Resident Evil 4 Re-Emerges in HD

I didn’t jump onto the Resident Evil bandwagon (game wise) until number 4 came out for a lot of reasons. I found them to be relatively slow paced with sluggish controls and not all that scary. But 4… 4 was a leap in visuals, storytelling, pacing and just about every other facet of any gaming genre. It scored near perfect across the board. I liked it so much, I actually bought it twice. First for the original Xbox and then for the Wii because point and shoot gameplay was just too much of a temptation. Not ones to let a good title die, the folks at Capcom are once again dusting off the 6 year old game to introduce them to High Definition.

Resident Evil itself turns 15 this year and to celebrate, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners will have an opportunity to download Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil Code: Veronica X to their next-gen consoles with upgraded HD visuals. Capcom has been kind enough to provide some comparison shots.

The left half of these shots demonstrate how RE4 looked on the Wii and the right shows off a much crisper and more colorful shot from the upcoming Xbox 360 version. It should be noted however that the HD shots were likely taken at 720p (or better) and that the Wii is only capable at outputting at 480p. In other words, the shot taken from the Nintendo console had to be scaled up in order to match a 1 for 1 size to do these comparisons, so they are going to look muddier than you would see on your television.

Putting that aside though, these still have an air of awesomeness to them, which begs the question: Should you buy a new version of a 6 year old title you’ve likely already played through just because it got a little prettier? Tough call. It’s a must play in my book if you haven’t already, but if you have, it isn’t quite old enough to qualify as a nostalgia investment. It may boil down to what, if any, extras are included and at what cost.