Resident Evil 4 VR review: breathe new life into a familiar feeling

I have two minds when it comes to whether or not someone should play Resident Evil 4 VR. If you have never played the original RE4, then by no means should you jump to this version; Everything that made it (and does, for that matter) important would go completely over your head in virtual reality. However, if you’ve played Resident Evil 4, especially if you’ve completed it multiple times over the years, then RE4VR must be played at all costs.

As the name implies, RE4VR is just that. It is Resident Evil 4 but in virtual reality. There is an immediate novelty in the game’s perspective shift: bringing it to the first person allows an intimate look at the game world that a third person could never afford. Effectively being a remaster of a 16-year-old game, RE4VR shows its age at times, mostly when it’s around certain muddy textures and assets, but it doesn’t look bad by any means. As someone who has played the original more times than I count, getting a chance to see a 1: 1 recreation of RE4’s levels, characters, and monsters was consistently fun.

Changes made specifically for VR are also welcome in most cases. The giant interactive briefcase where the protagonist Leon Kennedy holds all his weapons and gear is a marvel to assemble in virtual reality. It feels as close to doing it in real life as possible, even if you’re pretty much playing Tetris with weapons. Speaking of which, the weapons look fantastic. I had a great time holding iconic weapons like the Red9 pistol and Striker shotgun and getting a good look at the additional details. The same goes for items from around the world, like keys, money, and herbs. Everything can be collected and examined before putting it into your inventory. I’m sure I seemed like an idiot to all of my neighbors who were constantly staring at my hands, but didn’t know that I was seeing yellow grass up close and personal for the first time – their loss.

The combat received the most significant revision in RE4VR, and it is what sent me to the moon. It is famous that the original changed the typical perspective of the third person camera from fixed angles to the now modern view behind the back. But it still featured tank controls, which means Leon only moved in the direction he was looking. Also, he couldn’t move while aiming or shooting. While it was groundbreaking for the time, there is an obvious narrative and mechanical dissonance to the gameplay of the original. The game features Leon as a badass American action hero, but once you control it, you’re still hanging around like the same old Resident Evils fool from the past. RE4VR abandons this model entirely if you choose to play with full motion activated instead of teleporting. I can not recommend it highly enough; it marries mechanics and history in a way the original never did.

Running freely through a combat arena profoundly changes the way enemy engagements work in RE4. Rather than trying to line up with a row of enemies, doing as much damage as I can before they hit me, I was constantly on the move, adapting my play style to the moment, and acting offensively against enemies rather than defensively. From the beginning, I had a lot of fun running around shooting enemies like a virtual reality John Wick. I thought RE4 would never feel “new” to me again at this point in my life, but RE4VR completely changed the way I played one of my favorite games. It felt fresh, exciting, and completely different from every RE4 game that I had in the last 16 years. For the first time in a long time, I was no longer going through the motions, and iconic moments like the early encounter in the village, the El Gigante fights, and the minecart roller coaster have rarely been more fun.

Moving RE4 to first person also does a lot for its horror, although it’s still not the scariest thing you can play on the market. There is an inherent tension in being surrounded by enemies in virtual reality, especially when you feel overwhelmed. The many incredibly large bosses are also incredibly threatening when you see them towering high above your head. More than once, RE4VR put my heart in my throat as I frantically tried to maneuver any threat that was approaching me. Every now and then this exacerbated some problems with tracking for two-handed weapons, not registering one of my hands or an input like cocking a shotgun or aiming a telescopic sight. Fortunately, this was rare, but still led to some bothersome deaths. Until I unlocked the Striker, which allowed me to fire an automatic shotgun with one hand as if I was Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 – but cooler.

In 2020, I played the original RE4 from front to back three times. It’s something that I usually play for comfort; I can charge and fly without much thought. RE4VR completely changed my relationship with a game that I know better than most. If you’re a RE4 fan, have access to an Oculus Quest 2, and don’t mind the morally and ethically questionable necessity of having a Facebook account to play an Oculus game, I can’t recommend RE4VR highly enough. It is like giving new life to an old and familiar feeling.