Once again it's been a while and this post won't include artwork but does have something that I need to say about this franchise and what I think about the reviews for their latest release RE6.
First of all I don't even remember in which console I played RE1, I know I played the original (before the director's cut) and yes it was scary. The forced camera angles that made you walk in the wrong direction (often times killing you in the process as you ran towards the enemy instead of away) or that kept a scar "hidden" from the player until it was too late. Those were great moments of tension back in the day, today those are frustrating mechanics that break the gameplay and the immersion. Yes I used the freaking word, immersion. Along with Niche, Epic and Entitled, it needs to be in a video game dictionary. Anyway not the point of the post, with the current technology video games have crossed the line between interactive entertainment and movies. Long gone are the days of Q-bert and Pac-Man for a base of how to make a video game, we demand more. You may argue that old games are still fun, I agree that some people still find them interesting, I don't. So what we get is the so called AAA titles getting a story that usually has Hollywood looking over to see if they can get a piece of the pie, voice actors that sometimes include Hollywood stars, and a musical score that more often than not, makes a stand alone appearance to get even more money out of a product. I'm OK with all that, lots of people getting paid for it and if the big publishers have the money they should pay for quality. That includes motion capture actors, nobody quite does it like Naughty Dog but they've set the standard and it seems more and more studios want to follow. Whether it's by "motu propio" or not, that's for another rant. Back to Resident Evil, it's obvious they had to adapt and change the technology so no more locked camera. We have our first taste (if I remember correctly) of this in RE Code Veronica when you unlock the first person play. And the full treatment on RE4 which by many it's the best Resident Evil game of all. With that said, Resident Evil 5 and the newly released Resident Evil 6 have been called a departure from the series' root, which is survival horror to a more action oriented game. Departure from what exactly? from old technology? Just start a list of things you couldn't do in the first Resident evil games, try to find logic as to why these character were unable to shoot while walking, see things in front of them, move straight and why can't they jump (still can't) We're not talking about civilians here, this isn't RE Outbreak, these are trained cops, special ops people. They can kick ass and do and finally the games are catching up to what these guys are supposed to be.
Resident Evil may have been the father of survival horror in video games, but ask yourself why is it scary on the first games and not anymore and you'll see it's not because of the new mechanics. But because the story has evolved. First game, you're a member of a special ops team, sent to this mansion expecting human enemies and the first thing you run into are zombie dogs. You're trapped inside a mansion, no idea what happened there, or how those things came to be or who was psycho enough to build a mansion that you need to move crap around to open doors. Everything was new for you and for the CHARACTERS. Yes that's the most important part of Resident Evil and why I'm sure it has such a lasting appeal. Even the crappy movies focused on making Alice the appealing character, that you care about what she does even if you think the movies are garbage. So Chris, Jill and company are going through this for the first time just as you are. In Resident Evil 2, you have a rookie cop and a college student looking for her brother. Again two characters going into unexpected territory and the game is creative enough to let you experience the whole story by allowing you to play as each of the character. You get introduced to new people on each story arc, these people will be more than just survivors, but we'll get to that later. On Resident Evil 3 you play as Jill Valentine. After the horrors in the mansion she knows what to expect and how to react, even after watching some of her friends die in the process. She knows by now this is kill or be killed and surviving requires a cool head. I think that if you're going to point a finger to which game removed the limitations from the original Resident Evil that would be RE3. Jill could finally dodge, and the game still had tension in the form of Nemesis. This tyrant type of character that followed you around with a damned Bazooka screaming STARS even when he wouldn't appear (the Jaws type of scare, love it) Then we visit Code Veronica, a really disturbing story but that explained something about these viruses. Some people can adapt to them. Once again the story is broken by characters as you play as RE 2's Claire and RE 1's Chris Redfield. I'm glad this Resident Evil doesn't have a number on it, this is a true side story. Perhaps I'm more attached to the events of Racoon City and everything after that is bleh for me. I mean I did play RE1-3 and Outbreak and enjoyed them, when I played through Code Veronica (original on Dreamcast) it just wasn't as fun. To be honest I can't remember a scary moment in RE:CV but fans seem to love that game. Steve is a crappy character but some fangirls liked the whole "relationship" with him and Claire in the game. So after that came Resident Evil 4 with Leon as the main character. Why would I play as Leon? Isn't he a secondary character? what about the STARS people? So Resident Evil had shifted the character's importance and now Leon is the big dog. I never played the game, also the zombies weren't zombies anymore. A new type of virus was created and these were smart Bio Weapons. You got an over the shoulder camera that was highly praised and a very hard to manege inventory system. LOTS of Quick time Events and button mashing things and people loved it. OK back in the day that was great but again I feel we're past that.
Resident Evil 5, the game fans love to hate. This is the first Resident Evil to actually have co-op, outside of Resident Evil Outbreak. You may say that Resident Evil should be a single player game but when you look back, even RE1 had co-op but the computer had to control the other character. The technology and limitations of that time couldn't allow for a co-op game. Later on we get a game inspired by the Resident Evil franchise called Obscured that allowed us to play a survival horror with friends. Used the same mechanics and was quite fun, also had multiple endings depending on who survived. Capcom also released Demento (known over here as Haunting Ground) which was scary, disturbing and incredibly sexy. Yea all those together. The game never used loading screens to increase the tension (or to preload an area that is a door away) Again that's a game that used Resident Evil style of "horror" mechanics but broke with certain restrictions. I also remember back in the days of the Sega Saturn I bought a Japanese game called Deep Fear. The fear in that one was that it was Japanese with English dialog scenes, so if I missed something I would be screwed and the game was quite expensive ^^; It also used Resident Evil style camera but the protagonist could do things that were impossible in RE. It was still kind of scary. There's also the Silent Hill games but I never played those so I can't comment on it, same with Alan Wake and others that have taken the survival horror to a new level. What do they have in common? The areas are relatively small. A mansion, a submarine/ocean base. You feel like you really have no way out of the predicament you're in. That sets the tension, then you have your quiet moments. These days it's all bout high production and people with incredibly sound equipment want to hear even the breathing (which if done right could help set the tension but would get annoying FTL) but as some people say, sometimes complete silence can be scary. And I'm not talking your classic silent + "big expected but not totally prepared for" big noise, no I'm talking about feeling alone in an enclosed space/area that you know has a variety of horrors looking for ways to kill you. Darkness can also help with the scares as does water, but you need to get to a happy medium here. Don't keep the player too long on either 'cause that would drain the fun out of it. I'm always pro options and I know there are people that like challenges like not using a health spray, beating the game in X amount of time with only a knife etc. Well I could got for an option that lets you play the game without any lighting except for the one coming out of your flashlight or fires around the area. But just an option and no way I would play in that option, needs a freakingly good reward for clearing such a thing.
OK so on to Resident Evil 6 and the reason why I talked so much about those other games. Resident Evil 6 is not the 6th game these characters have been in, the events from Resident Evil 1 happened in 1998 and we're talking about a 2013 storyline in Resident Evil 6. Some characters have grown up (very nicely too) others have become killing machines. Point is they weren't rookies to begin with and now they're very seasoned in the art of BOW (Bio Organic Weapon) ass kicking. Using these character will remove a big level of tension found in other games just 'cause these are professionals doing what they do best. So yea it takes a more action oriented approach in gameplay but that's 'cause the story demands it even more than the publisher does (publisher rant on hold for now) If I were to criticize anything is that it doesn't go full throttle into an action game. It still insists on using outdated mechanics that include pressing a button to jump down a crate or something stupid like that. The game takes what it did with Resident Evil 2 to a whole new level. You get to play 3 campaigns with an unlockable one after you finish them and playing through all of them is the only way to get the "whole" story of Resident Evil 6. The three main campaigns are long, and I mean long even if you don't die often. They weren't done as good as they should have, they opted for simple minded approaches rather than trying to innovate even more. What I mean by that is that once again co-op makes a return, being a popular aspect in RE5, but this takes the cake. Each campaign crosses over at certain points, let's say you and a friend are playing Leon's campaign while I'm playing Jake's campaign. When their story crosses over we could be put in 4 player co-op (of course we would need to be at that point in the story for it to work I imagine, but damn that's interesting and something worth considering for future games, not just RE.) That's something new and very welcomed but all campaigns are in essence the same, get from point A to point B and deal with the hordes in different ways. If you complain about RE6 because of that aspect then yes, you are correct that it makes the game tedious but in my opinion I prefer that over backtracking to solve stupid puzzles. If that was their compromise then I suggest they look at other options for future installments. There was a time when anything coming out of Japan was great, and I think that was mainly thanks to the focus they used to place on characters over anything else. Resident Evil story is silly, interesting of course but silly, the characters make the games and franchise what it is now. You have your Leon fans, your STARS fans (me) and your extra goodies that keep popping in these games. Chris' story is kind of emotional very action packed but they focused on what Chris is thinking and feeling, and that carries over. I didn't play the game 'cause I don't like how it plays, I would prefer if it went full on action with the same story and people in Japan like messy menus for some odd reason. But I saw full walkthroughs of the campaigns and damn it was as if I was playing the game. We (westerners) need to understand and accept our cultural differences, don't know how asian the concept of fate is but I know for Japan it is a big deal. Most of the stories if not all of them work around the fate of a character and that's why we get incredibly linear games and why they tend to flop with general audiences. I'm a big BioWare fan because of the simulation to have your choices impact the game/story (let's ignore the ME3 ending thing) I don't like being forced a path and I don't believe in fate the same way, I believe in free will too, both competing for dominance. Fate presents you with a choice, the decision is your free will. So in any case no asian game that I have played ever gives you free will, so with that in mind nor does RE6. You're once again stuck with old mechanics and even more QTEs than before. Is the gameplay outdated? yes, is it like 5? no, it's a big improvement over 5 but too small for what the series needs in my opinion.
So we talked about Chris' campaign being emotional, Jake's campaign is surprisingly "warm". We have this unknown character who we find out has a very important role (and heritage) and again with the Fate thing he gets paired with Resident Evil 2 survivor Sherry. Sherry was like 12 years old in RE2 which should make her around 23-24 now If I remember the events of RE2 correctly.
Seriously, WOW!
Jake is about the same age, and funny enough less mature too. I'm sick of these" enhanced" characters, they started going over the top with Ada Wong now every character seems to have a mutated Bruce Lee gene or something. You look at Claire in Code Veronica's intro and later Leon in the movies Degeneration and Damnation, then Chris, Jill and Wesker in RE5. So everyone is a super fighter now (feels like an RP gone bad) but I can't be mad at Jake's superhuman abilities. His "heritage" aside which really shouldn't make any contribution to his abilities, he is a very well done character. Anyway precisely because of who their parents were is that we see Sherry paired with Jake (The fate thing I was talking about) Looking at fan reception I think everyone loved the characters.
And last we have Leon's story which the game makes into the main story. The others complement his', heh go figure the character I care less about. I find Leon boring but that's just me, I know a lot of people love the character for his ability to pull shit out of the air. Anyway his story was meant to be more like the classic Resident Evil games. More "scary" than the other two which at times I have to agree. They seem to have borrowed not only from their own titles but Leon's campaign early on feels like an episode of The Walking Dead. Helena's character seems interesting (haven't finished watching his campaign at the time of this post) which is another newcomer to RE. The thing with Leon is the pacing is similar to the others' when it shouldn't be. The others have down times, in Leon's case you're framed and you're looking for evidence as well as revenge. I might get to that later but I feel at the point I'm at in the story that it's past that and the 6 months some characters had of downtime meant 6 minutes for Leon. anyway let me stop that here.
Other aspects from previous titles they decided to bring were the boss fights. You get your Nemesis type of boss in Jake's campaign, your colossal over the top boss in Chris' campaign and Leon has the true boss battle. Another complaint I've read is about the graphics. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The game looks incredible and yes the cutscenes are prerendered but they used the same models and they look better than their full CG movie counterparts.
And the voice acting is great. Very good choices. The script may still suck at times but the voice actors did a fantastic job and will love to see them do more of these. My personal opinion based on a general overview, this is one of the best Resident Evil games to date. So get your heads out of your asses, realize that the characters here are badasses and that the survival horror aspect in this game lives in a smaller way. Survival games nowadays don't have that many sequels 'cause they know they can't fool the audience often with the same thing. The fact that Resident Evil has such a big library should speak for how well they've developed the connection of the player with the characters and brand.
