Resident Evil (4, but we can discuss other versions if you wish)

the castle is the best part, followed by the cod silent hill bit after. exploring and unlocking shit in the village is good too.

currently insanely bored in an endless factory level full of unscary bullet sponge enemies. hoping it will pick up again.

Just finished Village and really enjoyed it, though the whole thing did feel a bit slapdash in some ways? The character and environment designs were amazing, but the execution felt kind of half-assed. I guess that's inevitable given the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach they took.

Anyway, the Benevento house section had me terrified in the best way possible.

Yeah, I finished Village over the weekend. It was OK. I didn’t love it, even though it checked a lot of my RE boxes. Similarly to the poster above, I found that Factory level to be kind of a drag. Wasn’t crazy about all the end game stuff in general.

I played through and thoroughly enjoyed the RE2 remake a few months ago, I think my expectations were higher coming off of that one.

But yes, the doll house area… oof. Scared me good.

Can I just say that as someone whose memory, patience and attention to detail are relatively sound, games like "Resident Evil 2" (my first RE game, which I just started) are still really challenging. Granted, not long ago I played "Signalis" (as I understand it a throwback to games like the original RE) which was tougher than this (so far), however any video game that requires a pen and paper is a pretty big ask, imo. This is definitely fun, but it takes almost a certain level of zen to accomplish tasks that require diligence and deliberation as much as skill. Following "Bioshock," I kinda wish it had a similar floating arrow that indicates which way to go next.

lol killing zombies is a little annoying. I hate the way they take so many shots before they're downed but it doesn't make clear they're down and out. I get the "gotcha!" mechanic, but it forces you to use up ammo shooting these things repeatedly when these would-be ankle biters are lying on the ground kind of maybe moving but maybe not.

I just unleashed the Terminator, and holy shit, this is the most stressful game I've played since "Alien:Isolation" (which I never finished). I was having enough trouble with the limited resources before he showed up, so I chickened out and reduced the difficulty level to "assisted." I don't usually do that, but I was going to end up breaking the left stick from constantly pushing it down to run.

I hate having to press down on the a joystick to do anything sustained in any game, btw. Just seems janky and designed to damage the equipment.

lol I just did some googling and found (inevitably) lots of people that claim this game is easy, and that ammo "practically falls out of the sky." Um, not where I'm at, it's not. My Leon is a terrible shot just limping around bleeding to death and moaning all the time.

I would enjoy watching this playthrough.

If I can sum up my gameplay in one word? Slow.

I remember the original RE2 being very slow and deliberate, which makes sense given the awkward controls and perspectives. It's kind of strange to think of it using the RE4 style, but I'll probably play this at some point.

It's as slow and deliberate as it can be while still being chased by a relentless killer monster that doesn't care how long it is taking you to solve a puzzle. I think the game is giving me a break from that dude right now, though. I just outraced a giant mutant alligator.

I'm pretty sure this game has a dynamic difficulty curve, like it'll give you more ammo if you keep blasting through it? But yeah, definitely try not to shoot as much as possible, otherwise you'll make those inevitable boss fights feel impossible

Someone did the math somewhere, and apparently there is not enough ammo in the game to kill everything. Regardless, this is one of the games where the enemies are pretty much bullet sponges, encouraging you to go for headshots. But headshots are really hard on consoles with a controller, as opposed to, apparently, PCs, with mouse and keyboard.

I think I am finally in the ending stretches, a combination of lowering the difficulty, following walkthroughs, and realizing that years ago, not long after I got the game, I paid like $2 to unlock all the perks you would normally only get from beating the game on hardest difficulty three times or something stupid like that that I am literally never going to do.

I've accumulated a surprising number of these games, hopefully I have an easier time with 3, 7 and 8. I'll buy 4 when it goes on sale.

3 is a bit easier, and is mostly the same game as 2 so you’ll have the extra practice too. I repeat myself here: you are robbing yourself of one of the best games of all time if you don’t play the original 4!

3 is a bit easier, and is mostly the same game as 2 so you’ll have the extra practice too. I repeat myself here: you are robbing yourself of one of the best games of all time if you don’t play the original 4!

I'll try to play the original 4 (I played the very first bit on GameCube back when) before I play the 4 Remake, but if I play the original 4 it's going to be a long while before I get to the Remake. Are the differences between the two really significant, graphics aside?

I repeat myself here

Accidental lol

I’m unfairly recommending the one I’ve played over the one I’ve played for 2hrs, but from those 2hrs? Yes, very different in tone (both story and visual) and gameplay. If it was just gameplay and graphics that were changed, I’d be a little less of an OG4-stan, but the tone of 4 is the heart of 4. The removal of the b-movie trappings was a monstrous decisions by the higher up of capcom who have had a pretty great run in the past 5 years.

I’m definitely being sentimental, remake4 is probably pretty great on it’s own merits, but og4 is just something else and definitely not superseded by the remake

xp’s to Josh:

If it’s your first Resident Evil game (or survival horror game in general) it might put you off balance. You’re meant to be extra cautious with ammo and use a melee weapon or run when you can as ammo is always in short supply. Fundamental part of the thing. This kind of changed in some of the later games that are more action oriented.

Good to know. I don't like running because I hate having to press a stick to run; I don't want to break my controller. I get being cautious with ammo, given every enemy takes like a million bullets, anyway, and doesn't always stay dead, and healing is hard to come by, but I admit I'm not always conservative with shots, or, considering how challenging accuracy is with a controller, able to stay conservative, even on easy mode!; I haven't returned to nu-"Doom" again in a long time, but that one felt less focused on perfect shots and more on spraying everything, within reason, which I think I prefer. I guess if I were into the fantasy of actual survival, maybe; like, in a senses a lot of From games are about resource management, too. But this game is so far removed from logic and reality, even in a b-movie zombie apocalypse context, that I don't feel compelled to conform to its dumb/silly rules. When I'm done with this one, let's see how the others go.

They’re all very different, if you don’t like 2, only 3 is really like it. 7 is a whooooooole other thing (and maybe my fav? At least the first act is)

I think I like 2, but it is kinda dumb, and also not easy, which is a weird dissonance.

that's the quintessential resident evil dissonance (minus 7)

lol yeah, Resident Evil is quintessentially dumb and camp. Part of the charm. Always amusing to hear JiC’s introduction to certain corridors of the video game world. You’re not wrong.

Like maybe highly recommending RE2: REmake as your first shot at the series wasn’t the best suggestion because I think it requires some knowledge of the games and how that particular entry expertly blends old and new.

otm circa. RE2 is a cracker game, but as an intro? I think og4 might take the cake? or 7 if you are more for modern horror videogames sensibilities.

Actually I take it back; 2make is a great litmus test if this series is for you. 3make.... maybe even more so due to its shorter length and its blend of shooty shooty (4-6) puzzles (0-3) and modern horror graphics scary scary (7-8). If it's not for you Josh, it's not for you!

OK, finished RE2. It was ... OK. Looked and played really well. I think I liked the action stuff better than the horror stuff, tbh. That may place me in the minority, lol. The horror stuff ... that's where I was getting a lot of the (and forgive me if I am invoking this incorrectly) ludonarrative dissonance. Like, all the horror stuff works well, mechanically, but it feels cheap, because the surrounding context conveyed via cut scenes is so silly and campy, and it's hard to care about the characters (let alone the end of the world) when it's all kinda dumb and tacked on (especially the love interest stuff). The action stuff, on the other hand, is perfectly suited to stupid, so by the time I got to the more thrilling endgame I was more into it.

I like that it wasn't long, too. I know some complain that RE3 is too short, but that's fine with me, so I'll probably dive right in. RE7 looks like the most conventionally scary of the bunch, RE8 looks more goofy/giddy b-movie fun. Where does RE4 fit in? Should I play it after RE3 (whenever I can get 4 cheaper), or come back to it after RE7 and RE8, assuming I knock out the ones I already have one after the other?

If you like action & stupid, 4 is the game for you.

(in the best way)

Psyched! My pull the trigger price is around $20-$25 (for this, and Ragnarok, and Dead Space, and Plague Tale: Requiem, and Last of Us Part 1; I just discovered the "patientgamers" reddit thread, and those are my people.)

Oh, wait, I forgot, isn't there another character to play as in RE2? Claire? It's a slightly different story, right?

I started the Claire run, and it's different, but I may not be patient enough to make it through again, even from a different perspective.

Save Claire for another time imo. It great to do a different run, but might be good exploring something else first to give yourself some distance. Don’t sleep on 1make and 0 for some old school puzzle goodness

i tried 1make and 0 back in the GC games and it's... tough, especially as they were contemporary with 4. still, i admire the effort that was put into making them, at least

So far I'm enjoying RE3 (remake) more, because 1) Jill is a better protagonist than dumbass stupid-looking Leon and 2) it's leaning into action a bit more. I saw someone describe it as a cross between "Resident Evil" and "Uncharted" and ... sure. As a non-gaming purist with no sentimental attachment to the series (or any game, really), I've got no problem with that.

Yeah I think RE3make is a perfect introduction (and gets too much flack as a game). Good description; have fun!

I can imagine playing 1/0 contemporary with 4 would have been like playing a new shiny graphic NES game contemporary to sm64. I played 1 (and started 0) for the first time this year and found them to hold up really well if you can accept them for what they are! Besides the door animations, they could be released as modern games with different titles and I would not consider them antiquated. Kind of like modern Lucas Pope games

Code Veronica on the Dreamcast was great, I wish they'd bring this to steam

Good thing I didn't just play RE2 again (which was a big ask to begin with, lol), because RE3 has just dumped me back at the police station setting of RE2, albeit in control of a different dumbass dude-bro (who looks a bit like Keanu Reeves).

But yeah, "RE meets Uncharted" is the name of the game here (so to speak). Weird to have two games in a row with an unstoppable Terminator juggernaut in hot pursuit. The one in RE2 is/was more intense, this new one is mostly weird. I'm once again play on the easy setting, because difficulty levels based largely on conserving items and bullet sponge enemies and instadeath is a different game than the one I want to play.

I enjoyed 1, 2 and 4 back in the day— and replayed 4 a couple years ago, and am convinced it’d be a perfect game were it not for the weirdbad middle act

But I started 7 a few months ago, and was encouraged by a game-averse bf because he liked watching it (as opposed to everything else), and found myself so genuinely distressed and scared that I felt zero desire to go beyond a particular garage scene

Booted up Village tonight and again I felt this uncomfortable dread. The horror doesn’t just confine itself to the content but also to the gameplay and context, it is terrifying to play these games and to feel so directionless and helpless. I’m certain it’s “art” but I can’t imagine myself feeling stoked about playing 7/Village, it’s just too discombobulating or something

The thing that keeps them in check for me is the camp, which I can't figure out. These games are Japanese, right? So I assume they are written in Japanese. Are they silly/dumb in Japanese, too? That is, are they written to be this silly and dumb, with a wink? Or are they just translated in a way that amplifies the silliness? The closest I've seen the one of them breaking the fourth wall, sort of, was in "2" when I got the final hip pouch and I got a trophy: "A Waist of Space." I presume that's a pun that only works in English?

From what gameplay I've seen, "7" seems like the most strictly horror of the recent batch, but "Village" seems like a slight return to goofiness. More Hammer, less torture.

I must be nearing the end of "3," and it's definitely less scary than (aspects of) "2." More like "Aliens" vs. "Alien," maybe? I find big mutant monsters less scary than resilient zombies in a dark house.

Idk, both 7 and Village are so goddamn terrifying that when I found a “green herb” I had a Proustian moment— “this reminds me of a scary-fun game series I used to play”

I believe you, tbf I haven't played either of them yet. But broadly speaking, at least as I understand it, "7" is very Texas Chainsaw Massacre family torturing and pursuing you through a secluded home, but Village is more Gothic horror, with werewolves and castles and vampires and stuff. They're both designed to scare, but clips of the former I've seen make me unsure if I want to play it, while clips from the latter kind of made me giggle, at least at the writing. Kinda like how in "2," after seeing so much stuff, dumbass Leon still exclaims "what the hell ... !?" whenever he comes across some shambling creature.

don't rly think of achievement/trophy names as part of the text of a game, especially a game that came out in 1998, long before publisher psychologists had draped this particular dumb layer over everything in an effort to encourage addictive behavior. the REs i've played (1, 2, 4) def tend camp tho yeah. i wonder what you'd think of its mechanically similar contemporary silent hill: less action, more horror, maybe more commitment?

There's a nu-Silent Hill coming, right?

Case in point, btw: Playing as Jill you descend a long while in a giant elevator to a huge system of warehouses and labs, and she exclaims (to nobody): "How in the world did they hide all this stuff under a hospital?" Good question, Jill. Good question. That's more than Leon asked about the maze of secret labs under the local police station. Shit's amusing.

The camp started with 4 as far as I’m aware? 1-3 originals were more serious, kinda a final fantasy x thing where it was the early days of voice acting/cinematic experience in gaming and it all came of stilted and kinda unintentionally funny as gaming tried to figure it out (look at some of the voice acting from the original 1, it’s infamously bad/good). 4 took that unintentionally camp/stilted/weird, and made it an intentional part of its identity, and is beloved for it, and its been a running part of the series since. Even 7 has some classic re campiness put in at parts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtTfptkUgj0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXutugd67DA