Pushing Buttons: Why the Resident Evil 4 remake works

You know a game is important when even the release of a short playable demo is the most exciting, talked about event of the week. I am of course referring to the Resident Evil 4 remake, a 20-minute slice of which was made available for free on PlayStation, Xbox and PC last Thursday. The response has been ecstatic, both from newcomers and veterans of the original 2005 version. Fans are already discovering hidden modes and weapons and even modding it. Expectations for the full release are high.

I reviewed the game 15 years ago, and I can say with confidence that what made Capcom’s horror sequel so special then still works in its favour years later, in our era of vast open-world adventures. And that is flow. For many years, game designers have sought to give players the experience of flow, as defined by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who referred to it as becoming so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. The activity, he