Resident Evil 4 on iPhone is the worst way to play one of the best games of all time
Resident Evil 4 is a game I’d recommend to absolutely anyone. It’s a masterpiece of the survival horror genre, with smooth, satisfying combat and some fantastically spooky set pieces. The original was already a stone-cold classic, but the 2023 remake refined its graphics and gameplay mechanics, making the game feel better than ever. It’s something that everyone should play at least once, but if you have literally any other options, you probably shouldn’t play it on mobile.
Resident Evil Village on iPhone: a glimpse into Apple’s gaming future but that future isn’t here yet
https://www.taptap.io/post/6523201
Like Resident Evil Village, the mobile version of Resident Evil 4 is only available for the iPhone 15 Pro and newer iPad models. Playing a current gen game on a phone is pretty novel, but unfortunately, this suffers from many of the same issues that Village did. Playing Resident Evil 4 on iPhone doesn’t feel completely awful, but it’s riddled with problems you won’t find in any other version of the game.
The most glaring issue is the game’s touch screen controls, which take up a huge percentage of screen real estate. It’s already hard to adjust to playing Resident Evil 4 on a tiny iPhone screen, and these controls make it a thousand times worse. The virtual controller buttons are see-through, so they don’t totally block your view, but they do make it trickier to spot items and notice potential threats.
The controls aren’t just an eyesore either; they’re also imprecise, unresponsive, and generally terrible. Playing Resident Evil 4 with touch screen controls made even simple tasks, like opening a door or aiming my weapon, feel unnecessarily difficult. I never felt like I had full control over my character, which isn’t ideal in a survival horror game.
Thankfully, switching to a controller (I used the Backbone One) took care of most of these issues. The gameplay felt smooth, with virtually no input delay, but it wasn’t enough to solve all of Resident Evil 4’s problems. The iPhone 15 Pro has powerful hardware, but it was clearly struggling to run this game. My phone became hot to the touch after just a few minutes of play, and it didn’t cool down until after I shut down the game. Framerate drops were a frequent occurrence, and the game occasionally froze up and crashed during cutscenes.
Even when I wasn’t dealing with these kinds of performance issues, it was easy to see where the devs cut corners to get the game to run on an iPhone. Don’t get me wrong—Resident Evil 4 looks great, especially for a mobile game—but the graphics have clearly been downscaled and compressed. I also had a lot of issues with texture pop-in, especially when I moved my camera from side to side.
None of these problems are major enough to keep Resident Evil 4 on iPhone from being a phenomenal game, but they do detract from the overall experience. Every time I spotted a jaggy texture or saw my framerate drop, it took me out of the moment and kept me from immersing myself in the game. I don’t want to have to worry about game crashes during cutscenes; I just want to enjoy the story and have fun.
If you don’t have a PC or console that can run the Resident Evil 4 remake, and you have a controller you can play with, the mobile version of the game is worth picking up. That said, it should probably be your last resort. This is Resident Evil 4 at its worst, and while the worst version of Resident Evil 4 is still pretty good, you should avoid it if you have any other options.
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