The Shinji Mikami / Hideki Kamiya / Hideaki Itsuno Review Megathread - by froghawk
froghawk on 5/9/2018 at 06:40
FULL SERIES REVIEWS INCOMING
RESIDENT EVIL (1996/2002)
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https://daviscollective.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/resident_evil_1_cover.pngInline Image:
https://daviscollective.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/resident_evil_2002_cover.jpgProducers: Hiroyuki Kobayashi (2002) / Tokuro Fujiwara & Masayuki Akahori (1996)
Director: Shinji Mikami
I started off my Resident Evil marathon with the 2002 HD remake of the original game. Both versions were directed by series creator Shinji Mikami. The player takes the role of a member of the Raccoon City Police Department Special Tactics and Rescue Service, or S.T.A.R.S. - you can play as either Chris Redfield (with supporting character Rebecca Chambers) or Jill Valentine (with supporting character Barry Burton), and things will play out a little differently depending which character you choose. S.T.A.R.S. are sent to investigate some strange murders, but zombie dogs show up and chase them into a giant creepy mansion, where the game takes place. Your goal is to survive long enough to uncover the truth and escape the mansion.
I played the game on hard difficulty, which is really the only way to experience this - it's downright unfair in the best possible way. The fixed camera angles make it so you can't see a lot of what's in your character's field of view, meaning it's incredibly easy to run straight into a zombie and immediately get captured. The control schemes don't help with this - the control scheme is changed in the remake from the original tank controls to a directional control scheme, which makes it somewhat easier to evade enemies, but also makes it very easy to run in the wrong direction every time the camera angle changes, so I'm not sure how much I can really call it an improvement. Both control schemes are incredibly clunky, but that has the effect of ratcheting up the tension even further.
Zombies do quite a lot of damage when they capture you, and they're very hard to kill, as they have a tendency to get back up after you think you've killed them. Ammunition and medical supplies are very scarce, so you'll spend more time running past zombies and hoping they don't catch you than actually fighting them. The mansion is incredibly claustrophobic, but also quite massive, and you can only save when you find a typewriter, of which there are only 3 in the whole mansion - and all of them are quite difficult to get to. You need ink ribbons to save at a typewriter, but these items are also quite scarce.
To make matters EVEN WORSE, you have very limited inventory space (6 slots for Chris, 8 for Jill) and you can't drop items, and so you'll frequently need to deposit items in item boxes, of which there are only 2 in the entire mansion (next to two of the typewriters). The item boxes are magically linked, so any item you put in one box will appear in all the others - don't think too hard about it, as it seems this was a concession to make this unforgiving game a little easier for the players rather than a planned part of the design.. The game is basically structured like a classic adventure game - explore the mansion, pick up items, and use them to solve puzzles - so you'll be doing quite a bit of backtracking and repeatedly running past zombies you failed to kill while on the verge of dying, desperately hoping they don't grab you and deliver the finishing blow before you reach a typewriter. It's an incredibly tense and nerve-wracking experience, and it gets the adrenaline pumping in a way I've never experienced from any other game.
Later in the game, you explore the grounds around the mansion and eventually discover a secret lab underneath the mansion, where the evil Umbrella corporation has developed a virus-turned-bioweapon that caused the outbreak. While the later stages are still quite atmospheric, my main complaint with them is that they don't ratchet up the difficulty as much as I would have liked - the game actually gets much easier as it goes on and you figure out better ways to survive, reducing the adrenaline rush. Perhaps this is fixed in the ‘survival mode' which is unlocked at the end of the game, where item boxes are not linked and auto aim doesn't work. The other issue I have with the game's late stages is that the enemy design outside of the zombies starts getting a bit too goofy - we get giant tarantulas, giant sharks, a giant snake, and weird ‘Hunters' which look like a dinosaur crossed with a chimpanzee, none of which help the atmosphere. However, some bizarre giant mutant fly things show up at the end and show that they did have some creative monster design ideas, after all. With that said, the visual aesthetic of the remake is far better than that of the original game, making it darker and more atmospheric. The music is also quite excellent, and sets the mood perfectly. The cinematics and story bits are goofy b-movie cheese, but they happen rarely enough to provide a fun respite from the oppressive atmosphere.
The early Silent Hill games are superior to this in a lot of ways, but their psychological approach makes them less focused on the actual survival aspect. This remake is, in my opinion, the DEFINITIVE survival horror title, and I highly recommend it to masochists everywhere. I actually felt scared playing this on hard difficulty at night thanks to the combination of atmosphere and mechanics. The level design is just brilliant, and the later games never managed to top the feeling of slowly exploring this enormous, claustrophobic mansion. You're trapped in a madman's creation, complete with traps and secret passageways.
I am playing the series on PC, and the PC port of this title wasn't the best - I experienced slowdowns when attempting to run it at 1440p, despite the fact that the only 3D rendered parts are the character models. I managed to fix this issue with a patch, but I was able to run much flashier fully 3D RE titles from a decade later without a hitch right out of the box, so this port could have used better optimization (or at least a bugfix).
RATING: 9/10 mutant flies
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froghawk on 5/9/2018 at 06:41
RESIDENT EVIL 2 (1998)
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https://daviscollective.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ntsc_resident_evil_2_cover.pngProducer: Shinji Mikami
Director: Hideki Kamiya
Writer: Noboru Sugimura
Both fortunately and unfortunately for Shinji Mikami, Resident Evil (or Biohazard, as it was known in Japan) was a huge success. Capcom demanded a sequel and moved Mikami to a producer role, despite his reservations. Mikami didn't want RE to turn into a series, as he felt that the horror would only effective in small doses. Unfortunately, he was right. I've heard many proclaim this sequel to be the best game in the series, and I'm going to assume this is mainly due to nostalgia goggles.
Apparently this sequel reached 80% completion when Mikami decided that it was just plain boring and scrapped it, restarting the development process. I'm not sure if this caused the studio to be crunched for time, but the game's repetitive structure certainly makes it feel that way. Once again, there are two playable characters - Raccoon Police Department rookie Leon S. Kennedy and Chris Redfield's younger sister Claire - only instead of picking one to play through the entire game with, there are two scenarios. You can play either scenario with either character, but you will always switch characters mid-game to see what the other character has been up in the meantime. Events will vary depending which character you start off with. It's a cool idea in theory, but since this game is meant to be played twice, this means you have to play through the main areas four times with subtle variations to see everything there is to see.
While some events are exclusive to each character, many puzzles and bosses are repeated between them. How do the puzzles magically unsolve themselves for the next person who comes around? We'll never know. There are a couple of areas that are unique to each scenario, but there's so much lazy recycling between the two scenarios that what should be a different take on the same levels becomes a repeat, as they didn't go far enough in make the scenarios unique. The one major element that sets the two scenarios apart is that a nearly indestructible boss character stalks you through the second scenario - a really cool idea that sets the stage for the third game, but it's a bit underutilized here.
Aside from the repetition, the biggest problem is that this is basically Resident Evil Lite in every way. The structure of the game is very, very similar to the original - most of it takes place in a large, mansion-like structure (in this case, the Raccoon Police Department), then after going through the sewers beneath it, we end up in another secret Umbrella lab. But it's nowhere near as engrossing and labyrinthine as the original because it's all so much smaller - while the original took me nearly 10 hours to complete, I made it through the first scenario here in about 3.5hrs (and I think I could easily do it in 2 if I were to replay it). The police station is nice and atmospheric at first, but that atmosphere evaporates pretty quickly as you're forced to replay it. It's also much easier, partially because hard difficulty wasn't available from the start, making this feel like an absolute breeze after the first one. I didn't experience any anxiety until the very last section. I didn't try hard difficulty once I unlocked it, but I imagine it would still be too easy just by merit of the game being smaller and having more frequent save points.
There are still a few areas where this game improves on the original. The non-zombie monster designs are much better, especially for the bosses - the giant animals of the first game are largely replaced by gory body horror (though the giant spiders show up again for a minute, but they're cute, so why not?). The story is a bit more involved, once again with just the right amount of cheese, and the more frequent cutscenes are well executed for the time. There are more characters, who replace the original's constant feeling of isolation with a decent attempt at human drama. You get to play as one of the secondary characters, including a defenseless little girl, for one section of each scenario. The voice acting is also quite good for a Resident Evil game (it's generally abysmal, and still pretty bad here lol), and there are some great set pieces, like zombie hands grabbing at you through boarded windows.
The visuals are also pretty nice - while they're low resolution on this old PC port, the pre-rendered backgrounds look quite detailed - far better than any full 3D games from the time. The music is pretty solid here, but it's not quite as good or consistently atmospheric as that of its predecessor. I suppose it doesn't help that I'm comparing the original version of this with an improved remake of the first game, but since most of my issues with it stem from the overall structure, I can't see this mattering a whole lot. But nonetheless, this game is currently being remade as well, so I will re-evaluate it once the remake is released.
Granted, this review should be taken with a grain of salt - trying to play a PC game from nearly 20 years ago that never received a patch is not a good idea, but I tried it here. If I had been smart, I would have emulated it, but instead I jumped through massive hoops trying to get this damn thing to work, and the problems didn't end once I did. I encountered a game breaking crash at the end of the first scenario that I figured out a convoluted fix for, then another at the end of the second scenario that made me run to youtube to watch the last 10 minutes - so I technically didn't manage to play through the whole thing even once!
RATING: 6.75/10 lickers - A pale copy of the first game with a novel structural concept that needed to be taken further to truly work, but it has its moments. I'm excited to see what they do with the remake.
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froghawk on 5/9/2018 at 06:42
RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS (1999)
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https://daviscollective.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/resident_evil_3_cover.jpgProducer: Shinji Mikami
Director: Kazuhiro Aoyama
Writer: Yasuhisa Kawamura
After the success of the original game, Capcom started development on multiple Resident Evil projects. With Mikami producing, they had Hideki Kamiya (the director of the 2nd game) begin work on Resident Evil 3. But the Playstation 2 was announced, and Capcom realized that if they were going to get a 3rd Playstation game out before the PS2 was released, they'd have to rush it - so Kamiya's game was cancelled. This is where things get rather confusing - the scenario Kamiya was working on ended up later being used for RE: Revelations, and instead he started directing Resident Evil 4 - but that game turned into Devil May Cry, and Mikami directed RE4 instead. In the meantime, RE: Code Veronica, the true next generation sequel to RE2 with full 3D graphics, was being developed for the Dreamcast. An RE2 spinoff (also produced by Mikami) got promoted to the next numbered game in the series because Sony owned the rights to the name Resident Evil 3, so they couldn't use it for Code Veronica. That spinoff is what I am reviewing now. Confused yet?
This final numbered PS1 game closely follows the template established by the first two, using the same engine with the same mechanics, but the developers did their best to introduce new elements with their limited time. The game takes place in the streets of Raccoon City, which are swarming with zombies, instead of sticking the player in a claustrophobic environment with just a few of them. The titular Nemesis is the next iteration of the nearly indestructible boss that chased you through the latter half of RE2, and he chases you through this entire game. He looks a whole lot cooler than his predecessor. Nemesis has been designed by Umbrella to cover up evidence by killing off every member of S.T.A.R.S. who saw what happened in the mansion, so you play as Jill Valentine from the original game. This time, your goal is to survive and escape the city without being killed by Nemesis, who periodically shows up and says 'STARS' in a wonderfully goofy voice.
Instead of adding a second character choice for replayability (as they did in the first two games), the developers present you with a number of binary choices to be made on the fly which alter the course of the game. For example, when the Nemesis shows up, you can choose to run away or fight him, or to push him off a bridge or jump off yourself. They also allow you to craft your own ammo, which doesn't change ammo scarcity (as you still have to find gunpowder items), but does allow you to pick which types of ammo you want to have. They added explosive environmental objects that you can shoot, and also introduce a dodge move (which is useful but hard to execute with any sort of consistency, since it's contextual and the keys for it are the same as other movements).
The first half of the game takes place 24hrs before RE2, while the 2nd half takes place immediately after RE2. I thought this would matter, so that's the order I played the games in, but as it turns out, the two stories are basically unrelated. Aside from the quite conclusive ending which was added last minute to justify this being a numbered title, this rather thin plot has no impact on the overall plot of the series.
Thankfully, the PC port was much better this time around. Not only were the pre-rendered backgrounds much higher resolution (and quite pretty and atmospheric), but the game ran without a hitch and I didn't encounter any bugs, making this a much more pleasant experience than RE2.
I always thought the cover of this game looked AWESOME as a kid, so I was excited to play it, but it's not a fan favorite. I was always puzzled by this, as the concept sounded truly awesome. Now I know why - it's a real mixed bag. It's quite short - I beat it in a mere 5 hours, which would have been fine if it had all been high quality. The city streets are the best part, but I can't help but feel that they were held back by technical limitations - they could only have 9 zombies at once in any given area, which isn't quite enough to make this difficult or scary. Hard mode was available from the start this time, but it still wasn't anywhere near as challenging as the first game. While the Nemesis should be terrifying, I found him a bit too easy to run away from - the horror was gone by this point in the series, and they were clearly starting to move towards a more action-oriented approach.
The city is organized in a way that makes it play pretty much the same way as the mansion or RPD, but it feels smaller than the mansion, probably because it's nowhere near as densely packed. Taking this approach requires a bit more of a sprawl, so it's shame they didn't have time to make this part bigger.
Because of those time constraints, it's padded with recycled indoor areas. The first large indoor area is the Raccoon Police Department... again! As if playing through it 2-4x in the previous game wasn't enough? Most of it is inaccessible this time, but it still feels entirely pointless aside from forcing you to face Nemesis in an enclosed area. It also doesn't make any story sense with RE2... why is the police station deserted and boarded up one day, then totally accessible and with a couple survivors the following day? The next big indoor area is a Clock Tower, which feels like a mini-mansion - another pointless pale shadow of the original. There are even some recycled puzzles (‘Find the missing gear... again! But you have to assemble the gear this time, so it's different right?').
The indoor areas in the second half of the game fare much better. The hospital is quite nice (you play through that segment as an Umbrella hired mercenary named Carlos, who has a truly terrible voice actor), as is the secret Umbrella lab disguised as a factory. But wait.. didn't the previous game also end with a secret lab hidden in an abandoned factory? Yes, but every Resident Evil game features a secret lab near the end, so get used to it.
Ultimately, I like this game more than Resident Evil 2. It's got more original ideas, it's more ambitious, it's fleshed out slightly more, and it's more consistently fun. But like RE2, it was held back by its extremely tight development schedule, leading to a lot of recycling. Even the music was largely recycled from RE2. There are a couple new monsters - a giant mutated flea, some little worms, a frog hunter, more dangerous Hunter that can take your head off in one swipe - but they're all variations on older monsters. The best monster design is the final form of Nemesis, which retains the body horror aesthetic from the previous game.
There is also a ‘Mercenaries' arcade mode, where you run from one side of the city to the other while trying to kill as many zombies as possible in a limited amount of time. Arcade modes aren't really my thing, so I didn't spend more than 5 minutes on this, but it seemed decently fun.
RATING: 7.25/10 brain suckers - This isn't half bad for a rushed formulaic sequel, but the formula is running thin.
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icemann on 5/9/2018 at 12:05
Quote Posted by froghawk
Apparently this sequel reached 80% completion when Mikami decided that it was just plain boring and scrapped it, restarting the development process.
Your aware of Resident Evil 1.5 I presume?
Malf on 5/9/2018 at 13:58
Excellent stuff froghawk, looking forward to more :)
I skipped 2 & 3 as I'd sold my PS1 at that point, but I played a bit of Veronica on a friend's Dreamcast, and after that I think I either played Zero or REmake. Not sure which. Which one had the Witch's hut?
But I rinsed the original, with it being the last game I bought on my PS1 before I sold it. I even unlocked the rocket launcher with infinite ammo :D
And I loved RE4 of course. Bought it on Gamecube, then Wii (Wiimote was awesome for aiming), and even bought the initial borked PC release, later buying the proper HD one.
I did buy RE5 on the 360, but found it to be pretty "Meh" and never even got around to completing it.
Since then, I've not touched another entry in the series, as Dead Rising became my Capcom zombie game of choice (even though my interest in that series petered out after the second entry).
froghawk on 5/9/2018 at 14:43
Quote Posted by icemann
Your aware of Resident Evil 1.5 I presume?
Yep! I should probably give the released version a try... it just sounds like a pain to get working.
Quote Posted by Malf
I skipped 2 & 3 as I'd sold my PS1 at that point, but I played a bit of Veronica on a friend's Dreamcast, and after that I think I either played Zero or REmake. Not sure which. Which one had the Witch's hut?
I assume you're talking about the Lisa Trevor house, in which case it's REmake.
I recommend returning to the series for 7 - it's a huuuuuuge improvement over 5&6. Much more like the original, but in first person.
Anyway, I'll be reviewing some spinoffs and related games as well. I might not get to a lot of these until after I'm done reviewing the main series, but here's the first nonetheless:
DINO CRISIS (1999)
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https://daviscollective.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/dino_crisis.jpgProducer/Director: Shinji Mikami
In between producing multiple Resident Evil sequels, Shinji Mikami found time to direct the first title in a new IP called Dino Crisis, which was basically Jurassic Park (one character even states ‘This is just like that movie!') with Resident Evil game mechanics. Velociraptors and Pteranodons replace zombies and mutated animals. You play as Regina, a member of SORT (Secret Operation Raid Team - nothing like STARS at all!), who have been sent to Ibis Island to find a scientist, Dr. Kirk. Everyone thought Dr. Kirk was dead, but it turns out he'd been doing secret weapons research all this time and accidentally opened a portal to the past, bringing dinosaurs into the present.
This game was the first full 3D RE style game, predating Code: Veronica by a year, but featuring many ideas never seen in early Resident Evil. The game takes place entirely inside a research facility (basically another mansion/lab), and the downside of this being the first 3D game in this style is that every room looks pretty much identical, all lacking the detail and character found in the early RE games. Code: Veronica's environmental variety was much better, but its gameplay didn't innovate anywhere near as much as this.
In all the early RE games, once you managed to escape a room, enemies couldn't follow you (with the exception of the Nemesis). In Dino Crisis, dinosaurs can follow you between rooms, and they're much faster moving than the RE zombies, leading Mikami to dub this game ‘panic horror' instead of survival horror. They can even knock the weapon right out of your hand. There are also early quicktime event type things, which a dinosaur will attack you and you have to button mash to get free while ‘DANGER' flashes on the screen.
Typewriters and ink ribbons have been replaced by special save rooms that ask if you want to save as you leave them. You're given extra lives with an option to continue in the room where you died, but you can only do that 30x before you run out of continues (I only ended up using this 6x, and just because it was there - I didn't really need it at all). The health system is pretty much the same as RE - you can mix health items to combine effects, only poisoning has been replaced by bleeding, which is stopped using hemostats. Magic item boxes have been replaced by color-coded emergency boxes that need to be unlocked using plugs. Each box has items for you to use, which you can trade with items you want to store, and you'll be able to access them again from any box of the same color, making you choose which color box you'll use (different colors provide different items, but also take varying numbers of plugs to unlock). There are also laser grids which you can turn on and off, which are used to both block your progress and to give you another tool to escape enemies. The key hunts have gotten more complex, often requiring you to find two discs then solve a simple cypher to gain entry to new areas. You'll even have to take fingerprints off corpses to forge ID cards.
As in Nemesis, you are given binary choices that affect which of the 3 endings you get. You are asked to pick between the strategies of your teammates - Gail is a soldier who wants to fight through every obstacle, while Rick is a tech guy who offers alternate solutions, usually involving puzzle solving. I tend to avoid combat in games if at all possible, so I sided with Rick every time - and while I appreciate what they were trying to do, I ultimately found this way of playing the game to be rather dull. This style of gameplay is dependent on tension, but there were very few enemies to fight or avoid taking Rick's approach, making the game feel dull instead of tense.
Part of the problem is it's not only the visuals that lack variety - the puzzles also get repetitive. There are several variations on a couple types of puzzles (code cyphers and such) which start becoming tedious very quickly. I can't really imagine things are all that much more exciting taking Gail's approach, as there are only 5 types of dinosaurs (velociraptor, pteranodon, compsognathus, and Therizinosaurus, plus a recurring T-Rex boss, which presents no real challenge) and 3 weapons to fight them with (the RE standards - pistol, shotgun, and grenade launcher). Granted, each weapon has multiple types of ammo (including tranq darts for a shotgun - what?), and you can upgrade all 3 weapons if you can find the parts. The music is quite nice and moody and does some pretty cool things for a midi score, but also rather repetitive. This was the shortest game I've played so far (clear time was 4.5hrs), but it didn't manage to stay fun even for that brief amount of time.
It sounds like they rectified a lot of these issues in Dino Crisis 2, which returned to pre-rendered backgrounds for more variety and made a fast-paced game that focused on action instead of an incredibly slow game focused on puzzles. The atmospheric approach simply didn't work here, as the game fails to be scary like RE - transplanting that same gameplay into a new setting lost the things that made the gameplay work to begin with, despite many new mechanics.
The PC port seems to be using the same tech as Resident Evil 2, but thankfully it doesn't suffer from anywhere near as many issues. It has an extra mode called Operation Wipeout, which is similar to Mercenaries - run through the facility and try to kill all the dinosaurs before time runs out. Yawn. As with RE2, it also has an extra mode called ‘Arrange', which features different enemy and item placement. I didn't try this in either game.
As I side note, I think it's hilarious how attached fans get to these characters. Apparently there was outcry over Regina not appearing in Dino Crisis 3, but she has even less personality than any of the Resident Evil protagonists, which is really saying something. What is there to get attached to?
Every title directed by Shinji Mikami has far more fresh ideas than the others, so I commend this game for that aspect - but so many other parts of it feel undercooked that this title ultimately ends up rather underwhelming despite the new gameplay mechanics.
RATING: 5/10 dull spinoffs
froghawk on 13/9/2018 at 19:18
There were 4 titles in the Gun Survivor series, but this is the only one I'll be reviewing. RE Survivor 2 - Code: Veronica (2001) is unsurprisingly a light gun adaptation of Code: Veronica. Dino Stalker (2002) is a PS2 light gun sequel to Dino Crisis 2. The final entry in the series, RE: Dead Aim (2003), is a PS2 game with another original RE plot. There were also two rail shooters for the Wii. The Umbrella Chronicles (2007) retells the events of RE0, REmake, and RE3, while The Darkside Chronicles (2009) retells the events of RE2 and Code: Veronica.
RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR (2000)
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e3/RE_Survivor_front.jpgProducer: Tatsuya Minami
Director: Hiroyuki Kai
The first entry in the Gun Survivor series was a light gun game that used the GunCon 45, and thus was the first Resident Evil title in first person and in full 3D. It was one of the first off-rail light gun games, featuring free navigation of the environment. Unfortunately, it didn't make it to North America with light gun intact - the Columbine shooting happened shortly before the game came out and many blamed video games, leading light gun compatibility to be removed from the NA version.
What remained was a game that was clearly meant to be played with an entirely different control scheme and was ruined through the translation. The controls differ from a standard 90s FPS - as in the other Resident Evil games, you have to hold down a button to aim, which prevents you from moving. The movement keys move the reticule in this mode, which is quite awkward and makes aiming rather inaccurate. Nonetheless, mechanics like this alongside the presence of key hunts, door animation loading screens, the survival aspect (health pickups are very rare) and the overall atmosphere make RE: Survivor very recognizably a Resident Evil game. It also differs from the previous RE titles in many core ways - most strikingly, there's very little backtracking or spending a lot of time in a given area here, though there are a few bits which feel like the older titles in that regard. Most of the game is spent moving forwards.
The enemies here are the same as those of Resident Evil 2, but with a couple new additions. There are 8 weapons in the game, though they can't all be obtained in a single playthrough thanks to the game's branching path structure. 4 of the weapons are handguns with infinite ammo, so ammo shortages aren't quite as much of an issue as in the other series titles, but ammo for the shotgun, grenade gun and magnum is extremely scarce in just the way you'd expect. Since pistols are rather ineffective against the tougher enemies, this introduces a challenge, though it's sometimes possible to simply run away from the more difficult enemies. I almost entirely stuck to the pistols, which turned out to be a good idea, as there's a huge difficulty spike for the final boss. I used up every bit of ammo I had saved up and still needed to resort to using a pistol to finish it off. I also had to avoid getting hit for basically the entire final stage of the game, as there were no health items in the entire area and I entered it with low health. The balance could have used a bit of tweaking there.
In a surprising move for a light gun game, it also has a real plot. It takes place shortly after the end of Resident Evil 3, chronicling a biohazard outbreak in Umbrella's township. It feels quite forced when they announce that Raccoon City wasn't the ONLY city to experience an outbreak, especially since these events are never referenced in any other game, but I guess the fact that the town is on an isolated island is meant to explain that away. In any case, the player character is a guy who entirely lost his memory in a helicopter crash. As he slowly learns about himself, he comes to the conclusion that he was a very bad guy named Vincent - the Umbrella executive responsible for the outbreak. All of this is illustrated with utterly abysmal English voice acting and inconsistently translated text files.
It's a very brief title that can be completed in 1.5-2hrs if you make it to the end (my clear time was 2:08), but the kicker is that it needs to be completed in a single sitting with a maximum of 4 deaths. It doesn't allow you to save unless you choose not to continue after dying or get a game over, but even then, you can only save the weapons and files you've obtained and have to start the game over next time. It may have been possible to complete the game that way with a light gun, but it's virtually impossible using keyboard controls and an emulator and I imagine using a controller isn't far off from that. I'll admit to a bit of cheating by using the emulator's save and load function - I don't think I could have completed it otherwise. While the game is very nicely designed to be a different experience each time, with many door choices leading to vastly different branching paths (and a couple randomized options for monster encounters within each room), the final stages of the game are simply too hard to complete in one sitting with only 4 continues. I imagine almost no one actually beat the North American version of this game - and if they did, it was with a great deal of frustration. I certainly wouldn't have if I hadn't used the emulator's save states. I guess that's one way to make people invest lots of time in a very short game.
In short, this game gets a lot of hate for good reasons - the aforementioned control scheme issues, the dated full 3D graphics, the retconned plot and awful voice acting in the English version, and the fact that it's basically impossible to complete. Nonetheless, I actually enjoyed quite a bit of the game. It manages to have a great deal of atmosphere and nail the proper Resident Evil vibe through its visuals and soundtrack. The survival aspect feels quite strong in this game, and it evoked the proper tension. I think it's highly underrated for all these reasons and actually quite well designed for the light gun format. What happened to the game was out of the developers' hands, but it's an undeniably frustrating game in its lightgun-free form - perhaps too much so to be worth the trouble.
RATING: 4/10 Recurring Bosses - A game that could have been quite good had it been released with its proper control scheme, but instead came out borderline unplayable.
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froghawk on 13/9/2018 at 19:20
RESIDENT EVIL - CODE: VERONICA X (2000)
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https://daviscollective.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/recv_boxart.jpgProducer: Shinji Mikami
Director: Hiroki Kato
The first proper fully 3D, next-gen RE game was released on the Dreamcast in 2000. Development of this game was largely outsourced because of the sheer number of RE projects happening at Capcom, but was still overseen by Shinji Mikami. I emulated the Gamecube version of this game, which is extended with some extra cinematics at the end - hence the ‘X'. The audio was a little funny at times, but otherwise it ran fine. Aside from the full 3D graphics and camera angles that move a little bit with you every so often, this game is mechanically identical to the early RE games (minus the stuff that was added in Nemesis). The tone, however, couldn't be more different - it just feels wrong. It's very pastel - it looks and feels more like an adventure game than a horror title. Which is fine, as RE has always been an adventure series wearing horror clothes, so why not bring out the adventure elements more when the horror is no longer effective? But the strange part is that what's on screen is still horror - there are gory scenes, and it plays identically to the earlier games - but the whole art style looks so soft and friendly. It's a really jarring mix. Even the game's cover looks less badass. The music is largely awful, as well, and reinforces the adventure game feel, especially in the first half - though it gets somewhat better towards the end and finally establishes the proper mood. The music also drowns out the speech in a few of the cutscenes, which is quite irritating.
CODE: VERONICA is a direct sequel to Resident Evil 2, and takes place 3 months after that game ends. It stars Claire Redfield and her brother Chris (from the 2nd and first games, respectively), and begins with Claire getting trapped on a prison island in the South Pacific while searching for her brother. Claire executes all sorts of goofy action moves in the early cutscenes (inspired by John Woo lol), and the voice acting, writing and cinematics are just terrible - a real low for the series. The supporting characters and villains are downright embarrassing. The main villain in the first half of the game is Alfred, an aristocrat with a split personality who thinks he's also his sister Alexia and crossdresses to become her. He also does this really annoying high-pitched giggle. Alexia has has engineered a new virus, t-veronica, to improve upon the t and g viruses from the other games. This one is somehow extracted from a queen ant - don't ask me how it works. VERONICA is also the final code you have to enter in the game to start the last boss battle, so the title is quite literal in a rather goofy way.
Claire's love interest, Steve, is basically your generic emo teen who is obsessed with his submachine guns and can't deal with killing his zombie dad. He also tries to kiss Claire while she's sleeping, which is just creepy. Chris's main adversary is none other than his ex-boss Albert Wesker, the main antagonist from the original game - only now, he has superpowers (super speed and laser eyes lmao - this is never explained and also underused).
This is the longest of these first five games - the first playthrough took me 8hrs. The level design is a little different than usual, as it features multiple interconnected areas - a prison, a training facility, a naval airport, a palace, and a small mansion (this time with double the cheese) - and instead of progressing through them in a linear fashion, you can explore them somewhat freely. The game is structured similarly to RE2 in that you play as Claire on the first disc and Chris on the 2nd, and once again each character progresses through the same areas. I groaned at this initially, as you may recall that I wasn't much of a fan of RE2's structure, but it's MUCH better executed this time.
They do a lot more to differentiate the two halves here, as the base it takes place on has been bombed out when Chris returns - so the scenery is different, the route through it is different, and the puzzles are all different. Everything is exactly where Claire left it, so there are no continuity errors like there were in RE2, and you can't pick the order of characters, so it doesn't make you play through it twice. Chris only visits two of the five initial interconnected areas, and then the final area is MUCH larger when he gets there (with the parts Claire went through largely inaccessible). He even ends up in a recreation of parts of the mansion from the original (as if this series needed MORE recycling, or this game needed yet another mansion?), which just highlight's how bizarre the game's visual style is - seeing parts of the original remade in bright pastels makes my eyebrow raise. As a side note, Claire is given the exact same arsenal that she had in RE2 - cute touch.
I may have neglected to mention in previous reviews that a movie of a door opening plays every single time you open a door in all of these early games. They spice that up slightly in this game by having the animation move slower and adding a heartbeat sound every time you're about to encounter a boss - and cheesy as that is, it's actually pretty effective, as I usually haven't saved in a while by that point. They do fakeouts with it on occasion, too. There's also the addition of security cameras (placed by Albert Wesker) that summon hunters (the most dangerous non-boss monster in all of the games). Sometimes it even summons poison hunters, which are a real pain in the ass. This doesn't add much of a stealth element because those camera are quite hard to dodge, so I wish they'd taken that concept a bit further.
There are no difficulty levels to choose from on this one. The enemies are bullet sponges, and while they take a while to do any damage, health items are also EXTREMELY scarce, so it's a bit more challenging than the last two games, at least. This game isn't afraid of screwing you over in other ways - it's a bit mean spirited. Similarly to the hookshot lab bug in RE0, it's also possible to leave some items in a box and forget to to return for them, which will make it impossible to progress after you can no longer return to the box. This didn't happen to me, but I did run into some other issues. I had no idea that I had to take an item back to someone in the first room in the game to get the lockpick, as you otherwise have no reason to revisit that room. Because I missed this, I was cut off from getting several useful items for the rest of the game - even after switching characters, as Chris can only get the lighter if Claire first gets the lockpick. I wouldn't normally be irritated by this, but somehow the game gave me the feeling that I was being punished for not magically divining these things, because missing one action started a chain reaction of more and more things I couldn't access later on. If I played it again, I'd certainly do it differently - but frankly, I can't imagine ever doing that.
I also didn't know that Chris would have access to all of the items in Claire's box (even though that makes the nonsensical magic item boxes make even less sense), so I missed out on giving Chris some useful items (there was SO MUCH grenade launcher and bow gun ammo in the late stages of the game that I couldn't use, and instead was perpetually short on ammo for the weapons I did have). Claire takes over again later on for a moment, but doesn't get to do much fighting, so the ammo was still wasted. She does have an opportunity to give these weapons back to Chris, but that also isn't made clear - it looked like she was gearing up for a boss fight at that moment, so naturally I took all of her weapons with her. Instead, all she had to do was run away, so I could've given those weapons to Chris after all. But all of that did make the game harder, so that's good.
The monster design is ok - there's a big thing with a stretchy arm (somewhat reminiscent of the leech zombies from RE0, but even sillier looking), a salamander with a vagina for a face which can electrocute you, and more giant spiders (though they're not tarantulas this time, so they aren't as cute and fuzzy looking), but the visual style of the game affects the monsters as much as the environments, so nothing looks particularly scary.
On the whole, I just felt like this game was mediocre. The level design was nice at times, and the length was a plus, but the weak writing and audio/visual design combined with formula fatigue make this one of the weaker entries in the series to me. There's a mercenaries type mode which is unlocked when you beat it called ‘Battle Mode' which can actually be played in first person, but it's a pretty awkward and clunky first person that the game clearly wasn't designed for. As with the other arcade mode, you quickly run through environments from the game and try to kill as many zombies as possible in the shortest amount of time. You can unlock new characters to play with if you get high enough scores. Not really my thing, but it's cute.
6/10 Vagina-faced salamanders - A solid cheesy adventure game, but a terrible horror game.
Inline Image:
https://daviscollective.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/image_136.png
froghawk on 13/9/2018 at 19:22
DINO CRISIS 2 (2000)
Inline Image:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/49/Dino_Crisis_2.jpg/220px-Dino_Crisis_2.jpgExecutive Producer: Shinji Mikami
Producer: Hiroyuki Kobayashi
Director: Shu Takumi (the 'Main Planner' of Dino Crisis - also involved in RE2)
The second game in the Dino Crisis series underwent a massive change in direction. Mikami stepped back into an executive producer role, allowing the game to differentiate itself from Resident Evil and gain more of its own identity. The result is a far cry from the slow and ponderous gameplay of the original - Dino Crisis 2 is a fast action adventure game that only superficially resembles the original. Dino Crisis didn't run well enough to support this kind of fast gameplay, and so, in an unusual move for a sequel, the technology was scaled back. The fully 3D environments of the original game were replaced with the more attractive and varied pre-rendered backdrops of older Resident Evil, providing a more high performing and bug-free experience (at least in the PC version).
The contrast between 'Alien' and 'Aliens' nicely reflects the difference between these two games. Where Dino Crisis was a slow and deliberate horror title filled with a small number of intelligent enemies, Dino Crisis 2 is a quickly paced action title where the enemies suddenly become a mindless hoard of easily defeated individuals. There are even similar inconsistencies between the two titles - thewway that the the previously challenging hoards of compsagnathus from Dino Crisis won't even attack you in the sequel reminds me of how the xenomorphs' acid blood in 'Aliens' is much less dangerous than it was in the first film.
Regina returns as the protagonist here, but a second playable character is introduced - a meathead soldier named Dylan, who is probably meant to provide contrast with Regina's more deliberate approach but ends up playing pretty much exactly the same. The only substantive difference between the two is that there are certain doors that only one character has the tool to open, artificially blocking your progress until the characters are switched. The game takes place in a dinosaur-filled city and surrounding jungle that's been sent into the future. Regina and Dylan are stranded here and must find a way to return to the present, since the time drive on their ship was destroyed. The plot takes a few unexpected twists and ultimately doesn't make a lick of sense or have much of a point.
Part of the problem with the writing is that it often gives you little reason to progress in the game beyond exploration-based motivations like 'search for survivors' or opening a door because you've found a key. This worked fine for the Resident Evil series due to the puzzle-filled mansion design, but for an action game taking place in a much more open environment, the stakes need to be a bit higher to propel things forwards. It doesn't help that a couple transitional bits are spelled out with a line of text rather than shown, which further breaks the momentum and contributes to the game's rushed low-budget feel.
Almost none of the new mechanics from the previous title are present here - everythng from dinosaurs following you between rooms and knocking things out of your hands to freeing yourself with quicktime events to code cyphers to laser grids to emergency boxes to full 3D graphics has been stripped out. They've been replaced by a much more diverse array of dinosaurs and weaponry and a points system. The gameplay mostly consists of running (walking was removed) through a linear level segment and killing the constantly-spawning monsters as fast as you can (usually in 1-3 shots per dino) to get as high of a score as possible on each level segment. The highest scores come from taking no damage, performing counters and long combos (consecutive kills), and killing bigger dinosaurs. These points then act as money which can be used to buy new weapons, supplies, and upgrades from the computers, which feature shops and save points.
The computers are very frequent, so you'll rarely find yourself short on ammo or terrified of dying. The fear of death is further lessened by resuscitation packs, which replace the continue system from the previous game. You can only hold two at a time, giving you two retries per scenario, but they're available for purchase at every store. You can also upgrade the clip capacity of your weapons, and since there's no reloading, all of your ammo is in one giant clip. I didn't purchase a single clip upgrade or resuscitation pack during my entire playthrough and still found the game quite easy, partially because shops were frequent enough that ammo was plentiful. The very accurate autoaim takes away any remaining challenge.
All of this makes the game a far cry from the survival horror of Resident Evil, but it's the similarities with those titles that make Dino Crisis 2 feel like a strange relic. Although the game consists of linear level segments, these segments are all interconnected into a larger RE-style world which you'll backtrack through frequently - meaning you'll be killing dinos in the same level segment on repeat for more points, making the game feel very grindy. The inventory system doesn't feature any space management, but even the presence of an inventory screen feels out of place in such a fast-paced action game. Switching to the inventory to use a health item or look at a map still pauses the game, killing the momentum of the action. There are further RE holdovers which slow down the game, like stopping to read documents (which are longer than ever in this game, and filled with typos and misspellings) or stopping to examine the scenery (though all the important items are 3D, so I'm not sure why they even bothered to provide text explanations for parts of the backdrops). This gives the whole game the feel of an action game forced on top of a framework that was designed for slow survival horror. In 2000, it couldn't possibly feel like more of a relic - especially following more technically advanced titles like the first Dino Crisis and RE: Code Veronica.
My clear file clocked in at a mere 4hrs - even shorter than the already scant first game. That time felt like it went by a lot faster than the first game did, probably due to the attempts at varying the gameplay. There are primitive mounted gun sequences (which are awful enough to make similar sequences in later RE games look good), an underwater sequence, a tank sequence (though it feels like a cardboard toy), and a sequence in which the characters call down air strikes. While none of these are particularly good, they at least provided a break from the grind and keep each type of gameplay restricted to brief segments.
A mercenaries mode called 'Dino Colloseum' unlocks upon beating the game. It takes place in a Metal Gear VR type environment in which you battle dinosaurs on a timer. You can pick from various playable characters, including dinosaurs, a tank, and a couple characters from the first game, all of which are unlockable using points from the main game. There is only one lazily designed level with one scenario, so it's not likely to add much extra playtime.
Overall, my impression is that this was a very rushed cash-in sequel. The combination of the facts that it came out a mere year after the original despite a major change in direction, that said change in direction feels so undercooked, that it's so brief and light on content, and that the plot is so thin and nonsensical all make this game feel like it was forced into existence against its will. Is it more fun to play than the original, despite being far less innovative and unique? Yes. But that merely raises its status to mediocre, and the best thing I can say about it beyond that is that you'll likely have forgotten the entire affair the second after it ends.
Rating: 5/10 cash-in sequels
I won't be covering the 2003 Xbox title Dino Crisis 3, as there is no PC version available and the plot is unrelated to the earlier games.
icemann on 14/9/2018 at 07:32
Quote Posted by froghawk
In short, this game gets a lot of hate for good reasons - the aforementioned control scheme issues, the dated full 3D graphics, the retconned plot and awful voice acting in the English version, and the fact that it's basically impossible to complete. Nonetheless, I actually enjoyed quite a bit of the game. It manages to have a great deal of atmosphere and nail the proper Resident Evil vibe through its visuals and soundtrack. The survival aspect feels quite strong in this game, and it evoked the proper tension. I think it's highly underrated for all these reasons and actually quite well designed for the light gun format. What happened to the game was out of the developers' hands, but it's an undeniably frustrating game in its lightgun-free form - perhaps too much so to be worth the trouble.
I managed to beat this game on my actual PS1 back in the day. Took a few attempts in some of the bits, but was fine. I actually really liked this game. Has that campy zombie apocalypse vibe common to a lot of the older zombie movies (70s-80s), that is in the older Resident Evil games (1-3 + Code Veronica). Yes the voice acting is awful, but the gameplays fine once you've been playing for a bit. Best of all, unlike the other Gun Survivor games, your free to roam around to wherever you want. So it plays far more like the traditional RE games. All the other Gun Survivor games went for a more on rails style. So for me, I only enjoyed this one of the "Survivor" series. Tried the others and got bored quickly.