Resident Evil 4's remake gets the digitalfoundry tech analysis treatment, with every console version tested.
Resident Evil 4 is perhaps the most highly anticipated remake of the year - and it's not hard to see why, promising a full redesign of a highly decorated game with a ton of new content and reworked mechanics. It's an excellent-looking game too with fine-grained indirect lighting and attractive artwork. However, recent Resident Evil titles have suffered from awkward configurations on consoles with uncapped frame-rates and unimpressive ray tracing support.
This becomes especially clear when we look at Xbox Series S. Despite rendering at lower resolutions - a 1080p resolution in frame-rate mode, with a 1440p pixel-count in resolution mode, again with what looks like a checkerboard reconstruction - Series S has about the same amount of aliasing on fine transparencies like hair as the PS5 release. The console expectedly is a bit soft but it otherwise looks fine considering the hardware.
Ray tracing, in contrast, does improve the game's presentation, though it's not a slam-dunk win. Unlike recent RE titles which also feature RT global illumination, this option appears to offer only RT reflections, which have a limited impact on the overall visuals. Bodies of water usually look more realistic, though I did note some off-putting issues occasionally at a distance. The effect appears to render at a low resolution, and is only enabled on a very limited number of surfaces.
My recommendation for most players would be to stick with the default frame-rate mode on current-gen machines, perhaps toggling ray tracing on or moving to resolution mode if you have a VRR display and are fine with slightly lower performance. Xbox players have more latitude to push visual fidelity, given the consoles' larger VRR windows at 120Hz output, but those options still come at a noticeable cost to fluidity.
Despite my complaints about the way Resident Evil 4 has been delivered, there's no doubt that it's an excellent-looking title, which did leave me in doubt about last-gen consoles. Capcom is only shipping the game on PS4 and PS4 Pro, skipping the Xbox One platforms perhaps owing to performance concerns, or maybe simply down to return on investment. So can the base PS4 really deliver this level of visual complexity in a cross-gen game? It's a bit complicated.
On top of that, foliage on PS4 is static and doesn't seem to bend with the movement of the wind at all. Current-gen platforms have effective, if often subtle, foliage animation that is completely absent on PS4, which does stick out in outdoor game areas. Enemies also suffer from animation issues, with foes at a distance running at reduced animation rates in order to reduce the CPU burden. The opening village fight is a good example, with a heavy use of half-rate animation.
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