There was a lot going on in 2005. A German became Pope in Rome, a woman became Chancellor in Germany, and the daughter of the US President was abducted by a bloodthirsty sect to a village in Spain – the latter, however, only in one of the most popular video games of all time, "Resident Evil 4". Special Agent Leon S. Kennedy, unrelated or related by marriage to the Kennedy clan, does not allow himself to be stopped in rescuing the president's daughter by villagers with pitchforks, oversized insects or chainsaw killers with a sack over their heads.
Patrick Schlereth
Editor of the service at FAZ.NET.
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Not despite, but also because of the silly story, "Resident Evil 4" has become a video game classic. The emotional blunting in the face of the grotesque threats became the defining narrative principle, the oppressive horror of the previous titles was lost in the explosive banging, in favor of the complete exaggeration of bad taste. "It's good because it's terrible," writes writer Susan Sontag in her essay "Notes on Camp." In art, "camp", inadequately translated into German as "kitsch", is the ironic aestheticization of the trivial. Above all, it's clearly too much of a good thing – or a bad thing, because in no genre does "Camp" work as well as in horror, when subtle scary moments are replaced by exaggerated violence and absurd lines of dialogue. "I don't remember being part of your crappy script," Leon says in "Resident Evil 4."
Even in the remake, the script is really "crappy"
Also in the "Resident Evil 4 Remake" the script is really "crappy" and brings back exactly that tone that the fans have missed so much. Whether the of violence needed a new edition 18 years later was probably a question of commercial prospects for the Japanese developer Capcom. The remakes of the two predecessors had worked well and given the dusty zombie hunt a new shine. The "Resident Evil 4 Remake" is also a direct hit. Critics and gamers are full of praise, Capcom reported three million copies sold after just two days. And rightly so: The new edition looks excellent, offers varied firefights with a tactical component and a high replay value, a replay of the remake, so to speak.
"Resident Evil" is not an isolated case. Among the new releases of the past few months are a remarkable number of titles that were successful years ago. In "Final Fantasy 7", the turn-based battles of yesteryear have been replaced by real-time action, in "Dead Space" the player can now float freely through weightlessness and in "The Last of us Part 1" the apocalypse just looks better.