Also reboots, reimaginings… all of those loosely defined words which represent the same general idea – take a game that exists, change it and release it under the same or very similar name. But there is a word which I don’t count in between them and that is rerelease. When I say rerelease, I think of just releasing an old game again with a bit of patching to make it work on modern systems. I don’t have problem with that, only with remakes.
The main reason why is that I find them unnecessary. The games that usually get remade are the popular ones, often considered classics. These games are just as good now as they were back then, they don’t need changes.
I can also argue that once you make significant changes to the gameplay then you are not making a remake anymore but a different game altogether. At that point you could just treat it as a sequel or put in some more effort and make a real sequel.
Lastly, they make finding information about the original harder. They can also make legally obtaining the original game harder, or even impossible (for example when the original game does not have physical release and is pulled out of digital stores). That becomes a problem whenever a bad remake is made.
Sure, most remakes are fine (or at least good enough for people to keep buying them) but are they really better than the original? Higher resolution graphics look better but can dilute the original atmosphere when the new look is too different and in case of horror games, make the game less scary. Weird control scheme is sometimes a significant part of the experience, despite there being better options now. And because the remake is rarely done by the same people that did the original, there is always some risk of ending up with a bad one.
It is sad that there are people who never played a beloved game because they were dissuaded by a crappy remake.