Resident Evil 5 - a re-think

As noted in a previous blog entry i was very disappointed in the general direction that Capcom took this game after the awesomeness that was Resident Evil 4, my main point of disillusion being the "forced" co-op with the terribly coded A.I. partner.
Over the past couple of months however i've found that my opinion has changed considerably, i actually now really like the game! I think this turnaround is down to a few different reasons...

Downloadable Content:

The Lost in Nightmares DLC is absolutely fantastic, although short at approximately an hour long it is a lovely homage to the original game and actually shows how stunning a "proper" Resident Evil game would've looked using this game engine. Jill is a million times less annoying than Sheva was also and of course the team of her and Chris feels 100 times for natural in the context of the series.

Desparate Escape is less good but one thing i will say about it is that the partner A.I. seems greatly improved from the main game, if only they'd spent a bit more time making Sheva's AI as good as this.












The Mercenaries reunion DLC has also improved my enjoyment with Rebecca Chambers becoming my favourite character to use and I've also began to prefer the new soundtrack included in this mode.

The competitive online Versus modes have also been a blast to play with a friend although it suffers from many people using the overpowered version of Wesker that you can unlock.


Achievement & Trophy hunting:

Due to this being part of my favourite gaming franchise I've really wanted to unlock as many of the single player achievements as possible, which has lead to me tackling the higher difficulties which has increased the tension and made the experience a much more exhilarating experience especially on the Professional difficulty level with it's one hit kills.
I can honestly say that completing the game on Professional with a like minded friend is one of my treasured gaming memories of recent years.
I've also spent time upgrading all the weapons to unlock achievements which leads me nicely into my next point..












Special weapons:

After the initial couple of playthroughs one of the problems i had with the game was that there seemed to be too many generic weapons in comparison to the ones found in Resident Evil 4, especially the assault rifles. This has now changed now that i have everything unlocked and upgraded, the 3 barreled Hydra shotgun and the 3 Magnum pistols being my absolute favourites. In fact i don't even bother with the boringly similar assault rifles anymore preferring to use a fully upgraded V761 Sub machine gun with infinite ammo (reminds me very much of the glorious TMP found in the forth game)

So in closing i guess i was pretty much wrong about the game, I've put in 50hrs with the 360 version and around 25 i think on the PS3 so I'm obviously enjoying it far more than i thought initially!

Call Of Duty: Black Ops (360)

If there is one word i would use to describe this game it's Lazy. Yeah the multiplayer is fantastic and the single player campaign does have a couple of nice moments but in general it all feels a bit safe.

Putting the multiplayer to one side for one minute the single player campaign feels really dated, much like the earlier Call Of Duty games enemies spawn and spawn, spamming grenades as they do - it all just feels so unrealistic next to something like Medal Of Honor which at least tries to make it's encounters a bit more authentic.












The plot is stupid, yes i know Modern Warfare 2 had a stupid plot also but it's set pieces and combat were far better. I really don't know what to think about the single player segments of this series anymore, it all just feels tacked on as if they know most people will only play the multiplayer anyway. It's a shame as a couple of levels in Call Of Duty 4 really felt like the future of military first person shooters ("Crew Expendable" and "All Ghillied Up")











I think the Zero Punctuation review hit the nail on the head when he said that the game has no sense of pacing whatsoever, there is no downtime really to create tension - a trick which all the best FPS's have used. Here it's just explosion after explosion it just feels completely robotic.

Tune of the day:

This awesome track from Lost Odyssey, composed by the legend that is Nobuo Uematsu

Survival Horror

I decided to do this little piece on Survival horror mainly after reading the Eurogamer article published on 12/05/11 on the same subject manner. Personally i had issues with this article, i in no way think that Resident Evil 4 or Dead Space are survival horror games, they are ACTION games. Yes there is a horror element with both but i would say that they instill a feeling of panic rather than fear.

Don't get me wrong, i think both games are quality titles, RE4 is my favourite console game of all time, i just don't think they qualify for the category which the article had lumped them in. Plus it would help if the person writing the article could actually be bothered to do a bit of research first, Resident Evil 4 was released in January 2005 in US/Japan and later that spring in the Pal countries, not 2004 as stated in the article. I remember as i had the game on pre order from the US. Not a big deal really but for such a big site i think it shows the lack of care and detail which goes into some (not all) of the articles published there.













Games have been scaring people for many years, my first experiences of this were Rescue on Fractalus on the Atari 800XL and then later Aliens on the C64.


Survival horror to me means access to limited weapons and ammunition whilst you creep forward through an enviroment with a constant feeling of fear and dread. Usually some form of obscure puzzle solving is involved along with the odd interaction with other "survivors" - all in good horror movie tradition!

This is my problem with people lumping games like Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 into this category as they share none of these traits. You have enough weapons and ammo in these games to lay waste to anything that steps in your path and puzzles are get to an absolute minimum.
The phrase "Survival Horror" was coined by Capcom after the release of the original Resident Evil, yes it had many influences (Alone In The Dark) but it certainly forged it's own path and in a way created a genre.















Of course due to the success of the original Resident Evil many other developers followed suit and throughout the remainder of the generation and the one that followed (PS2 etc) many titles were released.

Survival horror as a genre is pretty much dead in the water now. The success of Resident Evil 4 meant that every developer believed that more action was needed to sell thier games and the final nail in the coffin for me has been the farming out of Silent Hill to various developers to dance on it's twitching corpse. In fact i can only think of one pure Survival Horror title this generation - Fatal Frame IV on the Wii (the abomination that is Silent Hill Homecoming does not exist to me)

Some would say that this is where the genre deserves to be due to some of it's outdated mechanics such as backtracking and archaic item management systems. At one point i maybe even agreed (stupidly) and was relieved when Resident Evil 4 took the direction that it did.

Now however i realise that there is no real way back to the way it was previously and a traditional survival horror title will probably never be made again, which is sad really when you think about it.


The pinnacle of the genre for me would have to be the following:
















Fatal Frame/Project Zero series

Too scary for me, in fact i haven't finished any of the games in the series although i have played them all except the recent Wii title. The J-Horror ghost story style is really what gets to me scare wise, i find the whole pale face/long black haired ghosts much more unsettling than any kind of horror out there and have done ever since watching "Ringu" years ago. Fatal Frame 3 is particulary evil.

















Silent Hill 1, 2 & 3

Absolutely beautiful games. I love the amazing contrast between quite melancoly and rustic horror moments throughout all the games. Probably some of the best game soundtracks ever written as well which can both settle and unsettle you depending on the situation. Best game is probably Silent Hill 2 although i have a personal soft spot for number 3 in the series.

















Resident Evil 1, 2 & 3

Still the daddy after many many years. The first game is still the best for pure horror, RE2 being like "Aliens" to the first games "Alien". The stunning remake of the first game in 2002 for the Gamecube probably represents the best game to play now. Still manages to get under your skin and give you that seem feeling of claustraphobic horror that the original did 15 years ago.



Notable mentions:

Resident Evil Zero
Gorgeous game but light on scares due to having an AI partner

Resident Evil Code Veronica
Less scares than the first 3 but still a cracking game

Silent Hill 4
The "runt" of the Team Silent litter is still terrfying in places

Siren
Fantastically tense if you can handle the difficulty

Siren 2
More action but less frustration than the first game

Dino Crisis
Shinji Mikami created Resident Evil but with dinosaurs

Puyo Puyo (Arcade/MD/SNES)

Puyo Puyo first came to my attention due to the campaigning of the classic UK Snes magazine "Super Play" who sang the games praises at every opportunity. At the time the Arcade board was very popular in Japanese arcades and both the Mega Drive and Super Famicom ports of it sold very well over there.

Puyo Puyo follows a very simple premise. Different coloured blobs fall down the screen, these are then rotated and arranged by the player. When 4 blobs of the same colour touch each other then they explode. Simple enough but the skill comes in arranging "chains" so that when you explode one set of blobs the rest of them move down so that four are touching again and explode.

Exploding blobs will cause "solid" blobs to fall down on your opponents screen and vice versa if they explode any. These solid blobs can only be exploded themselves by clearing out the blobs around them. This is where chaining comes into play as if you chain 3 or 4 blob explosions together then this will dump a large amount of the solid blobs on your opponents screen and fill the screen up to the top (causing them to lose the round)














Like all classic puzzlers Puyo Puyo is fiendishly addictive. It has since seen numerous sequels over numerous formats but for me the original and it's immediate sequel are still the best. The more recent sequels have tried to introduce different elements to the core gameplay and have lost some of the purity found in it's original form.

The game was released in the west as Kirbys Avalanche on the SNES and of course as the massively popular "Dr Robotniks Mean Bean Machine" on the Mega Drive which is also on numerous compilations so there's no real excuse for not being able to play this classic!

Now playing:

Lost Odyssey (360)

Currently on the last disc and it's shaping up to a be a classic finale' to what's been my favourite JRPG since the PSone days.

Preview: Shadows Of The Damned (360/PS3)

It's not very often i get massively excited for the release of a modern game, in fact the last time would be Bayonetta, but i can't help but be hyped up for the release of this game!
Shadows Of The Damned comes from the creative mind of Suda51 (No More Heroes) and my personal favourite game developer Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil). Also working on the game to provide the soundtrack is former Silent Hill legend Akira Yamaoka. This is a dream team as far as i'm concerned and the preview videos released for the game have only served to en heighten my enthusiasm.

From the preview trailers and interviews with Mikami & Suda the game appears to use the template of Resident Evil 4 for it's combat, this alone is enough for me to buy the game - Mikami making another game using the template that HE created.....yes please!
The visual style and theme of the game appears to come more from Suda51, Punk Rock Thriller as he describes it.











I'm very interested to see what Yamaoka does with the soundtrack, particularly as he has Mary Elizabeth McGlynn on board to provide vocals as she did with the classic Silent Hill 3 tracks.
Release date is currently down for 21st June, i for one will be putting in a pre order so i can play this on day one!