The failure of Resident Evil. An epic rant....

[Zombietoid]

How exactly is this a RE game? The last time I checked, RE was about zombies and the Umbrella Corporation. Now you're fighting vampire type enemies, and things that resemble werewolves. And the Duke? How does he know who Ethan Winters is, exactly?

Oh, and I never did like this series having vendors you get stuff from. In the old games, you had to find bullets and pretty much everything else from searching for it yourself. But not anymore.

RE4 was when the franchise started to jump the shark. Soon, every character will have enhanced agility like Project Alice from the Hollywood movies.

Just end the series somehow, Capcom.

 

[Nesh]

You have a point, but I did love Resi 7. The character was vulnerable and had to be careful with resources.
I have no opinion about Resi 8. But yeah I loved the zombies and X-Files style mystery of the original.
The game was actually going downhill since Resi 3 I think. Thats when it started becoming more action oriented and filled you with ammo.
But I agree Resi 4 is when the series completely lost it's identity

 

[Zombietoid]

To me, this series isn't even really worthy of being called Resident Evil anymore. I'm not gonna say to you that the game itself may not be enjoyable. But I care deeply about the lore and the legacy of the series, and this game is so far removed from what the games typically yield.

Like, just what the hell is up with the new merchant and these vampire type ladies? The Duke looks totally ridiculous. Keep in mind here, this was a franchise that started about bioweapons. Now it's focusing on folklore.

I don't know. Maybe it's just me.

 

[eastmen]

I remember going to my cousins and he loved RE and he loaded it up and was like you gotta play this its amazing. I played about 15 minutes of it and told him oh its great but lets go play basketball. I didn't have the heart to tell him but it had to be one of the worse games I have ever played. The tank mechanics to me were just bad. The constant loading gong from area to area... bad. Top it all off but it looked like ass

I dunno , I have never been a fan of this series. I thought 4 was okay when i played it on my gamecube ( I only had the dreamcast/ gamecube that gen) But I just never bothered with any after that.

I am also of the feeling that the saturn/playstation / n64 should have skipped 3d and just stayed 2d systems. None of them did 3d well at all.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

You are 100% correct. I hated most of the 3D games of that era on console. RE was hot garbage IMO.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

You are 100% correct. I hated most of the 3D games of that era on console. RE was hot garbage IMO.

It was an epic console era for me. I had not touched a console since the Atari 2600 but games like Tomb Raider, Wipeout and G-Police let me play the types of games I had never played before. I was in my 20s though and was not spending a lot of time playing games outside of strategy games on PC.

 

[Nesh]

I remember going to my cousins and he loved RE and he loaded it up and was like you gotta play this its amazing. I played about 15 minutes of it and told him oh its great but lets go play basketball. I didn't have the heart to tell him but it had to be one of the worse games I have ever played. The tank mechanics to me were just bad. The constant loading gong from area to area... bad. Top it all off but it looked like ass

I dunno , I have never been a fan of this series. I thought 4 was okay when i played it on my gamecube ( I only had the dreamcast/ gamecube that gen) But I just never bothered with any after that.

I am also of the feeling that the saturn/playstation / n64 should have skipped 3d and just stayed 2d systems. None of them did 3d well at all.

I agree and disagree.
Resident Evil wasnt easy to pick up and play, but once I got the hung of it, oh my god what an experience it was. I dont think a 2D version would ever come close.
I remember when I plugged in my PS1 for the first time in 1996 and popped in Wipeout. My senses were blown away.
Not all games were good in 3D, many sucked, and visuals were blocky, controls were a mess. But damn a lot were astounding and a true next gen experience.
Some games were a revelation.
The best 2D games on the consoles were awesome but they show clearly that 2D in terms of new experiences didnt have as much potential.
The Saturn and the PS1 were 2D and 3D powerhouses so we got both worlds. People wanted 3D next gen experiences, hence why Grandia as great as it was, it could never reach the spectacle and richness of Final Fantasy games. And they did 3D very well in the proper hands and for their time.
Sega Rally, Wipeout, Ridge Race, Soul Blade, Soul Reaver, Final Fantasy 7, Panzer Dragoon, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Virtua Fighter, Tomb Raider, Nights, Crash Bandicoot, Klonoa, Vagrant Story, Ace Combat, Tekken, Metal Gear Solid, Super Mario 64 etc, all these games set new standards or shined as titles because of the assist of 3D.

 

[milk]

I remember going to my cousins and he loved RE and he loaded it up and was like you gotta play this its amazing. I played about 15 minutes of it and told him oh its great but lets go play basketball. I didn't have the heart to tell him but it had to be one of the worse games I have ever played. The tank mechanics to me were just bad. The constant loading gong from area to area... bad. Top it all off but it looked like ass

I dunno , I have never been a fan of this series. I thought 4 was okay when i played it on my gamecube ( I only had the dreamcast/ gamecube that gen) But I just never bothered with any after that.

I am also of the feeling that the saturn/playstation / n64 should have skipped 3d and just stayed 2d systems. None of them did 3d well at all.

Yeah, I never thought the original games were at a properly playable state. This alone in the dark fixed camera + character relative tank controls is just too cumbersome in my opinion. I only ever endured them in Grim Fandango and Monkey Island 4, but those were not action games, and even there I was wishing they were point and click games all the way through. I did try to endure them in the little know AitD clone "Time Gate" but couldn't help but abbandon the thing midway through.

Ironically, I thought RE4 was a overdue step in the right direction gameplay-wise, although I cant comment on theme and story since i had not famirialized myself with those. I only watched other people play RE4 though, and was always impressed by how Next-Gen™ it looked and felt (to mid 2000's standards)
When I finnaly tried it out, last year, I could not be bothered either. The stiff controls and no walking while aming... While still better than the first 2.5d games, were still too hard a pill to swallow for me.

As an outsider looking in then, it always felt to me like the larger overarching thematic pattern across the franchise is action/survival games that ape B-horror-movie tropes and typical motifs, each few games focusing on a different flavor or subgenre of those. So the first one was more of a haunted house style B-movie mish mashed with bio-hazzard type stuff. 2nd one was more in line with your typical zombie movie. 4th was aping the horror movies about ocultist villages hidden in distant corners of europe (another rich horror subgenre) and the recent VR ones seem to be going for a Blair Whitch project kind of thing.

Maybe if you see the franchise less as a linear story, and more as a brand name for a certain kind of gameplay/thematic aspiration without such rigid linear connection between sequels (even though they do repeat characters and loosely connect the storylines) you would be not bothered. It doesn't ruin Final Fantasy or Zelda for their respective fans, why should it ruin RE?

 

[JoeJ]

Fixed camera was always a showstopper for me, speaking more of Alone In the Dark. I knew RE only from watching others playing. Though, seeing them sneaking around, searching for some ammo or healthy plants felt tense. I can imagine the games had some depth.
Third person works much better, especially on console. But still, horror in third person? That's laughable! It must be first person ofc, no?
Then i've discovered Penumbra, the birth if indie horror genre. Wow! Game of the decade. Truly terrifying, and all this without jump scares or any shooting.
After that i was happy to see the big ones go first person too. RE7 was great to me.

But i'm not interested in The Village. I expect the usual franchise mistake: The same game, just bigger, but likely they'll forget to build up story. Just rely on the former game being good, through the player into the next with same mechanics and recipe just bigger, and all will be fine? Result is often boring.

We'll see - maybe i'm wrong. But i would have less prejudices if they would sell this as something new, without that RE logo on it. Big franchise name is no promise of quality to me. It's a bit like with horror movies. The higher the number after the title, the lower my expectation. I think the industry generally overestimates the value of their trademarks.

 

[eastmen]

I agree and disagree.
Resident Evil wasnt easy to pick up and play, but once I got the hung of it, oh my god what an experience it was. I dont think a 2D version would ever come close.
I remember when I plugged in my PS1 for the first time in 1996 and popped in Wipeout. My senses were blown away.
Not all games were good in 3D, many sucked, and visuals were blocky, controls were a mess. But damn a lot were astounding and a true next gen experience.
Some games were a revelation.
The best 2D games on the consoles were awesome but they show clearly that 2D in terms of new experiences didnt have as much potential.
The Saturn and the PS1 were 2D and 3D powerhouses so we got both worlds. People wanted 3D next gen experiences, hence why Grandia as great as it was, it could never reach the spectacle and richness of Final Fantasy games. And they did 3D very well in the proper hands and for their time.
Sega Rally, Wipeout, Ridge Race, Soul Blade, Soul Reaver, Final Fantasy 7, Panzer Dragoon, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Virtua Fighter, Tomb Raider, Nights, Crash Bandicoot, Klonoa, Vagrant Story, Ace Combat, Tekken, Metal Gear Solid, Super Mario 64 etc, all these games set new standards or shined as titles because of the assist of 3D.

I dunno man. I made retropies for my family and the games everyone plays both old timers and the newbies are the 2d games, they will all load up something 3d from the ps1 or saturn or n64 but they quickly go back to all the 2ds.

I think its a testament to the fact when you look at games no one is saying OMG remaster Super Mario brothers ! but everyone is clamoring for remakes of the ps1 and even ps2 era. But when a lot of the remakes come like FF they change the very core of the game.

Also when I look at some of your games listed tehre. Sega Rally , Wipeout , Ridge racer , Slould series , Virtua Fighter those are all arcade games that were ported. Then I look and see some old favorites on the list. Panzer dragoon... its a rail shooter and the graphics aged extremely poorly (I am a person who owns both saturn ones and saga still) Tomb Raider is also extremely hard to go back too. Super Mario 64 had to have its source code leaked and rebuilt on pc to fix the horrible water performance. Nights is a 2.5d which was a lot of fun but broke apart in the only true 3d portion of the game (when your not a flying night)

I think those games would have been just as possible if not better if we never had the saturn , ps1 or n64 and instead the first 3d game system was the Dreamcast. All those games would have been done so much better on that system

 

[Nesh]

I dunno man. I made retropies for my family and the games everyone plays both old timers and the newbies are the 2d games, they will all load up something 3d from the ps1 or saturn or n64 but they quickly go back to all the 2ds.

I think its a testament to the fact when you look at games no one is saying OMG remaster Super Mario brothers ! but everyone is clamoring for remakes of the ps1 and even ps2 era. But when a lot of the remakes come like FF they change the very core of the game.

Also when I look at some of your games listed tehre. Sega Rally , Wipeout , Ridge racer , Slould series , Virtua Fighter those are all arcade games that were ported. Then I look and see some old favorites on the list. Panzer dragoon... its a rail shooter and the graphics aged extremely poorly (I am a person who owns both saturn ones and saga still) Tomb Raider is also extremely hard to go back too. Super Mario 64 had to have its source code leaked and rebuilt on pc to fix the horrible water performance. Nights is a 2.5d which was a lot of fun but broke apart in the only true 3d portion of the game (when your not a flying night)

I think those games would have been just as possible if not better if we never had the saturn , ps1 or n64 and instead the first 3d game system was the Dreamcast. All those games would have been done so much better on that system

Well I think what you are describing is how well those 3D games aged. Thats a different thing from how fun these games were in their time. If these games were a bad experience nobody would have been asking for sequels and remakes.
I dont believe that how we see those games today can be proof that those consoles had to be 2D.
3D had to start from somewhere and what started with the PS1, N64 and the Saturn was the foundation for the experience we got on the later consoles Without those 3D games we wouldnt have seen the later advancements and the more amazing sequels.
We were truly crazy for those games. We had fun. We had memories. They were platform sellers. Thats why people want remasters and remakes. They want to relive them with mature technology. I cant go back into playing MGS1 but I finished that game like probably 5 times. I spent hours on Wipeout trying to master every corner. And to be honest 2D racing games aged worse than Sega Rally, Ridge Racer and Wipeout. VF2 in 2D didnt work. The gameplay was functional only in 3D. We spend hours on those games because they were good.
Panzer Dragoon 2 also aged better than any of the 2D railed shooters like After Burner and Space Harrier and played much better. Final Fantasy games before 7 also aged badly.
Platform games, sidescroll shooters and 2D fighting games are the genres that never age in 2D. But what new gameplay experiences could they have offered for the other genres? I dont think much.
Neo Geo was that super cool 32 bit console for 2D games. But we all know, that despite how awesome these games were, they could only go so far.

 

[eastmen]

Well I think what you are describing is how well those 3D games aged. Thats a different thing from how fun these games were in their time. If these games were a bad experience nobody would have been asking for sequels and remakes.
I dont believe that how we see those games today can be proof that those consoles had to be 2D.
3D had to start from somewhere and what started with the PS1, N64 and the Saturn was the foundation for the experience we got on the later consoles Without those 3D games we wouldnt have seen the later advancements and the more amazing sequels.
We were truly crazy for those games. We had fun. We had memories. They were platform sellers. Thats why people want remasters and remakes. They want to relive them with mature technology. I cant go back into playing MGS1 but I finished that game like probably 5 times. I spent hours on Wipeout trying to master every corner. And to be honest 2D racing games aged worse than Sega Rally, Ridge Racer and Wipeout. VF2 in 2D didnt work. The gameplay was functional only in 3D. We spend hours on those games because they were good.
Panzer Dragoon 2 also aged better than any of the 2D railed shooters like After Burner and Space Harrier and played much better. Final Fantasy games before 7 also aged badly.
Platform games, sidescroll shooters and 2D fighting games are the genres that never age in 2D. But what new gameplay experiences could they have offered for the other genres? I dont think much.
Neo Geo was that super cool 32 bit console for 2D games. But we all know, that despite how awesome these games were, they could only go so far.

Wow we are on such different sides of this discussion.

The majority of games for me on the saturn/ n64 and ps1 are forgettable there are about 12 total games from them that I would say were foundational. Even your list the majority of games came from the arcades.

Sega Rally was an arcade game and yes it was amazing and I did enjoy playing it with my net link attachment but like I said it existed in the arcades and were a direct lineage from Virtua racing and daytona. FYI Virtua racing came out on the 32x before it came to the saturn and heck even the genesis had it !

Also lets not fight about space harrier and panzer dragoon 2.... I love both for different reasons. On the Final Fantasy games.... again we disagree. I think the ones post 6 aged poorly and after giving some a try I have stopped caring about that series. The original ones I can go back and play endlessly. I have replayed 4 of the FF games in the last 5 years and I bought and beat all the old dragon warrior (dragon quest) games on my phone when they came out.

I think we would have been fine if the 3D generation was pushed back to the next gen machines. Imagine how much of a better experience RE1 would have been on the dreamcast . Apparently it started as a Super nes game and then a full 3d game but had to settle for prerendered back rounds. I also believe part of the controller issue is because it predates the dual analog sticks on the playstation.

Just look at the difference a generation makes.
RE1 PSone

Code Veronica Dreamcast

and then considering its in the same gen as the dreamcast there is re4 on gamecube

 

[Nesh]

Wow we are on such different sides of this discussion.

The majority of games for me on the saturn/ n64 and ps1 are forgettable there are about 12 total games from them that I would say were foundational. Even your list the majority of games came from the arcades.

Sega Rally was an arcade game and yes it was amazing and I did enjoy playing it with my net link attachment but like I said it existed in the arcades and were a direct lineage from Virtua racing and daytona. FYI Virtua racing came out on the 32x before it came to the saturn and heck even the genesis had it !

Also lets not fight about space harrier and panzer dragoon 2.... I love both for different reasons. On the Final Fantasy games.... again we disagree. I think the ones post 6 aged poorly and after giving some a try I have stopped caring about that series. The original ones I can go back and play endlessly. I have replayed 4 of the FF games in the last 5 years and I bought and beat all the old dragon warrior (dragon quest) games on my phone when they came out.

I think we would have been fine if the 3D generation was pushed back to the next gen machines. Imagine how much of a better experience RE1 would have been on the dreamcast . Apparently it started as a Super nes game and then a full 3d game but had to settle for prerendered back rounds. I also believe part of the controller issue is because it predates the dual analog sticks on the playstation.

Just look at the difference a generation makes.
RE1 PSone

Code Veronica Dreamcast

and then considering its in the same gen as the dreamcast there is re4 on gamecube

Why does it matter if these games were in the arcades? Or why does it matter if Virtua Racing existed on the genesis/32X?
It was Sega Rally, Ridge Racer and Wipeout that stood out on the consoles NOT virtua racing. 3D games existed before the Saturn and the PS1 and didnt make as much of a sensation except in the arcades. Some of these arcade games were enjoyed on the console for the first time by many people. My first experience with Sega Rally, Ridge Racer and Virtua Fighter 2 was on consoles. It was amazing to be able to play these arcade games on your home console.
The next gen machines wouldnt have been what they were if there was no consumer 3D products before hand for the devs and engineers to get experience and work from there.
Why do you nullify these great experiences people had back then? What makes you so sure that the project that started on the SNES as a different game and became Resident Evil later would have been just as impactful?
You probably didnt have as much of a blast back then but we did have unforgettable experiences. If games didnt age well, it is a different matter. There is no problem if these games found their audience on the 32bit consoles and later on the Dreamcast as sequels. A lot of these titles might not have existed or might have started as 2D games that would have been completely unrelated to their 3D versions on next gen. Just as the new Final Fantasy games play differently from the NES and SNES versions.
Personally I replayed some of those old school PS1 games on my PS3 and enjoyed them.

edit: Btw I didnt enjoy Code Veronica as much as I enjoyed Resi 1 and Resi 2

 

[eastmen]

Why does it matter if these games were in the arcades? Or why does it matter if Virtua Racing existed on the genesis/32X?
It was Sega Rally, Ridge Racer and Wipeout that stood out on the consoles NOT virtua racing. 3D games existed before the Saturn and the PS1 and didnt make as much of a sensation except in the arcades. Some of these arcade games were enjoyed on the console for the first time by many people. My first experience with Sega Rally, Ridge Racer and Virtua Fighter 2 was on consoles. It was amazing to be able to play these arcade games on your home console.
The next gen machines wouldnt have been what they were if there was no consumer 3D products before hand for the devs and engineers to get experience and work from there.
Why do you nullify these great experiences people had back then? What makes you so sure that the project that started on the SNES as a different game and became Resident Evil later would have been just as impactful?
You probably didnt have as much of a blast back then but we did have unforgettable experiences. If games didnt age well, it is a different matter. There is no problem if these games found their audience on the 32bit consoles and later on the Dreamcast as sequels. A lot of these titles might not have existed or might have started as 2D games that would have been completely unrelated to their 3D versions on next gen. Just as the new Final Fantasy games play differently from the NES and SNES versions.
Personally I replayed some of those old school PS1 games on my PS3 and enjoyed them.

edit: Btw I didnt enjoy Code Veronica as much as I enjoyed Resi 1 and Resi 2

Why ?

3D had to start from somewhere and what started with the PS1, N64 and the Saturn was the foundation for the experience we got on the later consoles Without those 3D games we wouldnt have seen the later advancements and the more amazing sequels.

3D did start some where on the arcade units which could costs thousands of dollars vs a home console that was $200-$500. We had small attempts to get 3d started on the super nes (star fox) genesis (32x) and then the first 3d consoles in the psone , saturn , n64. I continue to say that if these systems were 2d only or 2d mainly with some 3d (like the super and genesis) we would have been better off and nothing major would have been lost.

I had a great experience on my saturn playing mostly 2d games and was extremely glad when the dreamcast came out so i could play decent 3d games. Of course I also built a new pc 97 with a P2 300mhz and a riva 128 and got to play ultima online that year and other games.

of course gaming on pc fixed most of the issues I had with the psone and saturn. I owned a saturn as I've said before and one of the 3d games I really enjoyed was tomb raider. Of course part 2 wasn't released on the saturn. But luckly i played it on my pc. On the pc it was night and day vs the saturn or even playing it on my friends psone

here DF compares part one on the ps1/saturn/dos/win95.

I think its important to see how poor games of that time were. The saturn was pretty bad , the playstation was next up. But the pc was the best. Just the calrity is amazing on the pc vs the playstation. Then of course you move from the software pc version to all the different graphics cards .


We are just going to continue disagree on this . So no reason to keep arguing. For instance , i would have preferred FF7 to be 2d like the super nintendo games lol

 

[Zombietoid]

My user name on here is from Alone in the Dark 2.

 

[Nesh]

Why ?

3D did start some where on the arcade units which could costs thousands of dollars vs a home console that was $200-$500. We had small attempts to get 3d started on the super nes (star fox) genesis (32x) and then the first 3d consoles in the psone , saturn , n64. I continue to say that if these systems were 2d only or 2d mainly with some 3d (like the super and genesis) we would have been better off and nothing major would have been lost.

I had a great experience on my saturn playing mostly 2d games and was extremely glad when the dreamcast came out so i could play decent 3d games. Of course I also built a new pc 97 with a P2 300mhz and a riva 128 and got to play ultima online that year and other games.

of course gaming on pc fixed most of the issues I had with the psone and saturn. I owned a saturn as I've said before and one of the 3d games I really enjoyed was tomb raider. Of course part 2 wasn't released on the saturn. But luckly i played it on my pc. On the pc it was night and day vs the saturn or even playing it on my friends psone

here DF compares part one on the ps1/saturn/dos/win95.

I think its important to see how poor games of that time were. The saturn was pretty bad , the playstation was next up. But the pc was the best. Just the calrity is amazing on the pc vs the playstation. Then of course you move from the software pc version to all the different graphics cards .


We are just going to continue disagree on this . So no reason to keep arguing. For instance , i would have preferred FF7 to be 2d like the super nintendo games lol

The only thing I know is that I had fun with all these 3D games on PS1 and as for TR, apart from PC having cleaner visuals, the game plays exactly like the PS1 version.
So are we talking about how un-fun 32 bit console games were because they werent good in 3D back then or how clean they looked?

 

[Johnny Awesome]

To expound a little on that era for me:

Tomb Raider and Wipeout were good and we had a great time with Twisted Metal.

VF2, Sega Rally, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, and NiGHTS were really good.

Most other 3D games of that gen, include RE were absolute trash (I might be forgetting a couple gems).

There's a reason why Killer Instinct is essentially 2D now and platformers like Rayman Legends, Sonic and Ori went back to their 2D roots. Certain genres mostly suck in 3D and they were trying to make everything under the sun 3D back then.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Most other 3D games of that gen, include RE were absolute trash (I might be forgetting a couple gems).

Introducing a real third plane (3D) really introduced a whole bunch of control and camera issues that many developers took a while to get to grips it. It didn't help that the original PlayStation controller only shipped with a d-pad and although Sony introduced the Dual Analogue controller during the generation, most games just didn't use even one analogue stick, let alone two.

Put me in the camp of not enjoying the Resident Evil controls, from the fixed cameras hiding things your character should be able to see, the 'tank controls' and that you could literally only do one action at a time. You can walk, or you can orient yourself or you can aim, which made it frustrating for me.

 

[Nesh]

Resident Evil is an interesting example of game design due to the limitations and challenges introduced at the time. Yes the gameplay mechanics and controls werent comfortable.
Where you would expect them to destroy the fun factor in another game, these problems contributed in Resident Evil's theme and genre.
The developers tried to circumvent or compensate with careful camera and enemy placement. At these limitations elevated the sense of danger, uncertainty and atmosphere.
We all hated the controls, but those who enjoyed Resident Evil, were unknowingly enjoying its consequences, which was a sense of insecurity and fear. It added to the vulnerability.
Once these controls were removed, we never asked them back. Modern controls are enjoyable, but Resident Evil lost something we have a nostalgia for but it cannot be reproduced and be well received in this time and age.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

That's the excuse people use for explaining why RE controls were utter crap. It's bullshit IMO.