Resident Evil 8 (village?)

[Stevie]

29 minutes ago, Triple A said:

you won't be disappointed

 

 

[Broker]

6 hours ago, Ry said:

 

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I have watched the scene. I can't go back and check. 

 

Had a look online. 

 

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Oh well. Was fine with Ethan being gone but he is essentially immortal if that's him back. 

 

Are we going to have regenerating gods as every protagonist now? It's my one complaint with the last couple games. 

 

If we are controlling Rose from here on how are they going to implement the "abilities" she has? 

 

 

 

Spoiler

Whilst Ethan did return this time, I think it’s worth bearing in mind that that rarely happens. The end of RE1 seems to imply Jill and Chris are going after Umbrella, but RE2 isn’t about them. Even when Jill returns she still hasn’t actually left the city, then we skip over all that anyway. 
 

It’s pretty standard for the endings to imply something that never actually happens. 

 

[NecroMorrius]

I'm still not really feeling this. I did the whole second section, the

Spoiler

doll bit

Which really struck me as some barrel scraping teen horror (but not in a good way) and really out of place for a Resident Evil. You could argue they were pushing into new territory but if that's where they're going, I'm not keen. It all felt very early 2010s Blumhouse - naff and undiscerning. I still have no idea why I was there, what was going on, what the

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hilarious baby monster thing I had to casually walk around twice was, what the doll was or who the person operating it was. None the wiser. I didn't leave anything undiscovered but I didn't get any sense of environmental storytelling either really. Am I being thick?

 

Compared with PT, which it was trying to evoke at times, it felt like amateur hour.

 

The puzzles are more Fisher Price than anything else, pick up the big square block and put it in the big square hole. Ho hum.

 

So far, my least favourite of any of the main line series or remakes. That second section was the wrong swerve to take at the wrong time. As I said in an earlier post, I was hoping to at least have it devolve into a decent action game if none of the horror or puzzles are going to land for me. And instead they doubled down on horror and puzzles which don't land for me at all.

 

Spoiler

And now I'm fighting werewolves which look like they took a wrong turning on the way to fraggle rock, naff clanky armor things, and a fish-man who keeps talking but I can't make out a word of what he's saying. I took a wander back to the grave to put the slab in and fought a big guy with a big axe who took about 90 bullets to kill while I slowly walked backwards in a big circle. Then I got his axe and a cup which I sold and used to buy some more bullets. 

I also hate how you're halfway through upgrading the pistol and shotgun when it gives you new ones. What's the point of upgrading them then? 

 

[ox1973]

Well, I loved it. A perfect mix of 4 and 7 and I immediately fired up NG+ as soon as I finished it - always a good sign.

 

Currently working my way through a Village of Shadows run; it does ratchet up the difficulty a fair bit but a magnum with unlimited ammo is a pretty nice equalizer.

 

The nostalgia of RE1/2/3 means that they are difficult to beat in some ways but this is top quality entertainment. I'd much rather play a tightly focused 10-12 hours game than any of the many 100+ hour open world bloat-fests out there....

 

[El Spatula]

Just finished this and thought it was fucking brilliant. Easily one of the better REs and possibly better than 7 in some ways. Mixed up the styles really well. 

 

Not sure about the lycans/vampire enemies as they were a bit poo at points but so ate the zombies/mould things.  

 

The arguments about puzzles etc. could apply to any RE to be honest.

 

 

 

[Jamie John]

I did the second area this evening. It was good fun, but I can't say it was scary at all. There wasn't really enough time for the tension to build: you can sort of just 

Spoiler

walk around it a couple of times, get to the lift and that's that. The doll bit afterwards was a big anticlimactic, too.

And I agree with @Moz on the point that I didn't really get the narrative justification for that particular area.

 

Still, it was an entertaining way to spend an hour on a rainy Thursday evening.

[Loik V credern]

@Moz I agree there's not much action or scares, and no real puzzles. Resident Evil 4 had more substantial puzzles and they were always considered flimsy and just there to break up the action, but i liked them, they weren't redundant.

But i thought the house section was amazing, the first time when the first person view has improved the game because I'm not finding the shooting anywhere near as good as Resident Evil 4. The pistol sounds weak, i miss the laser aim, i miss having to stand still to shoot, i miss the volume of enemies. I'm not one who pines for old Resident Evil with the scarcity of ammo and infrequent encounters.

While the castle section in this is full of stunning visual detail, what made RE4 so engaging was how it always would transform the environment into action scenarios. I'm finding in this the environment is just there. It didn't help that the cutscenes are so frequent and move you around, so it feels like you aren't exploring yourself, you're just participating inbetween. RE4 never made sense how its environments connected but i didn't care, the excitement was in always going forward into the unknown.

This has very little of that. What made the house so good is for the first time you don't know where it will go.

 

Spoiler

I'm not seeing a vast difference in quality between what PT was doing and what this is. PT has the advantage of being considered pure because it came before and was never fleshed out, so could remain more subtle, but they're both playing the same tricks. The photoreal corridors are just so effective to me. The expectation of something. If people aren't remotely unnerved by any of that sequence then i don't think there's any game that will. 

When i watched Audition it was as creepy as i wanted it to be. The game has completely failed to capture you if walking down some steps in pitch darkness is no big deal while there's weird creaking sounds in the background, and a grotesque deformed baby suddenly coming at you is described as no more than something to casually walk around. I felt vulnerable throughout that whole bit, hectically running to the lift and pressing at the buttons like my life depended on it. 

The doll bit has a kind of surreal air to it which i liked. I'm not sure what people expect when everything else you meet in a Resident Evil game grows into a monster with 8 legs and starts climbing the walls, where is the room to surprise really. 

 

None of it made narrative sense but when do things ever in Resident Evil? Make me engaged to want to see what happens next is all i ask for really, i don't want any sense or logic.  

 

Spoiler

I've just done the part with the fungus. This game has the best graphics I've ever seen. I don't play much of the AAA releases though. The detail in games is such now that i can't even take it all in, i had this with call of duty zombies, you're not really wanting to look at how detailed the ruined environments are, you're just seeing the open spaces, doorways, how it all connects, all the debris and fire just fades away. I'm not looking to be impressed. 

 

The detail in this is just mind boggling and overwhelming to me. I know we always think that the graphics of the present represent the most photorealistic we will ever see, but i think it's true now. 

 

[NecroMorrius]

It feels flat. It feels like Vader Immortal or something like that - a bit crap, on rails and simplistic, but buoyed by the novelty of VR. Except it’s not in VR!
 

Because I’m not finding it scary I’m sprinting everywhere, which is probably hampering the atmosphere even more. I didn’t find the bit you described scary at all, I just ran down the stairs. What was that thing, why was it there? It seemed really silly. 

[Triple A]

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hmm, struggling to get spoilers working on here atm, has it changed from the following (iirc of course):

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

 

?

[Kayin Amoh]

1 hour ago, Triple A said:

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hmm, struggling to get spoilers working on here atm, has it changed from the following (iirc of course):

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

 

?

 

Use the eyeball thing at the top of the post in the toolbar over the text you want to spoiler.

Spoiler

Like so.

 

[Jamie John]

8 hours ago, Moz said:

It feels flat. It feels like Vader Immortal or something like that - a bit crap, on rails and simplistic, but buoyed by the novelty of VR. Except it’s not in VR!

 

I agree with this, to an extent - there isn't that much to get your teeth into in terms of mechanics. You shoot, you run, you interact with specific, heavily signposted objects. That's more or less your lot. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the VR version is available at some point soon, maybe as a PSVR2 launch game.

 

That being said, I'm still having a fun time with it and am looking forward to probably finishing it this weekend. It's not breaking any new ground, but it goes down easy and it looks and sounds magnificent.

[NecroMorrius]

I reckon it would make an AMAZING VR game, for what it's worth.

[Pug]

The absence of object damage ruins the immersion and makes it feel like a tech demo a bit for me.

A bullet hole/dent in a wine bottle? Yuk.

 

Not a fan of the typewriter save system either but as long as quick resume works it's not an issue I guess.

 

I sound like a moaning Minnie but I am getting enjoyment from it. 

 

[Majora]

Now I've finished, I stand by my earlier assessment that it's like a Resi greatest hits that ends up being jack of all trades but master of unlocking none.

 

I did enjoy it quite a lot though. It's always fun to blast through a very expensive, immaculately produced rollercoaster ride like this. Visually I found it pretty astonishing and you can't deny the variety on show. While it can feel quite disjointed, each individual area is memorable in its own way and it never reaches the lows of, say, the ship in Resi 7. It's also a much better game than REmake 3 which, town opening aside, didn't impress me.

 

That said, I agree with the idea that it's quite limited. Though it could be summarised as REmake 2, 4 and 7 in a blender, it is only superficially so.

 

The combat feels most similar to 4 but, possibly partly because of the narrow FOV and first person view, most of it takes place in very narrow corridors and areas. Only very sporadically do the encounters have the dynanicism of those in 4. For many encounters I was just popping the heads off enemies at the other end of a corridor using the pistol.

 

There are areas that feel more reminiscent of REmake 2, like the castle, but this doesn't quite hit the spot either. Though lavishly rendered, it kind of misses what made an area like the police station great. You are very much led around it by the nose, never really having to consider how to get from A to B to C or what path you might want to take next considering the resources you have. It gives the impression of openness but in reality you don't have a great deal of autonomy.

 

You also have elements of being stalked, like in 2 and 7, but again it just doesn't have the same impact. The section of 7 where you played cat and mouse with members of the family was absolutely nerve shredding whereas I never got much sense of threat from the stalkers in this.

 

Even for a Resi game, where I tend to go in with the mindset that the story and writing are going to be camp ridiculousness, this was very poorly told. Beyond Ethan's core main objective, I thought they did a pretty terrible job of outlining the family's relationships, motivations and why pretty much anything was happening for most of the game. And Ethan is just drab idiocy personified.

 

If that sounds overly negative, it isn't really meant to be. It's very easy to play through, enjoy and revel in its nonsense. And it is memorable, despite my misgivings. But I think a second play through might expose its failings more in terms of lack of meaningful agency so I don't think I'll be doing that.

 

I would say first half of Resi 7 >>> Resi 8 >>>>>> second half of Resi 7.

[Triple A]

Spoiler

About the Chris Redfield bit at the end (super cathartic BTW and a great reward for the earlier survival gameplay - clever segue into Mercenaries etc. as well) - part of me really wants to see Capcom take Activision down a notch with a killer military FPS (though I wouldn't want that to remove from all the other good stuff Capcom is doing).  They're almost there with the core mechanics and feel already, even with everything else that went into Village! 

 

[Calashnikov]

1 hour ago, Majora said:

If that sounds overly negative, it isn't really meant to be.

It really does

[Ry]

The one thing I noticed about this is that the graphics regarding the faces/facial animations are far worse than RE2 and 3 remakes. Even 7 was better I think. Far more expressive. 

 

Not bad by any means but playing RE3 again just shows how better they are in that. 

[Stevie]

On 08/05/2021 at 00:09, Kayin Amoh said:

I still find the Lady D fawning weird as hell.

 

Shes one of the most interesting and attractive characters in the Resident Evil universe, and she has a great sense of fashion. Its a shame she had to leave the game so early as she did. If they had made the upper half of her final form a bit more humanlike I would still have loved to date her. 

[Hanzo the Razor]

3 minutes ago, Stevie said:

 

Shes one of the most interesting and attractive characters in the Resident Evil universe, and she has a great sense of fashion. Its a shame she had to leave the game so early as she did. If they had made the upper half of her final form a bit more humanlike I would still have loved to date her. 

 

You're weird.

[Calashnikov]

1 hour ago, Pug said:

The absence of object damage ruins the immersion and makes it feel like a tech demo a bit for me.

A bullet hole/dent in a wine bottle? Yuk.

 

Not a fan of the typewriter save system either but as long as quick resume works it's not an issue I guess.

 

I sound like a moaning Minnie but I am getting enjoyment from it. 

 

If a love letter to the series such as this scrapped the typewriter save system it’d be me fucking damaging objects and putting bullet holes and dents in stuff 

[Pug]

[Majora]

1 hour ago, Calashnikov said:

It really does

 

I said it's an entertaining, immaculately produced, memorable, varied rollercoaster ride 

 

All I'm really getting at is that it feels like 3 'quite good' versions of 3 different flavours of Resi mushed into one package and in a way it kind of has me hankering to play the real deals again because the individual components don't hit the series heights for me.

 

It is pretty consistent by Resi standards though. I don't think the second half dips in quality nearly as much as many of the other games do.

[NecroMorrius]

3 hours ago, Pug said:

The absence of object damage ruins the immersion and makes it feel like a tech demo a bit for me.

A bullet hole/dent in a wine bottle? Yuk.

 

Not a fan of the typewriter save system either but as long as quick resume works it's not an issue I guess.

 

I sound like a moaning Minnie but I am getting enjoyment from it. 

 

 

Never mind all the bioweapons on display, I want to know how they made the bulletproof porcelain dolls!

 

I don't think the typewriter system actually matters much, I've bailed on it a few times and gone back in and it seems to autosave constantly. 

[Calashnikov]

58 minutes ago, Pug said:

A Resident Evil game without typewriter saving? Fuck me, man.

[Stevie]

3 hours ago, Hanzo the Razor said:

 

You're weird.

It may have been satire. I’m still weird though.

[DarhkFox]

I 100% guarantee this game will at least come to PSVR. This game at times just feels like it should be in VR, looks to me it's been made that way for the upcoming headset.

 

The typewriters, surely are there for old school sake - it auto saves anyway.

[PyramidFace]

The typewriters seem more there to indicate 'this is a safe room' than to function as an actual save system. Given, y'know, that the game is autosaving all the time. Strange complaint.

[NecroMorrius]

2 hours ago, Darhkwing said:

I 100% guarantee this game will at least come to PSVR. This game at times just feels like it should be in VR, looks to me it's been made that way for the upcoming headset.

 

The typewriters, surely are there for old school sake - it auto saves anyway.

 

I know I (and by extension we) are repeating ourselves now, but the 

Spoiler

fish bloke windmill 

section might as well have THIS WAS BUILT PRIMARILY FOR VR flashing on screen at all times. It's hard to describe exactly why, but if I had to have a go I'd say it was the lack of interactivity beyond a few button presses, the overly easy puzzles, the very simple to navigate areas, and the reliance on a sense of spectacle and more importantly scale to sell the moment, which doesn't really land on a monitor/TV. It really, really feels like I'm playing a VR game. It would even explain why Lady D is ten foot high.

 

Edit: Oh, and there we go.

 

 

The very simple geometry of most of the bossfights/chases is a dead giveaway to me.

[NecroMorrius]

I died for the first time late into the game because I got stuck in the geometry. It immediately pops up asking "Do you want to turn casual mode on????? More aim assist?????". I don't even have aim assist switched on because it messes up your ability to aim. This game is so scared to challenge the player in any way, and it's really bumming me out. Right at the start it ought to have three difficulties - story mode (in which you can't die), normal mode, and survival mode, with survival listed as "for people familiar with Resident Evil or survival horror".

 

With normal mode as it is, the puzzles and gameplay are pretty much out of a children's game, wrapped up in an violent but not very consistent or thoughtful presentation. In my experience horror games are hard, because they're for adults by definition and they want to evoke a sense of dread and helplessness. Maybe this came in a little hot without any rebalancing for keyboard and mouse. I'm seeing sections which simply don't work properly because I'm killing enemies so quickly. I'm clearing out whole areas with the sniper rifle before I progress, or I'm standing in a corner and killing these sub-zombie dumbos as they wander towards me in small numbers. Then I'll run through the level and pick up 20 items and pull a couple of levers which make a door open very very slowly. Evidently I'm supposed to be in combat while the door slowly opens.

 

I've got stacks of throwable weapons I've never used too. Everything falls to the mighty pistol headshot which has laserbeam range so I'm juggling between that and the sniper rifle which you can use to hipfire and pop heads at point blank range. And I've still only used guard once, by mistake, when my Apex Legends muscle memory kicked in and I tried do a jump and kick! I didn't pop the achievement for counterattacking until the third area of the game.

 

Perhaps they're taking the mainline into a more casual space while reserving the remakes for the more diehard fans. Or maybe it really comes alive at higher difficulties. But for sure, if you're a dab hand at survival horror or if you're playing on a mouse, avoid normal like the plague.

 

The fourth part is pretty much just

Spoiler

Quake 2

though, so that's fun.

[Jamie John]

Want to know something cool? I'm into the game's final act now and unlocked the second pistol and second shotgun hours ago. Since then I've been merrily upgrading these two weapons the entire time, completely ignoring the now far weaker handgun and shotgun you initially find. Of course, at the end of the three hour session I spent on this tonight, during which I defeated about three more bosses, a handful of mini-bosses and several enemy hordes, I realised that I'd completely forgotten to update my weapon shortcuts with the new, better, upgraded pistol and handgun, and that, therefore, I've been using the initial variants of these weapons for the entire game thus far, wondering why they were doing so little damage.

 

Spoiler

 

I still haven't died yet, however.