5 essential mods for Resident Evil 4 to enhance your experience before the remake

The release of the Resident Evil 4 Remake is almost upon us. What better way to relive the experience than to take a trip down memory lane by playing the original classic? While the original Resident Evil 4 still holds up rather well to this day, there exist a wide variety of community-made mods that players can download, free of charge, to augment their experience further.

This article will detail five such must-have mods to enrich the vanilla experience.

Note: This article is subjective and reflects the views of the author.

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5 of the best mods for Resident Evil 4

While the vanilla Resident Evil 4 experience is still competent to this day, there are plenty of modifications for players to visually upgrade the game to somewhat modern standards and introduce new gameplay elements, such as difficulty tiers, to make for a fresh playthrough of the title. Five of the essential mods are listed below.

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5. ReShade Mods

While Resident Evil 4 was a fantastic-looking game upon its initial release, it has unfortunately started to show its age now, with muddy textures and outdated lighting techniques that do not hold up well today.

Fortunately, modders have introduced several ReShade presets for the game that increases the title's overall visual fidelity by introducing better colors, improved contrast, and sharpening. These visual upgrades are purely cosmetic and do not affect the game balance in any way. Recommended mods include the UHD Enhancements and RE4 Ultimate HD Plus ReShade.

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4. Modded Save Game

One of the more transformative mods in this list, Modded Save Game, includes a modified save file that places previously unexpected characters into different story missions. Characters primarily from the Mercenaries game mode are placed into story mode missions where they replace the original cast, allowing for a unique experience.

This mod is only usable on the original version of Resident Evil 4 - and not on the HD version released later.

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3. Hunk’s Gun Collection

Hunk’s Gun Collection brings a total overhaul to the weaponry offered in the game, offering a more comprehensive range of firearms for Leon to choose from during the campaign. While the number of guns can be overwhelming for the majority, the mod has much to offer for even the pickiest player.

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2. re4_tweaks

re4_tweaks is a complete overhaul of the base game on Steam, aiming to make up for the rather lackluster PC port release. In addition to various visual enhancements, the mod offers options such as disabling Film Grain, Motion Blur and a fix to make it run smoother on modern multi-core machines. Other vital tweaks include a complete overhaul of the aiming system to make it more mouse-friendly, which the game's vanilla version sorely lacks.

The mod is easy to install and offers a wide range of flexible options, making it one of the ultimate “must-have” mods for the PC port.

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1. HD Project

The Resident Evil 4 HD Project is arguably the best mod on this list, and for a good reason - it is a complete overhaul of the game’s textures, models, and miscellaneous pieces to bring it more in line with modern visuals.

The HD Project can be best described as a “complete visual remaster” of the original game, making it easily the best-looking version aside from the upcoming remake. It should, however, be noted that the mod requires some beefy computer specifications over the base version of the game, such as 4 GB of RAM and 38 GB of storage space.

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A combination of these mods is sure to bring about a fresh and exciting experience even for long-time players of Resident Evil 4, allowing them to relive the horror as they prepare for the much-awaited remake of the same game, releasing on March 24, 2023, for the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.