As part of Sony’s State of Play exhibition in February 2023, we have a new trailer (opens in new tab) for the Resident Evil 4 remake that gives us our first look at the castle and island sections of the revamped shooter. The trailer also revealed that a demo is coming soon, and that the game’s legendary Mercenaries mode will also return.
First of all, despite some speculation to the contrary, RE4 Remake will still feature the original game’s slightly battered chapter. After the thrills of the village and castle game, the island was always a B+ for me, with the level boosted by some home set pieces like Krauser’s boss fight and encounters with the seriously annoying Regenerators.
The trailer also previews a revamped version of your first encounter with resident Arnold wannabe Krauser. Before starting Soul Calibur with that drug boss fight later, Leon tangles with Krauser in a nice scene with some rough quick time events. Seriously, take a sip of your Dr Pepper at the wrong time in the original game and bam, a Delta operator falls from the rafters and impales you with a Bowie knife. Now this first Krauser match will be a more traditional full control affair and I can’t wait to see how that translates.
It also looks like we’ll be spending more time with the Remake’s new, leaner, decidedly from-Medicated treatment of Luis Sera, a monkey moment to be sure for fans of the original Spaniard. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he looks like a possible partner character—there he is doing cartoons with Leon with Donkey Kong, and oh, now he’s here and joining our hero for the dual-Gigante boss battle (Ornstein and Smough? How about Smough and Smough). Strangest of all, both of these phases take place after Luis’ death in the original game—prepare your betting pool to look for this “Madrid cop”‘s chances of making it out of Spain(?) alive. this time .
Confirmation of the return of the Mercenaries is also extremely “hype”, as the guys say. Resident Evil’s arcadey, wave-based survival mode is one of the best I’ve ever done, and its original iteration’s maps are seared into my brain after I five-star each character to unlock the Handcannon super weapon. I think there’s a lot of promise here for expanding the map and character selection—Mercenaries has come a long way in eighteen years. Capcom hasn’t given a date for the RE4R preview demo, but it can’t be far off—the full game is scheduled for release on March 24th.
Image 1 of 6
