Capcom’s Resident Evil 4 remake has various achievements and unlockables that demand quick clears and prime grades. Listed below are a couple of methods you’ll be able to shave minutes out of your runs to make these a good bit extra manageable.
In case you’re working by the Resident Evil 4 achievements, you will probably have seen that a few of them ask you to finish the sport on varied settings with an S+ grade, for which you’ll want to hit the credit fairly darn quick. You may be doing a number of playthroughs and unlocking all the Resi 4 bonus weapons alongside the best way, so any time-saving trick you’ll be able to apply on a number of runs will save a good chunk of time in the long run.
A few of these would require particular objects or weapons so is probably not potential on all varieties of playthrough, however there’s loads of time to be saved right here all the identical. You may most likely wish to play by the sport ‘correctly’ first — as famous in our Resident Evil 4 overview, it is actually fairly good — however these tips and optimisations will definitely aid you get your run instances down for these S+ grades. Let’s get into it with a couple of basic ones that may work all around the sport, earlier than breaking down some location-specific ones in chronological order. Naturally, this can embody spoilers of issues like objects, areas, and enemies… you’ve got been warned!
Resident Evil 4 time-saving tips
Pre-setting mines
In case you have the Bolt Thrower and a few attachable mines (plus a couple of spare bolts you do not thoughts shedding), you’ll be able to arrange a powerful enemy’s prompt demise earlier than they even seem. That is notably helpful in opposition to enemies that spawn in fastened areas with cutscene triggers — if you already know the place they seem, you’ll be able to load that spot up with mines to nuke them the second they arrive to life. We have seen varied movies of this getting used to insta-kill even some bosses and mini-bosses, and whereas it does take a second to set the lure, that is a small worth to pay for skipping whole fights.
By no means proceed
We talked about this beforehand, however in case you’re taking part in on something aside from Skilled the place auto-saves do not exist, keep in mind to by no means use the ‘proceed’ or ‘load sport’ choices on the sport over display — the in-game timer will proceed to run and embody every failed try, which means it may solely take a couple of failures to take you from S+ tempo to creating the highest grade inconceivable. As a substitute, you will wish to give up to the title display after taking a demise and reload from there, resetting the timer to when the save was first made.
Sniper lockpick
A fresh discovery, but one with huge potential for time saves, even if it is rather fiddly and glitchy (not to mention extremely difficult to pull off on console). Speedrunner Mattmatt discovered that scoped weapons could be used to unlock certain doors from the other side by clipping through them, by aiming at the ground with your back to them to slightly push Leon into the object and quickly pivoting to activate and sometimes be forced through to the other side. Since most of these kinds of doors serve as shortcuts while backtracking, this could be massive if you can get the trick down, although players have reported that using it in certain places can create adverse effects and even softlock the game, so use at your peril. Expect this to get patched soon because it’s pretty game-breaking, in every sense of the term.
Bonus weapons
Once unlocked, bonus weapons like the Chicago Sweeper are permitted for use in S+ runs, although unlocking their full potential will take considerable investment. If you plan on using one (or more), it’s worth taking some early slight time losses in order to prepare these powerful weapons, so do as many of the Merchant’s requests as you can without wasting too much time along the way and save your Spinels as best you can — you’ll need 30 to buy the first Exclusive Upgrade Ticket from the Merchant later in order to unlock infinite ammo on one of the bonus weapons without needing it fully upgraded first. Completing all requests bar the powerful dog one (which is a pretty chunky time loss and ammo sink) will get you to 30 by the time you reach the castle, at which point you’re in Go Mode and can just make up for lost time and blitz through the game without needing to worry too much about supplies beyond healing items.
Chapter 1: Mob skip
Ingenious players worked out a trick to skipping the first major encounter of the game, the village mob — if the battle ends when the bell rings, why not just ring it yourself? You can just make out the church in the distance from several spots around the village, and shooting the bell in the tower ends the intense fight immediately. Sadly, it seems as though this may be limited to New Game+ runs as it only appears to work with a rifle, and testing with the default pistol has suggested it simply doesn’t have the range to hit the bell. Unless someone manages to make that work, this being an NG+ trick means it’s no good for S+ ranks as those are unavailable in New Game+, but it’s still worth a mention here due to just how much time it can save on any NG+ runs you end up doing… just be sure to have a rifle in your inventory when you beat the game or you won’t have it when starting the next loop.
Chapter 1: Farm shortcut
When arriving at the farm area, there’s a building on the right with a door that is padlocked on the inside. While this is likely intended as an exit route, it’s possible to pop the lock from outside, either by finding a spot where you can see it through a window and shooting it, or by taking the heavy-handed approach and popping a grenade through the corner window. This lets you grab the missing cog for the gate lever above straight away, giving you a much quicker way to get off the farm and move on.
Chapter 7: Early cannon
Upon approaching the castle, you need to raise a cannon with which to blast your way through the front gates. The intended method is to drop down into the tower and break the counterweight holding the cannon platform down, but you can actually see the weight through one of the large grated windows on the round tower your way into the area, meaning you can shoot it early to have the cannon waiting for you up top as soon as you get there. This saves you doing a lap of the castle grounds while getting pelted with catapult fire too, which is welcome as Ashley seems to very much enjoy getting stunlocked in this area.
Chapter 8: Easy wine cellar
Early in Chapter 8, Leon finds an ominous room full of cultists and upon entering, the leader (who has the key item you need to get out, naturally) performs a ritual that causes them all to mutate, which can make this room very challenging. However, if you look up as you’re just about to enter the room, you’ll see the red-robed guy up on the balcony at the back — shoot and/or kill him from here and he won’t turn the entire congregation into tentacle-headed freaks, which makes getting the key and getting out considerably quicker and easier.
Chapter 8: Sun/moon skip
Later in that chapter, there’s a pretty lengthy puzzle sequence with a number of switches that open and close certain gates. So long as you have at least one grenade, though (or rockets, if you’re feeling fancy), you can just skip the entire thing. Right after the very first instance of the sun/moon switches, you’ll find a portcullis leading out onto the battlements, with the intended use here being to shoot the counterweight on the outside from the far tower to open a shortcut after working through the puzzle section. By blasting just outside the grate, though, we can blow up the weight and open this route early. Shortly after, there’s even more time to be saved if you have a rocket launcher — you can skip the song and dance of the armoured Gigante fight by simply blowing him up rather than dodging his nonsense all the way to the cannon at the far end.
Chapter 9: Easy Lion Head
The typically over-elaborate chimera statue lock prevents entry to the library until you round up all three of its missing heads, and this trick turns the most time-consuming one to get into possibly the fastest. The Lion Head key item is found in the Gallery area, and upon crossing the walkway to enter the room, a cutscene will play in which the platform is lowered and you have to battle through a bunch of tough enemies to raise it again and grab your prize. But since we can see the lever that sets off the trap on our way over, we can set up a welcoming gift for the cheeky cultist who tries to spring it — you’ll need either a well-placed Bolt Thrower mine or a well-timed grenade just before the cutscene trigger here which, if you get it right, will prevent the switch from being thrown so you can just walk in and grab the Lion Head. This leaves only the couple of easy enemies that join the party on your way out to worry about, making an otherwise quite dangeous section an absolute breeze. To further speed things along in this area, it’s also good to note that Flash Grenades can instantly kill the knights in the Armory while they are stunned by the lanterns Ashley chucks down.
Chapter 9: Clock skip
After reassembling the chimera, you play as Ashley for a short-ish section in the Library. While you’re supposed to pick your way through the place until you find a memo about certain times to unlock the grandfather clock passages, you don’t actually need to do that — the solution is fixed based on the current difficulty level, so just setting the first clock you come across to either 11:04 on Assisted and Standard or 7:00 on Hardcore and Professional will skip the preamble and let you go straight down to the Mausoleum for some knight-kiting fun. And don’t worry, the escape route will still be open for you after you grab the crest and head to rescue Leon, though you will miss the bundle of keys and therefore all of the treasures in this area.
Chapter 11: TNT skip
You’ll soon reach a passage blocked by a cave-in, where you’re supposed to head into the enemy-packed nearby caves to find some dynamite with which to clear the way. If you have any rockets, though, you can simply blast away the fallen rocks and move on, still being wary of the debris as it tumbles down the passage after the explosion. Although this does save a good chunk of time, it does feel like a bit of a waste of a rocket, especially when the launcher would let you skip the otherwise fairly long boss fight in the following chapter. If you’ve got the infinite launcher unlocked, though, or have enough spare change to pick up another launcher from the Merchant before the boss — or if you just really hate that TNT room — it’s still a skip worth knowing about.
Chapter 12: Statue deactivation
As you ascend the clock tower at the end of the castle area, a giant Salazar statue will come to life and start spewing fire all over the place, slowing your ascent as you can only move between the panning bursts of flame. On the back of the head, though, is a small hole through which you can just make out the telltale red hue of an explosive barrel, and shooting this will take the troublesome trap out of action. Explosives can also be used if you can’t get a bead on the small opening to take the shot otherwise. Not a huge time save, but again, certainly worth knowing to make life a little easier for yourself.
Chapter 14: Wrecking ball skip
This encounter, where Ashley slowly uses a wrecking ball to smash through a wall while enemies flood the area for Leon to fend off, is one of the toughest in the whole game, so anything we can do to speed this along and get out of there will help save a bunch of time, ammo, and heals. To do this, we’ll once again want explosives — sticking two Heavy Grenades down right by the crack in the wall where the wrecking ball will hit will weaken it enough for the first impact to go clean through, meaning you like only have to deal with a couple of enemies rather than a small army before you can run through and call the lift.
Chapter 15: AA gun skip
A similarly useful trick can be used when Mike’s helicopter has to retreat from the anti-air gun emplacement in the following chapter. The game suggests that we work our way around the area up to the mounted gun all the way up top to give the chopper-botherer a taste of its own medicine, but why do all that when we can just pelt it with explosives? One rocket or a few grenades will do the trick (the latter obviously being the preferable option unless you’re rocking the infinite launcher), after which you just need to head down towards the gate and Mike will return to blast you a way through, effectively skipping this entire area.
That’s all we’ve got for you for now, but we’ll be sure to add in any more tricks we come across to help make those fast times and great grades easier still. Let us know if you’ve found any similar tricks during your time with the game, and hopefully this all helps with a few S+ runs!
