{"id":53790,"date":"2022-02-08T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-08T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53790"},"modified":"2022-03-06T07:17:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-06T12:17:40","slug":"resident-evil-5-1-zombie-police-open-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53790","title":{"rendered":"Resident Evil 5 #1: Zombie Police! Open Up!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week Chris and I began our Co-op trip through Resident Evil 5. It went about as well as you&#8217;d expect&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.twitch.tv\/?video=1284344850&amp;parent=www.shamusyoung.com&amp;autoplay=false\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" frameborder=\"0\"scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>And now our drinking game begins to take shape. Take a drink whenever&#8230;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Sheva enters the frame via a <a href=\"?p=28980\">Miranda shot<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Anytime Chris or Sheva say &#8220;partners&#8221; to each other.<\/li>\n<li>Every time Chris impotently points his gun at a dangerous suspect while they do as they please.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Actually, I&#8217;d like to amend #3, since it&#8217;s kind of ambiguous. As stated, this just results in a single drink in every cutscene with a bad guy. But the point of this rule is to draw attention to how powerless he is, and how all of his enemies seem to be aware that he&#8217;s never going to shoot them. So let&#8217;s change #3 to &#8220;drink every time Chris asks a question that is ignored or mocked by the suspect.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Just a reminder that these drinking games are designed to kill the viewer.<\/p>\n<p>Now let&#8217;s talk about this gameplay&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>We found the shotgun and Chris asked me if I wanted it. I thought this was a choice given to us by the game designer, allowing us to choose what weapons are the most fun or useful in our playstyle. But no, the game designer was essentially saying:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Do you want to play the game as I intended, or do you want to play it wrong?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Apparently the designer thinks that Chris should get the manly shotgun and little Sheva should get the SMG. I didn&#8217;t get that memo, and so I took the shotgun for myself.<\/p>\n<p>At several points in the level, there are areas that only Sheva can reach. Chris lifts her up, and she then reaches some high ground where she can collect some key items or cover Chris while he does something. And these Sheva-only areas always had SMG and rifle ammo. Meanwhile, Chris would take the low road and find shotgun ammo.<\/p>\n<p>Now, during these streams I made a lot of jokes about stealing all the bullets and items for myself. (I make the same kind of jokes with Paul when we play <em>Deep Rock Galactic<\/em>. And I made the same jokes 10 years ago in Left 4 Dead. I don&#8217;t know. I guess I just love the joke of &#8220;Ha ha I&#8217;m a selfish and unhelpful teammate except of course I&#8217;m not really but maybe I am secretly you&#8217;ll never know.&#8221;)\u00a0But in reality, I actually do want my teammate to have the stuff they need so they can continue to carry <strong>me<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>So this turns into an enormous pain in the ass. I can&#8217;t just pitch the bullets off the roof for Chris to grab. And I can&#8217;t carry his bullets because everyone&#8217;s inventory is ALWAYS FULL. So if I wanted to give him SMG bullets that only I can reach, then I need to:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Climb down from where I am.<\/li>\n<li>Trade my stack of shotgun shells for his stack of SMG bullets.<\/li>\n<li>Get him to boost me back up to the high ground.<\/li>\n<li>Pick up the bullets, which will now stack with the bullets I&#8217;m carrying.<\/li>\n<li>Climb back down to Chris.<\/li>\n<li>Swap bullets with him again to get my shotgun shells back.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>So then I got up to the roof and I found <strong>three<\/strong> boxes of SMG bullets <strong>and<\/strong> a box of rifle bullets. Meanwhile, he found some shotgun shells on the ground. I realized it was going to take multiple trips up and down to sort out this inventory nonsense. And then once we were done, I learned that the shotgun bullets he&#8217;d found had vanished because they sat on the ground too long and eventually disappeared like Pac-Man fruit.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I realize that seeing me react poorly to this game is a big part of why people watch. But this is one point where I wasn&#8217;t performatively outraged, I was actually, <strong>genuinely<\/strong> annoyed and pissed off. This inventory sorting is a huge killjoy. But hey, &#8220;immersion&#8221;, right? The game is all about making hard choices and balancing your need for healing and your need for ammo? That&#8217;s the &#8220;survival&#8221; part of the game, right? It&#8217;s like a simulation!<\/p>\n<p><em>But no! Fuck you and your immersion. Bullets evaporate because I say so!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The shotgun was the one thing I had going for me. Knocking dudes down with that big boom was my one source of joy, and the game worked so hard to make everything a tedious pain in the ass to punish me for having that little bit of fun. And then after our big bullet-switch-o-rama I discovered that the game had poofed shotgun shells out of existence, and I was just <strong>done<\/strong> with this obnoxious game designer and his ridiculous griefing engine. I was now out of the ammo I&#8217;d sacrificed so much time to acquire. I was being punished for wanting a weapon that it wasn&#8217;t even letting me use!<\/p>\n<p>Everyone loved the briefcase in <em>Resident Evil 4<\/em>, so for the sequel they replaced it with something that was more cumbersome, less fun, and made even less sense. This 3&#215;3 inventory grid is the interface equivalent of a rock in your shoe: It&#8217;s constantly annoying, even when it&#8217;s not actively hurting you.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway. I don&#8217;t know what we&#8217;re going to do. Maybe I&#8217;ll relent and let Chris have the goddamn shotgun like the designer clearly intends, or maybe I&#8217;ll fight the game designer all the way, trying to have my fun where I can get it. Tune to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.twitch.tv\/ramblepak64\">the Twitch channel<\/a> in <a href=\"https:\/\/everytimezone.com\/s\/04031e6b\">tonight at 7pm Eastern<\/a> time to see how it goes. I hope to see you there!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week Chris and I began our Co-op trip through Resident Evil 5. It went about as well as you&#8217;d expect&#8230; And now our drinking game begins to take shape. Take a drink whenever&#8230; Sheva enters the frame via a Miranda shot. Anytime Chris or Sheva say &#8220;partners&#8221; to each other. Every time Chris impotently [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-streaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53790"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53969,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53790\/revisions\/53969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}