Resident Evil 4 Remake had a number of issues at launch, including image quality issues, unstable performance, ugly screen-space reflections, and controller input lag. At its core, the game was definitely a successful, compelling project, but lacked that final touch of polish. The recently released update 1.004 now added Mercenaries mode and fixes many of those issues – here’s the current state of play.
The most notorious issue of the launch version was image quality, all console versions suffered from a noisy appearance, and the PS5 apparently struggled with additional reconstruction issues. The new patch brings changes in this area, but the final results may be mixed at best.
On the plus side, the PS5 specific issues have been sorted out to some extent, everything looks sharper despite some artifacts. But oddly enough, the Xbox Series X/S versions are now inferior to their launch counterparts. They look sharper but have a lot more jaggies. All resolutions are the same as at launch, with a 1080p/1440p split on Series S (performance vs. quality mode), a 1800p/2160p split on Series X, and a 1944p/2160p split on PS5, so everything on Differences in image handling between patch 1.002 and 1.004.
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Capcom might want to reconsider its approach here. RE Village had a cleaner look than the RE4 remake on consoles and a world that was full of foliage. Perhaps a move to a less aggressive checkerboarding solution or a native resolution approach with a lower pixel count would be more appropriate for this title. I would prefer a softer but temporally more stable end result, especially given that RE4 tends to be rather dark and low in contrast.
A final note: “Lens Distortion” and “Lens Distortion with Chromatic Aberration” now render correctly on PS5 without the smeared low-res look they previously had. I would still recommend turning these options off, but at least sticking with the default settings no longer has a devastating effect on image quality.
Another big issue at launch was the reflections, more specifically there were low-resolution RT reflections and a very poor implementation of screen space reflections – issues inherited from previous RE Engine games. After the latest patch, both the PS5 and Series X no longer have screen space mirrors at all. Depending on the situation and the settings chosen, Capcom has replaced them with Cubemaps or RT reflections. In a way this is a settings downgrade, but it’s definitely an improvement for my eyes – and something we recommended in our launch analysis.
On the Series S, screen space reflections seemed to have been mostly removed, but on reload they reappeared in performance mode for some reason. Even with that, it’s hard to tell if this is an intended change or an unwanted side effect of changes elsewhere, but I hope the screen space reflections are gone for good. A less artifact-prone, better-working implementation of screen-space reflections would of course be ideal, but I’m afraid we won’t see any improvements there.
Aside from the graphical issues, RE4’s launch code wasn’t particularly powerful either. Most combinations of modes ran without framerate caps, with the PS5 and Series X hitting 60fps more frequently in their lowest configurations, while the Series S performed consistently worse than both premium devices.
There have been some significant improvements in this regard, with the Series X now having a five to ten fps advantage over Launch code, meaning it runs consistently at 60 fps in the default performance mode. Resolution mode plays fairly similar to Performance mode at launch, leveling off at or near 60fps for most gameplay and can deliver more variable framerates with graphical options enabled, going as low as 40fps at worst , depending on the complexity of the scene.
The Series S also performs significantly better than the first version, hitting a stable 60fps in Performance mode apart from some specific scenes like the rainy sequence at the beginning of Chapter 5. Resolution mode falls in the mid-30s and has a rather awkward response time , which is perhaps understandable given the RT reflections.
The results on the PS5 are a little less clear. Performance mode is just about stable here at 60 fps with no real issues, but that’s consistent with what I observed with the launch patch. The resolution mode still hangs in the low to mid 50s under heavy use, and the “all-dressed” option hovers in the mid 40s. It’s certainly possible that the PS5 will see a performance boost here, but if it does, it’s a smaller improvement than the Xbox consoles.
The dead zone issues have finally been fixed on the Xbox consoles. At launch, players had to push the stick about 40 percent through its range of motion to get an on-screen response. With the latest patch, the game feels much more responsive and similar to similar games like RE2 and Dead Space.
Beyond its fixes, the patch also adds the free Mercenaries mode, which essentially takes areas from the campaign, fills them with challenging enemies, and sets a time limit on what’s happening. Killing enemies and picking up power-ups increase the time limit, so the mode focuses on defeating as many enemies as possible as quickly as possible and moving around the map to increase the time. RE4’s accelerated mechanics lend themselves quite well to this mode and I’ve enjoyed my time with it, although the content is limited to three small maps. However, the A and S ranks are pretty easy to get to, so don’t expect many challenges here.
Performance in The Mercenaries is basically the same as the more intense combat areas in the main game, so I recommend going with the performance-focused options here. The default performance modes run solidly on all three consoles at a fairly constant 60 fps. Oddly enough, the hair strands option seems to be completely disabled here, making it impossible to enable it at all in The Mercenaries.
All in all, RE4 is in significantly better shape now than it was at launch, but there are still many areas that need attention. The strand based hair still looks oddly worse than the standard hair. RT is fairly limited and low-res, while there’s an overwhelming array of visual options on the premium consoles.
Performance improvements for quality-based modes would be desirable, and the ability to cap it at 30 fps would be welcome too. And while Capcom has slightly changed the picture quality across all consoles – which is a real improvement on the PS5 – the bottom line still struggles. I think a softer and more stable look would suit the game better. Perhaps moving away from the checkerboard approach and towards a more robust temporary super-sampling anti-aliasing option that might give better results would help.
In other words, the game has been improved compared to the launch version and the main problems of Resident Evil 4 Remake have been fixed, at least partially. Let’s hope future patches add further polish to a game that’s in other respects one of the best retro remakes in recent memory.
Originally by Oliver Mackenzie, Freelance Editor, Eurogamer.net
