A new demake turns Resident Evil 4 into a side-scrolling 2D shooter, and the results are surprisingly convincing.
We’ve already had Resident Evil 4 Remake – so how about Resident Evil 4 Demake? Modder DooMero’s project (as spotted by PCGamesN) turns Leon Kennedy’s seminal Spanish-trip-gone-sour into a side-scrolling action game that renders its village locations and its various Ganados and chainsaw-wielding denizens in glorious 2D.
The use of low-resolution textures (check out all that brown) and what appear to be pre-rendered sprites give Re4 2D (as its creator calls it) a charmingly early-2000s feel.
If Capcom had contracted some studio to make a port of Resident Evil 4 for the Nintendo DS, it might have looked something like this. (The DS did, of course, get one Resident Evil game made for it – 2006’s Resident Evil: Deadly Silence, a remake of the first series entry.)
DooMero is using GZDoom to develop their Resident Evil 4 demake, which is a modern port of the Doom engine, and the modder’s been providing regular progress updates on Doom World. According to DooMero’s March post, work on Re4 2D began in 2016, and it’s been paused and then returned to multiple times over the years. It’s an impressive piece of work, though, not least because it appears to retain so much from the original 3D game – not least its cut-scenes and accompanying ripe dialogue (“Heh, forget your makeup or something?”).
A second video (below) shows that DooMero has managed to recreate a fair chunk of Resident Evil 4's opening section – around 40 minutes or so in total. We particularly like the animated pre-rendered chickens and cows you can see at around the 30 minute mark or so in the video above.
With Resident Evil 4 2D having been in development for about seven years and counting, it’s not clear how much more time DooMero will need to complete the project. Given how widely it’s been shared, though, the positive feedback will hopefully spur them on to get it finished and released before too long.
