Resident Evil 4 Remake on PS4 Is Why Cross-Gen Needs to End

Image: Push Square

The PS4 is coming up on its tenth birthday this year, and boy is it starting to show. The aged hardware is still being treated to blockbuster releases like Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok, but outside of projects from Sony's own studios, it's becoming more and more obvious that developers need to cut the last-gen console loose.

Resident Evil 4 is the latest cross-gen title to be a bit of a mess on the PS4. While Digital Foundry points out that it's taken a fairly impressive effort to get the game running reasonably well on the last-gen machine, it does come with some significant downgrades, like incredibly blurry texture work, long load times, and dodgy performance issues.

The general reception to the PS4 version seems much more negative on forums like Reddit, however. Users are posting reports of borderline unplayable combat scenarios thanks to tanking frame rates, and distractingly blurred environmental assets trying their best to ruin immersion. It's clear that Capcom had to cut a lot of corners to squeeze the remake onto such old hardware.

It's a somewhat strange situation, because Resident Evil 4 was originally billed as a current-gen exclusive. It was only several months after its reveal that Capcom confirmed the remake was also in development for PS4, which did raise some eyebrows at the time. And yes, it's a PlayStation exclusive on last-gen systems; there is no Xbox One edition.