I should not need to tell you just how good the remake of Resident Evil 4 is, but if you really need a refresher go read our 10/10 review or appreciate the Best Remake award that we just gave it. Suffice to say it’s a brilliant game, but is it a brilliant game played on PSVR 2? Well yes… and no.
Everything that we loved about Resident Evil 4 is intensified when playing in VR, the atmospheric graphics and superb sound effects really transport you to the remote part of Spain where things are growling in the bushes. Rather like real life, there’s something really quite terrifying about an old lady slowly approaching you waving a meat cleaver when you can look her directly in the eye, and being chased by chainsaw wielding maniacs is as heart racing as you might expect.
The game uses similar controls to other VR shooters in that your items are stored on your belt or shoulder and by pressing the correct button on the Sense controllers you can pick them up. Weapons need reloading in a realistic fashion and you really need to learn how to insert ammo and cock the gun at top speed as you don’t get much breathing room. You can also swing your knife and stab people in a melee attack if things get really frantic, but you obviously can’t reload a gun while that is happening, so working out the best form of attack is may save you when under pressure.
Thankfully there’s also a whole bunch of options for you to fiddle with to try and ensure the game is comfortable to play in VR. If the gun loading actions are a bit too much for you, then you can thankfully simply this and many other actions as well. There’s also the usual options for motion and turning, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to switch off the dark vignette the game places around your view as soon as you start moving. It’s there to stop motion sickness, but I found it quite distracting as it really does black out a fair portion of your view as soon as you move, and even more when you are crouching. It also snaps back to full view as soon as you stop moving, but this means the outer edges of your vision are continually being obscured and then returned, almost flashing in and out of view as you move. Apart from that the VR aspects of the game are spot on, the shooting is snappy and accurate and there’s some great haptic feedback on the controllers and headset.
Sadly Resident Evil 4 suffers from the same problems as the PSVR 2 version of Resident Evil Village, but to a much greater degree. This game has been rebuilt from the ground up, but the foundations are still those of a seventeen year old game that was made before VR was even a twinkle in the eye, and the remake was still created for TV and monitor first and foremost.
Some cut scenes are CGI so your a placed in a black void with a video screen in front of you, and as the game was a third person action title you often get spirited out of your body and watch Leon from behind as he executes a roundhouse kick, or float above his body like a Ghost from Destiny 2 after he gets knocked to the ground. Climbing ladders, stepping in traps and many other things zap you into third person and it really ruins the immersion.
There’s also some shortcuts with in game actions, so you don’t smash barrels with a stab of your knife, you just press a button while stood beside them. Same for opening doors, sliding latches, and opening draws – you can’t reach out and turn the handle as you would in VR-first game. The menus are also pretty basic, just point at the item you want for a puzzle, wait for it to appear in your hand and wave it the general direction of where it should go and it just floats in to place rather than asking you to carefully place it. Crouching is also handled by clicking the left stick, rather than, you know, actually crouching, like you would do in any other VR game.
There are a lot of annoyances from jamming a third- game into VR like this but in the end they don’t overwhelm the core Resident 4 experience which remains as superb today as it was all those years ago. This dlc pack for the PSVR 2 upgrade is free so I heartily recommend giving it a go, even if you have finished the game before. If you don’t have the game there’s a PSVR 2 demo available for free, which you can find here.
And hey, it’s Christmas, so you can celebrate by stabbing some plague victims in the eye, It’s what Jesus would have wanted.
