Resident Evil 4 is back. Leon S. Kennedy is back. The game that redefined survival horror 18 years ago is back – with all the gore and guts and B-movie cheese that we all so fondly remember. To quote our Resident Evil 4 remake review: "Capcom has delivered a great remake of a classic game, one which captures everything that made it so special to begin with". And you really can't argue with that.
What is less certain is where Resident Evil as a series goes next. Capcom's stellar work in reimagining Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 for modern hardware heaped a degree of pressure on the devs ahead of RE4's return, but the standards set there also acted as a baseline moving forward. The 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake is surely one of the best video game remakes of all time, and while the reimagining of Jill Valentine and Nemesis' blockbuster tale didn't quite hit the same heights the following year, that's perhaps reflective of its weaker source material, not the quality of the game itself.
