line with modern development teams.