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!

Demon's Souls (PS3)

You creep forward gritting your teeth, your face a contorted mass of concentration. You know that one little mistake will cost you an hour and a half's worth of progress and will send you right back to the start of the area. This is intense. This is Demon's Souls!

As everyone is pretty much aware Demon's Souls is a 3rd person dungeon crawler developed by From Software which has become something of a cult hit. Much of the games reputation has been earned by the fact that the game can be unrelentingly hard and unforgiving of any mistakes the player makes, which in the age of easy games with checkpoints every few minutes makes this approach rather unique.

At it's core Demon's Souls has a simple premise, devise a character from one of the selectable classes and set about traversing the worlds, leveling up as you go along. In reality it's not so simple, this is a game where a couple of hits will usually kill you and dying sends you back to the central hub minus the souls (gained by killing enemies and used for leveling up) which were on your person at that point. If you can make it back to where you fell then you can retrieve said lost souls, but should you die on the way then they are lost forever.












For the first few worlds dying is an inconvenience but manageable, the levels being relatively short and easy to traverse. As the game progresses though the areas become larger and more complex meaning it is very easy to lose 1-2 hours progress due to a silly mistake. So you creep forward rather than run, wary of every footstep you take. This experience reminded me of Ninja Gaiden somewhat, in that this isn't a title where you run around slashing the hell out of everything without using block. In Demon's Souls you need to have your shield up. All. the. time.

The boss battles are nothing short of epic, the excitement and level of tension is nothing short of unreal when you have slogged through an hour long section for the fifth time and finally reach the boss knowing that death will mean an hours worth of slogging again just to get back there. You have to think and adapt, there is no place for rushing straight into the boss and hoping for the best, there are no checkpoint retries here.












Now whilst i completely commend the difficulty of Demon's Souls and do believe it is what gives the game it's intensity i would be lying if i said that the game didn't also anger and frustrate the hell out of me in places. The controller was thrown a few times in disgust, mainly at myself for making a stupid mistake and costing myself hours worth of progress. Other times at a couple of little bugs that resorted in me falling to my death.


The online element of the game is fantastically implemented. Other players can leave you messages on the floor warning you of upcoming danger, or even trick you into thinking the area is safe. Other players can also invade your game to either assist you or battle you. This constant online implementation however means the game lacks any kind of pause facility. This can be unfortunate if you (like myself) juggle gaming with a family, as should anything need attending to then you leave yourself open to death if you leave the game.












This is a minor point however, Demon's Souls is meant to be played intensely with upmost concentration, with no outside distractions and is certainly a unique and gripping game because of it.
Those craving intensity and an old school challenge should play this game straight away.

Top 5 Hori Shmups:

5. R Type (Arcade)
One of the originals and still one of the best, R Type changed the way developers made this style of game, without it the rest of the games in this list probably wouldn't even exist.

















4. Darius Gaiden (Arcade/Sat/PS1)
Personally i think this is by far the best in the Darius series, love the crazy bosses and the Zunata soundtrack is absolutely fantastic.
















3. Gradius V (PS2)
I'm a bit of a Treasure fanboy so this was always going to feature in this top 5. A wonderful sequel worthy of a place in one of the classic game series.

















2. DeathSmiles (Arcade/Xbox 360)
I've recently picked up the Pal release of the 360 port and fallen in love with this all over again. Simply a stunning game and kudos to Cave for making it a touch more accessible than their other games, it makes the 1CC a realistic proposition for us mere mortals!














1. Progear No Arashi (Arcade)
As i've mentioned in a previous post i really rate Caves first every horizontal shoot em' up, i just wish that levels 3 & 4 weren't so evil!

Tales Of Vesperia (360)

I love a good JRPG and have done ever since the SNES days. The various games championed by Super Play magazine in those days got me into the genre and also provided me with my first steps into the world of importing.

Since the during the PS1 days the genre has incorporated overly long self indulgent cutscenes. A fact that you could probably blame on Final Fantasy VII for making popular. Although FFVII thankfully didn't feature voice acting - my bugbear with modern JRPG's and the reason why i struggle to connect with any.

All of this rambling leads me nicely into Tales Of Vesperia. I've always enjoyed the Tales series to some extent, mainly the battle system. Tales Of Symphonia was the first one to tie it all together into a compelling title for me though. One think i liked about Symphonia was the fact that you could mute the characters, which was a godsend for me!

Vesperia differs from many RPG's these days in that it actually features decent voice acting, and a decent lead character who doesn't suffer from being TOO whiny or emo. That's not to say that the rest of the cast don't meet these stereotypes as most of them do.











The battle system is fantastic, this series has always been known for it's fast paced battle systems and this one is no different. To begin with i didn't enjoy the 3d battle area as opposed to the 2d plane found in Symphonia but i soon adjusted and grew to love it. Grinding is always enjoyable in this series and it's also possible to make your characters insanely leveled up and therefore make a mockery of some of the bosses (not necessarily a good thing)

Where Vesperia and the Tales series in whole lets itself down is with the plot. It manages to become a bit ludicrous and i found it a bit hard to connect with what was going on in the later stages. A plot doesn't need to be hugely over the top and convoluted to be gripping, a simple story done properly with proper character development would be much better.












I have to say that by the end of the game i had become a bit sick of the plot and the childish way which some of the characters both behave and are portrayed by their voice actors. This has recently really hit home as i have been playing Lost Odyssey - an rpg with a refreshing mature theme that manages to keep a more serious tone without feeling pompous and convoluted (plus it has a Japanese voice track)

Whilst i enjoyed Tales Of Vesperia and wouldn't at all say that it's a bad game in the slightest i just think the genre has so much more to offer than this.