T w e n t y S i d e d
Link (YouTube) |
This game is sort of beyond our usual criticism. It’s ancient by the standards of videogames, and massively influential. It’s pretty hard to tag any of its design choices in terms of right or wrong, since this is back when developers were still inventing and evolving new genres as a natural part of game development. To a certain extent, criticizing this game is like criticizing the flat lighting and lack of dynamic shots in Forbidden Planet, or the stage-style acting delivery of Gone With The Wind. That was just how we did things back then.
It feels very strange to see these ridiculous puzzles and goofball doorways realized in HD. The layers of abstraction kind of took the edge off of some of the more outrageous puzzles. Having said that, this dog collar puzzle is bonkers. You kill a dog and take its collar and in the collar is a retractable FAKE key that can be swapped for a REAL key of the same dimensions, so that you can deactivate the elaborate trap with moving walls and an animated knight with a blade designed to grind up people who don’t have the fake keyI’d love it if there was a mop bucket nearby for dealing with occasions when people set off the trap..
WHUT?
This is what drives me crazy about Resident Evil. I’m willing to humor a game that locks you in some madhouse of traps and zombies and asks you to fight and puzzle your way out without asking too many questions about the world. I could meet the game halfway, “I won’t bring it up if you don’t.” But no. Resident Evil has this preposterous comedy world of the Umbrella Corporation and Wesker and their haunted house of ridiculous contraptions. And every game adds to this great big pile of nonsense and shoves it in our face at every opportunity. And none of it can survive even a millisecond of scrutiny. This world would be so much more frightening if we didn’t know who built this house or designed these traps, or for what purpose.
Alone in the Dark did it much better. The monsters were clearly Lovecraft-inspired supernatural monsters. Nobody said, “Let’s grow a massive man-eating tentacle monster here in the library.” That was just a thing that happened because unknowable horrors had gotten loose. But in Resident Evil it’s all supposedly the work of boring human beings. And not something wild, like the eccentric toymaker of The 7th Guest or the manipulative villain of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. No, this silliness is supposedly the work of a corporation. That not just ill-fitting, it’s lame and banal. The world makes Umbrella look stupid and Umbrella makes the world less scary.
If the CEO of Wal-Mart put on some JC Denton cosplay and designed a house of convoluted contraptions, I’l not sure what sort of emotion I’d feel when I was chased inside the place by zombie dogs. But fear would be pretty far down the list. This is what has always put me off the series. The supposed survival horror tone does not mix with the Willy Wonka setting, and I go crazy trying to immerse myself in the world. I can’t ask why anything exists, who made it, or what it’s for. I can’t analyze the motivations of the characters, including my avatar. Everyone is a dumb idiot goof.
Having said all that, I’ll say that I like the sensibilities of this first game more than Resident Evil 4 or 5. While RE4 is widely celebrated mechanically, I think this first one is a lot more tolerable in terms of premise. It’s light on the stuff about evil corporations and sort of presents the weirdness without (much) comment. It’s silly, but at least I’m not a boy-band zombie cop sent to rescue the President’s daughter from Midget Napoleon and the Umbrella Corporation’s medieval doomsday castle / apocalypse science lab.
Looks like I was wrong. At the top I said this game was beyond my usual nitpicking, but there I went and did it anyway. Well, sue me. A zebra can’t change its stripes.
Footnotes:
[1] I’d love it if there was a mop bucket nearby for dealing with occasions when people set off the trap.
The Best of 2011
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2011.
Civilization VI
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
If Star Wars Was Made in 2006?
Imagine if the original Star Wars hadn't appeared in the 1970's, but instead was pitched to studios in 2006. How would that turn out?
Linux vs. Windows
Finally, the age-old debate has been settled.
Top 64 Videogames
Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.
or the manipulative villain of Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
You must be talking about Rutskarn.
Coffee i love Coffee
i know that was from alan wake, but spoiler warning and horror games allways reminds me of Coffee i love Coffee
I read that, and all I can think is, “that was some, pardon me, that was some damn fine coffee.”
Thanks Alan Wake, for reminding me of something far, far better. :\
7th Guest. I remember that game very fondly. First time I ever used a CD-ROM drive was when a friend got one for Christmas and also got 7th Guest. We played that game together a ton. Still remember the music and a number of the puzzles…
Shy gypsy slyly spryly tryst by my crypt.
It seems fashionable to hate on 7th guest these days, but I remember really loving it. Plus, there was nothing even remotely similar back then, the first game to embrace the new possibilities given by cd-roms. (The making of is actually quite illuminating about this: they were pretty much making up the software to fit the technology as they went along.)
T7G was awesome. Still is awesome. I don’t know who’s hating on a game that’s more than a decade old, but surely there must be better things to do.
Pity about how crap 11th Hour turned out. I don’t know who thought adding a hidden item game to the franchise was a good idea, but it was not.
Yeah… I never got very far into 11th Hour, sadly.. Couldn’t be bothered. I was so psyched about the game coming out, too…
Damn, now I have this zombie Willie Wonka image in my head.
Now I’m trying to imagine a zombies/brain-inspired Oompa Loompa song.
Thanks for that.
“Brains! Brains!
Brains brains brains!
Brains brains brains brains brains brains brains”
But I really love the pithy second stanza, which frankly is too good to spoil for people by posting it here.
So this is a Small thing but I feel the need to point it out anyway.
Jill is wearing sensible police officer clothes. Not short shorts, no midriff, not any cleavage to speak of…for 1996 that’s petty amazing.
For TODAY it’s pretty amazing.
That comes with the later games, particularly with the famous Resident Evil 2 outfit.
Pretty sure you mean Resident Evil 3. She’s not present in 2.
Yeah, then she changes into a tube top and miniskirt when she knows she’ll be dealing with a zombie apocalypse… >.<
So the limited save system is the game having no respect for the player’s time.
But what about the player having respect for the game’s time?
You may have to put aside the time and make sure that time will go uninterrupted. Incentive to take it on in the middle of the night, lights off, dead silent around. It demands a little, but offers a lot in return. For instance, you’re less likely to bail or reload in a difficult situation. It prods you to slog through the horror. There’s plenty of saves available, a decent amount of ammunition, enough healing items, but just by attaching a finite number to them anxieties can be kindled.
I’m also reminded of this being one of the last hurrahs for people having to fill in the blanks of fuzzy graphics with their own imagination. I think the creators did the best they could with what they had, and used it to evoke a more dreamlike / nightmare experience than trying to perfectly nail reality. Really, I can’t see how this remake does anything but take away from the original. Especially for people who never played the original, it feels like they’re being robbed of a very crucially nuanced experience.
Not to get too obtuse, but it’s like the difference between having a print of a Van Gogh, fancy frame and all, sitting in an art museum – and the actual painting, being able to see the thickness of the paint, the brush stroke lines, the hidden dimension of paintings that’s lost in pictures no matter how high definition they are.
Similarly with the puzzles – they could have just as easily have put much less convoluted systems in place. You could have fought the dogs to get to a cabinet with a normal key in it, and set the blender-knight puzzle up with a pressure plate or somesuch and have a key-shaped hole on the floor be the solution. But instead it’s a transforming object found on the collar of one of the dogs that turns into a fake key.
It’s purposefully confusing, it’s dream logic, and it’s disconcerting. It points the player to question everything, examine every object, having to wonder if every little thing could somehow contribute to the overall puzzle. It means anything could hold any meaning or use, and to expect that.
To submit a small part of yourself to the game. To treat it with some degree of respect. To be humbled by what it does and in what way.
I’d accept that I may just be sentimental and all of this is nonsense, if not for remembering just how viscerally terrifying a video game managed to be in this instance. And I find it reassuring that it became a franchise with so many titles by being successful at what it set out to do, and not just for the sake of franchise (regardless of what the franchise eventually turned into, which is disappointing).
Respecting the players time:There is a much easier way to limit your saves AND respect the players time.Just make it so that it saves on exit,then deletes that save when you start again.And make some checkpoints,so that you wont go all the way back to start when you die,but youd still be pressed with limited progress windows.
As for the dream logic:Like Shamoose said,dream logic is fine when you are presented with a dream villain,an eldritch horror.But not when the villain is a corporation.
That’s a PS1 problem. In that
1) You don’t exit consoles, you just turn them off
2) It takes forever to save on a PS1, making autosaving impossible
They could have had some kind of exit screen + savepoint though. That would have been a cool solution
The kitchen bit at the end reminds me of a great puzzle from Alone in the Dark, where you can feed a bunch of zombies (who then get destroyed for some reason), rather than having to fight them. Much better than a convoluted dog whistle/collar/key/contraption bit!
Chris’ (and other people’s) statement that the tank controls were in service of making the game scary never held water for me.
Resident Evil Revelations has the controls pioneered by RE4 but a tone closer to the original. At the point where you first meet a Zombified
RachelI was so affected by the tone, atmosphere and build up that I emptied my shotgun into it and sprinted back through the ship to find my partner, twitching at every creak of metal and afraid of every shadow….and there was no attack. when I finally worked my way back to the initial encounter location I found that the creature was dead. My panicked barrage had killed it, and during my “escape” through the ship I had been chased by nothing more than my own imagination.During that segment I felt like I was running, I was the one being chased I was afraid. When I play the original with tank controls, I never feel like I’m there, I spend my time yelling at Jill to “Stop bumping into the wall and just run down the hall already!”
But RE4 has the exact same tank controls as this one.
No RE4 was the first game with the new control scheme. Josh said he is playing with a controller but showed the original tank controls at one point and you can visibly see the difference.
Plus In RE4 you can aim…and control the camera.
In Resident Evil 4 the camera is positioned behind the character. Hitting UP moves the character forwards the way they are facing, hitting DOWN makes them back up, LEFT and RIGHT have the character turn to their left and right, just like the Resident Evil staple. The difference is the camera. In the old the camera was fixed and looking in on a scene, in 4 is was moved behind them. But the controls of movement are the same.
Yes in 4 you could now free aim, and you could use a button to quickly use a knife. But the controls were not all that different.
The control scheme added to this HD remastered version at camera relative. pressing up down left or right moves the character in the direction dictated by the screen. This was also an option in the N64 release of Resident Evil 2, back in the late ’90s.
But as Josh demonstrates the original controls had Jill turning slowly step by step instead of turning fluidly as she does most of this playthrough.
There’s a quickturn option in 4 that isn’t in 1 but the normal turning speed is about the same.
also to be fair, the quickturn was introduced in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. I know we’re comparing 1 to 4, just wanted to add where that function was used in the series.
Resident Evil 4 uses the camera to give the illusion of different controls, but they’re still pretty much the same, unless you account for the quick turn option, but that has been present since RE3.
The game that actually did away with the tank controls was RE6.
shoot, sorry. I take forever to post, and while I was posting about RE3’s quickturn, you beat me to it.
ok ok argue about what does and does not constitute tank controls.
The point was that Starting With RE4 the actual fighting of enemies was easier, and more fast paced.
I think Revelations, RE6, and Revelations 2 are the only ones that use a modern shooter control scheme. RE4 and 5 still used tank controls as I recall.
Tank controls didn’t make the game scarier, but they did make it more tense.
I feel like a distinction needs to be made here between “Scary” and “Tense” types of gameplay. It’s almost like the distinction between “horror” and “survival horror” (or between survival horror games which lean more on survivial, like RE, and those that lean more on horror, like Silent Hill).
Scary gameplay style has more of a spooky, psychological, messing-with-your-head vibe, the kind that somehow makes you nervous to be alone in your bed at night long after you’ve stopped playing. Aforementioned Silent Hill games or Amnesia games are an example of games closer to the “horror” end of the survival horror spectrum.
Tense gameplay doesn’t leave such a lasting impression, but it makes you give your 120% when you play, because you know death can easily come if you ever relax, and it will cost you. And avoiding that death cost makes victory all the sweeter. Resident Evil 4 is a good example of a game that has almost no Horror at all (unless you’re afraid of laughter), but tons of Tension from sheer gameplay challenge. Similarly, something like X-Com isn’t even a horror game per se, but the punishing mechanics allow it to frequently invoke the same feelings you get from tension-focused suvival horror.
There is some overlap between the two in most horror games, but it often seems like people emphasize either the former or the latter when talking about games being “scary”. Shamus seems to prefer Scary games, whereas RE fans probably prefer either games near the middle of that spectrum or ones that are closer to the Tension side, depending on which particular RE installment they like the most.
I can understand that, but I’m with Rutskarn in that if the “cost” is something real world it isn’t nearly as fun. It just disconnects me from the character I’m playing. In the original game I never feel afraid, feel like I’m there because I’m too busy yelling at the character to just do what I want it too! A similar scenario can be seen during the Assassin’s Creed 2 season when Josh would shout “Ezio Why?” as the character suddenly takes a 90 degree header off the building when it was clearly not Josh’s intention.
The “this is the work of boring human beings” is one of the (many) reasons I don’t like Dean Koontz novels. 9 times out of 10, the “supernatural” horror is really some kind of magi-tech or hand-wavy sci-fi that destroys any build-up about facing some form of otherworldly nightmare.
Aye right. Same with Scooby Doo. You’re full of it, Scooby! – we all know the real ‘Mystery Machine’ is the injection moulder used to make the rubber masks…
Hey, at least Scooby Doo teached a valuable lesson to children.
If more people took its core lesson to heart and started looking for the rubber masks and pulleys behind the ghosts (figuratively speaking), maybe there would be less people dying to faith healers and losing money to mediums and TV psychics.
Rankrou! Good to row romeone gets rot re rer rying to roo.
I never found RE’s crappy controls “scary”. Frustration doesn’t create tension, and usually kills tension since I’ve stopped focusing on atmosphere and started focusing on how annoying the controls are.
Dead Space did it much better. You aren’t fast and agile enough to feel like Master Chief, but the controls still work smoothly and you’re never doing the opposite of what you’re trying to do.
Yeah, and it helps to remember that back in 96 this wasn’t really a horror specific thing. You could pick any third person PS1 game at random and chances were it controlled pretty awkwardly and if it had guns that it was pretty awkward to shoot things. This was before the dual analogue setup had caught on and the original PS1 controller didn’t even have one analogue stick like the N64 controller did.
The game didn’t control badly for horror reasons, there was no comfortable norm for RE to deviate from at that point. It controlled badly because it was a 3d game designed for what was basically a SNES controller.
Unfortunately, they kept those controls long after 3D movement had been solved.
I’m honestly reminded of the original Turok game where your turning was controlled by using the C buttons (basically a second D-pad on the controller). The dual analog was one of the major reasons the original X-Box caught on so fast. It used that mechanic so well it was well-received as a new console.
I wonder if the tank controls were the result of the fixed camera angles.
I doubt it. The HD version they are playing still has the fixed camera angles but the more free-flowing controls of more modern design.
The real question is whether the low turning speed was a design decision or a hardware limitation. I’m pretty sure that’s the part that annoys everyone.
Yes, this, people seem to forget one of the big pluses with tank controls is that you easily keep your direction constant while moving through abrupt camera angle changes, instead of having to quickly adjust the direction you’re moving every time you walk over a transition. Or having to keep the now comparatively wrong angle to the camera held very steady so it doesn’t lose the old bearings, but only if they had thought of that problem already.
Plus this would’ve been made before analogue sticks were a (at least mandatory) thing, so without the tank controls, movement would be limited to the eight cardinal directions. Directions which change every time the camera switches.
That’s what I always thought. The tank controls keep you from doing that little twitch Josh does every time the angle changes, because “up” always means “forward” no matter what the angle is.
Back in the ’90s, I don’t remember the tank controls feeling *that* awkward. A lot of older games had them, so I think I was more used to it.
I’m having this odd problem with this part. Shamus is upset the game is too much like a point and click adventure game. And Rutskarn wants it to be more like a point and click adventure game. Shamus doesn’t like the odd/dumb fake key hidden in a dog collar thing (and I can understand), but I have to ask if he’s never played old adventure games before, there’s so much stupid in some of them. Then Ruts is saying a good way to do an arrow head puzzle would be to interact with all the objects to a fuller extent, which is something familiar to adventure games, to the point of complication.
I know Resident Evil is not for everyone, I’ve been a hard fan of the series since 2001 or so, I’ve been on the internet. I’ve heard most of the complaints, I understand that I simply accept the games’ faults, that doesn’t make the games good, or coherent. And the defense that other games have done aspects worse is not a worth while defense. I apologize, I just find it odd that I see the conversations that Ruts and Shamus are having as being a push and pull of how adventure game heavy the game should be. And yet, I think at both points it would hurt the game in particular.
Resident Evil’s corny-ness is heavily based on story and dialog, but I feel the puzzles play an important part as well. Removing some of the odder puzzles can make the game more serious, which then I find ruins the tone of Resident Evil, it’s supposed to be goofy, even if at first it didn’t mean to be, it became that. As they said in the first part, if the dialog was polished a bit more it would feel out of place, I find the same can be said with the puzzles, if the puzzles were made too clean, the mansion’s traps removed, it would lose a large part of the charm and might end up in a situation where the seriousness highlights the silly to a painful degree.
Resident Evil is one of those few games in the survival horror genre that gets that balance between action games and adventure games. And moving the slide further to the adventure side could destroy what it is. Yes, there’s stupid silly puzzles in this game and the series, like the dog collar fake key, the arrow head, mixing chemicals based on colors and simple math, the shotgun ceiling puzzle, ect ect. But it never gets to the point of having an item, and playing the Longest Journey, as much as I also like that game and point and click games in general, it would get aggravating picking up a new item, and not knowing if I’m supposed to Use Eye, Nose, Hand, or Mouth to solve it or make it useable. And for something that is slower like the Longest Journey it can work, but add that to having to manage inventory space, ammo, enemy encounters, save items, health items, and trying to avoid deadly traps, I think would kill the game. Take the rubber ducky puzzle from the Longest Journey for instance. You go through some small trouble to get the ducky. It’s inflated and has an adhesive bandage on it. You have to remove the bandage, take a rope and combine it with a clamp, combine the clamp and rope with the ducky tube, then use your mouth on the ducky to blow it up this in turn causes enough pressure to hold the clamp open, then DO NOT use the bandage on the ducky but lower it down, wait for the air to run out of the ducky tube, the clamp will then close catching the other item you are seeking, then you can pull it up and have your new item.
TO ADD:
I don’t want to be the serious stickler. And be all, super nerdy. But…
about the building of the mansion. The actual story is they hired a guy to make it, then once it was complete kidnapped his wife and daughter, experimented on them, and looked him in the mansion with the traps he helped make. Even going as far as to make him a tombstone for himself for him to find.
I think what helped make a game like this scary(at least to Young Me) was the limitations brought forward by the original PSX release.
The need for pre-rendered backgrounds meant you were always paranoid that something would be around the next corner. And as Chris pointed out, they also had to lean on the sound design.
Combined with the pre-rendered camera angles, there are lots of “I hear something bad, but I can’t see it!” moments. I can kind of see why the series moved into a more action-oriented slant once you could always see the monsters.
What was that zombie even doing in the bathtub?
…the backstroke!
Care to join in? Here’s the back!
(…NSFW?)
The comment about having a contract with the game developers was very interesting to me since exactly the same comment came up yesterday when I was discussing Spec Ops with a friend (I’ve played it; he hasn’t*). Where do we draw the line (no pun intended) for deceit as a story-telling tool in games? Is there “good” and “bad” deceit? (The escape the room/chainsaw murderer “horror game” example in the SW video is clearly the bad kind, but also extreme to the point of absurdity.) Does this kind of unspoken contract put hard limits on what we can expect (successful**) games to say and do? Honestly not trying to be bait-y here, just genuinely curious. :)
Also, I suspect that people are much less tolerant of “awkward mechanics as design decision” because there are vastly more games readily available now than there were in 1996, and the people who played those games then are in their 30s/40s now and have jobs/families/other hobbies/etc. that also claim their available minutes. So time “wasted” on a poor/awkward game is time not spent playing a slick/fun game/watching your daughter’s dress-rehearsal/doing some much-needed overtime/weeding the garden/going down the pub with Real People(tm)/…
*Yes, he probably should play it at least a bit (it would make discussing it with him so much easier!), but he’s currently sharply limited to things you can play with small inquisitive children around and Spec Ops is Not That Game. :/
**I could make a game about nose-picking and claim it was an expression of the futility of human existence if I wanted, but I doubt I could make it popular and I certainly wouldn’t be entitled to have people agree with my claims…
Well yer an engineer Shamus. The world has to be tangibly logical for you before it can be experienced and that’s kinda antithetical to the nature of horror to begin with.
TBH, I get a strong sense that the designers didn’t have any strong feelings about what the story was about when the started. Coherent stories were not high on the prioritylist back then. The goes for atmosphere; whatever story there is is not forced too hard to fit the gameplay.
So… the way out of the locked room was by shooting the lock. Doesn’t Jill have a gun?
I was thinking that would be a great lockpicking mechanic in a horror game; you can shoot doors open, and some doors can only be opened that way, but it takes lots of bullets to do so.
I think the reason RE4 gets more of a pass is because I think it’s the only game in the series that acknowledges and embraces how goofy it is. RE1/2/5/6 all play it as straight as possible, and we’re expected to take Umbrella and the Weskers and all that stuff seriously.
RE4 was goofy and seemed to acknowledge that it was goofy and over the top and that its villain was a midget and a weird priest guy.
RE5 and 6 always struck me as this kind of stealth parody. I have no idea of that’s intentional or just baked into the writing, though.
Devs having no respect for players’ time was pretty much the standard mode of operation back then…
“I can't ask why anything exists, who made it, or what it's for. I can't analyze the motivations of the characters, including my avatar. Everyone is a dumb idiot goof.”
I love how Capcom’s plots and characters are like an atmosphere that is uninhabitable for Shamus. The commentary during the video is great, the description text could have just said “WHUT?” and “Then what’s keeping the lights on?” and I would have got the intent.
I think what Straymute is saying influences my opinion of the tank control method. Some PS1 games I’ve tried just controls terribly in 3D, either from tank controls or just moving around a 3D environment with a D-pad. Nobody would argue that Crash Bandicoot or Tomb Raider control weird to create a sense of tension. It feels like it’s just luck that some people find bad controls help horror games feel scarier. Luckily, they included options in this remake.
Anyway, Los Iluminados are different from Umbrella. What made RE4 so easy to jump into is that I’m pretty sure the entire cast is different except for Leon, who you don’t need to know anything about, and Ada and Wesker, who do background crap that doesn’t matter to the core experience or conflict. And there’s nothing lame or mundane about Mini Napoleon or Giant Rasputin. Please don’t fault me for nitpicking a nitpicky post.
What made RE4 so easy to jump into is that I'm pretty sure the entire cast is different except for Leon, who you don't need to know anything about
How is that any different from like half of the Resident Evil games?
The first they’re all new characters, and the story is straight forward and simple. Attacked by zombies, trapped in a mansion with zombies. The zombies and monsters were being made there. The end.
2) All new characters, only relation is Claire looking for her brother Chris (from RE1), and even then you don’t have to know anything about Chris or the events or RE1. The story is zombies in the city, and there’s a lab that made them.
3) Jill Valentine returns from RE1, however her story is simply escape a city of zombies, other than her and Brad everyone else is brand new, don’t need to know anything about 1 or 2, just that Brad and Jill know each other and work together. There’s mercs from something called Umbrella, but simply put its a group of mercs sent in to fight the zombies.
Survivor) All new characters, island, zombies, amnesia. Leon gets mentioned once.
Dead Aim) All new characters, almost no mention of anything from any previous games in the series.
Outbreak, files 1 and 2) All new characters trapped in a city with zombies, try to escape. Need no information from previous Resident Evil games.
Code Veronica has as much need for previous events as 4 does. Revelations 2 helps with previous knowledge but only minor plot points are critical about past events.
AND the enemies in 4 is very opinionated thing. Nothing Lame about them? I would highly disagree. But that’s opinions, sweep that under the rug and move on. Because as far as I’m concerned el Gigante is stupid, keeping “pet” vanishing giant insects in the basement was a lame plot point, they were there kept for generations, because, things. Those files, and notes left everywhere were the laziest, dumbest, notes in any game I’ve played.
Leon’s gadgets getting locked away from the player is poor design choice. What happened to the binoculars? You got to use them once at the opening act of the game, then they were put away and weren’t brought out again, even though in theory you could HAVE used them with ease, but nope, gone, nothing happened to them or with them, they weren’t broken, stolen, lost, misplaced. Leon put those damn things away and that was the end of them. That grappling hook he has/had where the hell was that throughout the game? He gets pushed down a hole and suddenly has a hook that has no other use in the game ever. And that’s just to start with. There’s more. I accept that people like the game. But when you start hailing it as the only good Resident Evil game, or the best in the series when it’s the sore thumb that turned into a giant infection, a get a little passionate.
Look, are you sure you meant to respond to my post? Sure, I liked RE4, but it’s just the one I played and the one Shamus used as an example. He said it was Umbrella’s castle, I said no, one of the reasons it’s easy to jump into is because it isn’t. He also said the enemies were boring and mundane as normal human, corporate people and I used Mini Napoleon as an example because he’s technically a human but practically bananas. I’m sorry if it looked like I shit on the series and implied RE4 is the only good one, because that’s not what I meant and I haven’t got the experience to make a judgment like that.
I fully apologize for coming off as hostile. I misinterpreted your meaning, sorry. There happened to be a few comments in a row about RE4 being good because of X reasons some seemingly insinuating that others in the series lacked X or were less for it. And I took it the wrong way, it’s just a game(s), it’s no big deal, I need to keep that in mind and remember we’re all friendly here.
Again, sorry.
No problem, it’s all good.
Man, RE4’s story is the only one of them that I can even tolerate. But only knowing, going in, that it isn’t a horror game, it’s a semi-difficult action adventure game with a horror-themed comedic story. Its so silly, even though the atmosphere is so dark, that I couldn’t help but smile and get drawn in by everything. Napoleon Hitler was the greatest, too.
It’s kinda like MGS though, in that for this to work, it has to take ITSELF seriously, even while being balls-to-the-wall crazy. If Solid Snake didn’t take Psycho Mantis seriously, it wouldn’t have worked. If Solid Snake had pointed out the ridiculousness of psychic possession via arm graft, it wouldn’t have worked. But he does it deadpan, and accepts the world as it is presented to him, so the fun can come through.
Oh I don’t know, it worked for Revengeance.
At least I *think* it worked for Revengeance… Is it a bad sign when a game in the MGS series can involve a military cyborg (badly) disguised in a sombrero and poncho, a man who attacks by turning his own limbs into magnetic slinkies while babbling about MEEEMES and a last boss that’s
a superpowered U.S. senator that tries to sumo-wrestle youand you *still* can’t tell if it’s intentionally taking the piss?That actually sounds like the best sign.
Wow,that water is beautiful.
*zombie jumps out,water awkwardly dripping from it*
And now youve ruined it.
Why do you need daggers to defend yourself from zombies,when you have a combat knife?
It’s silly. But the defense items/daggers were new to the remake and where the knife is a weapon you have to equip then get in close range with an enemy and swing over and over, the daggers/tazer/flashbangs are used to counter an attack against you. Normally when a zombie has the character in their grasp you cannot attack the zombie, just push buttons until you get free, however with the disposable defense items, a zombie who grabs the character can then be attacked at the cost of a defense item and the character is let go/breaks free.
They’re like a get out of jail/hugs free card.
If you were asking a question. If not…my answer is cheese? Some knives are better to cut cheese with, some knives are better to stab zombies in the head with than others?
Gamers dont want hand holding,they want the challenge to come from the game itself,not from the ui.We want functional controls,easy saves and quick loading times and tough enemies that dont rely on gotcha moments.
You can argue that crappy ui is giving you a better atmosphere,but lets face it,it was like that because we didnt know how to build a better ui.A much better game would have a good ui,and build tension from in the game,not from without it.For example,ravenholm in half life 2 manages to be scary without you having to struggle with the controls and saves.Same goes for the cradle in thief 3.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I was thinking when they were talking about that. There seems to be this concept of fear = fear. That fear of being unable to save is the same emotion as fear of the monster/environment/villain. Rutskarn talks about how something might add to the atmosphere of fear but players hate it because it causes them to repeat parts, and that was just a huge disconnect for me, because from my perspective, repetition reduces fear.
UI tricks and restrictions don’t make me afraid of what’s in the game. At best they make me afraid OF the game, which is a different state. And more commonly, they just make me frustrated.
Ravenholm was scary?! But then, I thought A Machine for Pigs was scary, so I might be the strange one when it comes to what is and isn’t scary.
Also, what is really “the game itself” and what is “UI”? The way I see it, save rules are as much a part of the game as shooting, or controls or level design.
Good controls are the ones that are easy to get into and become a part of yourself.Just like you dont have to think about moving your arm to grab a jar from the shelf,you shouldnt think about moving your character and shooting at a zombie.It should be a reflex action,one which doesnt yank you out of the experience because,where there isnt much time between you reacting to something on screen and your character responding to your input.
Good ui gives you a proper response to your input in as few steps as possible(so just pressing a single key to go forward is good,having to press two keys is less good),and rarely does it misinterpret your input(mass effect with its one button for everything is a prime example of bad ui).
Same goes for saving.If you have to push a single button to quick save,or you can save and exit with just a single alt+f4,thats good ui.If you have to go around and hunt a specific checkpoint,with a spare item in your inventory,before you can save,thats bad ui.
To offer a different perspective, I’ve had a lot of fun playing games on the sofa with mates in my youth. We would pass the controller around after a death and watch someone else try to get past a challenge. Having infinite saves takes away part of the appeal of that.
As for the controls: Tank controls were so standard in the 90s that they were easy to get into back then. Having to stop to shoot moves the game from action focus to survival focus. It’s a risk to stop running and face your opponent. It takes time to turn and line up your aim. Is this shot going to be a wasted bullet? Have I made enough progress that I can justify spending a save?
I think there’s simply a cultural aspect to gaming in the late 80s – early 90s that no longer exists: We have networks replacing sofas; everyone wants to play at once; There are so many games now that it’s more about how quickly you can get through one game and move onto the next.
It doesnt matter if the game is good,or fun,or the norm,it can still have weird controls or a bad interface.Fallout 1 is a great game,a fun game,and was quite the norm for rpgs of the day.Yet it has horrendous user interface and very unintuitive controls.
And just because you can get used to something doesnt make it good.Again,once you got used to the controls of falout 1,you could play it without thinking.That doesnt change the fact that it was a bad setup unintuitive setup.
Heck,even the current WASD keyboard setup isnt stellar.Its sufficient most of the times,and people are used to it,but it sure can be improved.A controller with more degrees of movement is better.And in reverse,a controller doesnt offer you enough ease and precision when moving around camera or targeting a specific point on the screen,for which a mouse is superior.So both of the most used control setups available today are not perfect,despite how widespread they are.
“just because you can get used to something doesnt make it good.”
Quoted for truth.
So much of what we have in games (specifically AAA games) is that way because…it has always been that way (or it has been that way for a long time). We seem to be at a point where we think we have perfected most things, and innovations are tiny or non-existent. That is why I like seeing companies like Valve creating the Steam Box. The controller is very different, and may be a complete failure, but it will help shape/encourage future innovation.
Fear of failure (and the co$t of it) is holding back gaming. Indies are different, since they usually are produced for much less, thus not as big a risk.
Having trouble finding a link, but I recall a post by Tycho over at Penny Arcade where he drew the distinction between a game being “hard” and a game being “difficult to play.”
Dark Souls is a great example of “hard.” It’s demanding, and if you don’t understand the controls and mechanics you’ll die a lot. But it’s always your fault – you know that you died because you missed the block button, not because the game cheated or misinterpreted your input.
Wonky controls make games “difficult to play.” It’s not that I don’t know what logical actions my character should take – it’s that there’s a layer of indirection in my ability to communicate that effectively to the game. Sure, it adds some amount of tension if I don’t know whether the game will interpret me pressing the space bar as “hide behind the conveniently placed cover” or “stand stock still right here while I painstakingly reload all my guns.” But when the tension comes from “I hope the game engine won’t screw this up” as opposed to “I hope I don’t screw this up,” then it feels like cheating.
The mop bucket joke idea makes me think, it’d be a pretty cool signifier for a serious threat, though in a horror game you don’t want to go too far in making threats known, since that undermines the constant sense of dread. Perhaps as an acknowledgement that a certain puzzle is a bit outside of the game’s usual challenge level or style.
As for games not respecting a player’s time, it’s a difficult balancing act. The whole point of limited saves is shown by roguelikes, rather than being able to solve each and every instance of challenge individually, you have to get good and master the system. If you’re not expected to master the system, why make it a game? It’s just a walking simulator with a jumped up QTE system that you brute force with quick saves, that doesn’t respect your time either. Obviously, this is hyperbole, but we saw with adventure games that having quicksaves available and expected lets devs do things that are just tiresome, like instadeath nonsense. If failing a single fight or QTE or pressing the wrong button can set you back twenty seconds, that’s inconvenient, if it can set you back thirty minutes, it’s not getting past QA without a long list of very good reasons, but 90+% of these kinds of gotchas are best off removed either way. It’s just a lot easier to justify “Do it again, stupid” when the cost of doing it is lower.
Basically, I’m saying that uncontested reloads can open the floodgates for some serious bullshit and you get a better standard of game if it’s built on the assumption that saves are between fifteen and sixty minutes apart at a minimum, and the upper limit is just for health reasons. This doesn’t mean the final game shouldn’t have uncontested reloads, but the game should be built so that it isn’t a pile of shit if you enforce that rule. For example, games like Bayonetta and the Wonderful 101, where the framing of the game implies you’re meant to clear each level as a block and it’s satisfying to finally manage that while maintaining a high rank, but you’re allowed to revert to your last save and take on each fight individually if you so choose, or just take the rank hit from dying and continue from the game over screen.
Mastery of the system is only one of the possible motivations for playing a game. A pretty common one, to be sure, but it’s hard to overestimate the variety of reasons why people play.
True, but most games have a choice in mind of what they’re trying to impart, and it’s rarely going to help the story or atmosphere if frequent reloading is an expected part of the rhythm, anyway. I’m only saying that the devs building the game so that it wouldn’t be obnoxious if saves were limited helps far more often than it hurts, not that it should be required of the player.
Ive figured out why that zombie was in the tub:Its an homage to the movie.
Seriously? I thought he just committed suicide.
Nope,its alice.And this time,the military was not there to get her out before she drowned.
Man, the movies turn the entire course of the games weird. On one hand, it was where the games ended up… on the other the films weren’t particularly faithful. So, did the games follow the movies that were adapted from the earlier games? *head implodes*
You know, after the fake key and the blender trap puzzle I have to say the absurdity of this game is starting to grow on me. I still don’t know if it would be fun to play, especially because I tend to hate adventure game logic, but I could see having some fun with this season.
I definitely do have more respect for the game not killing you as soon as you trigger the trap and instead letting you say “oops… let me just put this back” and leaving to figure out the puzzle.
*Edit* In fact I am slowly realizing that the more willfully absurd this game is, the more likely I am to accept what they’re doing without question.
I’m actually a little disappointed we’re only going to get another episode of this. RE is the most fun I’ve had so far this month.
OK, so can I just say – being fully aware of the difficulty of translating between languages used in wildly different cultural contexts – “Chemical to use on plants”? Is that not a bag of soil fertiliser?
I noticed that too! (Well, chemist here…) Also quite amused at all plants apparently falling into the category of either “green herb” or “red herb”.
That might technically be true, but most people associate ‘chemical’ with ‘chemical warfare’. The majority of people who see it will think more along the line of Agent Orange.
Also, Rutskarn’s hypothetical “House Horror” game comment still immediately made me think of Hugh Laurie, and the last time I saw him in something that wasn’t a cheeky British comedy was nearly ten years ago.
What annoys me about RE is the same that annoys me about a lot of “adventure” style games from that era: Nobody ever thought about how much of a pain in the ass it would be for somebody who actually worked there to ever do anything. “Well, i’m off to the restroom, Larry. I just need to collect the 3 keys, navigate the alligator pit, and run through the death maze. It’s hard to believe we lose so many interns. Anyway, I’ll be back in three hours if I don’t die, and we’ll go over the Franklin report.”
I get that in most of these cases gameplay is trumping realism, but it would be a lot scarier to me if the place made sense. When the evil scientists need more copy paper, do they have to fight off zombie dogs to find the one who has the collar-key?
Well the zombies didn’t happen until there was an outbreak of the virus, then the whole place went to shit. But that doesn’t solve the only one bathroom problem. Or that no bedroom is anywhere near the bathroom. Or that to get from the dining room to the kitchen you have to go down a long hallway, then down a flight of stairs, and so the kitchen is under the dinning room and there’s no dumbwaiter. I’m not familiar with mansions or big houses, or with the idea of the kitchen and dinning room being on different floors,so maybe that’s all normal, but I would hope there’d at least be a dumbwaiter. It takes the same amount of time to get from the library to the kitchen and that’s on the second floor.
There is some sensibility in the layout. Behind the mansion is another building, referred to as the residence. a sort of T shaped hall connects a small storage room, the first bedroom, and a sort of lounge with bar and pool table. Off one of the legs connects to an L shaped hall, with an additional bedroom and the “gallery” room. Into the “gallery” there’s a table in the middle of the large room for chemicals, there’s a small storage room filled with chemicals, the third bedroom, and a large room with a fireplace. Each bedroom has its own bathroom complete with toilet, sink, and tub. The second bedroom leads to an underground lab, which dampens the sensibility in a little however. ‘Course that doesn’t fix any of the odd quirks of the main mansion.
What’s wrong with being able to tell which of the boxes you can interact with?
Would it be better if the art style was so muddy and confusing that you couldn’t tell what you could interact with, like 100% of all games released since?
It’s not BAD. It’s just clearly not what the designers intended. It’s a curiosity of taking such an old game design and pulling it forward into the modern age.
I think you’re being a little harsh on RE4. If I remember correctly, Umbrella had no presence in the village. The cult leader convinced Midget Napoleon to dig up the parasites and established a parasite cult with himself at the top. The Umbrella Corporation was present, but only because Wesker was trying to obtain samples of the parasite for his own use.
And I freely admit that I might have missed something about the plot (which isn’t great in spite of my small defense). RE4 is a great game, but oddly I’ve never been able to bring myself to play very far into it a second time.
Yaaaaaaay it’s a Shamusrant! This started my day off so brightly. I am so happy that there are so many things to be disliked in the world of videogames.
… wait, that’s not exactly what I meant.
Next week:Shamus rages at rage,and another zombie game gets a bullet to the head!
Wait,he already raged at rage…
Umm,next week:Shamus gets angry at angry birds,and another zombie game gets decapitated!
I don’t understand the notion of something not being scary because it was created by humans rather than being supernatural. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding something? In any case, it pays to remember that most of the Umbrella monsters that we fight in these games tend to be accidents or failures rather than purposely created. The giant man-eating plant in the library wasn’t supposed to be there, it just grew on its own accord and they just left it there for study.
Also, I feel it’s important to make the distinction that Resident Evil games were never supposed to be actually scary. They have almost always been homages to B horror flicks, which are very popular in Japan and tend to go the bizarre route rather than the scary one.
Things have pretty much changed since RE5, but the original intent wasn’t to scare anyone. The problem is that a vocal part of the audience has called them scary because of the jump scares. This is the kind of people who confuse surprise for fear and has turned the horror genre in film into a joke.
The basic difference is that if the cause is supernatural and/or non-sapient, questions about why it would do something can be answered with a shrug and “It’s zombies, I don’t gotta explain shit”, whereas if you say human beings did this, and mostly on purpose at that, you have to answer why these muppets thought that might be a good idea, what possible goals they may be trying to achieve, and why the hell they thought the methods they chose might possibly achieve them. It invites analysis zombies need like a shotgun blast to the head.
But the question of why they would want to make zombies has an in game answer “they didn’t want to”. It’s sort of the same question as why Bruce Banner wanted to make himself the Hulk. It’s a byproduct of the research they were doing, not the intended result.
The scientists working for Umbrella wanted to make monsters they could control and sell as Biological Organic Weapons. The closest they got was a virus that would successfully turn less than 1% of those infected into something close to what they wanted (Tyrant), but even then the creation would need to be nurtured to mature. The other 99.999% (or close there of) turned into zombies.
Going on in the series the virus has since been used as a weapon unto itself, dropped into small population(s) and used to cripple an army. And further research was able to weaponize the hunters with a sort of simple friendly/unfriendly identification.
And when it comes down to it there have been a number of zombie stories that have looked into and asked how these creatures came into being. Night of the Living Dead pondered, and Day of The Dead tried to educate them, the strong standing catalyst movie series of the zombie.
“The basic difference is that if the cause is supernatural and/or non-sapient, questions about why it would do something can be answered with a shrug and “It's zombies, I don't gotta explain shit””
Yeah, but isn’t that just a terrible cop-out? Sort of like the difference between superheroes who acquire powers through some experiment and those who are just born with them. You can, as a storyteller, use that time you’re not wasting in an origin story into developing the characters more or unravel a more detailed plot, and that’s good and all, but…
… the entire point of Shamus’ complaint is that the thing fails when put under scrutiny, and a supernatural origin would end up sounding lazier if you don’t establish some rules. Look at the Harry Potter books. No matter what some ignorant naysayers claim, they’re not “It's zombies, I don't gotta explain shit”, there are set rules about what can and can’t be done with magic, which get more complex with each new book, and while some stuff doesn’t get explained, it gets implied, and generally the story doesn’t fall apart when put under scrutiny.
I’ve never played this game–and firmly intend never to do so–but I completely understand where Shamus is coming from when he suggests that it is “beyond our usual criticism.” Resident Evil is so awkward and dated that I cannot help but view it as some sort of historical curiosity rather than a game. I want to give the developers a pat on the head, say “attaboy!”, and tell them how interesting their work is.
If I were to actually play the game, though, I think I’d change my tune pretty fast. I don’t mind bizarre puzzles, but I hate nonsensical architecture. I tried playing Daggerfall when Bethesda released it for free. I got used to the graphics. I got used to the PC speaker noises. But the dungeons! Good gravy, the dungeons!
Their random dungeon generator was a bit lacking, yes. Like rooms without any way to get to them.
Time for room statements inspired by Ruts.
1: We need to get to the zombie room.
2: Wait – this isn’t the zombie room?
1: We need to get to the broom room.
2: Wait – this isn’t the broom room?
1: We need to watch The Room in the The Room room.
2: Wait – this isn’t the The Room room?
We need to get to the unreasonable death machine room.
Wait – this isn’t the unreasonable death machine room?
Josh is playing on Hiking right? Cause 2 green herbs PLUS 3 red herbs outside where you pick up the Chemical… That’s overkill. I haven’t played RE on Hiking (Easy mode) in forever. I just don’t remember it being so generous. What’s there on Walking difficulty, probably 5 First Aid sprays. Haha. On Mountain Climbing there is just the two green herbs I believe.
For reference…
Difficulty:
Mountain Climbing – Normal
Hiking – Easy
Walking – Very Easy (New to the HD version)
Hard – Unlocks after clearing the game once and you can play Once Again mode
Campster = Drunk Vadar.
Heh. Weird effect though. I wonder what happened on Google Hangouts or whatever to cause that.
Regarding Eternal Darkness, I love love loved that game.
Yes it was pretty easy and the fire particle effects were terrible, but I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience.
I vote ED for a spoiler warning season/mini season :p
Although I imagine Chris might have to play as I think he’d be most likely to have something he could play it on.
It’s not unreasonable for the elevator to be without power while the lights are on. They’d be on separate circuits, and possibly even on different phases depending on locality, since they both have widely different needs when it comes to voltages and current flow. Here in Australia, we legally have to run power-points and lights on different circuits, so it’s not outlandish to assume that an elevator would need it’s on circuit.
The key that you got from the dog certainly looked good.
It was a nice dog-key.