Recent reviews by Paciorr

20h half of it in a character creator and I didn't leave a starting area yet.

10/10 so far

There are only 2 things I hate about this DLC:
1) You can't finish it in a single sitting
2) You can't even exactly finish it in a single weekend :(

Seriously though, it blew me off my feet. Easily among the top gaming experiences I've had in the recent years.

It makes me wonder if CDPR shouldn't try making some smaller scope games. Cyberpunk has so much content that it could easily be multiple games and sometimes I feel like its elements conflict with each other. If you were to distill just the main story out of this DLC and make it a linear, shorter experience it would still be an absolute banger and well worth it's price. Alternatively... maybe they should just make more DLCs :)

TL;DR
PLAY IT!

Weird game, I enjoyed it, very comfy and relaxing but not that interesting.

You get an experience that's about half as long as the main story but otherwise of the same if not sometimes better quality for a price of 10€. More than worth it if you ask me.

Very faithful remake with some changes to the story and narrative that I welcome. The manner, humour and absurdness which were kind of the style and part of what was special about the OG RE4 got toned down but not fully rid of. This in my opinion works much better in a franchise which roots are in survival horror.

I don't know how enjoyable gameplay-wise this game is for people who haven't played the original because it (the gameplay) didn't evolve much since 2005. However, we do get expanded melee combat and limited but possible stealth options. Considering the fact that it's an action game first, it might be a bit underwhelming for some but for me personally it was absolutely enough and at that fun to learn and master.

I must say, visually it often felt a bit weak or odd and not because of lack of graphic fidelity but rather due to the design of some locations. I don't know how much of it is because they wanted to keep it similar to the source material(I'm sure however that it at least plays into it) and how much is of it is caused by engine or studio limitations and game being quite a bit bigger compared to everything else they released since the introduction of RE engine. However, some of the environments didn't feel like they were made for a modern, 2023 game. Textures on some of the elements felt weirdly dated or... unrealistic, especially yet not exlusively in the lake and village area. What I noticed more often though and almost throughout the entire game was how empty and void of detail with this feel of being fake or artificial some of the locations were and the fact that others were perfectly fine didn't help because it only strengthened the contrast (though, overall it wasn't gamebreaking or anything of that level).

The other thing I just can't ignore is Ada's voice acting. During the main story whenever she was on the screen, saying something, I could only think about how off it was and it completely threw me off and out of the otherwise pleasant experience. VA presented no emotion and sounded like a person being forced to read lines of a paper while finding it really boring and tedious and not acting them out. Luckily, it got much better in the DLC but it's still nowhere near as good as RE2R Ada's VA was.

Despite focusing mostly on the negatives in my review I very much liked the game and I'm happy with the level it represents. If CAPCOM ever decides to remake RE5, I think RE4 remake shows that overall they know what direction to follow in order to make playing it worth our time (and money).

TL;DR
If you liked RE4 (2005) you will like RE4R a lot because it's nearly the same game just... modern and I would dare to say it's mostly even better. If you haven't played the OG? I think it's still solid but being a in my opinion surprisingly faithful remake of a nearly 20 year old game it might not be what you expect. Similarly, if you come from RE2 remake or RE7/8 and expect more of a horror experience RE4R might turn out to not be what you're looking for.

As a remake 9+/10
As a game in a vacuum? 8/10

MANNEQUINS

I prefered survival horror, helplessness and tension of RE7. However, these are my preferences and RE7 raised the pole so high it's hard to beat. This game is still great - visually stunning, sound design is great, story/some of the enemies and what they do are a bit over the top and too much even for RE but at the same time it's the rule of cool I guess. It also gives us some context and ties RE7&8 events with the rest of the series.

Yeah, pretty much I just wish it was more a horror than an action game but I still loved it and I hope we can expect similar production value from the next installment in the series.

OK as a cinematic experience but I feel like I bought into the hype too much. Game doesn't do anything you haven't seen elsewhere or doesn't really do it better.

What I was underwhelmed with:
1) Performance leaves room for improvement.
2) Horde density - Chaos enemies were fine but Tyranids don't come in high enough numbers especially the little ones. If you played other horde shooters before you will be underwhelmed.
3) Gore - We have 51 unique execution animations but what of it if it's literally ALL SCRIPTED, 1 or 2 per enemy and it only affects melee finishers. Killing enemies with normal melee attacks or ranged weapons doesn't allow you to turn them into a red mush or anything. The only reocurring ranged kill "animation" I noticed is heads exploding on headshots.
4) Gameplay is so simple it hurts. Walk through a room or a tunnel push a button wait walk through another etc. Controls or clunky and don't feel right, dogde and parry mechanics are basically a glorified quick time events. You press the button when it lights up... It just doesn't work well in a game that's supposed to be replayale over and over, then you get iframes/invincibility for the duration of the animation when execute enemies to watch the same animation 100s of times because there are only like 2 per enemy per weapon used. It could be way more random and satisfying if this game had dismemberment and and it more random just through normal attacks because yes, as of now you can't dismember enemies with your guns with the exception of heads sometimes exploding.
5) Gunplay feels unsatisfying. Weapons simply don't have that umph, neither through sound nor visually.
6) Weapon variety - Pistols aside we get like 5 weapons since most of them are the same thing just with minimal change to the stats and/or added scope etc. I think there should be bigger differences between how the weapon work and generally more variety among them.

What I will applaud this game for:
1) Art direction.
2) Some high testosterone scenes and dialogues.

TL;DR
It doesn't reinvent the wheel, it just does it's thing. None of the things I mentioned earlier are breaking the game. They just feel like they could be done better (or some of them at least) which is why this game leaves me quite unsated and worried that areas where it had potential to be great are and will be left mediocre, shallow and boring after a couple hours of gametime.

For a game that's build, in significant part, around co-op and online play it's very unlikely I'll ever want to play it again after getting through every mission 1-2 times..

ADVANCED TL;DR
The game is pretty and has some cool scenes but gameplay is as mid as it gets.

6/10

I regret buying it because I paid full price for it. If it costed 50% of what an AAA releases cost then I would recommend it as a short cinematic campaign but as of now I just can't. You can get way better games for less.

Actually quite fun even 13 years after release. I wouldn't buy it for full price though since multiplayer is dead and 8h long campaign of a 13 year old game isn't worth 35€ or whatever it is in your region.

As good as an indie roguelike like this can get.