Capcom has announced that Resident Evil 4 will be coming to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on Aug. 30, marking an end to the releases of modern Resident Evil games for next-gen consoles that began with RE6 on March 29.
Often regarded as the best game in the series, Resident Evil 4 marked a new beginning for the series that almost never came to fruition. The game was cancelled and restarted from scratch multiple times, so many times, in fact, that the original version of Resident Evil 4 eventually became Devil May Cry.
The team tangled with issues that prevented the earlier games from reaching true levels of greatness, such as fixed camera angles, stiff movement and unintuitive controls, and in the end, they came to a solution in the best way possible. The game replaced shambling zombie hordes with a mob of infected humans (a trend that continues to this day), movement became fluid, and most importantly, players were blessed with its over-the-shoulder camera.
Originally released for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube in 2005, the game has seen plenty of ports since then, including Windows, Wii, Zeebo, iOS, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Now, according to the announcement, come Aug. 30, 2016, it will be on pretty much every platform worth mentioning.
Quite frankly, it's become something like Final Fantasy VII (which, coincidentally, is getting a re-release on Android today) in regards to how many ports and releases it's gotten over the years. At this point, all it needs is a remake and the cycle will be complete.
With that said, it might be considered the best Resident Evil, but is the fourth entry worth buying again? Presumably, the game will cost $20, just like Resident Evil 6 and Resident Evil 5, so it's not too expensive as a standalone purchase. However, for those who have played other versions, even $20 might be too much to ask for.
Unfortunately, the available content doesn't help this port's case too much, either, as all that's included is the bonus content from the original game (including the New Game Plus option), along with the Mercenaries mode and features added to later versions of the game (which has been present since the Wii version). It's possible that this re-release will restore the background from the GC version and allow bonus costumes to appear in cutscenes, but if that is truly the case, then Capcom has yet to comment on it.
Yes, the game is awesome and is most definitely a must-buy for those who have yet to play it, but if Resident Evil 5's re-release is anything to go by, then this might be better off skipped, unless you really want to play it again and don't have access to — or don't want to bother with — your older version.
