I seriously don't understand some Resident Evil fans...

[Casual Shinji]

That's because RE6 was so shit that it gave many people a new found appreciation for RE5. RE5 compared to RE4 was just run-off, RE5 compared to RE6 was pretty great.

So I guess once RE7 comes out, we'll be hearing a lot about how RE6 was a great game while RE7 was dumbed down to appeal to the masses and not the hardcore fans?

I don't know, I can't see them getting any worse than RE6, wich was basically Every Popular Videogame: The Videogame (Done Poorly). But anything is possible, I guess.

But then, does Capcom even still have game developers in employment?

 

[OhNoYouDidnt]

The thing that confuses me is that a big complaint people seem to have about 4-6 is 'It's not even zombies anymore/zombies shouldn't have guns!'. RE hasn't been about zombies since, like, RE1. And arguably not even then. It's about biological weapons and bio-terrorism.

That's very true! The original Japanese title for the franchise, バイオハザード, does mean 'Biohazard'. It's a bit weird that so many people are unaware of this. Steam users in particular have no excuse for this, as pretty much every Resi game is called RESIDENT EVIL / BIOHAZARD there.

But, on topic: This is unfortunately very much a recurring thing with 'hardcore fanbases'. I've seen it happen with the Zelda fanbase too. So many people are currently deriding Skyward Sword for being 'terrible', whilst their hatred used to be focused on Twilight Princess. Final Fantasy, same story. VII used to be the pinnacle according to many, whereas that's now VI. Apparently.

There's no real logic behind it. I guess it's just thrilling to hate on the newest installment, regardless of its qualities.

 

[scotth266]

There were some good bits to 5, and the co-op was well done, but there are reasons people don't like the game. Yes, it was quite similar to 4, but the introduction of co-op made things much less stressful (bad for horror games, even actiony ones) and the level design was much more bite-sized chunks than 4 (probably to accommodate co-op play). We won't even go into how poor the vehicle sections were, or how incredibly dull the story was in terms of pacing (4 had a nice sense of rising tension - 5 just has no idea how to pace itself).

The funny thing is, I LIKE 5 - in terms of co-op games it's a fun time. But that doesn't mean it isn't flawed, and coming off the heels of a game as great/hyped as 4, it needed to bring more to the table than it did.

I played only a short bit of 6, and wasn't a fan of what little I saw, but I think when I finally play it it'll wind up being the same as 5: an okay game that needed to be better than what it was.

 

[Zenn3k]

There are no zombies in RE4, just infected people. They still had intelligence (at least some)

Details, details... My point was that it had enemies with guns. I just call them zombies for abbreviation's sake.

Eh, Resident Evil 1 was fairly scary?it had its moments, mostly in the form of "Holy fucking shit I'm gonna die!"

Resident Evil 2 was easy and not scary. Resident Evil 3 was actually kinda scary every time you had to run your off of from Nemesis.

It's still not scary per se - it only forces you to be scared of losing all your progress. I bet you 10 bucks that if it had a save anywhere feature instead of the typewriter system, it would've stopped being scary.

Its not just about getting killed (btw, I can beat the whole game without saving), its about the atmosphere and camera angles. Many used to complain about the static camera, but it has a purpose, it limited what you could see because the UNKNOWN is the scariest thing a person can feel, the feeling of not being 100% sure if thats a zombie down the hall or just a sound effect? Thats what made RE1 scary.

 

[White Lightning]

RE4 was a great game but it killed the series. People who had never played the games before flocked to RE4. Crapcom saw this and just started to try and copy it's success but failed. Largely because a large portion of the people who liked RE4 weren't loyal to the series and didn't care about the new ones. All they were left with were people who would play it for one run then sell it back to the store, and fans of the original games who had no reason to return to the series because it was no longer RE, just some... QTE filled thing. That's why the series gets so much crap when a new game comes out.

I'm playing through the REmake on the 360 right now and it's a blast. A lot of people are saying that the series can never go back to it's roots but I disagree. Honestly, put the new gameplay mechanics in (take out all the king-fu BS though, it was... bearable in 4 and 5 but from what I played of 6 it was just dumb) and bring back the unsettling atmosphere, keep ammo, saves, and heal items to a bare minimum. Go back to the open world (this is what pissed me off the most in Evil Within, it's fine that I have no ammo. Forcing me to stay in an area and constantly reload the last checkpoint is just dumb though) and bam. The enemies don't matter, the thing that made older RE games so tense was knowing you have low ammo, and haven't saved in an hour.

 

[Veldel]

There are no zombies in RE4, just infected people. They still had intelligence (at least some)

Details, details... My point was that it had enemies with guns. I just call them zombies for abbreviation's sake.

Eh, Resident Evil 1 was fairly scary?it had its moments, mostly in the form of "Holy fucking shit I'm gonna die!"

Resident Evil 2 was easy and not scary. Resident Evil 3 was actually kinda scary every time you had to run your off of from Nemesis.

It's still not scary per se - it only forces you to be scared of losing all your progress. I bet you 10 bucks that if it had a save anywhere feature instead of the typewriter system, it would've stopped being scary.

Its not just about getting killed (btw, I can beat the whole game without saving), its about the atmosphere and camera angles. Many used to complain about the static camera, but it has a purpose, it limited what you could see because the UNKNOWN is the scariest thing a person can feel, the feeling of not being 100% sure if thats a zombie down the hall or just a sound effect? Thats what made RE1 scary.

This right here is exactly why I loved the orginal 3 and don't like 456.

The tension and feeling of dread that somthing can come out of no where then with remake of first you add those fucking crimson heads. Fuck shit terrified me.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I don't really get those who praise RE4 to high heaven but then crap on the later games in the series either. RE4 was the first game that really diverged from the previous games and made the series into an action series with some survival horror elements instead of a survival horror game with some action elements. If you really hate where the series went in and after 4 then you shouldn't be praising 4. I can totally understand why Capcom doesn't seem to know what to do with the series. When anyone asks what the best game in the series is the answer is almost always 4, but then when Capcom gives us essentially more 4, everyone complains because it's not like the earlier games in the series that they just said they preferred 4 over.

 

[The Bucket]

Its almost like groups aren't hiveminds, and different people have different opinions

 

[ninja666]

Its almost like groups aren't hiveminds, and different people have different opinions

Hence the keyword some in the title. I'm not judging the community as a whole because there are surely lots of reasonable people there, who just like the games for what they are, but rather the "hardcore fans" of the series, who, coincidentally, tend to be the most vocal about everything related to it.

 

[Lieju]

You are aware that the people complaining about the different things aren't necessarily the same people, right? RE-games are fairly diverse, and the fanbase is also fairly diverse.
So why is it surprising different fans dislike different kinds of things in the franchise?

 

[ninja666]

You are aware that the people complaining about the different things aren't necessarily the same people, right? RE-games are fairly diverse, and the fanbase is also fairly diverse.
So why is it surprising different fans dislike different kinds of things in the franchise?

It's surprising because despite all the diversity in the fandom, there doesn't seem to be many people who actually don't complain about these games and know what they want.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Well, each to their own. Obviously, what makes people angry is the deviation from what the series used to be. Survival Horror as a genre is slowly slipping away, and has turned from games with ammo management to simply running away from the scary things. To be honest, I don't enjoy this all that much, hence I never finished Amnesia or Outlast, and am slightly hesitant to purchase Alien: Isolation. I do love Survival Horror though, the first 3 RE's were always my favorite.

However I do enjoy RE4-6 on their own merits. In fact I like RE6 MORE than RE4 AND RE5 *dodges pitchforks*. I played the hell out of 4 and 5, and even got right into the mercenary mode of all of them, but RE6 just had a certain kind of replayability and variation going on within the characters. And the controls, once I got used to them, made for a pretty slick connection to the game, which always seemed missing. Going back to RE4 and I can barely make Leon snatch a headshot from 10 feet away. RE6 QTE's are fucking annoying, I'll say that, so I hope that disappears in any coming iteration.

To me, the horror completely disappeared in RE5 and RE6 because of the introduction of co-op play. Playing solo, you still had a partner with you all. the. time. And that makes everything feel safer and comfier, doesn't it?

 

[The Bucket]

Its almost like groups aren't hiveminds, and different people have different opinions

Hence the keyword some in the title. I'm not judging the community as a whole because there are surely lots of reasonable people there, who just like the games for what they are, but rather the "hardcore fans" of the series, who, coincidentally, tend to be the most vocal about everything related to it.

This isnt unusual, people are most vocal about things they have strong opinions on. Nobody ever went on a multi page rant about a game they thought was alright, or good but with a few minor regressions from the previous entry. It's not hypocrisy as you put it for different people to weigh in on different games.

 

[Just Ebola]

The thing that confuses me is that a big complaint people seem to have about 4-6 is '[...]zombies shouldn't have guns!'.

The funniest thing about this complaint is that it started with Resident Evil 6. People seem to forget that "zombies with guns" were a thing way back in RE4.

That one deserves a bit of slack because the "zombies" in RE4 aren't really zombies at all, though I can't remember what they're called exactly. The game establishes early on that even though they're infected they can speak, cook, watch after farm animals and yes, use guns and other weapons.

On to the topic though. My biggest complaint about RE5 is that it's just a carbon copy of RE4, minus the sense of humor, and trading the dark environment and novelty with a well-lit map and an annoying sidekick. And Six, as far as I've seen isn't being lynched for "being too action-oriented" but for split campaigns with buddy systems, a ridiculous story, reducing well-known characters to stereotypes with new backstories and using nearly the same combat system from the past two games, not even trying to innovate.

It's important to remember there's always going to be a dichotomy between fans of any series. Even if some fans do complain about Resident Evil, there's a good chance it won't be for the same reasons.

 

[Comic Sans]

As someone who loved 4 and was fairly ambivalent about 5 and didn't finish 6, I would say there's a lot of little things that made 4 better. Mechanically, the inventory system in 4 worked really well. Handling the inventory in 5 and 6 felt really cumbersome, especially the item trading. Resident Evil 4 had good level design. The environments felt better to fight in when playing RE4, and the lighting and general alien feel of the environment kept it from feeling familiar and comfortable. I felt like enemies had an easier time mobbing you, making for a more tense experience. Interaction with the shop keeper allowed for more variance in weapons and gunplay (as did the larger inventor space), and the ability to find pieces that could be combined into more valuable items rewarded exploration and being thorough. Most importantly, to me at least, was that the game still felt tense. Despite it being more of an action game, the lighting, enemies, and environments made the game still feel intense to play through. Kept you on edge. I never felt like I could go completely rambo, even late game when I probably could have (until the end, when it got all action set piece). In RE5 it was just a shooting gallery, and the co-op removed any sense of dread an encounter could have. When I did RE4, even when I had played the game before, I found myself gripping the controller and swearing at the TV as I ran around dealing with the enemies. In RE5 I felt no such thing, just casually plowing through enemies in an non threatening environment.

RE5 and 6 might have copied the action orient 4 introduced, but it lacked the same intensity, leading to bland experiences.

 

[Flammablezeus]

Each fan is different. You can never truly group a single fan base together when it comes to opinions. On top of that, people change over time. People who enjoyed RE4 when it came out might not like that kind of game so much anymore, and vice versa.

 

[Zetatrain]

You are aware that the people complaining about the different things aren't necessarily the same people, right? RE-games are fairly diverse, and the fanbase is also fairly diverse.
So why is it surprising different fans dislike different kinds of things in the franchise?

It's surprising because despite all the diversity in the fandom, there doesn't seem to be many people who actually don't complain about these games and know what they want.

Well people who don't complain typically don't make themselves known since they're not...complaining. For every fan you see complaining there could be two fans that are perfectly content.

 

[Kopikatsu]

The thing that confuses me is that a big complaint people seem to have about 4-6 is '[...]zombies shouldn't have guns!'.

The funniest thing about this complaint is that it started with Resident Evil 6. People seem to forget that "zombies with guns" were a thing way back in RE4.

That one deserves a bit of slack because the "zombies" in RE4 aren't really zombies at all, though I can't remember what they're called exactly. The game establishes early on that even though they're infected they can speak, cook, watch after farm animals and yes, use guns and other weapons.

Ganados. Traditional RE zombies are corpses being reanimated by a virus. Ganados are humans that are infected and controlled by a Plaga, which is a parasite that's bonded with their central nervous system. That's why they're much more intelligent, because they're still alive (and also why a Ganado can be 'saved', as when Leon destroyed his own parasite, or when Buddy had his parasite destroyed, although since it already bonded with him it cost him his legs)

In RE6, zombies created with the c-Virus are capable of using guns in a manner of speaking. Zombies of police and BSAA agents carry weapons, but they don't show any degree of proficiency with them, they just occasionally pull the trigger and cause the gun to fire randomly.

 

[AlphaAscalon]

As a Biohazard fan. What I'd like Capcom to do is to stop bloating the lore. There's a reason why I only subscribe to the cannon of 1, 2, 3 and maybe the Veronicas. Going beyond the games set in and around Raccoon City starts to get messy.

I've read every scrap of lore and background info I could find about the first 3 games. The setting and themes captivated me beyond the games themselves.

What is presented in 4, 5 and 6 feels utterly divorced from all of the prior lore and I never cared to look beyond playing. I've completed roughly half a dozen playthroughs of 4, many with personal rule sets. I played through the coop experiences of 5 and 6 with my brother who introduced me to Biohazard in the first place. They were fun action romps, good for what they are.

As a world-builder myself, I hate it when games ignore continuity and logical progression. Resident Evil might have never been 'serious' to begin with, but at least events and people made more sense in the 'old days.'