Resident Evil

Playing through Resident Evil: Requiem, so far I’m rather enjoying the game’s choice to split it down the middle. In the RE2 remake, we really got the anti-zapping system. I kind of liked the inverted routes since it avoids all the headache of the original games zapping system, which I always considered more of a grumbly puzzle than a good idea.

By contrast, having both Grace and Leon get a blood-soaked, zombie riddled trip through Victor’s facility gels well. The campaign alternates perspectives rapidly enough that it avoids the need for a log book or cursing yourself for ammo shortages, yet also yields a balance. It feels more like the campaigns compliment each other rather than compete, or make it a jumble. The way they take such different focuses, also feels like an effort to merge the gameplay that attracted folks like me to the RE2/RE3 remake and those more used to games like either version of RE4/RE5.

On the flip side, I also find it an enjoyable characterization. Grace, despite how much negative feedback she’s generated, I think actually makes a good protagonist. Compared to our returning hero, she’s about as prepared for this as The Lone Gunmen. Her reactions are far more that of a normal person. Yet, she still exhibits the strength to get up and keep fighting. And then of course we have Leon whose attitude like older players, are more been there, done that, got the t-shirt when things go awry. I also somehow managed to appreciate the awesome jumpscare in tunnels, which just so happened to align with me commenting out loud about being surprised by the lack of anything happening there 😆.

Much like earlier games, the folks behind Resident Evil have some faulty ideas of physics and technology. The meat grinder and chainsaws for one. I’m sure there will be others, but assuming it’s not as outlandish as RE6, I’ll probably continue to ignore that. It’s an RE game, you eventually know what to expect when things just make no damned sense.

On one hand, I pretty much decided to watch this clip because, “I’m damn tired of seeing this as I scroll by.” That really summarizes how I feel about most of the AI generated yada-yada that pops up whenever I visit YouTube.

On the other hand, it both kind of makes me wish that someone would make a good horror movie adaptation of Resident Evil Village, and makes me want to play the game again….

While I can’t say that RE7 really did it for me, so much as I was glad for more of a return to the game’s roots, I really did enjoy Village. Discounting remakes, Village was probably the best resident evil game since RE4.

Visiting the original mansion again for the first time in this millennium, it’s an interesting exercise in how much I’ve forgotten, how much I’ve remembered, and how much comes back to me when I’m there.

On one hand, after do many years it’s kind of hard to remember which door leads to zombie ridden stairways and which leads to almost becoming a Jill Sandwich in the name of acquiring a shotgun. Honestly, I don’t remember that horrible joke at all even though I still remember the distinction of Jill gets rescued from becoming a human pancake by Barry, while Chris has to bugger about looking for a broken shotgun in order to win.

Access to guides that have been around for years, and I can’t even remember the name of it, but there’s a wiki somewhere that goes into posting the maps and details (I’ve probably written about that here, regarding the RE2 remake); certainly make for a good augment to the old ‘what order should I?’ problem but not so much the minute directions.

The mansion has always been a hard place to navigate because of its size. It’s pretty easy to remember the general flow, especially easily reached locations like the hallway you meet Cerberus or the balcony where you acquire the grenade launcher. But smaller details like which door in the upstairs east hallway leads to the knights puzzle or what’s at the end of the ground floor dining room hallway, is a bit harder to remember.

This is kinda nice. Like one how it’s easy to remember there’s little point to grabbing the wooden emblem, but hard to remember when it’s time to bring it to the piano room. Couldn’t remember where the knight puzzle was but on the flip side once finding it, I did remember to avoid the poison gas on the first go, lol.

Some parts are a lot harder to remember than others. For example, I have pretty much no real recollection of the layout of the guard house. Just old mental images of things like pool tables and giant spiders.

But unlike the “Huh, what the frell is this?” feeling the GameCube remake always gave me, the GOG’ified PC edition is more like an old stomping ground. If one filled with zombies and horrors that want to decapitate you, lol.

Over the years, I’ve generally considered GOG a good thing but haven’t cared terribly much given my focus elsewhere. But much to my pleasure, it turns out they have a real nice treat that I never expected to find: Resident Evil.

While I appreciated the HD version of the remake, I also didn’t enjoy my childhood memories being made useless by the fact that it was built from the GameCube remake rather than one of the original PlayStation releases. Meanwhile, the version recently released on GOG looks like it’s a fairly vanilla build of the PC release of Resident Evil rolled up for modern machines without extra hackwittery.

I haven’t really played the original since the 1990s and the original PlayStation. Within moments of launching the game, I felt like a proper trip backdown memory lane — in just about every way, it’s how I remember it from almost 30 years ago.