Hello and welcome to the IGN UK podcast. My name is Dale Driver and today I'm joined by Matt Persler. Hello. Hello. You're right Matt. I'm good. Thank you Dale. How are you? I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. Jesse, you're also here. How are you doing? I'm doing good Dale. I feel nervous. Why? I don't know. It's like a big set up. I'm here. It's

all good. But how are you doing? Is the big set up? Is that another question that you do with every day? Not really. Okay. Cool. Let's get to know. What have we got today? So obviously me and Jesse are on the podcast. What does that mean? We're talking about Resident Evil. Obviously the big talking point is Resident Evil 4 is out today. Was it yesterday? Today. But yesterday if you're in New Zealand who live in the future?

Yes, but we've been very fortunate to have had the game for a little bit and we've got to spend lots of time with it. So we're going to be chatting about that. But also coming up on the podcast we're going to talk Matt's played Redfall and you've written a preview about Redfall. We're going to talk about that. And also the mysterious everywhere which I'm sure is going to provoke a conversation or two.

And then we've also we decided this week and we had so much good feedback this week that we're going to do a double dose of feedback as well. So we'll get to that later in the show. But first Resident Evil 4. Now I finished it twice. Jesse, have you, how many times have you finished it? I finished it six times. What the fuck, Jesse? Is that actually true? Are you joking? I'm not joking. Oh my god. I knew you'd done it like on professional mode really fast. Yeah. But six times.

It's a good game, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, where do we start? Like with Resident Evil? Like, Matt, what's your, what's your burning questions? My big minute. So obviously I know, like I have played Resident Evil 4. It was the first Resident Evil I ever played. I've actually only ever played the Wii version. That was my adversion to it. Yeah.

One of the best versions to be fair. But kind of like as the, as the series is ticks on, I'm ultimately currently at the point where I think Resi2 remake is my favorite of the Resi games. And obviously this is in the lineage of that of what to started right as a remake structure. What is it that's been bought from their learnings of Resi2 that's made Resi4? I'm guessing better since we gave it a 10. Yeah.

I mean, I'd start by saying even though I think this game is like, is phenomenal. Like it's building on top of a phenomenal game to begin with. Yeah. And it's only improving across the board. I still do think I'm like, you were I think Resident Evil 2 is probably still my preferred game. And I think that's more just about style and tone and location. Yeah. I love that structure. I've just finished replaying ready to again. And I still can't get enough of that. That just immersing yourself in that police station. Yeah.

The learning get and figuring out all the shortcuts and all the secrets. It's, it's yet to be really in my eyes.

I mean, ultimately I know that I'm mostly a fan of evil residences. So like, so the haunted mansion, the police station. And then even like with Resident Evil 7, the Baker house.

Yeah. That's my favorite sort of said. However, Resident Evil 4 is, it's like scope wise is way beyond what the other games did. It was originally in it is now as well. It still maintains, you know,

it'll take you about 15 hours on your first playthrough to finish this game. It is a is a very large game. And what I'd say what they've done.

In terms of Resident Evil 2, what they've learned from that is definitely being extremely faithful to the source material, but also making changes where.

In 2023, those changes feel like they need to be made. Yeah, I think Resident Evil 3 was a big step back. Yeah, it definitely felt rushed because the success of Resident Evil 2 when they just need to turn three round.

Yeah, however, there's huge sections of the game from the original though they cut out in the Resident Evil 3 remake. And yes, some of those sections weren't the best, but I felt like they could have.

Rejig them and remix them like what they've done in two. They probably did it more in two, but in four, they've definitely done that as well. Yeah, there's.

So we've got actually got a video going out this weekend, which is about some of the biggest story differences. And ultimately the story is the same.

But the journey is slightly different. How do you get there? Yeah, I mean, that's your column that was actually so stuck in my head as I was playing fruit, because you obviously did a column about like video game remakes and ultimately like what they should really offer an experience. And as I was playing through Resident Evil 4 remake, you know, it's way more than just a HD clone. We've been seeing that version of Resident 4 re-released for years now over and over again every last point.

It sort of makes people forget that this is a game from 2005. It was released on the GameCube. It's ancient at this point. And if you break down Resident Evil 4's highlights, you know, you've, you've got the village you blast through, you've got the church, you save Ashley and you've got the lake, the castle and the island and you visit all of those places in the remake, of course, but it's, it's reimagined and it's remixed in a way that for me always kept me on my toes and just sort of had me smiling all the way throughout.

I don't think it's ever like remix beyond recognition as well. It's always treading that fine line between, oh, this feels familiar. Oh, this like, oh, I remember this room.

But then what's going to happen outside of this room or the next step? Oh, that's not how exactly it went last time. I'm like, oh, I like, it's, it's like, I would dare to say this one is like the perfect balance of that, whereas I feel like dead space was close, but it was maybe almost too slavishly like faithful.

Yeah, this one is definitely like pushes it just a little bit more and without insulting the original and what people love about it. Yeah, I think one of the, sorry, Jesse, one of the things that comes to mind with this is the idea of

I think when you do in a remake, you need to kind of like recontextualize it through who are the current like directors of the project. There's recontextualized by what does the game need to be today. Right. Yeah.

...