The knife loses different amounts of durability if it's used defensively or offensively, and by employing things like wall-bounces, sneak attacks and finishers on stunned enemies you use less durability, while you use more if you use it to escape a grab. In other words it's modifying the RE6 model very carefully to make your meter about "the meta-game of RE4 became all about killing as many enemies as you could as ammo-efficiently as possible". It's carefully designed from the ground up to feel like a perfect part of RE4's loop and make that game's somewhat repetitive combat more dynamic and based more around taking risks and playing offensively.
Wait, what do you mean that RE4 was "never saddled with the clunky tank controls of old"? I've played RE4 through like a half dozen times across three different systems and they all had tank controls. Are you thinking of RE5?
It's a shame how fast this became "is this ending as good as this arbitrary cutoff. I think choosing the best of each game and pitting them against each other would have been a lot more fun.
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