Resident Evil 4 holds a special place in video game history. Released in 2005 for the GameCube and later for the PlayStation 2, it was an example of the third-person survival horror genre with its incredibly tense action sequences, stunning level design, terrifying enemies, and memorable characters and writing. It carved out a niche for itself and was for many, including myself, their favorite entry in the series.
Having played that version on PS2 all those years ago, I was genuinely excited to see it get a proper remaster earlier this year along the lines of Resident Evil 2 and 3 for modern platforms. What I didn’t expect was a port for the iPhone, that too within the same year. So imagine my surprise that I was able to play this full version for console and PC and nominated for Game of the Year on my cute little iPhone 15 Pro review device.
The new version of the game, simply titled Resident Evil 4, is a complete remake of the original, with completely new graphics and level design, voice acting, music, and everything else you can think of. The only thing that remains the same is the story and overall gameplay. The game launched on consoles and PC in March this year and is now also available on iPhone 15 Pro devices, as well as iPads and Macs with M-series processors.
For one thing, the Resident Evil 4 app is universal, meaning if you buy it once it will work on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac without having to purchase it separately. This was not the case with Resident Evil Village, which had to be purchased separately for iPhone/iPad and Mac.
The game is free to download and gives you access to the first ten minutes or so of the game, which ends after the first big fight in the opening village section of the game. It’s the same as the separate demo released for consoles and PC, except in this case you can only pay $30 to continue playing and your progress in the “free” section will be kept, unlike the demo. Resident Evil 4’s free-to-play section is much shorter than Village’s but should still give you a decent idea of what to expect from the rest of the game.
The game is initially downloadable in 686 MB from the App Store on iPhone. An additional 12GB will then be downloaded to be playable. If you purchase the full game and DLC, you’ll need to download an additional 17GB. That’s about 30GB in total, which isn’t bad considering the size of the game. Expect to download twice as much data to your Mac.
Speaking of DLC, Resident Evil 4 for Apple platforms also features the recently released Separate Ways mode, where you play as Ada Wong, who makes brief appearances in the main game. While protagonist Leon is doing her thing, Wong has her mission to accomplish at the same time and it’s interesting to see how their paths cross as they go *drum roll* in separate ways. If you liked the main game, it’s definitely worth picking up. The other DLC are mainly cosmetics and weapon upgrades.
At this point, I’ll reiterate what I said in the Resident Evil Village review, which is that this is not a review of the game itself but rather a review of the iPhone-specific port and the experience of playing the game on a phone. There are already many great reviews if you want to know more about the Resident Evil 4 game. Alright, let’s move on.
After downloading the game on an iPhone 15 Pro, I went into the menus to see what changed compared to the console and PC versions. The biggest difference is the lack of significant graphics settings. There are also no options to adjust the resolution or frame rate. In fact, the only visual settings available concern depth of field, motion blur and lens distortion.
This is the ideal solution and exactly what I asked for in my review of Resident Evil Village. While it limits scalability for future devices, it ensures that today’s players will get an optimized experience for their devices and won’t have to endlessly fiddle around in menus to get things working properly, which was an issue with Village. Don’t worry if you play on a Mac, however, as the settings are hidden for mobile devices and are visible when you launch the game on a desktop.
Other than that, the only change is the addition of on-screen controls for mobile devices. These are identical to the ones I covered on the Village port; they have quite a bit of customization and ensure that the game can still be played if you don’t have a controller. However, the game simply isn’t designed for on-screen controls, and as with Village, Capcom recommends using a physical controller. Also like Village, you can’t use mouse and keyboard to play games on iPhone but that might just be an iPhone thing.
Upon entering the game I realized that it is locked at 30fps. This is fine because the game is unlikely to hit 60fps or more on iPhone. An unlocked frame rate option could be useful in the future when iPhone hardware is powerful enough or has variable refresh rate displays, but for now a consistent 30fps is a pretty good target, especially considering the slow nature of the game .
However, this is just the beginning of the optimizations Capcom has in store for this version. The game runs at a really low resolution. The final output resolution of the game on the iPhone 15 Pro is 720p but the internal rendering resolution appears to be a quarter of that at 360p. The game then uses MetalFX to upscale the image to 720p. There’s no evidence of dynamic resolution scaling here as the image appears consistent throughout the game. There are no switches for MetalFX in this game on iPhone but you have the option to switch between Performance and Quality mode or disable it completely on Mac.
Unfortunately, with such an incredibly low base resolution, MetalFX has its work cut out for it. The image appears surprisingly stable for distant objects such as trees and is soft but reasonably detailed up close. But the problem comes in the form of disocclusion artifacts on high-frequency details, which can be distracting. Every time an object moves, it leaves a trail of flickering around it as objects behind it become disoccluded, which is a result of the reconstruction algorithm failing to recover fast enough. In the video below, you can see the area around Leon’s head and the weapon whiz by while the trees behind take a split second to rebuild. The video has been brightened to make it easier to see.
In the clip you can also see the extremely crisp look of Leon’s hair. The Apple Silicon version of the game does not have the dynamic hair strands option found on console and PC, which renders each strand individually. That’s fine because it doesn’t look particularly great, but the game’s standard hair rendering also suffers a lot from the extremely low rendering resolution and the anti-aliasing doesn’t seem to work at all.
This, unfortunately, is the weakest part of the visual presentation since outside of the costumes and other playable characters, Leon and his shiny golden locks are always on screen in a prominent position that naturally attracts attention and enormous amount of sizzle seems extremely low. Moving hair strands also raise the issue of disocclusion artifacts, although they are difficult to notice on the hair itself.
The other big issue is texture streaming. This was also an issue in the PC version of the game, where texture rendering was a bit uneven at lower settings, rendering some textures sharp and others blurry, even when they were next to each other. This issue is also present on the iPhone, as the texture cache setting will undeniably be set internally to the lowest value to account for low system memory. Even when textures are at a higher resolution, they can take several seconds to stream, which can be quite noticeable when solving one of the game’s many puzzles.
Textures before and after loading
Other than that, I didn’t find much to be offended by. Objects typically don’t cast shadows and ambient occlusion is lower quality, but the game still has a good amount of shadowing that makes objects look grounded. The game doesn’t have the RE Engine’s infamous on-screen space reflections, which is a good thing as they look pretty poor on other platforms, and the few reflections you see appear to be entirely based on cube maps. Volumetrics have lower resolution and, aside from a rather aliased flashlight beam, aren’t particularly offensive.
But despite the extent of the cuts made for this version, in action the game looks fine, especially since you’re playing it on a small screen. Even at the lowest settings, the level designs, character models, animations, and graphics manage to shine and it still feels like you’re playing a console or PC game rather than a mobile one. It’s almost an unfair comparison since there’s nothing else with this level of visual fidelity on mobile at the moment, aside from Capcom’s Resident Evil Village, and even that isn’t that impressive. This is truly a modern title and to think that it’s possible on a phone is mind-boggling.
After visuals, frame rate is the other important part of this discussion. I already said that the limit is 30 fps, but whether it can maintain that limit is a different question. For the most part, I think the game runs well and stays close enough to the frame rate limit to not be distracting. But the frame rate tends to drop during challenging combat sequences, such as the chaotic village fight in the first few minutes of the game. There are also the annoying hiccups that can occur when entering a new area, which have come this far from the PC version. This is likely a problem with the engine rather than the hardware or this specific port.
Outside of these, the game remains quite playable. Motion blur definitely helps make animations smoother and I would recommend enabling it as it is disabled by default. You should definitely disable the chromatic aberration effect, as it makes the game look softer than it is.
I would also like to point out that during my testing Resident Evil 4 ran perfectly on the iPhone 15 Pro, which was not the case with Village at all. There were no crashes and even after long periods of gameplay there were no issues.
Other things of note include the HDR presentation, which is once again excellent and makes the most of the iPhone 15 Pro’s bright display. The sound is also very good, but it’s only stereo and I feel they could have taken advantage of the spatial audio capabilities of the telephone. The game displays in ultra-wide mode on the iPhone, although for some reason the cutscenes are in 16:9, even though they are rendered in the game.
Loading times are also quick; reloading from a save takes about 9 seconds, and there are no other loading screens within the game itself. The game also supports iCloud backup, and saves sync across iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Incidentally, I also checked the battery consumption while playing. The iPhone 15 Pro used about half the battery on a full charge after an hour and a half of gaming. This included playing at maximum display brightness, using a USB-C DAC for audio, and pairing an Xbox wireless controller via Bluetooth. The device gets a little warm but is manageable in colder climates.
Overall, I was impressed with the iPhone version of Resident Evil 4, more so than Resident Evil Village. It doesn’t feel like the Mac version has been slapped onto a smaller screen, but a more intentional, optimized and refined build that shows the same care and attention you’d get from a dedicated console version. It also helps that Resident Evil 4 is simply the better game of the two.
Now, I wouldn’t necessarily suggest playing this version if you have access to consoles or a powerful computer. But again, I’m amazed that this version exists. A modern Resident Evil game with all of its content running natively on an iPhone would never have been on my 2023 bingo table earlier this year, but Capcom and Apple did it not just once but twice. It cannot be understated how impressive this is and as someone who enjoys not only playing but also analyzing the technical makeup of games, this has been an amazing year.
Let’s hope for more such amazing mobile ports in 2024.
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