Remasters and remakes are a common sight these days as publishers strive to increase profits and make classic titles readily available for modern gamers.
Oftentimes, remakes focus on popular first-person games such as Nightdive Studios’ System Shock remake or Halo Studios’ upcoming Halo: Combat Evolved remake, Halo: Campaign Evolved.
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However, a large majority of game remakes center around third-person titles to update top-down perspectives, fixed camera angles, or pre-rendered backgrounds for more popular over-the-shoulder points of view.
While many third-person remakes strive to keep the original game’s experience intact, several others have striven to improve upon the original in various ways, such as gameplay, narrative flow, extra features, and more.
10
Destroy All Humans!
The Grand Return of Crypto
2005’s Destroy All Humans! is an underrated sixth gen classic, allowing players to gleefully destroy 1950s neighborhoods and military bases in cliché alien fashion, complete with flying saucers, anal probes, jetpacks, and psychokinesis.
The first Destroy All Humans! was a hilariously fun sandbox title and while its gameplay was generally improved upon in its sequels, Black Forest Games strove to greatly expand upon the original game’s features in their 2020 remake while keeping its story and comedy intact.
Aside from general graphical improvements, Black Forest Games added several new gameplay features to DAH, such as new upgrades and abilities for both Crypto and the UFO, hoverboots, unlockable skins, and new side missions and optional objectives.
On top of all of these features, Black Forest Games was able to complete a scrapped mission from the original game called “The Wrong Stuff” in the remake, which sees Crypto sneak into Area 42 and destroy a human flying saucer prototype.
9
Shadow of the Colossus
Bluepoint Games’ First Remake
Sometimes, improvements to games in remakes can be subtle but still carry a lot of weight towards making the new iteration the best way to play through a classic story.
This is the case for Bluepoint Games’ 2018 remake of Shadow of the Colossus, which primarily kept most of the gameplay and mechanics of the 2005 original intact.
However, the 2018 remake does make several minor improvements that culminate in making this iteration of Shadow of the Colossus the best way to play through Wander’s journey.
Some of these minor improvements include refined controls, realistic lighting, multiple performance settings, new game modes such as Reminiscence mode, an Easter egg to The Last Guardian, and enlightenment collectibles.
8
Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster
A New Side to Willamette
Dead Rising was one of the stand-out early releases of the Xbox 360 with its never-before-seen large herds of zombies, limitless ability to use anything and everything as a weapon, and stress-inducing time mechanics.
While the Dead Rising series never got as much support as its Capcom zombie sister series, Resident Evil, Capcom strove to celebrate Frank West’s investigation into the Willamette Parkview Mall in 2024 with the Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster.
Despite the remaster in its title, DRDR is a remake of the 2006 classic through the RE Engine, and it virtually improves upon every aspect of the original, such as adding voice lines to all survivors, being able to answer the transceiver while moving, and adding a ramp to the roof for survivors.
Checkpoints and time acceleration were additionally added, which made saving survivors and reaching or replaying certain cases a breeze, as well as completely notorious achievements, such as 7 Day Survivor, immensely more fair.
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7
Kirby Super Star Ultra
The Definitive Kirby Game
Aside from Pokémon games, it was somewhat rare for Nintendo titles to get the remake treatment in the early 2000s, but despite this rarity, Nintendo put out one of the best third-person remakes ever made with 2008’s Kirby Super Star Ultra.
A Nintendo DS remake of 1996’s Kirby Super Star, Kirby Super Star Ultra was developed as a way to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Kirby’s Dream Land.
Ultra is a fairly loyal remake to Super Star with most of the basic gameplay resembling the original and the original game modes’ stories remaining the same, but the remake does add four new fun modes with Revenge of the King, Helper to Hero, Meta Knightmare Ultra, and The True Arena.
One of the best improvements found in Ultra is the ability for anyone with a DS to play as a Helper without needing an extra copy of Ultra through DS Download Play, which was a perfect way to create new fans of Kirby and a great way to play with friends on long bus trips.
6
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
Crash’s Much-Needed Revival
Crash Bandicoot has arguably had a rough time in history since his PlayStation 1 debut, with most subsequent sequels becoming less and less popular and the marsupial fading into relative obscurity until Vicarious Visions released Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy in 2017.
A remake collection of 1996’s Crash Bandicoot, 1997’s Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, and 1998’s Crash Bandicoot: Warped, the Trilogy was the perfect revival Crash needed to regain a prominent spotlight in the gaming industry.
Since the original source codes for Naughty Dog’s original games were lost, Vicarious Visions had to rebuild the game’s iconic third-person view with various traditional enhancements such as dynamic lighting, detailed textures and graphics, and a re-orchestrated soundtrack.
On top of these conventional improvements, the Trilogy introduced brand-new features such as being able to play as Crash’s sister Coco in all three games, time trials for both Crash 1 and 2, and two new challenging levels in the form of Stormy Ascent and Future Tense.
5
Dead Space
A Horrifying Return to the USG Ishimura
Similar to Crash Bandicoot in a way, the Dead Space series struggled to gain a foothold in the 2010s primarily due to EA’s mishandling of the property and astronomical profit goals, but the sci-fi horror franchise saw a brief, celebrated return in the form of Motive Studio’s 2023 Dead Space remake.
The 2023 title was a near perfect remake of Visceral Games’ 2008 classic, keeping the core Resident Evil-like gameplay intact and upgrading the industrial and gory visuals of the USG Ishimura and Aegis VII with the grand return of Gunner Wright as Isaac Clarke.
Dead Space 1 was already a near-perfect game, but Motive managed to improve upon it in various ways, such as bringing back Dead Space 2 and 3’s zero gravity mechanics, introducing expansive side quests, and new corridors to better connect the Ishimura’s levels.
Narratively, certain sidequests and logs better connected Dead Space 1’s events with those of DS2, 3, and Extraction while collecting new Marker Fragments in New Game+ altered certain events and led to an alternate ending, seemingly setting up events for DS2.
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4
Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver
The Best Pokémon Remakes To Date
Starting with 2004’s Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, Game Freak made it a tradition to eventually remake each subsequent mainline Pokémon game at least once on future platforms and to this day their best remakes have got to be 2009’s Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver.
Remakes of 1999’s Pokémon Gold and Silver with features from 2000’s Pokémon Crystal for the Nintendo DS, HeartGold and SoulSilver were perfect meshes of Gold and Silver’s Johto and Kanto region with the popular gameplay and visual design of Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum.
Gold and Silver were already some of the most celebrated gaming sequels of all time, but Game Freak managed to improve upon greatness in several ways, such as having the first Pokémon in your team follow you in the overworld and expanding the National Dex to include every Pokémon made up to that point.
Unlike future Pokémon remakes like Pokémon Omega Ruby or Pokémon Shining Pearl, nothing from Gold or Silver were removed from HeartGold or SoulSilver, but expansive features from the sequels were brought over to make Ethan and Lyra’s journey all the more fun.
3
Resident Evil
The Potential of Resident Evil Remakes
1996’s Resident Evil is one of the most important video games of all time as it essentially defined the survival horror genre, but its creator, Shinji Mikami, did notice how poorly the title aged over the years, leading to its refinement in 2002’s Resident Evil remake.
Being a relatively early PS1 title, the original Resident Evil’s polygonal graphics haven’t aged exceptionally well over the years and its localization often made the game more comedic than horrifying.
To rectify these issues, Mikami and Capcom used motion capture to better depict Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, and the zombies, as well as created new enemies such as Crimson Heads and Lisa Trevor to make the game more terrifying.
In terms of gameplay, the Resident Evil remake retained the original games’ fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds but reworked most puzzles, enemy encounters, and inventory management to make exploring the Spencer Mansion tense and electrifying.
2
Silent Hill 2
James Sunderland’s New Nightmare
Similar to Resident Evil, Silent Hill was a widely celebrated pioneer of the survival horror genre during the PS1 days, but by the early 2010s, the series fell into an undead state until Konami announced the development of a remake of Silent Hill 2 in 2022.
2001’s Silent Hill 2 is arguably the most popular entry in the Silent Hill franchise, so making a 2024 remake of it to revive the franchise was a smart move as the remake went on to be nominated for numerous awards and sell over 10 million copies by October 2025.
Much like the recent Resident Evil remakes, the Silent Hill 2 remake ditched the original’s fixed camera angles for a more modern over-the-shoulder third-person perspective while retaining the original’s creepy foggy atmosphere.
New puzzles, enemies, and story sections were further added to expand James Sunderland’s horrifying journey while the combat was refined to make enemy encounters less cumbersome, such as Sunderland being able to easily switch weapons or quickly evade enemies.
1
Resident Evil 2
The Best Third-Person Remake of All Time
2002’s Resident Evil remake was a perfect recreation of the PS1 original, but to this day I’d still argue that the best RE remake, and best third-person remake overall, was Capcom’s 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2.
1998’s Resident Evil 2 was already a popular entry in the series thanks to the debut of Leon Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Ada Wong, and more action elements through the zombie outbreak of Raccoon City, so an RE2 remake was inevitable.
Using the RE Engine from Resident Evil 7, the RE2 remake recreates the Raccoon City outbreak in its most visceral form yet, with zombies and mutants appearing more disgusting and terrifying than they ever had before.
Aside from visuals, the RE2 remake improved upon the original in several ways, such as using an over-the-shoulder perspective, allowing Mister X to hunt down players throughout the RPD, and being able to play as other characters through The Ghost Survivors bonus missions.
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