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

Roger Cobb

Regular
I've been a huge fan of survival horror games since about 2000. I really don't like RE4 as a RE game. That isn't to say I totally 100% hate it, but it's a pretty stupid RE game in general. I've never found the merchant to be all that "realistic" to me, yet everybody finds him hilarious. To me, RE4 was sort of like the death of the franchise. Maybe they needed to change up some stuff, but the horror side of things got severely hacked up.

One thing that disappoints me is how RE entries 0, 1, 2 and so on was about setting up a future confrontation with Umbrella. When RE4 begins, they just announce that Umbrella 'went bankrupt' after people learned the truth of what happened with Raccoon City, and the rest of the game is a mindless shoot 'em up, with a RE2 character who may as well have been some other guy. He didn't even really feel like the same Leon S. Kennedy from RE2 either, giving his different look and voice, and so on and so forth.

RE5 isn't a bad game either, but it's not at all terrifying. I did think the 'Lost in Nightmares' DLC was better than RE5 was overall. Is it just me, or did they make Jill look like Nina Williams from Death by Degrees? LMAO.

The only RE game I can say I liked in recent years, that at least felt like the RE of old, was Revelations 2. Some people whine that it's a low budget episodic game, but I think the story and characters and especially the villain (Alex Wesker) made it a cut above RE5... and especially the multi-million heap of trash, that is RE6. It also felt genuinely scary in some parts, like when you cannot see the flying bugs and the screen flashes different colours to indicate one of these insects is nearby. However, it did also feel like a major rip off of The Last of Us.

Again, RE6 isn't terribly bad, as an action game. But as a horror game?! Nah. You can pass on it.

OK. So, "What about RE7?" - you may ask. Well... I think it has shades of RE, because it's set in a house and has the horror elements intact. But it only has shades of the earlier RE games. To me, it's a decent horror game. However, it does not really feel like a RE game whatsoever, besides having Chris "Redfield" in it. That's another thing that bothered me. Chris looked nothing like Chris from the previous sequels, but at least you still seen him in the cutscenes. In RE7, you mostly play as this Ethan guy, who is like an avatar, because you're supposed to see the world through his eyes. Not once is he shown in full. You get a glance of him in a flashback scene where he is launched through a wall by his possessed wife, Mia. Playing a man you never see but only hear, didn't appeal to me.

They were essentially copying Silent Hills. They also stole a bunch of ideas from horror movies. Like the part where Ethan is tied to a chair, being tormented by the weird family, is copied from the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

So now Capcom is working on Resident Evil Village. I think it looks good. But it looks also incredibly supernatural in tone. That's just not RE in my opinion. It's also looking suspiciously like a filler game, so they can cut and paste assets into the future RE4 remake that they are allegedly working on, according to Dusk Golem on Twitter. I'm not sure why Capcom thinks it's necessary to remake RE4 anyway, but okay.

The last point I want to make is that the RE2 and RE3 remakes were cookie cutter bull crap. They cut out enemies and areas, and they repeated boss fights. Some aspects of the RE2 reimagining were decent, like the gore. But all in all, I wasn't overly impressed. Nemesis in RE3 also mostly just appears in dull scripted segments, and he never shows up in the police station at all. They also used the same zombies and the gore was downgraded as well.

Capcom could do way better than they are doing. Maybe they've cleared out a lot of their employees. Perhaps the original developers have moved on, and rightfully so...

 
RE7 was meant to be played in VR, so will be REVIII
in that mode it became to me the best RE ever, immersion makes it all in this genre.
 
Tokyo Game Show is less than 2 weeks away.

I must say, I hope this is the last first person sequel for a while, as I prefer third person...
 
Resident Evil started deteriorating since Resi 3. Thats the point where it started transforming into a more action oriented game.
Weapons were becoming abundant, and characters could dodge/evade attacks.
Code Veronica was a mixture of splendor and mediocrity. The characters and story were flat. They started overdoing it with the supernatural elements from there.
Resi 4 was a great game, but I agree it was a different game. It became a super action packed game and the protagonist was no longer the vulnerable character that communicated the elements of survival.
Characters became Chuck Norris versions of their former selves. And was getting worse with each installment. 6 was a disgrace. I hated it as a game in total.
Resi 7 finally went back to it's survival horror atmosphere. But I agree the supernatural is way too much. But nevertheless, it is a much much better game than what we got since Resi 3 and finally the survival horror I felt in 1 and 2 came back in a different form. I endorsed Resi 7
 
I've always hated early RE as the controls are atrocious. RE4 looks like something I might like gameplay wise, but im not a big zombie fan.
 
RE7 is a really good game for survival horror fans, the problem is that it isn't Resident Evil.
Without the wee... er... herbs, I don't think I would call that game a Resident Evil game.
It's a game that has Resident Evil references in it so it can be called a Resident Evil game.

edit: having said that, there is nothing wrong with what Capcom is doing. A lot of game series have done it where number doesn't mean it's a continuation. But it felt a bit weird (at least for me) in RE case since it is the first game in the series that did this and I haven't played games in a long time. Only recently started playing games again and the first one that I've played was RE7 and I immediately think "Is this a Resident Evil game?"
 
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It's a pity that Capcom didn't try to bring back the Outbreak series, or at least create a somewhat similar side series with online co-op features. Many people demanded that Outbreak should come back for years now, but then we got something so inferior. :(

Chin up, though. Tokyo Game Show will feature Resident Evil Village, and we may even get a release date confirmation. We could also have the new Silent Hill game making an appearance. Assuming what Dusk Golem has said all year long isn't just hogwash, it would make sense to have it at a major Japanese event, since it is meant to be in development across in Japan. :D
 
I agree. I like the creepy piano music when you are inside the palace. It is scarier than RE4 and despite not being a numbered sequel, it is in fact the real sequel to RE2. RE3: Nemesis was basically made for contractual reasons, I believe, since CV was on the Dreamcast, prior to the CVX version coming to the PS2, etc.

OK. RE4 was actually pretty scary the first time I played it. Plus, the better gameplay was why there was no going back to the original style. In 2005, everybody was like, "The future is now". LMAO. But it felt more like a science fiction blockbuster than a standard 'B' horror flick. Looking back on it now though, it feels crazy to think it was even called RE4 at all - giving how disconnected it was to the other games in terms of the plot. Yet the early concept for RE4 had a ghost like "hook man" or something. :D

What do you think of the spin offs? They're all pretty rank, but Fongling is still pretty hot... :love:
 
Yea the whole plagas thing is very bad for re. 4 and 5 are good for what they are though action games. I honestly haven't really played any of the new ones since then. I have 7 on ps4 but never really got into it.


Revelations i hear is good and its on sale on steam i might snag it well see.
 
Revelations is not that bad but it looks like a phone game -I have both Revelations games-. I got relatively deep into the campaign but couldnt complete neither game.

As for RE7, I've completed it already but I am tempted to give it another try -gamepass PC version- using my new computer just to see how different it performs.
 
I like the first Revelations, but compared to the second one with Barry Burton as a playable character, it feels way more self-contained. It does set up the confrontation with Wesker, prior to RE5. Although the rest of the game is more so a separate adventure that doesn't feel related to the rest of the series, other than Capcom's frequent trickery of adding in a few references to past events. It is also never explains as to how Chris and Jill learned of Wesker's whereabouts.

Hopefully, Capcom eventually goes back to third person. I'm not the biggest fan of the first person viewpoint. But as long as the horror comes thick and fast, that's all that matters.

 
RE got rather....diluted after RE4. I feel RE5 and RE6 are multiplayer party games. There are two Wii shooting gallery RE games that are superficial but actually a bit fun. The Revelations were offshoots for portables and not exactly advancements for the series. There's also that RE Raccoon City game for more multiplayer.

RE7 was a reinvention of the series and shifted deeply toward horror. I appreciate that sort of thing but I can certainly see why it wouldn't work for some RE fans.
 
I think the RE2 section in The Darkside Chronicles (released on the Wii back in 2009) was a way more faithful remake than the actual RE2 remake from 2019 is. God, those plant men in the lab were just awful substitutes for the ivy variation from the original. They really did resemble weeds. Not to mention, they missed out spiders and crows in the RE2 and RE3 remakes. If they cannot code those type of things in a 2020 game, then there's really no ounce of hope for a Dino Crisis remake coming any day soon, other than the unofficial one that this Nemesis guy I know is involved with...

By the way, Resident Evil Village will be at Tokyo Game Show this Saturday. I'm more concerned about whether Konami will reveal anything about the rumoured Silent Hill soft reboot.
 
OK. I left this thread to go get a link and when I came back, the thread's text wasn't here. So I ain't typing it again.

Just watch my video about RE bletherings

M-Two are making RE4 and RE8 just looks stupid in general. So... that's why. Also, expect cut content and nonsense all around. Chris is also supposedly retiring. But this game got leaked and it looks awful...

 
I really only liked Code Veronica and a bit of RE4 (although the game cube controller really killed it for me)

But it is really popular with a lot of people
 
For me RE7 is my favorite, no contest, but because of the VR mode. They could have called it another name i would have liked it as much.
I'm not much into the remakes.
But a liked RE5 and 6 last gen because of the coop mode, i'm still baffled that this gen we got so few full coop campaign games, it was a big thing last gen.
I've read rumors of a potential RE4 VR version for Oculus Quest, I hope it turns out to be true.
 
The plot is so convuluted, and I can't say I like the fact you never actually see the face of Ethan Winters. Or maybe it's because Capcom doesn't want anyone to see him in full, as we are supposed to view him as some type of a proxy character. That's stupid. But I just don't want to see any more first person sequels.

Maybe Capcom could make that perspective optional, huh?
 
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