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Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

Emperordaein posted:

My first impressions of the game have been, post godawful tutorial level, drunkenly staggering around while everything explodes as I punch anything that moves. Mercs didn't fare much better. Two observations. One: I need to get better. Two: This game is awful at explaining itself. Three: The camera is REALLY twitchy. Four: Gun aiming feels really off.

If you like to run up and melee, the rules for staggering enemies with the pistols are a bit different. I believe to definitely stagger, instead of shooting someone in the face once you want to shoot them 2-3 times in the same body part.

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Rookersh
Aug 19, 2010
Zero was not good.

I couldn't really care about Rebecca or Billy. Chris just stays hilarious throughout the series, Leon is a goof, Claire is probably the most levelheaded/serious of the series, and Jill at least has experience in fighting zombies, even if her arc gets tangled up in the later games. Even Ada has the mysterious angle. Rebecca and Billy just kind of exist.

It's even worse because the bad guy is even less interesting. Wesker had the betrayal thing going for him, Birkin was the archtypical mad scientist, Spencer was the conniving businessman. Marcus is just a pile of leeches that pops up every now and then and yells at you/Spencer. Great. And while the leech attack on the train at least looked kind of cool, the leeches themselves just aren't a fun enemy to fight.

And apparently nothing that happens here ever gets mentioned again anyway. I've seen at least 4-5 things with "ALBERT WESKER" on them, yet Rebecca hasn't figured out he's part of Umbrella. If she ever does, she apparently forgets it by the time Chris finds her, as she never mentioned it in REmake. And while Spencer didn't invent T, that doesn't actually matter because he wiped all traces of Marcus from company records, so in every game forward it'll claim he's the inventor. And Billy just walked away into the sunset? What the gently caress.

I'm guessing since 4/5/6/Rev are the only games that come after this that Marcus/Billy never get mentioned again?

Excels
Mar 7, 2012

Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!
If we're talking about the clusterfuck of Resident Evil's story, look no further than Wesker's biography.

:words:

Scalding Coffee
Jun 26, 2006

You're already dead

Kaboom Dragoon posted:

Remember that STARS is a unit that requires one of its members to be trained in the use and operation of mortars.


Don't police or SWAT use something like that to shoot canisters into buildings?

Rookersh
Aug 19, 2010

Scalding Coffee posted:

Don't police or SWAT use something like that to shoot canisters into buildings?

Traditionally you'd use a Riot Gun or a Grenade Launcher like the M32 for that.

Raziel 0128
Feb 18, 2011

Rookersh posted:

Zero was not good.

I couldn't really care about Rebecca or Billy. Chris just stays hilarious throughout the series, Leon is a goof, Claire is probably the most levelheaded/serious of the series, and Jill at least has experience in fighting zombies, even if her arc gets tangled up in the later games. Even Ada has the mysterious angle. Rebecca and Billy just kind of exist.

It's even worse because the bad guy is even less interesting. Wesker had the betrayal thing going for him, Birkin was the archtypical mad scientist, Spencer was the conniving businessman. Marcus is just a pile of leeches that pops up every now and then and yells at you/Spencer. Great. And while the leech attack on the train at least looked kind of cool, the leeches themselves just aren't a fun enemy to fight.

And apparently nothing that happens here ever gets mentioned again anyway. I've seen at least 4-5 things with "ALBERT WESKER" on them, yet Rebecca hasn't figured out he's part of Umbrella. If she ever does, she apparently forgets it by the time Chris finds her, as she never mentioned it in REmake. And while Spencer didn't invent T, that doesn't actually matter because he wiped all traces of Marcus from company records, so in every game forward it'll claim he's the inventor. And Billy just walked away into the sunset? What the gently caress.

I'm guessing since 4/5/6/Rev are the only games that come after this that Marcus/Billy never get mentioned again?

I just finished replaying RE0 the other and will concede it's pretty good game to actually play but the plot really really lets it down, making the entire thing feel like a wasted opportunity and less satisfying to finish.

The gameplay is solid, the partner mechanics are pretty fun and it's useful being able to move them with the other stick or control the manually and dump them in rooms whilst you skip leechmen. The graphics and settings are very good. However, there's zero point in any of it. Few cutscenes, no motivation to do anything in any of these areas let alone the insane geography. When your characters don't know who the main villain is or who set off the self destruct sequence or what the hell they're doing you've got a problem. When the villain swears revenge on the people who killed him (Wesker, Birkin and two random guys) then spends the entire game ignoring Wesker and Birkin who are in the same building and focusing on two random plebs you've got a problem.

The observatory and church are supposedly right next to the Training Facility which you never ever see when you look at the external shots and is on a cliff somehow in a forest. It's also right on top of the marshaling yard and disguised factory from RE2 above Birkin's lab, which is a short walk from the Spencer Mansion according to Enrico, however the Spencer is also visible from said training facility or a hill nearby. Then we've got the various labs and underground hydroelectric plant and the railway that takes about an hour to reach the Training Facility from an overturned truck which is within running distance of the Spencer Mansion and therefore also the Training Facility. Also the tramline that somehow takes you from the cathedral (aka next to the training facility) to birkin's lab (aka beneath the training facility) by driving in the opposite direction. Ok then. :psyduck::psyduck:

The game really could have benefited with more character interaction and idle banter when wandering around areas. Darkside Chronicles did a fine job of having character interaction and reactions to the insane poo poo happening and thus a reason to care. In RE0 They almost never communicate, during gameplay and puzzle mechanics mechanics they just telepathically know what each other needs to do. Occasionaly you might get little flashes of personality or even something remotely interesting like Billy's 5 second PTSD then it stops and the game ends making you feel like you've just accidentally skipped something important.

In a way it's odd how little sense RE0 makes story/character/geography wise considering it's been in production since the N64 days and the REmake was being made at the same time yet there's zero continuity between either of them despite being less than 24 hours apart.

Basically it's a decent game mechanically ruined by a pointless plot that actively hurts what little continuity the games have and story is usually the main point of a prequel and gives you a headache when you try and make sense of it. :psyduck:

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

Risky posted:

Or they could have just given her a realistic age of 30. Or would that turn off a whole demographic of guys who have never been laid?

I get some poo poo about this whenever I bring it up on SA, but one of the reasons why RE in general has such a weird feel is that it retains a lot of features of Japanese pop culture despite being a game that stars Americans and has never been set in Japan. One of those features is the same bizarre youth-worship trope that, as was mentioned, leads to everyone in the Final Fantasy games being hard-bitten ex-soldiers by 17 and ancient withered bastards who are barely clinging to life by 35. Jill is the go-to example of this in RE, but there's basically nobody in the first few games who's old enough to have the skills or background they're introduced with except Sherry and maybe Claire, and even Claire has a bizarre amount of firearms and demolitions training.

It's actually an interesting topic overall. There are a lot of things in the series that are weird or out of place to a Western audience, but which make sense if you get where the writers and designers were coming from. Rachael in Revelations, for example, looks like a yūrei, but to most Western players, she's a stupid woman with a stupid haircut.

Crowetron
Apr 29, 2009

Wasn't the episodic format of Revelations also supposed to be like a direct reference to a certain Japanese TV drama? I thought I remembered reading that.

blackguy32
Oct 1, 2005

Say, do you know how to do the walk?
Just beat the REmake after not playing it for a while and I forgot all of the effort that they put into the Lisa Trevor storyline. Then it pretty much is just dropped from the other games.

Alteisen
Jun 4, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

blackguy32 posted:

Just beat the REmake after not playing it for a while and I forgot all of the effort that they put into the Lisa Trevor storyline. Then it pretty much is just dropped from the other games.

Kinda like how RE4 dropped the entire umbrella thing for "Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president's daughter from foreigners?"

Yes I liked the stupid plot, I wanted to see some big epic battle, no magical handwaving away and the crap we have now. :colbert:

Rookersh
Aug 19, 2010

Wanderer posted:

I get some poo poo about this whenever I bring it up on SA, but one of the reasons why RE in general has such a weird feel is that it retains a lot of features of Japanese pop culture despite being a game that stars Americans and has never been set in Japan. One of those features is the same bizarre youth-worship trope that, as was mentioned, leads to everyone in the Final Fantasy games being hard-bitten ex-soldiers by 17 and ancient withered bastards who are barely clinging to life by 35. Jill is the go-to example of this in RE, but there's basically nobody in the first few games who's old enough to have the skills or background they're introduced with except Sherry and maybe Claire, and even Claire has a bizarre amount of firearms and demolitions training.

It's actually an interesting topic overall. There are a lot of things in the series that are weird or out of place to a Western audience, but which make sense if you get where the writers and designers were coming from. Rachael in Revelations, for example, looks like a yūrei, but to most Western players, she's a stupid woman with a stupid haircut.

Err, I agree in theory, but not really?

Chris is 25 during the Mansion Incident, and his only skillsets are basic marksmanship ( from growing up using guns ), and the ability to fly helicopters ( from the Air Force. ). Both of these skillsets fit his age. By the time of RE6 he's 40, and has been fighting zombies for almost 15 years straight, so of course he's an expert marksmen by that point. 18-22 is the average for military service, and Barry hired him into STARS when he was 24.

Claire grew up in a similar environment, and trained with Chris. Despite being the youngest main character ( 19 as of RE2 ), her skillset could fit her age depending on how often she visited firing ranges.

Leon is 21 and just a cop. He's in fact a rookie cop with no real skills at all at the start of RE2. That's a bit young for cops, but it's not unheard of, especially if the person had been training in their teens/outreach programs. I have no idea why he ended up becoming secret agent Leon, as he'd have been secret agent Leon at around 24-25 which IS unheard of, but I think plot took a backseat to silly in RE4.

Wesker and Barry are both almost 40 by RE1, and are 50+ by RE5.

Jill is the anomaly, largely because she was supposed to be Delta at 21. But outside of that, she's 24 during the events of RE1, and 39 by RE6.

21-25 is young, but they are all presented as rookies in their respective video games ( Jill freezing up in the intro, Chris getting lost multiple times, everything Leon does. ), which fits Chris/Leon at least. And by the time they are "battlehardened" old men, they are in their 30s and HAVE been fighting zombies for 10+ years.

Rookersh fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Mar 10, 2014

Gaz-L
Jan 28, 2009

Alteisen posted:

Kinda like how RE4 dropped the entire umbrella thing for "Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president's daughter from foreigners?"

Yes I liked the stupid plot, I wanted to see some big epic battle, no magical handwaving away and the crap we have now. :colbert:

Funny how the two best games in the series have the least to do with the main plot. Not that I dislike Wesker in his moonbase or wherever he was in RE4.

Crowetron
Apr 29, 2009

blackguy32 posted:

Just beat the REmake after not playing it for a while and I forgot all of the effort that they put into the Lisa Trevor storyline. Then it pretty much is just dropped from the other games.

Well, they retconned it so that the parasite in her was basically the prototype for the Nemesis project, so it kinda comes up again. I think it was mentioned in one of the Wesker Reports.

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

Rookersh posted:

Err, I agree in theory, but not really?

Chris is 25 during the Mansion Incident, and his only skillsets are basic marksmanship ( from growing up using guns ), and the ability to fly helicopters ( from the Air Force. ). Both of these skillsets fit his age. By the time of RE6 he's 40, and has been fighting zombies for almost 15 years straight, so of course he's an expert marksmen by that point. 18-22 is the average for military service, and Barry hired him into STARS when he was 24.

Chris can fly a fighter jet. He does so in CV and in RE6. In order to become a pilot, a candidate has to go through four years of higher education followed by a little over a year of flight training. Even if he went into the Air Force Academy at 17 or something, that's really not enough time for him to be drummed out by 23 and a not-cop by 25, especially given how hard the Air Force tries to hold onto trained pilots.

The rest's just nitpicking, but the point stands that in order for most of the original cast to have their skill sets, they've got to explicitly be child prodigies (Rebecca, Wesker, William Birkin) or there's something not quite right with their backgrounds (Chris, Jill). Jill in particular is a trained soldier, gunsmith, mechanic, bomb technician, and classical pianist by 23, and Claire knows how to set a detonator in a plastique charge and fire an anti-tank rocket.

Even Steve is kinda weird, as he's 17 and he can fly a cargo plane, fire a machine gun, and work a bunch of different kinds of construction equipment. He apparently had some very eventful summer jobs.

Crowetron posted:

Well, they retconned it so that the parasite in her was basically the prototype for the Nemesis project, so it kinda comes up again. I think it was mentioned in one of the Wesker Reports.

Yeah, Wesker's Report II, which was never officially translated. It actually joins a lot of random stuff together pretty well, just in time for things to go nuts again with RE4.

Kaboom Dragoon
May 7, 2010

The greatest of feasts

Rookersh posted:


Leon is 21 and just a cop. He's in fact a rookie cop with no real skills at all at the start of RE2. That's a bit young for cops, but it's not unheard of, especially if the person had been training in their teens/outreach programs. I have no idea why he ended up becoming secret agent Leon, as he'd have been secret agent Leon at around 24-25 which IS unheard of, but I think plot took a backseat to silly in RE4.


One of the post-credit screens in RE3 reveals that he was picked up immediately after RE2 by some nameless group (later revealed to be the US government). So presumably he spent the intervening years in some heavy duty training. To the point where he's hand-picked as a bad enough dude to rescue the president('s daughter).

The Dark Id
Aug 13, 2005

Why
you
know
I
LOVE
THIS SHIT !!!!
[citation needed]

Wanderer posted:

Yeah, Wesker's Report II, which was never officially translated. It actually joins a lot of random stuff together pretty well, just in time for things to go nuts again with RE4.

I had a Japanese lady friend sort of look over the original translation help me translate that like seven years ago. It's fairly kosher.

Also convoluted as gently caress on top of a story convoluted as gently caress. I can't wait to hear about the sidestory where Wesker was in East-Europe and banged some chick and somehow had a super-powered son. Perhaps Birkin gave him the super power virus back in his '20s during a bender of watching video cam feed and he'd been waiting for the opportunity to activate it by being impaled for the next decade and just had a wild vacation in Slovakia one summer and boom. Jake Muller.

The Dark Id fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Mar 10, 2014

Fereydun
May 9, 2008

The Dark Id posted:

I had a Japanese lady friend sort of look over the original translation help me translate that like seven years ago. It's fairly kosher.

Also convoluted as gently caress on top of a story convoluted as gently caress. I can't wait to hear about the sidestory where Wesker was in East-Europe and banged some chick and somehow had a super-powered son.

I definitely also wanna see that. Because the file about it is a riot:

"Jake's Family Situation posted:

Jake Muller was born into an extremely poor family. As his father was missing in Jake's early childhood, the family budget was supported by his sickly mother.

If treated, she could have completely recovered from the illness she suffered from, but the family was pressed to the point it was difficult just to live a daily life, never mind the cost of his mother's medical treatment. Jake's mother worked hard and raised Jake with unstinting love.

Although she was a gentle mother, she was harshly cautious when Jake complained in regard to his father. From the bottom of her heart, his mother still loved her worse half who left her. That was his influence, and in response, Jake also had a bitter impression of his lost father.

Jake grew up and made up his mind to become a hired soldier of the rebel troops and fight. It was all for his mother, he was trying to return the favor by earning the cost of her medical treatment. However, soon after Jake became a mercenary, his mother died of the illness.

Having been raised in an extremely poor household, he was unable to save his mother from the illness because there was no money. Due to his mother's death, only a strong, deep attachment to money remained in his heart, hamstrung by his later life as a mercenary.

There is a letter Jake's mother wrote on her sickbed.

---

"My beloved son, Jake. Please forgive your mother for dying so soon.
And please don't hate your father.
Your father surely still loves you from the bottom of his heart.
I believe in a day when you'll be able to meet him sometime, stay strong"

All I can imagine is Wesker rambling about becoming a god or something absurd while this random Easter European lady falls for him not knowing what the hell he's talking about at all.

Excels
Mar 7, 2012

Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!

Wanderer posted:

I get some poo poo about this whenever I bring it up on SA, but one of the reasons why RE in general has such a weird feel is that it retains a lot of features of Japanese pop culture despite being a game that stars Americans and has never been set in Japan. One of those features is the same bizarre youth-worship trope that, as was mentioned, leads to everyone in the Final Fantasy games being hard-bitten ex-soldiers by 17 and ancient withered bastards who are barely clinging to life by 35. Jill is the go-to example of this in RE, but there's basically nobody in the first few games who's old enough to have the skills or background they're introduced with except Sherry and maybe Claire, and even Claire has a bizarre amount of firearms and demolitions training.

It's actually an interesting topic overall. There are a lot of things in the series that are weird or out of place to a Western audience, but which make sense if you get where the writers and designers were coming from. Rachael in Revelations, for example, looks like a yūrei, but to most Western players, she's a stupid woman with a stupid haircut.

Regarding the "youth worship" trope, this is a pretty common theme in Japanese games and anime; They believe it's fine for youth to be adventurous and silly but when you become an adult you're supposed to put all that poo poo aside and become a salaryman. That's why you almost never see main characters over the age of 21.

Rookersh
Aug 19, 2010

Wanderer posted:

Chris can fly a fighter jet. He does so in CV and in RE6. In order to become a pilot, a candidate has to go through four years of higher education followed by a little over a year of flight training. Even if he went into the Air Force Academy at 17 or something, that's really not enough time for him to be drummed out by 23 and a not-cop by 25, especially given how hard the Air Force tries to hold onto trained pilots.

Ok yeah, that's a bit strange. I hadn't finished CV yet so I thought it was just helicopters.

Aces High
Mar 26, 2010

Nah! A little chocolate will do




Wanderer posted:

Chris can fly a fighter jet. He does so in CV and in RE6. In order to become a pilot, a candidate has to go through four years of higher education followed by a little over a year of flight training. Even if he went into the Air Force Academy at 17 or something, that's really not enough time for him to be drummed out by 23 and a not-cop by 25, especially given how hard the Air Force tries to hold onto trained pilots.

Wasn't this also kinda :psyduck: because he's flying a Harrier at the end of CV and there was some talk about how you have to have qualified on other jets before flying that one?

Whatever, Resident Evil I have always found to be "The Rule of Cool" in all its glory.

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition
Honestly, that Harrier is set up so Alfred can fly it, so I figured it was a glorified rollercoaster car.

Excels
Mar 7, 2012

Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!
http://gamingbolt.com/capcom-discusses-resident-evil-7-and-the-future-of-the-franchise

I'm convinced Capcom has no idea what makes their games popular or why. As evidenced by them saying poo poo like this;

quote:

“The secret lies in its elaborate settings and world. Horror is a common entertainment genre around the world, but Resident Evil adopted the setting of epidemic disaster that could be a reality rather than a wild fantasy in order to make the horror convincing,” Capcom said. “This sense of realism is smoothly incorporated into the story as well as feeding the fear as horror.”

They also say it's a GOOD thing that every RE game has a different dev team. As well as the claim that "realistic" characters (such as Chris "gently caress Boulders" Redfield) and plot are clearly why everyone loves the series.

Excels fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Mar 13, 2014

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Excels posted:

As well as the claim that "realistic" characters (such as Chris "gently caress Boulders" Redfield) and plot are clearly why everyone loves the series.

To be honest, yeah, the characters, setting and plot are probably part of why people like the series. Knockoffs (even those with mechanical improvements) have never seen as much success as the original game did and characters like Jill and Chris are actually fairly popular.

I assume when they say realism they're talking about the bioterrorism angle and not, like, actual realism.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

Excels posted:

http://gamingbolt.com/capcom-discusses-resident-evil-7-and-the-future-of-the-franchise

I'm convinced Capcom has no idea what makes their games popular or why. As evidenced by them saying poo poo like this;


They also say it's a GOOD thing that every RE game has a different dev team. As well as the claim that "realistic" characters (such as Chris "gently caress Boulders" Redfield) and plot are clearly why everyone loves the series.

It feels kind of like the Fast and the Furious franchise where the first three all have different characters and leads and its not until the 4th one which reboots the focus and the 5th and 6th ones which bring other characters back in as a full ensemble does it really take off.

They both have that same familiarity and naive earnestness that makes you appreciate coming back to the characters. They also both have a complete disregard for the laws of physics.

Excels
Mar 7, 2012

Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!
Real question here: when was the last time a Resident Evil game was genuinely scary? I thought RE2 was scary as hell because of the static camera angles, not being able to see what was coming, etc. But it's gotten so over the top now that suddenly you are fighting a normal human that can transform into a Meat Rex at will, shooting blindly at it from a helicopter.

People turning into grasshoppers when you shoot them isn't scary and if Capcom thinks they were going in the right direction with RE6 even slightly, then RE7 is dead before it even comes out.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

Excels posted:

Real question here: when was the last time a Resident Evil game was genuinely scary?

Me at the age of whatever in 1998 trying desperately to figure out why in the hell the knife sucks so bad and WHY IS THE CAMERA FACING THE OTHER WAY AND CHRIS DON'T RUN INTO HIM OH GOD NO I'M DEAD.

blackguy32
Oct 1, 2005

Say, do you know how to do the walk?
Resident Evil 6 Leon campaign and Ada campaign had sections that I believe were intended to be scary. But the real answer is never.

But RE6 sucked because much of the focus was taken off the action which was kind of fun. But the Leon bits were plodding and dull all in the name of atmosphere.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Excels posted:

Real question here: when was the last time a Resident Evil game was genuinely scary? I thought RE2 was scary as hell because of the static camera angles, not being able to see what was coming, etc. But it's gotten so over the top now that suddenly you are fighting a normal human that can transform into a Meat Rex at will, shooting blindly at it from a helicopter.

People turning into grasshoppers when you shoot them isn't scary and if Capcom thinks they were going in the right direction with RE6 even slightly, then RE7 is dead before it even comes out.

Every Resident Evil game has had sections at very least intended to be scary. Being hunted by the NotPredator in RE4 and the Regenerators debut, the darkness areas in RE5, a few sections of Leon and Ada's sections in RE6, and so-on. You may not have been scared but they were intended to be scary and you're probably a fair bit older than you were when you played RE2.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

The scariest part of Resident Evil: Code Veronica is getting to the end of Disc 1 and the Tyrant Bossfight and realizing that you don't have like any ammunition left and you can't possibly beat him.

The second scariest is leaving the fire extinguisher in the metal scanner safety box as Claire and realizing 4 hours later how much you retroactively hate yourself.

TERRIBLE SHITLORD
Oct 20, 2005


MY NIGGA HAVE
YOU TRIED LSD

Excels posted:

Real question here: when was the last time a Resident Evil game was genuinely scary? I thought RE2 was scary as hell because of the static camera angles, not being able to see what was coming, etc. But it's gotten so over the top now that suddenly you are fighting a normal human that can transform into a Meat Rex at will, shooting blindly at it from a helicopter.

RE4 had a lot of things that creeped me the gently caress out, especially the whispering and mumbling of the dudes in the castle and the regenerators. It still had that clunky control scheme so you got blindsided a lot too.

Vakal
May 11, 2008
I think the creepiness of the early RE games can be directly tied with their soundtracks.

I haven't found the gameplay of RE 1 or 2 scary since I first played them as a kid, but there's something about those slow violin tracks that still give off that perfect sense of foreboding.

Cheston
Jul 17, 2012

(he's got a good thing going)

BORK! BORK! posted:

RE4 had a lot of things that creeped me the gently caress out, especially the whispering and mumbling of the dudes in the castle and the regenerators. It still had that clunky control scheme so you got blindsided a lot too.

morir es vivir, morir es vivir

cogedlo cogedlo cogedlo cogedlo


I recently replayed RE4, and Dead Space retroactively made the regenerators scarier. "I'll just shoot off their legs and run past!" *Regenerator fish-flops up to Leon's neck*

Black August
Sep 28, 2003

RE4 was genuinely scary to me, but in a sort of Italian old horror movie way, where everything is just off and creepy. Inbetween the Michael Bay action segments where Leon gets to be the big rear end in a top hat superhero agent, you actually have some genuinely gross and weird places crawling with awful things. The scream of a chainsaw caused panic attacks after the first time I saw what it did (getting stuck in a dark rainy muddy hole with the Bella Sisters was full loving panic the first time), the Regenerators were pure walking dread, the sewer section with the invisible face-melt bugs scuttling around, the head-eater cultists you'd run in a hot panic from when there was 7 of them, trapped in a falling alarm-scream cramped box with a giant penis monster slopping around, etc etc.

RE4 did an incredible job of sort of blending old and new horror, where you're a year 2000 action star who has to earn his chops in a 1970s splatterhouse warzone, where everything smells, is grungy, bloody, the music drones on, you need to blow treasure just to get better guns, and although you swing it like Milla Jovovich huffing crystal, if you die it's violent, humiliating, and makes want to NEVER die like that again.

The contrast of style and atmosphere created just the right kind of dysphoria to make the first playthroughs memorable and scary. Then you play Mercenaries to go rear end-out blast mode for fun. Then you play the Waterworld level and see Super Salvador and the screaming starts up again and never stops.

Excels
Mar 7, 2012

Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!

You, I like you.

Synthwave Crusader
Feb 13, 2011

One of the main reasons I never, ever got the Handcannon in any version of RE4 was because Super Salvador legitimately scared the poo poo out of me the first time I played Waterworld. I seriously stopped trying to 5-star that map.

RE4 In general scared me the first time I played it on GCN. I actually stopped playing it for about a week the first time I faced off against a Regenerator and was murdered because I freaked out when it just wouldn't die. :(

Black August
Sep 28, 2003

I guess I feel what RE5 and 6 lacked was a sense of power for the player to achieve. In RE4 you're the action hero, but you need to prove it by yourself in an isolated piece of raw Hell where you get NO help. Luis dies, Ashley can't fight (but she can help which is important to the setting), Ada is as much antagonist as friend, Krauser comes out of nowhere for a deliciously cheesey Dark Leon match fight and betrayal, every human you meet is a horrible murderfreak, and it also made Mike memorable and meme-worthy because you get this ONE bit of awesome help, and then he dies and gives you a chance to scream along with Leon because GOD DAMMIT MY EVAC AND COVER FIRE.

RE5 has TWO competent people together with sporadic help from the outside. You're not isolated as much, and the focus is too much on sheer violence over having a more passive goal (Get Ashley out alive, KEEP HER SAFE), instead of the older RE goal of Survive And Escape. You're not fighting to get out, but to get in further and further in pursuit of Evil Neo, and you have double the firepower since your partner is also a murderlord.

Then RE6 goes absolutely pants-down goofy. You're all superhumans, you're fighting comic book minions more than biological horrors, you can breakdance all over to kill poo poo while embroiled in moldy-cheesy romance plots and poo poo that just makes no loving sense. Jake and Sherry are literal superhuman heroes with superpowers -- the biological angle has become an excuse for supers stories instead of "Competents and/or trained professionals get way in over their heads and have to escape some serious poo poo that is trying to slurp their intestines like fine spaghetti"

Which is also why Revelations was good. The enemies were disgusting, inhuman but still formerly human, Jill wasn't a silly leap frogging test tube superbabe yet, you were isolated in a dark, cold, rainy, threatening place, rescue was not coming easy, and even if you had a companion you spent just as much time alone which did a good job of taking away your feeling of security in having help. Even the Rachel hunt segment was a decent retrace of the Left Hand fight with Leon, if on Infernal mode.

That's my take on why it feels a little stale. RE4 shouldn't be repeated endlessly, and RE5 and 6 have some excellent aspects that need to be kept and built on, but they seemed to not get why RE4 was so goddamn cool and popular. It had substance to its style, and that style didn't outshine the sensation of having to FIGHT for what you wanted.

Also nothing made me poo poo myself worse than the quicktime event with cutting the rope as Del Lago dragged you into the lake. That made me WANT to mash the button screaming to avoid a really lovely death.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Eh. I generally feel the opposite. RE4 made me feel like such an overpowered action hero that very little felt threatening to me once I understood the mechanics. I still love the game but I never felt like I was overwhelmed or underpowered when I was dropkicking chainsaw zombies in the face and my knife was one of the most powerful and versatile weapons I had. Leon being along just emphasized that he was wrecking poo poo hilariously easily while protecting an effectively helpless person. Your goal might have been to get out but in essence it was to keep diving deeper because Ashley kept getting kidnapped. You weren't trying to escape, you were trying to rescue someone and then escape and I think that's a difference.

In comparison at their best RE5 and RE6 made me feel like I was overwhelmed and outclassed even when I was kicking rear end. The village sequence in RE5 feels a lot more overwhelming and "I am in serious poo poo" than the comparative sequence in RE4 where I'd frequently kill so many enemies that it took time for them to respawn. RE5 and 6 were not at their best as often as RE4 which I think is a major difference between the two but it wasn't really because of a lack of power. You had backup and help but they kept getting brutalized and slaughtered. You had two people which makes it less scary but not less power-fantasy because you're emphasizing that you could not possible survive this alone, as opposed to Leon in RE4 who is basically unstoppable.

I guess the big difference to me is that in RE4, El Gigante is something Leon solos 2v1 without much trouble. In RE5, it is a monster that devastates an entire group of soldiers and that you need two gattling guns firing basically nonstop in order to take down because there's on way you could handle it on foot. The former feels a lot more power fantasy to me.

I think it's basically a simple as the fact that RE4 is 'on' a lot more than RE5 and 6 are. It has its weak areas but they are fewer and further between. There's not many areas in RE4 where I feel like "man, I don't want to do this scene," while say, Chapter 2 Jake in RE6 is something I wouldn't replay unless I had absolutely no other choice.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Mar 14, 2014

Excels
Mar 7, 2012

Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!

ImpAtom posted:

I guess the big difference to me is that in RE4, El Gigante is something Leon solos 2v1 without much trouble. In RE5, it is a monster that devastates an entire group of soldiers and that you need two gattling guns firing basically nonstop in order to take down because there's on way you could handle it on foot. The former feels a lot more power fantasy to me.

But that was far and away the worst part of the game. It was silly.

Gaz-L
Jan 28, 2009

Scyantific posted:

One of the main reasons I never, ever got the Handcannon in any version of RE4 was because Super Salvador legitimately scared the poo poo out of me the first time I played Waterworld. I seriously stopped trying to 5-star that map.

RE4 In general scared me the first time I played it on GCN. I actually stopped playing it for about a week the first time I faced off against a Regenerator and was murdered because I freaked out when it just wouldn't die. :(

The Regenerators unfortunately are way less scary when you realise they can die even without the scope. A decently powered shotgun will kill them in like 3 shots. It makes them kinda wimpy.


ImpAtom posted:

Eh. I generally feel the opposite. RE4 made me feel like such an overpowered action hero that very little felt threatening to me once I understood the mechanics. I still love the game but I never felt like I was overwhelmed or underpowered when I was dropkicking chainsaw zombies in the face and my knife was one of the most powerful and versatile weapons I had. Leon being along just emphasized that he was wrecking poo poo hilariously easily while protecting an effectively helpless person.

In comparison at their best RE5 and RE6 made me feel like I was overwhelmed and outclassed even when I was kicking rear end. The village sequence in RE5 feels a lot more overwhelming and "I am in serious poo poo" than the comparative sequence in RE4 where I'd frequently kill so many enemies that it took time for them to respawn. RE5 and 6 were not at their best as often as RE4 which I think is a major difference between the two but it wasn't really because of a lack of power. You had backup and help but they kept getting brutalized and slaughtered. You had two people which makes it less scary but not less power-fantasy because you're emphasizing that you could not possible survive this alone, as opposed to Leon in RE4 who is basically unstoppable.

I guess the big difference to me is that in RE4, El Gigante is something Leon solos 2v1 without much trouble. In RE5, it is a monster that devastates an entire group of soldiers and that you need two gattling guns firing basically nonstop in order to take down because there's on way you could handle it on foot. The former feels a lot more power fantasy to me.

Ludonarrative dissonance. In the STORY, Leon's a bigger badass. Mechanically, Sheva/Chris/Jill/Jake/Sherry all feel way more powerful because their games are action first. RE4 is very easy to game the system and be in little danger, but you have to know the game well to do so. I feel the opposite about the siege sequence, purely because the twice it happens in RE4, you're stuck to small, confined spaces, it ratchets up the tension, because enemies are everywhere and you can't escape. In RE5? You kite them until the time runs out. That's MUCH lamer.

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ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Excels posted:

But that was far and away the worst part of the game. It was silly.

It was a bad part of the game but we're talking about atmosphere here.

Gaz-L posted:

Ludonarrative dissonance. In the STORY, Leon's a bigger badass. Mechanically, Sheva/Chris/Jill/Jake/Sherry all feel way more powerful because their games are action first. RE4 is very easy to game the system and be in little danger, but you have to know the game well to do so. I feel the opposite about the siege sequence, purely because the twice it happens in RE4, you're stuck to small, confined spaces, it ratchets up the tension, because enemies are everywhere and you can't escape. In RE5? You kite them until the time runs out. That's MUCH lamer.

You kite the enemies in RE4's first village sequence too? That section in RE5 is basically identical to RE4, right down to it ending when time runs out or you kill enough. The second is confined for certain but you also have an ally helping you out. (It's still one of the best sequences in the game, mind.)

And I disagree about the mechanical difference. Leon's mechanics are simpler in fact which emphasizes the power aspect because it takes less to do ridiculously powerful things and because his knife so much stronger and over-emphasized that getting up and knife-fighting dudes is not only a viable strategy but encouraged. Someone like Krauser who is a mutant with a giant knife-arm is easier fought with a knife than a submachine gun and the story backs this up by having you knife-fight him in a QTE fight prior to that.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Mar 14, 2014

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