The Separate Ways DLC for Resident Evil 4 Remake is a nice reason to return to one of 2023's best remakes, but it isn't really worth buying unless you're just really, really invested in what Ada was doing the whole time. It's more RE4 Remake, and if the prospect of that excites you then there is absolutely no reason not to check it out. Weird that it costs $9.99 now when it originally came for free with every copy of Resident Evil 4, though (barring the original GameCube release, which didn't get it at all).
Much like how RE4 Remake tweaked its timeline and events a bit, Separate Ways offers the same functional experience as the original with some changes. To mention them here would be to spoil the only truly interesting bits of Separate Ways, but suffice it to say that some of the content I expected to see in the game's original release back in March has finally made its way back. Shooting, stabbing, and exploding enemies is just as entertaining now as it was earlier in the year, and in Separate Ways players are given a grappling hook to mess around with as well.
In my Resident Evil 4 Remake review I spoke at length about the questionable necessity of adding the current evolution of Resident Evil's crafting system and disposable knives to RE4, and both return here. It's still not ideal, but at least Ada's knife durability seems to have been tweaked and appears to be far less flimsy overall.
Ada's grappling hook is interesting, but it isn't as useful or entertaining a mechanic as it might seem at first. Its best uses come during combat - while Leon would have to hastily abandon his position and run across the room to suplex a downed enemy into submission, Ada can simply fire her grappling hook at the enemy's face and pull herself over to them instantly. It's quick, it's satisfying, and the arc of Ada's followup melee attack is usually wide enough to know down two to three other enemies if they happen to be standing close.
This is fun, but a grappling hook's main function lies in traversal, and in RE4 Remake's Separate Ways Ada can only shoot her gun at fixed targets in the game world. If she could zip around levels at will this would make for a truly different gameplay experience, but instead it means that levels are often designed with a "hop from platform to platform" mentality in mind and offer little in the way of explorative fun. It's entertaining to see someone zip up a wall like Batman, but in Arkham City Batman got to choose where to shoot his gun. This is more akin to Wind Waker, a grappling hook that only works on Official Grappling Hook Landing Zones™.
Capcom Loves The PS5 Controller
I've generally been a big advocate for developers utilizing the features of the DualSense controller. Capcom has been pretty good about designing with the DualSense in mind so far, adding nice little touches like the color of the controller changing to match your heath or making guns feel more tactile by using the adaptive triggers. This whole "every radio message comes out of your PS5 controller" thing, though, is out of control.
I have young children and Resident Evil 4 Remake is not as kid-friendly as games like Dark Souls and Starfield. When they're asleep is the best time to play Resident Evil 4 Remake, and it's shocking how loud Wesker's voice is coming through the microphone of the PS5 controller. This isn't new - the original RE4 Remake did this as well - but Wesker's breathy, menacing voice seems so much louder than anyone Leon spoke to. It's especially jarring to hear the audio switch back and forth between TV characters talking and DualSense voices coming from your lap, and it doesn't feel nearly as immersive as it did in the base game.
Why This Review Score Is Lower Than RE4 Remake's
Resident Evil 4 Remake: Separate Ways is just as fun to play as Resident Evil 4 Remake was, although it's much shorter. There are some great set-pieces and moments of camp that you won't find in any other series, and it is nice that Capcom is at least giving Ada and Wesker to the base game's Mercenaries mode for free. But. This whole part of the game used to be free. This was an add-on, a bonus, something Capcom initially packaged in with Resident Evil 4 on the PlayStation 2. All you had to do was beat the game once - there was no extra money involved.
Recent comments at TGS from the president of Capcom (originally reported by nikkei) relating to the phrase "the price of the game is too low" become especially worrying when applied here, a paid-for DLC remake of what used to be a free mode in a game the company already sold players over a decade ago. How much repackaging and reselling are we going to see in the future? Will the inevitable Resident Evil 5 Remake offer its Versus DLC as a free inclusion, like it was in the later Gold Editions of the game, or will they charge $9.99 for it? We could guess, but we don't really need to. That doesn't mean we have to be happy about it.
The Resident Evil 4 Remake: Separate Ways DLC is available now for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. A PS5 code was provided to Screen Rant for the purposes of this review.