5 Video Game Remakes That Are Better Than The Original

From the long line of Resident Evil remakes to the standout remake of Dead Space, video game remakes are more or less a dime a dozen nowadays. There's still a wealth of value to be gained from them, like the opportunity to enhance the accessibility of games. This can be as simple as the easier availability of a modern port, but it can also come through actual gameplay accessibility options that were not available when the remake’s original counterpart was released.

In some cases, remakes have had the potential to outshine the original game, which is what all remakes should strive to do while also being faithful and respectful to the game that was obviously enough of an iconic gaming classic to be considered for a remake in the first place. There will always be players who prefer the original for nostalgia’s sake, and yet some remakes have debatably done the impossible and surpassed them.

Resident Evil (2002)

The remake of the first Resident Evil game is a pinnacle of remakes and, to this day, perhaps one of the best Resident Evil games. Funny enough, this remake is colloquially known as RE1, having firmly supplanted the original 1996 game as the better of the two in nearly every way imaginable, unless players adored and missed the original game’s polygons and voice acting/hilarious dialogue.

Unlike all the Resident Evil remakes that have been released since, it is fairly undeniable that the first game’s remake is superior to the original, with everything that is added or changed between progression, enemies, bosses, characters, story, lore, puzzles, and so forth.

At the same time, it's loyal to the fundamental gameplay precepts of the original Resident Evil, maintaining the fixed camera angles, tank control options, deliberate gameplay pacing, and more aspects that loyalists love. In essence, the remake is the meat on the original Resident Evil’s bones.

Silent Hill 2 (2024)

It goes to show how profoundly paramount remakes can be for survival horror/psychological horror franchises when Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 remake is as widely beloved as it is. To be fair, it did not have an impossibly high bar to clear regarding boss fights—the Eddie boss fight in an Otherworld meat locker, in particular, is quite horrid in the original—but it greatly improves on almost everything posited by Team Silent’s 2001 game, as a remake theoretically should.

The length of Silent Hill 2’s remake is more than double that of the original, which will be alarming for anyone who prefers the digestible span of ~8 hours to the remake’s 17–20-hour standard playthrough, depending on how much exploration players dabble in. That said, the remake’s critical path is long all on its own, and multiple endings (including brand-new ones) guarantee that players could spend upwards of 100 hours trying to see them all, unless they pepper in some optimized speedrunning tech to race through the game quicker.

Nonetheless, this narrative and gameplay extension is fantastic, as it further explores the town of Silent Hill in a way that the original never did. The remake behaves like something of a spiritual successor or sequel, where it is suggested that Silent Hill 2’s James Sunderland is in a loop, reconciling with and confronting his past more than once.

If nothing else, it is terrific to be able to actually explore Silent Hill this time around, and combat is remarkably better, despite not being able to wield Pyramid Head’s Great Knife as a weapon. Bloober is now tasked with remaking the first Silent Hill game, and it will be fascinating to see if it can do as wonderful a job on it as it did with its remake of Silent Hill 2.

Persona 3 Reload

Persona 3 Reload improves on the original in a handful of ways, such as taking inspiration from Persona 5’s beloved gameplay and stylizations. Where it truly shines is in quality-of-life updates that players might not know about or appreciate fully if they hadn’t played Persona 3, Persona 3 FES, and Persona 3 Portable, though not everything was adapted from each version of the game.

These include no longer being able to tarnish social links (though progress can be lost or ‘reversed’), being able to ‘rewind’ to a previous save, a more fleshed-out Tartarus, and new story/dialogue (voiced social links, for example) for characters. Plus, the abandonment of the fatigue system is a godsend. The wait for Persona 6 has been far too long, but with remakes on the level of Persona 3 Reload in the meantime, it's hard to complain too much.

Resident Evil 4 (2023)

Many gamers may choose to die on the hill of the Resident Evil 2 remake being one of the best remakes of all time. However, while it has the honor of reimagining the original Resident Evil 2 from a third-person perspective and gorgeous graphics on Capcom’s RE Engine, the remake botched its adaptations of the original game’s A and B scenarios. The Resident Evil 3 remake, meanwhile, widely disappointed fans by cutting some memorable content from the original game.

The Resident Evil 4 remake, on the other hand, is so superb that it deserves to be in any ‘best remake’ conversation alongside Resident Evil (2002). It would be an exceptionally hot take to say that it is leagues better than the original, especially considering how meteoric and historic the original Resident Evil 4 has been for survival horror and action games in 2004, but the remake was somehow able to successfully and faithfully bottle its magic.

It stirs in the same whimsy and absurdities as the original, but gameplay has reached a new apex in the remake’s modernized style. While firing shots at an enemy’s head or leg will still allow for a follow-up melee attack, Leon S. Kennedy now has a parry mechanic in Resident Evil 4’s remake that helps even the odds further (knives have durability, ensuring that players can’t simply parry to their heart’s content). The recent release of Resident Evil Requiem builds on some of the RE4 remake's ideas, proving that a trip to the past can still contribute to the future.

Dead Space (2023)

We might never be treated to another new Dead Space game, as the franchise is supposedly on ice indefinitely, though it seems more like it could have been incinerated, with its ashes subsequently scattered. Even so, EA Motive’s Dead Space remake is one hell of a swan song for the franchise to go out on.

The original Dead Space is magnificent in its own right. However, the Dead Space remake is basically a wholly new experience.

For instance, Dead Space’s antigravity flight propulsion became outdated as soon as it had evolved in Dead Space 2, and the remake brilliantly elected to adopt the sequel’s evolution of this feature. Likewise, the lethality and effectiveness of Dead Space’s Kinesis in the sequel were also adopted.

But that's not all. This remake bestows a voice onto Isaac Clarke, reprising Gunner Wright in the role, and Dead Space’s narrative is astonishingly strengthened as a result, with Isaac now vocally contributing to conversations. Plus, there is a lot more optional exploration aboard the USG Ishimura, such as a side quest that dives deeper into Nicole Brennan’s lore and what happened to her before the events of Dead Space’s story.