Resident Evil 4 (Remake)

[Moonface]

Regardless of that, her character always has a soft spot for Leon. That's how their relationship is and she's terrible at hiding it. None of that is conveyed in her voice. Nothing is converted in her voice. Only words being said.

Yeah, I didn't get impression from her voice acting either really. At least her body language and facial expression convey it.


Also, anyone else here try the shooting gallery yet? I swear the challenge to hit all the skull tokens borders on taking the piss with some of them; I only got to 1B before losing my patience and deciding not to bother with them at the first range in the game with how quickly some of the tokens turn up at the end. I thought 1A was already bad with the parrot skull token at the very end that seems to be a matter of luck to hit it.

[Maniakkid25]

I have; I have decided to not worry about it until I get to the island. It turns out you have access to all the games available when you find the shooting gallery, so you don't have to worry about getting all the tokens in one shot.

So, I've made it past the Double Garrador fight. If you do not have the bolt thrower and mines, I do not know how you are supposed to do this fight. And then! Oh, and then! They managed to make the spike pit area WORSE! I DON'T KNOW HOW THEY MANAGED THAT, given you have to deal with the Verdugo in the original! Well, no, I know exactly how they managed it, but no spoilers! Just know that I am taking a break because I have enough stress in my life, and I don't need that shit!

[Moonface]

I have; I have decided to not worry about it until I get to the island. It turns out you have access to all the games available when you find the shooting gallery, so you don't have to worry about getting all the tokens in one shot.

Yeah, once I found that out I ditched the shooting gallery pretty quickly. I might just do all the regular challenges in the one found in the castle and save the stupid skull tokens for the last gallery in the game.

So, I've made it past the Double Garrador fight. If you do not have the bolt thrower and mines, I do not know how you are supposed to do this fight. And then! Oh, and then! They managed to make the spike pit area WORSE! I DON'T KNOW HOW THEY MANAGED THAT, given you have to deal with the Verdugo in the original! Well, no, I know exactly how they managed it, but no spoilers! Just know that I am taking a break because I have enough stress in my life, and I don't need that shit!

I haven't got that far yet, but being reminded of the Garrador's, I absolutely adored the way they introduced that enemy in the remake! I was so on edge at first when I realized what I was likely going to encounter, and kept inching forward at the area where you grab the item off the dead body in the dead-end corridor because I didn't notice it was a dead-end hall at first, so I was expecting the Garrador to come around a corner ahead of me once I got close enough to the item. Also, screw the jump scare that happens right after that, especially because @ShiraNoMai convinced me nothing was going to happen after I said the floor was going to collapse and then it didn't. That whole encounter might be my favourite thing I've done in the castle so far.

[Maniakkid25]

One thing that annoyed me in the Garrador fight is he has more senses than before. If you turn your back on him (such as to, say, know when you're dodging a chain so you don't alert him), there's a good chance he'll get triggered and attack you, and I've noticed that they can "feel" you aiming at them if you aim for too long. Combine that with a small hitbox on their literal only weakspot, and it's a bad time trying to kill these bastards.

Oh, and you might expect you'll run into the Novistador dungeon soon after this. You don't! No! In fact, the game gives you no warning about the little f***s! You're just on your way to the throne room, when BAM! Novistadors, ALL UP IN YOUR FACE! And they even took the exploit that let's you insta-kill them if they are flying! Their health pool is SIGNIFICANTLY smaller in this version, however, so bggars can't be choosers.

Edit: Mercenaries DLC dropped today. It's free to anyone who owns RE4, as far as I can tell. You do not have to have completed the game to partake in the mode. Also, managed the Verdugo fight with barely any ammo left over. Because I'm an idiot, I didn't buy a rocket launcher for this fight, so I had to take him down with conventional arms. It was not fun. And then it turned out I missed a treasure, so I had to do it again. It was still not fun.

[Moonface]

One thing that annoyed me in the Garrador fight is he has more senses than before. If you turn your back on him (such as to, say, know when you're dodging a chain so you don't alert him), there's a good chance he'll get triggered and attack you, and I've noticed that they can "feel" you aiming at them if you aim for too long. Combine that with a small hitbox on their literal only weakspot, and it's a bad time trying to kill these bastards.

Dang I forgot about that one gripe I had with that first Garrador fight. I didn't have a problem avoiding the chains, but the amount of times I would be crouched and completely still (nor aiming) yet somehow the Garrador would always just turn and walk towards my general location. I think at one point he even just opted to start swinging his arms wildly when he randomly got close to me without me doing anything, and I ended up muting the mic on my PS5 controller because I started thinking the game was detecting sound through that.

Edit: Mercenaries DLC dropped today. It's free to anyone who owns RE4, as far as I can tell. You do not have to have completed the game to partake in the mode.

Ooh nice, I didn't know it was going to be added so soon! I think I'll save it for after I finish the game just in case it features any enemies, weapons or locations I've not come across in the main game yet.


So last night I was doing the puzzle with the three heads for the animal statue in the Ballroom, and I just want to say that this room...



...can go and utterly fuck itself. Far and beyond the worst enemy encounter I've had in the game so far and it has definitely single-handedly put my death/failure count for Chapter 9 into double digits. I haven't finished the chapter yet to see what my total count for it is.

[Maniakkid25]

Yeah, that room sucked. It's the red guy that makes it so terrible. That new mechanic he has is utterly disgusting, and I like to shut him up with the Broken Butterfly. A few rounds of that to the face usually deals with him. After that, it's just trying to deal with the enemies. Once you realize the layout of the room, it's MUCH easier because you realize you have a couple ready-made funnels, but yeah, no, that room SUCKED!

Oh, and you're gonna love the end sequence of Chapter 9, by the way. I literally said "Not like this! Not like this!" when it happened to me.

[Moonface]

Yeah I used the Butterfly on the red dude in that room whenever I got to him, but my struggle was reaching him without Ashley faltering behind and getting herself caught. My failures can be summed up into this:

• Ashley getting abducted and too many enemies swarming me to reach her before she either got carried away or I died in the horde.
  
• Ashley getting abducted when I'm all the way by the red dude on the balcony because she didn't follow me up the ladder and I can't run back fast enough to get a clear shot off on her abductor.
  
• One instance of my failure to stop Ashley being carried away was caused by her abductor opting not to take the stairs to the single doorway in the room, but instead walked over to the still lowered walkway and up to the wall. I thought the AI had bugged out so didn't shoot them from up on the balcony, only for the game to decide walls are no obstacle and gave me the failure screen anyway. This one royally pissed me off.
  
• Having a tentacle plaga perform back to back attacks with zero pause, putting me in a stun lock and killing me in three blows.
  
• Throwing a flash bang to kill four transformed enemies with Ashley between us as she was clutching her head from the red guy chanting again, and somehow Ashley died instantly when the flash went off.
  
• Running out of ammo and crafting materials entirely so I have to try and survive with just a knife, which felt like a lost cause so I'd just let myself be killed.
  

Somehow I ended that chapter with 7 deaths, so either failures don't count on that tally or I didn't suffer as many game over screens in that room as I felt like I did.

Chapter 9 Ending Sequence

And since that means I did the latter half of that chapter, I was jump scared by everything that happens before any enemies show up and then it was fine from that point onwards until the final escape sequence, which was when I began to properly shit the bed. I only took one death in that whole section and it was only because the third chain I pulled in the mausoleum was one where a wooden barrier blocks the other direction so I had three suits of armour bottle necked into the only opening I could escape through. I did try lantern stunning them but I couldn't do it without them freezing in places that prevented me from passing them, and because they tend to attack as soon as they unfreeze I didn't have enough room to back up anymore to try and avoid the attack and attempt another freeze, so I died.

[Maniakkid25]

You know, something that I'm realizing about the Remake is that it significantly alters the canon, now. See, we know because of the trailers that Luis takes part in the double gigante fight and the minecart section, so it's not a spoiler to say that. But in the original version, by the time you get there, Luis is dead. He dies before the "Ashley ventures off on her own" section. So, this game suddenly becomes a lot more interesting in terms of its plot, now. I'm wondering how they're gonna deal with that...

[Moonface]

Yeah, seeing how much more prominent Luis was in the trailers got me really curious about the plot because it was clear right away his death wasn't going to be where it was in the original.

Minor Story Spoilers

Another notable change with characters is Saddler. If I'm remembering right, in the original he meets Leon and Ashley at the church after you rescue her, but so far he hasn't appeared a single time in the game and even references to him have been minimal; I think the only mentions of him are in lore pickups and not a single character has actually spoken of him by name yet. I find that change really interesting since Saddler is the main antagonist and yet his role so far has been greatly reduced.

[Maniakkid25]

Dos Gigantes down, and the game has no sense of pacing, apparently, because it leads directly into the minecart section, and just from the small bit I've played, IT'S A DOOZY! No idea how I'm supposed to get that achievement for taking no damage. At least the gun you're given gets infinite ammo...

[Monocle]

So last night I was doing the puzzle with the three heads for the animal statue in the Ballroom, and I just want to say that this room...



...can go and utterly fuck itself. Far and beyond the worst enemy encounter I've had in the game so far and it has definitely single-handedly put my death/failure count for Chapter 9 into double digits. I haven't finished the chapter yet to see what my total count for it is.

secret for you. Throw a grenade at the switch and then run to trigger the enemy pulling the switch. He blows up and never pulls the switch. the bridge never drops.

[Monocle]

Dos Gigantes down, and the game has no sense of pacing, apparently, because it leads directly into the minecart section, and just from the small bit I've played, IT'S A DOOZY! No idea how I'm supposed to get that achievement for taking no damage. At least the gun you're given gets infinite ammo...

Double post! 

It's not as hard as you think. Don't go wild shooting because it takes too long for the reticle to center again. Just shoot them first time. Plus there's bombs and stuff for a few of them. Took me many tries but I finally got it. Plus it's split in two parts. Once you do the first part with no hits, you get an auto save when you get into the second cart


also i finished the game on standard. B rank. Gonna play throb professional to see if I get S rank since I can blow through the story was and everything now

[Moonface]

Dos Gigantes down, and the game has no sense of pacing, apparently, because it leads directly into the minecart section, and just from the small bit I've played, IT'S A DOOZY! No idea how I'm supposed to get that achievement for taking no damage. At least the gun you're given gets infinite ammo...

I just did that part tonight, but I didn't know about the no damage challenge until a ways after. I did the first half hitless but got caught by a random arrow on the second half which sucks to realize in hindsight. Ah well.

So last night I was doing the puzzle with the three heads for the animal statue in the Ballroom, and I just want to say that this room...



...can go and utterly fuck itself. Far and beyond the worst enemy encounter I've had in the game so far and it has definitely single-handedly put my death/failure count for Chapter 9 into double digits. I haven't finished the chapter yet to see what my total count for it is.

secret for you. Throw a grenade at the switch and then run to trigger the enemy pulling the switch. He blows up and never pulls the switch. the bridge never drops.

I saw something about a grenade skip for that room when trying to find a decent image of it for that post but didn't bother to look further into it. I'd have probably discovered it for myself if I'd bothered to toss a grenade over to the switch before hitting the trigger point for the enemies but I felt that one grenade wouldn't do enough damage on hardcore to kill the switch puller.


Finished Chapter 11 a couple of hours ago, and did the Verdugo fight in Chapter 10 today too after stopping before it yesterday.

Chapter 10

I liked the way the Novistadors are introduced in this game compared to the original. They also seem way easier to kill too because I was killing them all in just a couple of shots from my TMP. The invisible ones in the caves were neat too with how you need to rely on the water reflections to see their location, but once I knew what to look for to detect them it removed all of the tension since they'll never get close to attack you once you consistently spot them.

The double Garrador fight was incredibly rough for me at first because I didn't know a swarm of enemies were going to enter the room and I was trying to juggle them and the Garrador's together which didn't end well. Got through it very slowly by using the bolt gun to kill everyone silently since getting their attention doesn't alert the Garrador's. I then spent a bit of time lining up bolt shots with the back of the armored Garrador to try and kill at least one of them silently, but I ran out of bolts so had to finish that one with a rifle round which obviously alerted the other one. Fortunately dealing with only one Garrador in that big room is easy even with loud weapons so it was smooth sailing to finish up that room.

The Verdugo fight was better than the original in terms of arena layout, although I would love to know what the reason was for someone wanting liquid nitrogen showers installed; it felt so random to me.
I eventually managed to kill it on my first try at the boss fight, although it took a stupid amount of ammo to get the job done. I didn't have enough money to afford an RPG and forgot to bring my magnum in with me for easy damage.

Chapter 11 Story Spoilers

I found all the changes to Luis' death really interesting here. I like that it starts with the same type of kick-off for his death with him suddenly being stabbed in the back, but I was not expecting it to be a knife from Krauser. I thought the knife fight against him was way better than the QTE in the original, which was a pleasant surprise because knowing the QTE was removed beforehand made me expect the knife fight to be entirely cutscene. I also expected Ada to still be the one to fire the gun at the end of the fight but was surprised to see it was given to Luis for his final moment.

[Monocle]

I'm probably gonna go it on my professional run to get rank S. doing handgun and knife only in a separate run, probably assisted. Then a fresh professional. I dunno if I'll get all the achievements but I'm gonna try!

@Maniakkid25 What settings are you running on PC? if you want, I can get you to mod in DLSS into re4 so that you can crank up the settings to high on everything except raytracing.

[Maniakkid25]

I'm basically running the recommended settings for my rig, but with two exceptions. I have raytracing on normal, and the cutscenes only in 1080p instead of 4k. I don't have a 4k TV, nor do I want a 4k TV. The human eye cannot resolve 4k outside of perfect circumstances (giant TV, short viewing distance, high visual acuity), so there's no goddamn point, you graphics whores.

I think the game looks perfectly fine; my only issue is with gameplay freezing if I play for longer than about 2 hours.