Play it on: Meta Quest 2/Pro/3 (or the flat version’s on just about everything)
Current goal: Starve myself of upgrades until I get the good guns
I’m surprised how rarely games feature in my VR playtime. Standalone Meta Quest games, which have sucked the lion’s share of development dollars away from the (in my opinion) more exciting realm of PC-powered VR, frequently strike me as small in scope and unexciting. Instead, my killer apps these past few years have been VRChat and Bigscreen VR. I find socializing in fantastical user-made worlds and screening obscure flicks with distant pals well worth the price of admission.
But, Claire decreed we were doing Halloween games this week, and I’m in the honeymoon period with a new Quest Pro, so I finally got around to starting Armature Studio’s Meta Quest-only VR version of Capcom’s 2005 classic Resident Evil 4. Verdict so far? Wonderful. (The headset’s pretty good, too.)
Resident Evil 4 was the first game in the series I really loved, but having not revisited it since the GameCube OG, I’ve been long overdue for a replay. This VR edition’s virtual reality you-are-there element offers a newly intimate perspective on Leon S. Kennedy’s iconic adventure, heightening both the creepiness and my immersion. It does this so well that I think RE4 VR is now ruining me on all the older “pancake” (2D, flatscreen) versions.
Armature did an amazing, thoughtful job converting the 2D game to VR. Leon’s hands in particular are great. It feels so cool to grab your pistol off your hip, headshot a goon, drop the gun, pluck a grenade from your chest, pull the pin with your other hand, hurl it at the mob, retrieve the shotgun from over your shoulder, pantomime the reload, rack it… Once you get used to the motions they become second nature, making combat frantic and fun in a very fresh way.
Yeah, Leon’s new agility (strafing!) makes the fights easier; you can turn that off, but it feels bad to do so in VR (definitely disable the laser sight, though). Given how differently it plays, you can basically consider this a wholly separate game. But no sweat. It’s super fun, and I’m finding it hard to imagine the OG pancake versions feeling quite as satisfying, now. (Beyond moddability, the one definite advantage they still hold is that Ada Wong’s “Separate Ways” campaign is regrettably missing here.)
Resident Evil 4, I am reminded, is an exquisitely well-designed video game, full of everything I love about the medium. It’s proving a joy to revisit in VR, and it’s also really neat how it now runs on a little computer attached to my face. If the Quest platform (or VR in general) gets more games of this quality, I might find myself spending a little less time in VRChat. — Alexandra Hall
Hey! Listen!
A nifty app called Quest Games Optimizer makes it easy to run RE4 (and hundreds of other Quest games) at considerably higher resolution. It’s well worth the $10 on Quest 2 or Pro, and legit essential on Quest 3, being the only way to conveniently take advantage of Q3’s extra GPU horsepower in older games.
If you don’t have a Quest, there’s a pretty good fan-made PCVR mod for the recent RE4 remake, and the PS5 version of the remake’s getting official PS VR2 support in the near future. (Capcom…please remember your PC players…)
