So do we like the Remake again or is it going to be soulless?
It is kinda soulless to be honest. It has some nice touches here and there (Leon speaks basic but fairly clean and understandable Spanish, for one.) Gameplay feels good but takes story takes itself a little bit too seriously.
The story looks like it's gonna be a cleaned up version for modern audiences. No senior moment here, no joking about Ramón's height, Ashley's not as fanservicey now, Leon's much more serious and not as fun which, I'm sure someone said before, just makes hit one liners seem really weird and out of place. Gameplay's very much Re2Make with some tweaks. Lure dodges are much easier to perform now, enemies are far more predictable, one really good addition is being able to have a point of reference, basically a dot where your crosshair would be when you aim which makes things much, much easier on your brain, but the rest is a little wonky. Controls are a little floaty and it just feels like Resident Souls. Parry's in a really weird place balance wise. Enemy about to grab you? Literally useless. Enemy has a specific weapon? Best you can seem to do is block, which isn't very good. Better than being hit, but not very good. Enemy about to swing a knife at you? Get out of jail free card that lets you instantly get a melee strike and fuck that dumbass for even trying to come close to Chad Leon.
Velcro tape your back to a wall with a shotgun and spam parries when in doubt and you're mostly gonna be fine. In all honestly that is true to how easy Re4 was on Normal. I'm sure a normie would panic and die a few times. Anyway, after having a big tizzy over how Mad Chainsaw was only ever accessible through random means, as soon as I got the code my brain clicked with it and I beat it in one seamless try. I got roughed up a bit, had to use two heals, but it's not as daunting as it may seem at first. I think it's just the mental thing where having to waste another 50 minutes of your life in the dumb New Game-Abandon Game loop until MC just happened was really putting a damper on the whole experience for me.
I really, really fucking hope they don't just go ahead and make the ridiculous bullet sponges in Mad Chainsaw just how enemies are in Re4's Hardcore mode. It's literally just Re2Make, except it's ironically a lot HARDER than Re2Make because your weapons either suck dick or ammo is outrageously scarce, and it's Re4's map. Four entire shots to the head to stun a fucker, and they don't stagger so you can kick them, just get stunned so you can scoot past. Most of the time you're well advised to just run like hell rather than try to take out any enemies at all. While it does make the game into a somewhat effective survival horror experience, it sucks absolutely all of the pew pew roundhouse kick fun out of the thing and forces you to play in a really, really dumb way where you just loop around the map taking potshots at the enemies you want killed before maybe parrying or lure dodging a dude on the way out and doing it all over again until completion. And the original Re4 WAS an effective survival horror without needing to turn into Dark Souls for it's Hard Mode.
I could not imagine the sheer amount of frustration in dealing with Ashley or even Luis' new more involved role where they are just definitely not equipped to handle this sort of opposition. I know Luis melees and much like in Resident Evil 5, in this mode, melee is just a really great way to kill yourself very quickly, which again, pure anti-fun.
Might be a nitpick to some, but I also don't like how Leon's Silver Ghost feels exactly like the MUP, RE3 and 4th Survivor's main handgun, and the in-joke at the Resistance community that the initials stood for Mostly Useless Pistol. I checked the description for it, and they even admitted it's basically a reskin. Thing fires waaaaayyyy too slow. I figure we're all gonna move on to one of the other three guns sooner rather than later, as if 99% of the players don't gravitate towards the Red9 anyway, but the original Silver Ghost was actually underrated. Few people even knew it increases your knife crit chance when you get it's special upgrade. It might not have been a sick boss killer like the Red9 was but by god, that gun could take out the trash like nobody's business. Now it just feels like the starter weapon you can't wait to get rid of. We'll see how the upgrades go.
TL;DR: Gameplay's fun unless Hardcore mode is like Mad Chainsaw Mode. Honestly, if it IS like that, all the time, and you literally can not even kick enemies once without getting instantly gangbanged and destroyed, I'd just skip the thing. I did expect fun shooty roundhouse kicky action and not another "Learn the strats until you git gud enough to get around enemies" experience like Re2Make was. Nothing wrong with Re2Make, it is a cool game, but I want Re4Make to be like Re4.
Also, in case anyone is interested, the code to play Mad Chainsaw Mode at your leisure is L1+R1 (Hold during the whole thing)
Up Left Down Right Square Triangle Circle X X. Now, I've tried this code on Keyboard and wasn't able to get it to work: Hold Shift and Space and input
W, A, S, D, R, I, E, F. I ended up doing it with the PS4 pad, and it does work.