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Post by Rtoo on May 30, 2018 8:21:47 GMT 10
Introduction. It seems that some of You like the giant walls of text I used to post here from time to time. Seeing that now I rarely, if at all, engage in any discussions here, I'll try to use this thread to entertain those fine folk. For me it will be a good exercise to practice my english and writing skills and for You, hopefully, an interesting read. So if You don't like heavily opinionated, long posts feel free to ignore this thread, for the rest of You, I hope you'll find here something to enjoy. That said, let's begin...
2016 was a good year in gaming for me. I was kinda sad there was no 2016 goty thread that year. I even intended to create this thread myself, but stopped a quarter way in when writing my post (it would be huge, of course, so go figure). Quite sad, I think, because I had a story to tell, but I can only blame myself for not going through with it to the end. Anyway now I have the will and resolve to share this story. Better late than never, I suppose.
So 2016 was so special to me for the sole reason that it was the year that had a theme to it when it comes to games I played. That theme, unsurprisingly for this forum, was horror- I played lots of horror games in 2016, most of them for the first time ever. These games were, in no particular order: Alien Isolation, Amnesia 1, Outlast 1, The Evil Within, all 4 Silent Hill games (the ones that matter, anyway), Alone in the Dark (the very first one), RE5 Gold (for the first time), and, if my memory serves me well (it doesn't- that was in 2015), the first 3 RE games+ Code Veronica (finally got to finish RE3 without cheating). There were 2 games more that I played that year for the first time, which will be the main focus of this post (actually mostly one, the second has a more supplemental role in what I'm about to write). Those games were RE0 and RE: Remake (or their Remasters, though in case of REmake that word should be in qoutation marks) on PC.
My logic was this: Since, acording to everyone, the REmake was the superior game, I decided to play 0 first, so I could save the best for last. This wasn't a good train of thought. While, indeed, the REmake is the better game of the two, presentation wise, it's obvious which game got more attention when it came to the whole remastering part. Having played those two games back to back, it was saddenning that so much more work went into updating the lesser game. I attribute this to the fact that RE0 remaster team had the original games director on board. Or maybe they didn't have all the assets from REmake, I don't know. What I do know that after 0 the poorly updated backgrounds in the REmake left a bad impression on me for the rest of my time with the game. But that's not the games fault that it's developer halfassed the upgrade.
And here we arrive at my main point: how was the game? The REmake seems to occupy a very special place in every RE fans heart- it's called the best survival horror of all time, the best remake of all time and what not. It has been vindicated to this status of a perfect game that everyone loves and no one dares to speak ill of it. So, yeah, everyone loves it... except me, I suppose. I didn't hate it, mind you, I had fun playing it, sure, but it didn't blow me away like You think it should. And I don't know how to explain that, to be honest. Maybe it was because I was so late to the party, that there was nothing for me to be excited about. Maybe it was due to the fact that I didn't play any RE games in the PS2 era until I played RE4 in the very end of the consoles lifecycle (the PS3 was already out). Or maybe it was the shitty remastering job that Capcom pulled of with this game- the game that everyone was waiting so long to free itself from Nintendo exclusivity, and when it finally did, they didn't give it the attention it needed. Actually it's none of those things. The reason that I didn't fell in love with this game is simple- I like the original better.
Yes, the 1996 Resident Evil. Just thinking about the awful dialogue and voice acting brings a smile to my face. The live action intro, where characters are intoduced doing those hilarious poses, intercut with explosions is the best thing ever- why would you want to change that? I remember when I was 11 and played it for the first time, it gave me nightmares. The zombies, dogs crashing through the window, enemies eating half of a clip before going down, I was scared shitless. Or maybe because it was in german, who knows. I had no idea what to do, understood nothing (again, german localisation) and the only help I had was a walkthrough from some british or american magazine, where there were screenshots of every possible camera angle and a few words accopmanying them for guidance. It was awesome. My english however, was not. Better than my nonexistent german, but I had trouble understanding everything written in the walkthrough none the less. I did beat the game eventually, even though I had no idea how to play the game, not in the slightest. I remember wasting all my shotgun shells and grenade launcher ammo early on killing everything in my way. I didn't even get the magnum. All I had in the end was a handgun with lots of ammo for which I used to take the Tyrant out, and basically finish the game. I sucked at the game and didn't understand a word from it but I finished it, somehow. That counts for something, right?
You may say that it is thanks to nostalgia and my fond childhood memories that I hold the '96 RE in such a high regard, but as stated in the beginning the last time I played RE1 was about a year before I got my hands on the REmake so my acquaintance with the game was refreshened by that time. And I still found that game more impressive.
But how about my thoughts on my time with the REmake, though? Well, funnily enough, I feel that the gameplay advancements are more catered to the new audience, unfamiliar with the previous games. A veteran RE player would probably avoid most encounters with the enemies, so his exposure to crimson heads would be limited to those scripted ones and maybe the one or two times where he would unkowingly leave a couple of corpses which would then turn and, in effect, cause him to back away from combat even more. Similarily the defense items, although in some cases they actually help avoiding combat, by allowing to get yourself bit by some pesky zombie that you couldn't maneuver around and not take any damage. The Lisa Trevor arc is fine and all but I don't think it has that much of an impact on the overall plot of the series (my game lore may be rusty but the only time I remember it to be mentioned outside of the REmake was in History of Resident Evil files hidden in the extras of RE5), so the game wouldn't lose much if it wasn't there. But it's cool that it is- at least they added something new and not focused only on redoing the visuals which are fine artistically- I'm no graphic whore, but a game should be on the same level as it's contemporaries when it released, which I'm sure it was (on GameCube). The music is fine, I'm definately no critic in this regard- it didn't annoy me so there's nothing to complain about. I will complain about the writing though- it's obvious that they took queues from the original when writing the dialogue. But while in RE1 the awfulnes of the lines was funny and somewhat adorable here it's just bad (but still funny since they tried to hit the same dumb beats as in the original- the scene with Chris mocking Wesker about Tyrant comes to mind as an example). But it's Resident Evil so no one in his right mind is expecting Legacy of Kain level of writing.
And that would be all for now- my (not so) brief opinion about the RE Remake. Hope You enjoyed reading it, I had quite a bit of fun writing this- had to think pretty hard to keep this somewhat coherent, considering I'm someone who normaly doesn't write that much, especially in a foreign language. Cheers.
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sed.akoson@gmail.com
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Post by seda on May 31, 2018 0:37:07 GMT 10
that's me ,im the guy One of those who are involved and loved to read the giant walls of personal opinions speaking of my experiences and my memorable time of being in love with this franchise i was about 17 when the re2 got released and that was the time of switching to love and getting involve with re for me but after re3 personally i loved to go to the next level and it couldn't be another pre rendered locations with static cameras so i really admire Mikami for being brave enough to do a surgery on this franchise so obviously i can't love the remakes as they came to sale again without any chance to play them with a chance of cloudy view! (third person i mean ) so yep, those are nothing to me but a replay (which i've never played and probably i'll never play) (just personal opinion) in my opinion mikami took the right step for going to forward to the next lovely level maybe some of people say that those were remakes so they have to be exactly same as the originals and i'm pretty sure that most of members would love to dislike my post (if they had the option! ) but i respect those who are disagree with me, it's their opinion and this is mine i'm just saying that remakes should have something to say as their own existence of a new game released in a new era albeit, of course they have to have the old materials and foundation of their origins too like father like son is very good and ok but doesn't mean that son can not be better , smarter , more trained and educated who has taken lessons of his father's mistakes but unfortunately the biggest mistake happened, making a limited position for yourself while the greatest wish of your father was the liberation of this cage
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Post by Rtoo on May 31, 2018 18:22:59 GMT 10
Well for me RE1 holds up so well that it doesn't warrant a remake. Code Veronica, though, could use this treatment. If Darkside Chronicles is any indication can you have characters like Steve look cool and likable when you put some effort into the writing. Some gamelpay changes wouldn't hurt either.
Anyway I'll get to the more controversial stuff one day. Now I have to recharge my batteries and start collecting thoughts for the next monster post.
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Post by Rtoo on Jun 24, 2018 22:34:10 GMT 10
Episode 2. I don't have much of a history with the Silent Hill games. I played 1 and 2 in the past and remember really enjoying them. I even have this great memory of trying to figure out the zodiac sings puzzle in SH1 for a couple of days until finally something clicked in my brain and I got it at last . I was so proud of myself then. This and the vampire stronghold puzzle in Soul Reaver 2 were the only puzzles of not point and click variety that gave me so much trouble to solve. Other than that I played the beginning of Silent Hill 3, but set the puzzles on hard and couldn't progress past the bookstore so I stopped playing it and didn't return. I suppose this makes my previous statement about my history with puzzles void, but since SH3 with puzzles set on hard requires lots of outside knowledge I'll let it slide this time. Anyway that was it for me when it comes to Silent Hill games. Until 2016 that is where I played, in order, Silent Hill 2, 4, 3 and 1. Each of these games has something special about them, but one thing's for sure- Team Silent had technical geniuses in their ranks. The games were among the best looking of their respective generations, and while by todays standards aren't anothing to write about the sheer artistry and technical prowess still shine through these old graphics. Contrary to how I played them I'll discuss the games in order they were released. I love the Playstation. Even though I never owned it and had a couple video game systems this is the console I identify as my childhood gaming device. It was the beginning of the 3d era, so to make a good 3D game the developers had to struggle not only with this added dimension but also the limitations of the console itself. This mentality led to creation of Resident Evil, but most importantly for this post, Silent Hill. And, boy, did Team Silent did the most with what they had. And the best thing is that the workarounds used to bypass these limitations enhance the game. Brilliant! So the trick here, something that you probably know, is that they use fog or darkness to limit your view distance so you don’t see things popping in and out of existance. I also eliminates loading when moving around the current location. This allows for detailed (for the time) 3D character models and enviroments. And they look awesome- I wrote this once and I'll be certainly writing this again but the visuals in this game surpass almost anything seen on the PS1 before and after it. I’d even say that for the time this is borderline photorealistic (if you can call it that). At least when it’s not the rusty nightmare of the otherworld. It’s almost unbelievable that the PS1 hardware can run it. Sure the protagonist runs like no living human being that I’ve seen and the visibility is poor, but in it’s defence you never need to see more than it shows you. Unless the camera shifted and obscured the thing that you wanted to see that is. Having everything in 3D has an additional benefit- the camera is no longer static. For most of the part it behaves as it should, sometimes even switching angles to focus on something important. However on some ocasions, especially when entering a new room, it likes showing our character rather than whats in front of him which can lead to cheap hits from the enemies. Fortunatelly there is the button for manual camera control, so that remedies this problem somewhat . Anyway I’ve been praising the graphics all this time, but Silent Hill wouldn’t be Silent Hill without it’s audio direction. The voice acting is pretty on par with the japanese games at that time- it’s pretty bad, but not distractingly so, but everything else is spot on- creepy, atmospheric and fits whatever is on the screen at the moment. And the main theme… the main theme… this theme to me is as iconic and significant as something like the Star Wars theme- it’s that good. The static and the distorted music fit the grainy visuals and ever changing reality of the city perfeclty. The game is worth buying for this theme alone. It being good is just the cherry on top. Unless you’re buying the PAL version that is- PAL versions of most PS1 games suck. Silent Hill 2 may be the best game that uses fixed camera angles in existence. Normally this interferes in games where there is a lot of combat, especlally ranged, but here everything fits like a glove- you have the radio notifying you of enemies in vicinity, the enemies themselves are mostly slow and unresponsive. I would even go as far and say that they're pretty much defensless, their attacks being weak attempts to reppel the player. Thanks to this you can skip combat most of the time throughout the game. The best thing about this is that whether you choose to fight monsters or not it all fits with the theme of the game. James is not your average video game protagonist- he's full of emotions, some of them conflicting, and carries a lot of emotional baggage with him. With this in mind you can say that when fighing monsters he's just lashing out at them and venting his aggression. Avoidng combat, on the other hand, is more inline with basic human nature of not looking for trouble unless endangered. Story and character wise there is no wrong way to play this game. Great stuff. Rather than being scary in the literal sense of the word, it puts you in a state of tension and uneasyness, due to how bleak, depressing and unsettling it can be. Everything from the visuals, music and sound, story and even voice acting serves this. While not the top of their class there's something wierd about how the actors read their lines and it feels right at home here. All in all this is an amazing game that rightfully deserves its reputation. The pc port could’ve been better, however. Silent Hill 3 is where the series started to lose it’s traction a bit. But first some positives- this is the best looking game of the PS2 trilogy. Looking from afar this could be mistaken for an early PS3 game. How Team Silent were able to make one of the most gorgeous games of that generation on the weakest hardware is a mystery to me, but, damn, is this game a looker. It’s realtime cutscenes even have a pretty great facial animations for the time. The voice acting is the same wierdnes as in SH2, but the actors seem to be engaged enough to sell it. Anyway the game starts great- with a music video. It sets the stage for somewhat different, yet still familiar setup. More energetic feel of the opening may even serve as foreshadowing of sorts. While it fits with the protagonists youthful and spunky nature it also indicates the change in focus towards more action. The bigger arsenal of weapons pretty much confirms that. And here is where the game falters for me- by increasing players offensive capabilities the enemy threat is diminished. And with it the horror. Having so many tools for dispatching enemies at my disposal made it hard for me to feel endangered and engaged when fighting them. It almost became a routine. Sure ammo conservation is still a factor (especially if you want to beat the final boss without using tons of healing items), and the enviroments are creepy and unnerving, but the encounters were less tense for me- I always knew I could power my way through monsters if I wanted to. And thats what spoiled the experience for me- the sense of security from the knowledge that I am well equiped for every challenge ahead. That doesn’t make the game bad, mind you. It just doesn’t live up to the potential of what it could have been if they didn’t go that route. But the pc port is decent, at least. And here we are at last with Silent Hill 4- a game I enjoyed more than 3, even though if I were to be objective SH3 is an overall better game. Fortunately I wasn’t there when the game released so the fan outrage regarding this being supposedly some other game repurposed to be Silent Hill had no impact on me. Too bad the joke was on them when it came out that this was supposed to be Silent Hill all along. I guess that when you try to alter an established formula for whatever reason the fanbases reaction is to dissmiss the game for the sole reason that it’s different from the previous ones. Funny how years later so little has changed. I wonder how these poor saps feel about that after the release all those western developed Silent Hill games. Anyway back to Silent Hill 4. What’s most apparent at first glance (other than gameplay changes that is) is that the game looks worse than Silent Hill 3. It’s pretty bizarre. Maybe it’s because theres less fog in this game so the view distance is further away. But the locations aren’t that much larger or more detailed and complex so it can’t be that. My guess (supported by some presentation quirks) is that the budget for this game was a lot smaller than the previous one. Another example? The endings are low quality prerendered movies using ingame models . It doesn’t make a great first impression. This isn’t to say that the game looks bad, though. You can still feel that the game was created by a group of very talented people. Hell, this game has one of the cutest girls ever created for a video game, putting to shame characters made generations later (looking at you Revelations 2 Claire) but the of polish and attention to detail seen in SH3 is apparent. Actually the lack of polish can be felt throughout the whole game- it’s a bit clunky. Especially the combat- it’s now the main focus, even more so than in Silent Hill 3, now almost exclusively melee (there are a couple of guns, but the ammo for them is quite rare and their effectiveness questionable). The changes in the UI, controls and gameplay reflect that- inventory doesn’t have a separate screen and doesn’t pause the game when you browse it. You can charge melee attacks for additional damage and in some cases i-frames (which kinda breaks the game in one on one situations). I had a tough time warming up to the game, but when „Room of angel” started playing at the end of the first leveI was hooked in. It then hit me- this is as much an art piece as much as it is a game. The way how songs are attached to major events is so well executed that it elevates the game past it’s lower than expected production values and odd and sometimes frustrating design choises. Yes, the game pulls a Devil May Cry 4 and makes you go through the same levels in reverse order. However instead of giving you a new character to play as like in DMC4, you get a character to look after. Yes, the second half of the game is an escort mission. Fortunatelly there is no failstate here- how you care for that character determines how events play out later on. All the game requires is a little more patience as you wait for the escortee to catch up to Henry (the protagonist), so while not perfect it’s not as annoying as it could be. And the titular Room is integrated quite well- it gives you hints about the locations you’ll visit thoughout the game, play’s into some of the puzzles found in levels in sometimes clever and creative ways and is a host of many wierd and psychodelic events as the game goes on. It feels like an integral part of the game rather than some gimmick or an afterthought. All of this is why I like this game more than SH3 despite all of it’s oddities and frustrating moments. The PC port is what it is, sadly. Seems some visual effects got lost in transition to PC similar to what happened to SH2. This concludes my brief history with Silent Hill games. I don’t feel the need to play the later games- while I’m not against western developers handling japanee franchises I don’t find anything that interests me in those games. They also seem to reference past games for no particular reason (like using piramidhead) which is lazy, uncreative and serves no purpose in the story. That’s just dumb. I suppose the only game I’d like to play is PT, but I got my PS4 long after the game was removed from the store so I’ve lost my chance. Oh, well…
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Post by Rtoo on Sept 14, 2018 6:57:31 GMT 10
Episode 3. Amnesia the Dark Descent and Outlast seem to be viewed as the progenitors of the new era of horror games- titles that every horror game featuring a first person perspective is being comapared to, the other one being PT. But now it's dead, so... Anyway, as with most games, I wasn't there to check them out on release, but thanks to Frictional Games' generousity and Outlasts rather effective marketing (that being screenshots creepy naked dudes with their dicks hanging- what the hell was I thinking...) and a steam sale I finally got to play them. And, boy, were they different experiences, all right- the short version is that one is great and one is shit. And here's why.
Let’s start with the not-shit one, which is Amnesia. What makes it superior to Outlast is that it offers more than running and hiding and it’s gameplay loop is more organic despite a clear pattern to it. I like how, despite it’s linearity, you’re not constantly pushing forward. Each of the games levels is a small hub with locations connected to it that present a set of somewhat unique tasks and challenges that you need to overcome in order to advance. Many times the order of completing them isn’t fixed so you don’t get penalised for entering the wrong location. The levels are constructed in such a way that you need to visit every location connected to the hub at least once, so choosing a destination at random always yealds, if not an item required to move forward (which mostly it does), than certainly supplies that can be saved for later. So it’s pretty cool that you don’t get penalised for doing things your way. Those supplies mentioned earlier aren’t that essential for progression either- other than health items the lack of every other resouce item intoduces new mechanics to the game, some beneficial even. Without the illumination coming from your personal light source not only are you harder to detect, but also, after some time spent in the darkness, develop a short ranged nightvision, so if you run out of lantern oil you’re not left in the dark (ha ha), without any means to progress. Staying in the dark depletes your sanity meter, which supposedly has a huge impact on gameplay, but throughout my playthrough I haven’t noticed anything other than screen distortions. Sanity does recharge when you’re in light, there are even consumables that do this if needed, but I don’t think I was focusing on keeping this resource in check. Maybe I’m better at this game than I though, who knows. The takeaway here is that, whether you manage your available resources reasonably or not, finishing the game is never impossible. All in all this game gets a solid recommendation from me- it looks, sounds fine- the monsters while having simple but effective desings and look creepy enough to send chill down the spines of those that are susceptible to these things in horror games and whatnot. It plays fine, there’s some variety to the gameplay, has multiple endings and the lenght is just right so it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. If only I had this much good to write about the other game… It’s going to be somewhat difficult to write about Outlast since almost everything I mentioned about Amnesia doesn’t apply here. So I’ll start with something positive- this game had me on the edge of my seat, maybe more so than any other game I played in years if not decades. I truly felt uneasy while playing. For about 20 minutes after which I landed in the generator room in the basement and my suspension of disbelief crashed and burned and never returned. Maybe it was because I’m not actually good at the game and got stuck trying to restore power for too long or maybe because after a few tries I put the game away for a couple of months or both of these things combined but after I came back to finish it I came to realize just how shallow, boring and repetitive this game really is. Basically, as soon as you get out of that generator room, you’ve seen everything this title has to offer, gameplay wise. It’s rinse and repeat after that- you walk for a bit, maybe have a short chase/stealth section but then you get to this one room with the exit right in front of you, but the door is locked and you have to search a nearby location for multiple levers or other key items that’ll open the exit while avoiding some asshole doing his patrol route. On the surface it’s not that different from Amnesia, but here the artificiality of the level design is so blatantly obvious that it never feels like this could be a real location and just takes you out of the experience. It’s that bad. It doesn’t help that, while the enemies have some truly repulsive and off-putting designs, throughout the game you encounter many neutral npc’s you can’t interact with which share many of the mangled features the actual antagonists have, so whatever fear they may have induced by their appearance is made void when you can walk to a similar looking npc and stare at him until it gets boring. The game goes out of it’s way to build tension and then defuses it by doing shit like that. It’s quite astonishing really. I think I had much more fun playing the Whistleblower dlc, but that’s probably because it was so much shorter than the main game that it didn’t piss me off that much. On the whole that was an awful experience. I suppose the lesson learned here is not to buy games just because they have dicks hanging in them… So what is the bottom line here? Well, I guess there’s no denying that many games which were released after those two were in some way inspired by them- some did their own take of the formula with added gameplay elements like, say Alien Isolation, while others just borrow the viewpoint and some atmosphere elements with gameplay being their own like RE7. Either way if the game is good who am I to complain? Unless it isn’t…
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