I’ve played Resident Evil 4 an absurd number of times. The PS2 version came out when I was 15, and that Christmas I played it over and over again until I could practically play it with my eyes closed. Back then we didn’t have live service games like kids today, and the online game I had for PS2 was Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (look it up), so it wasn’t weird to grind a single player game like a Fortnite battle pass. Somewhere out there is a translucent blue 8mb PS2 memory card with a Resident Evil 4 New Game++++ save file on 🍃it.
Later, I played it again on Wii with motion control - every game from that era was better with motion controls - then I went back to play the original Gamecube version and regretted it. I played Resident Evil 4 HD on PS4, I played it again when it came to Switch in 2019, and last year I pl𝓀ayed it in VR on the Quest 2. So when I booted up the remake and saw that ‘Hardcore’ mode was intended for people that had played the original 🌳RE4, I didn’t hesitate. All that to say: you can take it from a Resident Evil 4 vet, Hardcore mode isn’t messing around.
It took a while for me to realize what I had gotten myself into. The opening sequ🐓ence is a slightly extended version of the original’s intro, and while the enemies you encounter on your way to the village are noticeably hard to kill, muscle memory kicked in immediately and I had no problem taking down the scattered villager🐻s in the house and along the first path.
When you get to the village, all hell breaks loose just as it did in the original. It's an ingenious opening that has been written about countless times over the years, and the remake maintains the sense of hopeless claustrophobia you feel as an entire village of people swarm you. Enemy AI is sharper here. They’re better at dodging, timing their attacks, and surrounding you. It seemed like there were more bodies than usual, but I couldn’t say for sure, since this sequence has always been chaotic. One thing that’s definitely changed is the old watchtower cheese. You can no longer climb up the ladder and hide up there, because as soon as you get to the top the floor falls out from under you. It’s a terrifying sequence that’s really hard, but it always has been.
When the bell finally rang and the village cleared out, I made my way to the next area, the Farm, where I first started to suspect something was different. In the original, a small group of Ganados, no more than five or six, will confront you in and around the barn. In the remake, that number is easily doubled, and they’re led by a hammer-wielding, pig-head-wearing, s♐even foot tall maniac that has as much health as a Chainsaw Man. I expended every bullet I had found while scavenging the village in this just this fight, and it didn’t lꦕet up from there.
The remake throws an unbelievable number of bodies at you on Hardcore Mode. Even with 80 percent accuracy (you get this data at the end of every chapter) there was hardly a moment where I’m not completely out of ammo and herbs. It’s just non-stop🐻, almost to the point of fatigue. By the time I made it through the valley, the area made up of small shacks and cross-crossing bridges you path through after meeting Luis and getting infected - I had to take a break. There’s only so many indigent Spanish villagers I can massacre at once before I need to ꦐgive my nerves some time to relax.
The new Resident Evil is quꦜite a bit longer than the original, but the chapter breaks are in roughly the same places. Chapter 2, which is 1-2 in the original, ends when you get to the Village Chief’s Manor and encounter Ada, who shoots at Mendez to save you. I found a YouTube video from a couple of years ago where a guy tried to kill 1,000 enemies in🐼 RE4 - a challenge that’s difficult to pull off in a single run if you aren’t exploiting a couple of infinite spawn locations. By the time he arrived at the Mendez’s Manor he had killed 41 enemies. I had killed 107. He barely got to 1,000 by the time he hit credits. At this rate, I’ll reach 1,000 before I even get to the island.
The original game used a dynamic difficulty director to increase enemy spawns if it thought things were getting too easy for you, and I assume the remake has a similar feature. It’s possible you’ll see fewer enemies than me if you’re more liberal with your ammo, or possibly more, if you’re a better shot. It seems like it wants to ensure you always have just enough supplies to survive, but never enough to feel comfortable, and I’m not mad about it. It’s nice to have some challenge again after all these years mastering the game, even if its stressing me the f*** out. They just keep coming ya&rsquo꧅;ll… they just keep coming.