Move over Elden Ring - the award for the best video game parry goes to Resident Evil 4 Remake

I'll confess, I'm actually terrible at parrying. I'm one of those people who got to Gwyn: Lord of Cinders in Dark Souls 1 and found to my horror that his most glaring weakness was something I didn't really know how to exploit. Almost the exact same thing happened in Sifu, although I think I managed to work it out in Jedi: Fallen Order. But even I, a novice, can recognise a truly great parry when I see one, and I see one in the Resident Evil 4 remake's new demo.

The demo dropped last night, and players have been pouring in to take a run at the game before its release later this month. Naturally, clips and reactions are flooding social media. I've seen Leon on the receiving end of some serious villager anger in several of those clips, but on one particularly glorious occasion, he manages to give drastically better than he gets.

In the tweet below, one user noted that "you can parry someone's arm off" in the Remake. As a villager lumbers towards Leon with a clumsy overarm swing, our long-suffering hero whips out a knife, and with one fluid motion, stops the blow in its tracks by literally severing the guy's arm at the elbow with a single swipe. It's a move that's as brutal in the cool, calm, self-assuredness of Leon's movement as in the act of the dismemberment itself.

The NPC manages to pick himself up, but to be honest if I'd been dispatched like that, I feel like there'd be no coming back. What it's safe to say though, is that this is genuinely one of the sickest blocks, parries, deflections, rebuffs, or counters of any kind that I've seen in ages. That said, players did recently discover how to parry the original Resident Evil 4's chainsaw attack, which is almost as cool. 

My enthusiasm for this parry spills over into the rest of the demo - check out our Resident Evil 4 Remake Chainsaw demo impressions.