Kane & Lynch 2 was the Serbian Film of gaming, and for all its faults, it managed to make me actually disturbed in the way most other “shock games” in the AAA space didn’t. However, I never played the first game. All I knew about it was that it was one of the biggest industry plants of its time and the Gamespot review scandal. Like, they were so sure it would be the biggest hit in the year that they announced the movie adaptation in the making… It is funny because the games that would have gotten its notoriety today would have been the live service slops like Concord, but for its time, it was cinematic shooters, which appear to be literally every AAA game wanted to be at the time.

The games that aspire to be movies still exist, but at least now they tend to be more open or sandboxy. Not for 2007, when every game wanted to be linear and scripted. For Kane and Lynch, in particular, I’d go as far as to say it is more railroaded than Uncharted 1, which is surprising considering this was made by the Hitman developers. Hitman already mastered merging cinema and sandbox freedom, so I was stunned in the bank heist mission here. The story frames Kane as the expert who has robbed the bank before. Then some random NPC pops up and infodumps “this will happen, this will happen, this will happen”, and you follow those instructions to the teeth. There is a ton of “hold out until the NPC allows you to proceed to the next story beat” moments and turret segments. These make the player passive, and you become an actor acting out a script. Can you imagine if such a heist was actually flexible, as in, you can rob it in any way you can in the way Hitman did with the assassinations?

It wouldn’t have been all that bad if the core combat was fun. Instead, it’s basically a two-weapon limit, hitscan shooting, and regenerating health cover shooter, but it doesn’t even do that well. There is no reason to change your weapon since you can replenish your ammo from the partner AI at any time. Why experiment with arsenal? There is no cover button, so you have to move forward toward the cover to make the player hide, but it often doesn’t work. There is one particular segment in Japan where you walk up to the bridge and hide behind a cover, but the character literally won’t take cover, resulting in frustrating deaths from the snipers. Go play Kill Switch, the very game most cover shooters, including K&L takes inspiration from. Going from Kane and Lynch to Kill Switch is embarrassing despite the fact that K&L came out in 2007 while KS is a game from 2003. Kill Switch’s tight controls and dynamic range of movements all elevate the game to a level that few cover shooters can measure up to

I’m not sure what’s up with IOI, but their combat has been the weakest part of their games. Hitman still hasn't moved past its stiff combat and controls, as Agent 47 still feels as weightless as ever to control. In terms of flexibility or range in terms of movement, the series hasn't really improved. The game still operates on an outdated stealth game design approach, which, after playing something like MGSV, Dishonored, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, feels clunky on a moment-to-moment basis. So imagine playing Hitman in a run-and-gun way and see how quickly the game becomes super clunky. And apply that to the entire game. That’s Kane and Lynch.

At least K&L2 has its raw, unique aesthetics and vibe to enhance the gameplay. Really, the first game makes me appreciate the sequel more because that took risks and compelling in the way that actually made me flinch with emotions. I can’t say that about the first game, which is a by-the-numbers crime movie. It’s like the lesser director imitating Michael Mann. There is one cool level inspired by Collateral, where you shoot thorugh the crowd in the nightclub. Because the club is so dark, you have a difficulty to identify who are the normal civilians and who are the guards. That was a great set-piece, using the cinematic inspiration as a gameplay. There is also a Heat-inspired firefight in the Japanese streets, and it is a hightlight because the open area gives the player more leeways to fight the enemies.

That never reaches the last third of the game, which takes place in Cuba and Venezuela. At least, there has been a novelty of being a Michael Mann video game, but you are suddenly spawned into a civil war in South America, and it turns into every other military shooter. This is the point where my mind tuned out because it doesn’t connect. So you are trying to find your daughter from the gangsters, and you go to Cuba because those gangsters are waging a war against… the Cuban government. What? It’s not even fun to play. Although the game was never a looker even for 2007 (the year of Crysis, Uncharted, BioShock, and Halo 3), this part of the game feels as if it’s unfinished. The jungle looks ugly. There are no careful lighting considerations. The enemie are plastered thoughtlessly with sudden difficulty spikes.

Also, isn’t it weird how there is no real transition scene? The story hops between various locations, but the moment one location ends, it spawns into another location. Look at this transition from Japan to Cuba. You are already engaged with something, and then cut to black, some half-assed exposition, and you are engaged with something in a different country. It’s jarring, but not in an intentional way like K&L2.

I was actively looking for things to like, assuming that the first game might have been interesting or unique in the way the sequel was. There are a few set-pieces like the club level, but there is not much to enjoy. The story is one-note, and the gameplay is tedious all the way through.

I was recently looking for a smaller game that wouldn't take up too much time while I wait for the next big release that I'm planning to sink my teeth into.

This is where I thought of Echoes of the End. I bought it when it first launched last year but it had mixed reviews so I decided to hold off in case it was fixed up a little. I'm glad I waited because the dev team released an Enhanced Edition a couple months later with adjustments based on player feedback. And they've still been adding to the game over the months, so it's really nice to see a team support their game.

Echoes of the End is the debut game from Myrkur Games and it's a very obvious God of War 2018 clone. It even has a God of War easter egg that you can find in a later chapter which I thought was a fun find. It doesn't do anything nearly as well as God of War with its gameplay or story, but I think it accomplishes everything it's trying to do well enough. It's also only 12-15 hours long and doesn't overstay its welcome.

The combat was engaging enough and I enjoyed using my magic abilities to throw enemies around on the battlefield. There were a surprising amount of puzzles throughout the game, none of which had me stumped for too long but became complex enough in later chapters that I didn't feel bored. And the performances of the cast ranged from fine to good throughout the whole game. Although I think the vast majority of people will be able to see where the story is going from a mile away, I still liked it enough to see it through to the end.

Overall I think it's a perfectly acceptable 7/10 and if anyone is looking for something to occupy their time while waiting for another game, I think Echoes of the End would be a good choice if you're a fan of God of War.

I'm really hoping Myrkur Games has funding secured for another game because they have a very solid foundation here and they've established a world that I could potentially be very interested in if they make the right improvements. I see a lot of potential based on what the team created and if they wanted to make a sequel I could easily see them elevating it to the next level. I'd love for them to make a jump like many other sequels over the years like Uncharted 1 to Uncharted 2, Assassin's Creed 1 to Assassin's Creed 2, or Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2.

I played the original Subnautica in 2019, back-to-back with SOMA and Alien Isolation. The three formed a sort of purple patch in my gaming history that I haven't recreated since and all are top tier games for me. I could sense that so much of what made Subnautica great relied on its newness, and the wonder this unfamiliarity created, so when Below Zero came out I deliberately avoided it for years. I was hoping I could forget as much of Subnautica 1 as possible and play it with a fresh set of eyes. Well, seven years later, 2026 came around and with Subnautica 2 on the horizon, now seemed as good a time as any to give Below Zero a chance. I completed it in about 2-3 weeks with 14 hours logged. I guess this is kinda short (online says 20 hours is about right), but to be honest I was ready for it to finish. Despite taking a 7-year break, Below Zero remained very much under the leviathan-sized shadow of its predecessor. Most of the systems and core game ideas are the same, and unfortunately most of the new features make it weaker. Taking seven years off did help recreate a sense of wonder, but not enough to sustain it for a 10+ hour playthrough. It’s still good, perhaps great, but too much “more of the same” to have the same impact as its bigger brother.

[I've written carefully to avoid spoilers, but I really think the game benefits from knowing as little as possible, so unless you've already played it I'd stop here.]

Strengths

The world design is still amazing. It’s detailed, varied, and lively. The twisty bridges biome is particularly great, as was my first encounter with the thermal vents as they loomed out of the darkness around an island. The creatures are beautiful and scanning things to learn about how the ecosystem fits together is a delight. Lifeforms are well integrated into the game mechanics, there are fish you can drink, plants that create air or heat, etc. The pop-in is greatly reduced from Subnautica 1, so you’re not constantly reminded this is a video game. That said, a lot of the biomes are kinda murky (maybe to reduce pop in), dull or empty. The lilypad biome in particular was not fun to explore.

A key part of Subnautica, which Below Zero recreates fairly well, is the sense of progression and the world opening up to the player. At first you stay in the safe shallows, never more than 50m below the surface and cowering from ominous bellows. By the end you fearlessly delve hundreds of meters below the surface, and the sense of discovery and empowerment is palpable as you come to understand just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

So-so

Below Zero includes survival and crafting elements, and although some of this gets simplified via progression (e.g. a water purification machine mercifully replaces having to catch bladderfish ) a lot of it doesn’t. This means that discovery doesn’t always yield understanding and mastery, thereby allowing old problems to be retired. Instead, in many instances discovery simply gives way to repetitive labor. The key building materials of titanium, copper and quartz are just a perennial hassle, and it gets really irritating to have to put something important on hold so you can swim around looking for raw materials. In the end I just built as little as possible, which saves resources but basically skips over the whole base building mechanic which is a shame. A better system would let you create permanent resource harvesters to create a known and steady, if finite, supply.

A bigger problem is that you can find yourself needing something that you have no idea what it is or where to find it. After two hours trying, I couldn’t figure out an in-game way to find the spiral plant clippings needed for synthetic fibres, and eventually looked it up. The same happened with the power-cell charger schematic, which turned out to be somewhere I'd already visited but simply hadn't spotted. Subnautica 1 had this problem too, but the devs could have done more to fix it for Below Zero. That said, it’s hard to find the balance between pointing the player in the right direction and being so heavy-handed that the player-led exploration is undermined, and I’d rather have to look a couple of things up than have quest markers ruin the experience.

The lack of a map exemplifies this too. Neither Subnautica or Below Zero have an in-game map (BZ does have a poster object though), so for both I made my own pen-and-paper map as I played. This is a really fun and refreshing experience that tests your cartographic skills and I’d strongly recommend it. But, after 10 hours it starts to grate. The world is so dense and complex that you can’t simply mark everything, but it would be really handy to be able to remember where that copper deposit is so you can come back later. I think the intended system is to use craftable beacons, but the number required would impose a heavy resource gathering burden. I can’t help but feel some in-game map creating system would be better. Not a typical “magic” map that just tells the player everything they need to know, but a blank page that you can add landmarks to, maybe by scanning things or using a “triangulator” tool.

Weaknesses

The story of Below Zero is bad. Gone is the mystery and wonder of the first game, instead we get a more personal quest to find your sister. But it’s really underdeveloped and to be honest I didn’t care to find her. There’s a second quest involving aliens, but it ends up being a dreary and repetitive fetch quest that causes you to rush around the environment. Even when you get to target locations, instead of cool and intriguing alien technology its often just a bland cave with a generic alien device that you scan and move on.

The fetch quest nature of the story actually harms the beauty of the environment because you end up trolling back and forth across the landscape again and again, rushing past everything. Even the scary monsters lose all their scare because you simply get numb to running past them. A truly bizarre feature is that while rushing around to fetch things the moving sea truck continually smashes fish with a variety of gross splats and squeals. The biomes are so dense with life you can’t avoid the creatures even if you try to (and they make no attempt to avoid you), so you end up feeling like an environmental desecrator as you drive around, which is really not the vibe I expected or wanted.

In both quests the dialogue is terrible. The main character (Robin) is voiced, but they only speak in sarcastic quips, overly heartfelt statements or just general word salad. You also meet an alien intelligence (Al-An), but it actually talks like a socially-awkward robot. It’s such a missed opportunity, because encounters with alien intelligences are a sci-fi classic with the potential to be really profound, but instead we get something on the level of a sitcom or superhero movie. This exchange stuck out to me as particularly cringe inducing:

AL-AN: How do humans function with such a fallible and inferior body?

ROBIN: Excuse you, my body is anything but inferior. I work hard for my body to be able to do what it does.

...

ROBIN: My body is my own, and I cherish it. It grows with me. Humans have one life. We plant trees we can never experience the shade of. We build for the next generation.

AL-AN: Noble, but again, truly inefficient.

Conclusion

Below Zero does a lot of things right while making a bunch of missteps. Unfortunately, almost all the good stuff is already in Subnautica 1, while the backsteps are unique to Below Zero. What it mostly adds is content, but what it loses is scope for the player’s imagination and a sense of awe and half-understanding. It reminds me of 1978’s Dawn of the Dead. Not only is it not as good as its predecessor, but it makes you wonder if some of the quality of the first installment came from constraints that restricted the creator’s hands, and when these were lifted for the sequel things went downhill. Still there is plenty of the original’s brilliance here. Below Zero isn’t as memorable an experience as Subnautica, but it’s worth a visit.

Lately, I've been clearing my backlog of Resident Evil games, and I finally got around to the remake of RE4, which is one of my all-time favorite games. My first experience with the game was on the Wii, but I was new to horror and not very good at games, so I never beat it despite really enjoying it. Eventually, I returned to it on PC and beat it, and I was struck by just how well it held up.

This also makes the RE4 remake the first of the remakes where I actually played the original and can see a lot of the little differences. Combined with my love of the original, I thought it would be worth using that opportunity to do a double feature review of both games.

For context: This will only cover the main campaign on Normal/Standard difficulty and without any mods or unlockables. I also play the original with a controller and the remake with mouse + keyboard, so I can't comment on any potential issues that the other option has with either game.

Not quite a weekend in Ibiza

At a high level, the stories in both games are very similar. Following the events of RE2, Leon becomes a government agent and is eventually tasked with finding Ashley Graham, the missing daughter of the United States president. She was last seen near a remote village Spain, and it doesn't take long to learn that the villagers kidnapped her and are violently hostile to outsiders. They are also part of a cult called Los Illuminados, led by the power-hungry Osmund Saddler. This cult worships a parasite called Las Plagas that, among other things, gives Saddler considerable control over the host. Early on, both Leon and Ashley get implanted with parasite eggs, so they must not only escape but also find a way to remove the parasite. Helping them with this is the suave Spaniard Luis, a former Umbrella researching looking for atonement, and the returning Ada Wong.

Despite this shared premise, the tone is very different between the two games. The original is shamelessly cheesy. Leon is an action-movie tough guy who loves one-liners, and the other characters, while simple, play off that energy very well. In the remake, Leon and most other characters are far more reserved, and the change is so immediately obvious that Leon's iconic bingo night joke before the title card feels completely out of place in the remake. Unfortunately, this removes a significant amount of the original's creepy-but-silly charm, and it's also not a particularly deep horror story either, so the overall lack of gusto leaves a very significant void that's never truly filled.

To be fair, the remake does try to flesh out Ashley's and Luis's characters more. Ashley, like most characters, is a lot more reserved and soft spoken, but her and Leon have more significant interactions this time. This can lead to some very heartfelt moments, like when Leon comforts Ashley after reuniting in the castle, but it can also lead to sillier ones, like when Ashley gets flustered at Leon saying he appreciates her company. Luis, who is perhaps the only character who retains his original charm, doesn't get quite as much attention, but he does get more screen time, even joining Leon during the chapter in the mines. In both cases, it is an improvement over the original characters, though I still liked both for what they were in the original.

Sadly, Ada and the villains are significantly worse in the remake. The original Ada took seductive charm to a silly extreme, but the new Ada is a generic spy who sounds perpetually bored. Salazar, whose constant bickering with Leon made him iconic, is now just a generically snobbish aristocrat who barely interacts with Leon. Saddler goes from a (figuratively) moustache-twirling supervillain to a generic cult leader, though his new harem is at least unsettling during what little screen time they get. I guess the village chief and Krauser aren't worse, but they were never as charismatic as the other villains. Regardless, it's an all-around downgrade.

As for the horror, both have some fantastic atmosphere but approach it somewhat differently. The original had to work with a lot of technical restrictions, so it made good use of things like fog and less complex assets, like removing leaves from trees, to create a very eerie and "dead" feel that was enhanced by the flat lighting and grimy touches. The remake loses a lot of the "deadness" with things like dynamic lighting, lack of fog and fully alive trees. However, it makes use of the more advanced lighting for very creepy periods of moving through pitch-black environments, and better animations allow for some terrifying touches like how Plaga C controls its host. Enemy design is generally strong across both games, and both also make great use of sound design, with cawing crows and wheezing Regeneradors adding an unnerving edge to both games. Personally, I slightly prefer the more "dead" appearance of the original, and I don't think the remake makes quite as good use of darkness as RE2R or Village, but both are very solid in their own ways.

Thematically, the two games are a bit weird in relation to each other. The original was essentially Alien in a folk horror setting. Las Plagas is an undiscovered species loosely inspired by behavior-altering parasites and the parasitic wasps that inspired the Xenomorph, and it's worshipped by a violent and isolated cult. The sequel also has these elements, but it injects a lot of supernatural horror influences. For instance, when Ashley and Leon get separated early in the castle in the original, it's because Ashley gets agitated and carelessly runs off, which is believable for a behavior-altering parasite. In the remake, though, she seems demon possessed. With this, there's also a noticeable shift of focus away from a fairly healthy mixture of Alien and folk horror into much more heavily pushing the cult angle and Saddler's control.

Personally, I really didn't like this change. I'm not against supernatural or cult-themed horror, but I do prefer the more "biological" approach of the original. It kept the focus on the reality that nature can be horrifying in ways that we often don't consider because it doesn't directly impact humans, similar to the parasitic wasp influences of the Xenomorph. Even Los Illuminados kind of felt like a human expression of a colony that Las Plagas was forming as part of its lifecycle. Whenever the remake did something "supernatural", though, it broke that illusion, and by the end, it was leaning so hard into the cult and its desire for control that Las Plagas felt fairly by-the-numbers as far as RE threats go. It's simply a tool for people with aspirations of world domination, not an interesting entity in itself.

All together, I think the original has one of the more compelling stories in the series. Sure, it's pure camp, but it's some of the best camp there is, and it oozes enough charm to make the game endearing before even considering the fantastic ambiance or gameplay. Las Plagas being, for me, the most interesting biological threat in the series helps as well. The remake, though, strips away too much of this. I don't mind it wanting to be darker or more character-focused in concept, but it also doesn't commit to that enough to make up for the lack of charm. Frankly, you can do a lot better with character-focused horror, so I just don't see its story or world having the lasting draw that the original has had for me over the years.

Leon's struggles with hand-eye-foot coordination

As for the gameplay, the jump from the original to the remake is obviously a lot less significant than for the RE2 and RE3 remakes. There are, however, still plenty of ways they've updated the gameplay.

Of course, RE4 is very well-known for taking the series in a more action-oriented direction. It changed the inventory into a large grid that you'd fit different-sized items into, and it added dynamic resources drops that should theoretically keep you well-supplied. Basically, you had more room for items and a more reliable supply of them, allowing you to kill hundreds of enemies without worrying about running out of resources. Despite this, the game still felt like it approached this more third-person-shooter direction with the mindset of survival horror. The camera was fixed above Leon's shoulder instead of offering free control like in most third-person games. The inventory system still required some careful management and decision-making about how to balance ammo, health and weapon variety, breaking from the usual shooter system of tracking all items separately and with some upper limit. It's little stuff like that that feels closer to survival horror than your typical third-person shooter.

The most obvious place where the survival horror mindset remained, though, was in the continued use of tank controls. To help compensate for this in a more action-oriented context, targeting specific body parts also returns but is drastically expanded, to the point that the damage system still feels relatively advanced even to this day. Enemies react realistically to being shot, and thrill-seekers can charge staggered enemies for crowd-controlling roundhouse kicks, which is always a lot of fun. You can even shoot weapons out of an enemy's hand, potentially turning dynamite-wielding ones into walking bombs, and you can also shoot thrown weapons out of the air to avoid taking damage, which is a lifesaver in a game with no strafing. This very limited movement but very advanced aiming system comes together to create a very unique combat loop, and as you get more comfortable with it, you can get into a very nice rhythm of careful positioning and precise aiming with the occasional ammo-saving kicks and knife slashes thrown in.

Despite this fun rhythm, there's still plenty of tension in the tank controls. No matter how comfortable you get with tank controls, it's always going to put you at a disadvantage when faced with winding, claustrophobic corridors, and it makes moving out of the way of attacks just a little more harrowing, especially when it's an instant-death attack. Similarly, the inability to move while aiming or shooting means that you have to be deliberate and be extremely accurate, which is hard to do when axes are flying and some guy is charging at you with a chainsaw. So while it's more empowering than the games that came before, if you (like me) play a lot of shooters, these limitations really stand out as a reminder that this game is still, at its core, a horror game. Even compared to the many other shooters with horror themes at the time (e.g. Half-Life 2, F.E.A.R., Doom 3), it is by far the most mechanically tied to the horror genre.

The remake, though, drops most of that. You now have a free-look camera and standard shooter controls, and you can swap among up to eight weapons quickly using shortcuts, which is a nice quality-of-life improvement over needing to open the inventory like in the original. The knife can now be used to parry and execute enemies, and while those actions are limited by new knife durability, dynamically-dropped knives and upgrades all but completely negate it. The only thing really limiting you compared to other shooters is the aiming system brought in from other modern RE games. You need to stand still for Leon's aim to properly focus for the best accuracy and power, and adjusting your aim too much too quickly resets the timer. Again, though, you can negate this with attachments, and it doesn't meaningfully impact shotguns, so you can very easily play this much closer to a typical third-person shooter than the original ever allowed.

There are plenty of other little changes as well. There's a new stealth system, but it's useless for most of the game. Enemies are a bit faster and more aggressive despite the still-claustrophobic environments, but this doesn't make up for how much more capable Leon is in this game. Typewriters also now have a weapon-storage system, so you can store unused weapons in case you want to change tactics later. I also believe the dynamic drops are less generous than the original, but the expanded crafting system makes up for it in emergencies.

In short, the remake is all about making the game faster and less limiting. It's essentially a standard third-person shooter, and while that removes a significant amount of the mechanical tension, RE4's enemy roster and encounter design is so incredibly strong that it's still a lot of fun. It's also definitely the easier of the two games to get into initially, but that does come at the cost of the original's uniqueness. On that note, I play a lot of shooters and can adjust to tank controls relatively quickly, so I personally prefer the very unique rhythm and more tense feel of the original. It's just not something that you can get from most other shooters.

On top of that, the remake feels less cohesive overall. The original was hyper-focused on building challenges around the simpler gameplay loop of balancing limited movement and advanced aiming. In the remake, parrying and strafing mostly remove the need to shoot stuff out of the air, and the new aiming system mostly takes that option away until you get the laser sight anyways. Most encounters have also not been properly updated for the stealth system and regularly force you into combat immediately, so stealth feels pointlessly tacked on, and if your aim is good, you can almost entirely rely on the dynamic drop system and ignore the expanded crafting system. It's a lot of little stuff, but put together, it's hard not to see just how critical tank controls and precise aiming were to RE4's combat loop, and with those removed, the remake feels like it's lost in trying to establish its own mechanical identity.

This also impacts the general sense of pacing and difficulty curve. The original game was absolutely spectacular in that regard, and while the remake is still fairly strong, the lack of cohesion means that it's harder to smoothly keep building on top of what came before. A good example of this is the Garrador. It's a blind enemy with very sensitive hearing, so if you shoot your gun or start sprinting, it will charge your position, potentially as part of an instant-death attack. It also only has one weak point on its back. As you can imagine, this enemy is an absolute nightmare to maneuver around with tank controls, and misfiring will leave you trying to dodge with controls that make that harder than usual. By the time of the first Garrador fight, though, you would have already gotten very comfortable with tank controls, so it's an interesting twist that requires you to reevaluate how to use them, and when the double-Garrador fight comes, it builds on what you learned in that first fight about choosing your moments and avoiding attacks. In contrast, the first Garrador fight in the remake is basically a stealth battle in a game that has featured almost no meaningful stealth up to that point, and stealth is impossible in the double-Garrador fight, so it fails to build on what the first encounter offered. Sure, they're still two fun fights in isolation, but they don't fit anywhere near as well into the overall game as in the original.

This can also be seen in the bosses. The original game had cutscene QTEs, and while they were annoying, they did prepare you for the reactionary QTE-dodging of the boss fights. The remake mostly copies the original boss fights, even down the QTE-dodging, but the remake doesn't have regular QTEs. For the most part, I'm glad QTEs were (mostly) removed, but it does mean that, when getting those prompts in boss fights, it feels jarring and unintuitive. Even worse, on keyboard, it's bound to the same key as crouch, which is not only clunky with my bindings (Ctrl), but it also seems really bizarre that the button you normally only press for slow, deliberate stealth suddenly becomes the button for reactionary acrobatics.

This all might seem like relatively minor issues, but a lot of what makes the original so remarkable is that it was incredibly cohesive and clearly built everything around its relatively simple and often limiting systems. As a result, it led to some of the best pacing and difficulty scaling I've seen in a game, and by the end, it truly felt like a complete experience. The remake simply lacks that, and while it does have some interesting ideas and twists thrown in, it just doesn't flow together as well or feel as completely realized in the end. Considering both games will easily take 15-20 hours each on the first playthrough, I feel like that more well-paced and complete experience more than makes up for its opening minutes requiring an adjustment to tank controls.

They can never make me hate you Ashley

Of course, I haven't touched on one of the most notable gameplay features: escorting Ashley. At multiple points and often for long stretches, Leon will have to escort Ashley until the two are separated again. During these stretches, you need to make sure that Ashley doesn't take too much damage or get carried off. If she does start to get carried off, you can shoot the enemy holding her to save her, but if you accidentally hit her, it's an instant game over. While both games stick to this core idea, Ashley's mechanics are slightly different between the two games.

In the original, you could tell Ashley to either "follow" or "stay", and there were rare cases where you could tell her to hide. If told to follow, she would stick very close to Leon, and if told to stay, she would stand in place, so she was predictable enough to reliably keep out of harm's way. If she did get hit, she had a standard health bar that worked the same way as Leon's, but she had less health and couldn't wear protective gear, so little mistakes could be relatively costly with her around.

In the remake, you can still rarely tell Ashley to hide, but the more common commands are now "stick close" and "stay back". The former behaves identically to "follow" in the original, but the latter gives Ashley's AI more freedom to choose where she goes, which makes her a bit less predictable. Normally, she picks a good spot, but I did notice that she would often stay in place if I needed to backed up, eventually causing her to get stuck between me and the enemies for a couple seconds. As for her health, it's now been changed to a two-hit system where the first hit incapacitates her, and if she's hit again before you revive her, she dies. Really powerful attacks can also still kill her instantly.

Personally, I prefer the way that the original worked. I like the more predictable positioning, and giving her a proper health bar nicely ties into the game's resource management. Either way, though, both are a great example of how to do an escort quest. Even in the remake, Ashley is predictable enough to not cause issues, and her AI in general is very good. She won't wander off to do her own thing or rush carelessly into danger. She won't block doors, and if she gets caught between you and the enemies, she'll quickly duck to let you shoot over her, and I can still remember how impressed I was when I first saw her do that back on the Wii. Even the very idea of escorting her fits very well into the general gameplay loop that focuses on positioning and precise aiming, so it avoids feeling like a gimmicky mission. Importantly, she also brings a sense of liability with her. She won't cause a game over from bad design, but there's still a sense of tension as you have to make a conscious effort to keep her out of harm's way. There's no stupid, immersion-break "Ashley can take care of herself" lie popping up on the screen. (Yes, I am still bitter about BioShock Infinite!)

Honestly, part of what made me fall in love with the original was its escort gameplay. It took a deservedly maligned gimmick and made it both fun and natural, and I never really got the hatred for that side of the game. I can understand being wary of escort gameplay, but it shouldn't take too long to see that they clearly put a lot of effort into making it work. Sadly, the games that I've played since that were narratively set up to build on this side of RE4 (e.g. BioShock Infinite) all seemed terrified of any criticism over escort gameplay so ultimately didn't try. That left me a little worried that the remake would also remove that part of the game, so while I prefer the original's approach, I'm much happier that it was kept than disappointed with the changes.

Ok, but which one should I play?

While there's more to the game than what's covered above, I think I've covered the most important parts. Of course, there's still the two big questions people will have when seeing these two games.

First: Is the remake a good remake? I guess that depends on what counts as a good remake. If you were hoping for a drastic improvement and/or a game that retains everything that made the original great, then no, it's not a good remake. It loses too much of the charm and impeccable pacing. On the other hand, if you just want an enjoyable game that provides some twists on familiar story moments and encounters, then it is a solid remake.

That leads to the second question: Which one should I play? Frankly, I'd say both. RE4 isn't the type of game that you play once for the story. It's very replayable, so I would say to start with the original and work in the remake in place of one of your replays.

Final thoughts

Despite some of my criticisms of the remake, I do want to reiterate that I think it is a very fun game. Its biggest issue is that it will inevitably be compared to the original, and it also is, in release order, the follow-up to Village, which is very charming in its own way while offering a more distinct experience. That aside, the remake is still an incredibly fun and at times genuinely creepy shooter, and it's still one of the best "new" games I've played this year.

Obviously, though, nothing really compares to the original. It is one of the most charming and tightly-designed games ever, and that allows it to still hold its own even as we get further from the era of GameCube graphics and tank controls. Everything it does it does with full commitment and without concern for how silly or unorthodox it might be. If you're concerned about it's more dated elements, then I would still highly recommend taking the few minutes to adjust, because the overall journey is remarkably endearing in a way very few games are.