21st September 2023 saw the release of the DLC “Separate Ways” for the Resident Evil 4 Remake. This was initially available in the PAL release of Resident Evil 4 on the Playstation 2, but MY GOD, was the wait worth it! Firstly, I just want to say, this completely took me by surprise with what we were given. For only £8, I got a 4 hour side-story (for initial run through) which captivated me for the entire run time. Changing a lot of what was there in the original version (which was honestly mostly a palette swap, with very basic gameplay), this really fleshed out what happened with Ada during the story of RE4. Now before we go any further, I need to issue a big SPOILER WARNING for the following content for me to really delve in to this.
If you read any further than this point now, the spoilers are on you, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
One massive change from the original version of Separate Ways, is how much Albert Wesker is involved, and boy is he involved. This time around, he see a fully, newly rendered version of Wesker, prior to the events of Resident Evil 5. We even get numerous nods towards towards RE5, my favourite being Wesker saying “complete local saturation”. He is there, in the flesh, not just through comms and all this seems to point towards a RE5 remake (but please, Code: Veronica first!) especially with the ending sequence and more closely linking Las Plagas to Uroboros.
The gameplay has been vastly improved and really shows Ada in all her greatness, allowing her to use her grapple hook (which I’m really not sure on its physics and possibility to work) to grab on to enemies from a distance closing in for a melee attack. Her choice of guns is limited, no doubt due to the run time, which does decrease the variability to take out the enemies within her short run, but we do get some unlockables for use in the DLC, and some costumes for the main story for Ada upon completion.
One thing that I really loved with this DLC, is the inclusion of cut content from the original story for Leon. The boss fight which originally took place among some cargo boxes suspended above a giant black pit (which I really never understood? Like you’re risking so much loss of supplies!) is now within this DLC.
Most surprising of all (to me) was the LASER SEQUENCE. That corridor that Leon originally dodged lasers in? That’s part of this DLC, however not as it was. You’re now being chased by a new beastie, and it seems the remakes developers took a hint from the Resident Evil film (NOT Welcome to Racoon City, we ignore that film here thank you!) and we get full on mesh lasers at one point.
Resident Evil (2002) – Laser Sequence
This was such a cool nod to the less than stellar films (I still enjoyed them though, even though they got really, really crazy. Honestly, go watch the Final Chapter, stuffs MAD).
For the low price of £8, this was worth every penny and is the way DLC should be. Other developers should take note from this in future, so we don’t get poor DLC again (I’m looking at you horse armor from Oblivion).
| Criteria | Scores | Our Score |
| Storyline | 1 – 5 | 4 |
| Gameplay | 1 – 5 | 5 |
| Value/Cost | 1 – 5 | 5 |
| Controls | 1 – 5 | 4 |
| Length | 1 – 5 | 4 |
