You’re out of ammo. You fumble for a reload as an elderly woman wielding a pitchfork bears down on you. Just as the magazine snaps into place, a hulking man with a burlap sack for a head bursts into your field of view, chainsaw revving. You turn to run, but shit, you can’t move. You look down. Metal teeth encircle your calf. You wrestle with the iron jaw as the overpowering buzz of the whirling chain draws closer. Just as the roar becomes unbearable, you pry the bear trap off your leg and sprint away as the chainsaw cuts the air where you just were.
This particular situation has happened to me only once inResident Evil 4 Remake, but situationslikeit are constantly happening while I’m playing it.Capcomtook a game that was already filled with overwhelmingly bloodthirsty zombie hordes and threw a bunch of bear traps in to even the odds in their favor.
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There were bear traps in the originalResident Evil 4, but I asked our resident Resident Evil 4 rememberer, Features Editor Eric Switzer, about this, and he confirmed that there were way, way less. In Resident Evil 4 Remake, the ground is often covered in them. As I made my way through the grounds around the Village Chief’s Manor, for example, I felt like Sideshow Bob attempting not to step on a rake.
The decision to crank up the sheer number of bear traps is one of the best decisions Capcom made for the remake. Resident Evil 4 is a game that many of its players know very, very well. I wrote recently about howI’m not one of those players— I played it once, enjoyed it, and moved on — but many fans have memorized its intricacies. Though Resident Evil 4 is an overhaul of the original game on a macro level, increasing the number of bear traps allows Capcom to change the experience on a micro level, as well. If you’re used to speedrunning the original game, the bear traps are a reminder to slow down and not get too cocky.
Outside of the context of Resident Evil 4’s specific legacy, bear traps are a great match for horror in general. As I wrote that opening paragraph about getting caught in the bear trap with the chainsaw hulk bearing down on me, I realized that Capcom is, essentially, recreating a very common nightmare in interactive form. How often have you dreamt that something terrifying was coming after you but, for some dream logic reason, you couldn’t move, only stand there as it got closer and closer?
It’s a terrifying feeling and, by populating RE4’s world with devices that trap you in place if you touch them, Capcom effectively taps into that basic terror. I would love to see other horror games ape this. Though popular first-person horror titles like Layers of Fear and Outlast have often taken away weapons as a way of removing the players' means of defense, being stuck in a bear trap and unable to use your pistol is so much scarier than not having a pistol in the first place. Running and hiding is one thing. Being stuck in plain sight is another.
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