I finished Resident Evil 5 a couple of days ago and Resident Evil 1 today (probably for the fifth time since years ago).
The difference between what defined Resident Evil as a survival horror game then compared to now is unbelievably huge.
But first here are my impressions of 5. Visuals were superb. If I didnt know it was a game and someone presented me the cut scenes as a CGI video I might have believed him. I often got the impression that it looked on par or better than the recent CGI resident evil movie. Capcom did a great job on that.
I also loved the reappearance of a certain monster enemy from the old
Now here is what I didn like.
I have said this before. The animations were the same from 4. The problem isnt just the fact that they are outdated and limited compared to other games but the fact that they best fit for an action game than a survival horror.
Having played Resident Evil 1 again I now know better what is going on with 5 in terms of controls. It is the fact that the controlled characters perform powerful moves, the fact that the game presents fast paced quick time events and that it presented very destructive reaction moves.
It brakes the sense of realism that the old games had.
But wait I dont think it started with 4 either. The problem started with Nemesis. After 2 Capcom gave to the player the ability to dodge attacks and threw more ammo and more powerful weapons.
In the original the sense of survival and horror was larger because weapons exposed tangibly their weaknesses against enemies. Moves were as many as that of a real person in a horrific dangerous situation. You had to think of your ammo and health supplies. Like it would have been in real life. And they were either too few or enough based on the player's patience to search and avoid danger.
If you wanted many ammo you had to go pass through many monsters in order to search and/or kill as less as possible which exposed you to danger. The other option was to use your ammo on them to reduce them and have less (ammo) for later which also exposed you to later danger from a different angle.
If you didnt do things right you might have reduced your chances to survive for the later parts of the game in general. This added realism.
From nemesis and later on I didnt worry much about ammo even if I wanted to. There were plenty to find in many areas. Especially for powerful weapons.
Then capcom also choose to make Resi more linear. You mostly move from one area to the next, therefore the design of the game changed which meant putting enough ammo in each area to move to next new one. Resident evil wasnt divided to levels originally.
It also started to partially predict/read your ammo status to drop you what you need. It gives birth to unlimited ammo now
Unlike 4 and 5, in 1 and 2 you had to find and discover the special places that had ammo and use them accordingly in order to survive.
Extra ammo hidden in places feel more like a bonus this time than an essential asset. I also didnt like the fact that I can play a single stage multiple times and pile up with treasures that tend to reappear in the same places and inside the same enemies. If you die you start the stage with the money, weapons and ammo you gained before you died. So the game often becomes easier and easier each time you die.
But even if I try to have as few ammo as possible and have only the gun and shotgun in my menu it still doesnt feel scary. It feels like a shoot em up where I make my life harder to kill targets in order to move forward.
It also pisses me off that the game progresses like this: Walk a bit, cut scene with enemies, shoot and kill, take key, open door to next area, cut scene with enemies, shoot and kill, take key etc etc. Surprisingly this is how Gears progresses too.
Which is bullshit and repetitive.
And now lets go to the sound effects.We dont need too much sound effects to create atmosphere. Resi 1 (not the director's cut version) and 2 succeeded because they had the right amount of effects. Silence created suspense too in some specific areas. In others the environment sound effects were enough. And in others there was a sense of a sinister presence and mystery in the music.
They replaced this with action packed soundtrack.
Why?
And why do I have to face enemies with guns so much?
And although I welcome co-op, having a partner that is as powerful as chuck norris (which happens to be as powerful as my own character) in a game that is supposed to be a survival horror makes it even less scary.
I miss narrow spaces with enemies that arent affected much by guns.
