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

[ninja666]

So, recently I've been on a Resident Evil binge. I've played RE4, RE: Revelations, a bit of RE6 and at the moment I'm halfway through (I think) Resident Evil 5. Before I'll go further with what I want to say, I must admit that I don't consider myself a fan of the series, but from what I've played so far, these games seem incredibly fun. I've also had some playtime with the older RE titles (2 and 3) so I have experience from both "worlds" of this series.

What puzzles me, though, are fans of this series. From the looks of it, they just can't be pleased. With every new Resident Evil title there's always a lynch mob, ready to use their pitchforks and torches because apparently every new iteration is "bad" and "sucks". RE4 comes out - it's presented with a super good receptions, fans want more of it and to this day it's considered to be godlike. Then RE5 comes out and is instantly criticized for being "too action oriented" and "not scary", even despite basically being a carbon copy of RE4 with improved controls. A few years later, RE6 comes out and is instantly lynched everywhere by the fans for... guess what? Being too action oriented and not scary. While I can somewhat understand complaints in case of this game (because it literally was a straight up third person shooter), what I don't get is that since RE6's premiere, RE5 has all of a sudden started to be considered a good game, even despite constant disapproval from the people at the time of its release. Hypocrisy much?

A year later, a PC and console HD reedition of the handheld spinoff Resident Evil: Revelations comes out. It's generally met with very warm reviews, but still - hardcore fans are not satified. Why? Beats me. It's more like classic Resident Evil than RE4, RE5, and RE6 and yet people complain. The most hiliarious argument I've seen about it is that it's too easy to shoot accurately. I figure you all want this game to eliminate aiming altogether and return to the PSX era wonky auto aiming system?

I also don't get this constant complaining about lack of scariness in the newer RE games. Reality check, everyone - RE games were never scary. They were an homage to campy B movies about zombies, that also weren't scary. It was you who considered them scary because you most likely played them when you were tiny little kiddies and it's nostalgia working its magic.

I wonder what do these poor sods at Capcom have to do to make you happy, dear RE fans because apparently no matter what they do and what they improve over the former iterations, it's bad and makes the whole game suck.

 

[FC Groningen]

You do realise this goes for almost every known franchise right?

 

[ninja666]

Yes, that's true, but it really shows in a few specific fandoms. Resident Evil is one of them.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I love Resident Evil 4. It's my favorite in the series, and one of my favorite games of all time. And I thought that it was scary. Maybe I'm afraid of Spanish people. They were Conquistadors, after all

Resident Evil 5 was just boring to me and I never got around to playing Resident Evil 6. I might get it on the next Steam sale because it looks like it might be a lot of fun. I heard that it's a pretty long game and the criticism around it is mostly due to Capcom trying to cater to everyone instead of just to one particular demographic that enjoys survival horror. That is a valid criticism. The "dumbing down for wider audience" is a real thing in the gaming industry unfortunately. But it only affects fans of the series. Since I'm not what you'd call a RE fan, I don't really care if RE's been dumbed down from it's survival horror roots, as long as the experience is fun.

 

[Silvanus]

Resident Evil 4 is fun, but it's far from godlike, and lacks most of what I enjoyed from the Resident Evil series-- claustrophobia, industrial/ sciency intrigue surrounding Umbrella, focus on horror. The charge that RE5 is too action-oriented can equally be levelled at RE4.

RE5 was a bigger step down, though. Wesker is utterly absurd, an unbelievable villain with a laughable motivation and ridiculous superpowers, entirely out-of-tone. He has almost no connection with the Wesker from RE1. The other villains can scarcely be called characters. Most upsetting, though, is replacing Jill with the hilarious, Ninja-jumping, cleavage-showing action hero who inexplicably bears her name.

I'm not a long-time fan of the series; I only got into it relatively recently (a few years ago), since which time I've played most of the games in the series, including the older ones. Even so, the change in direction is clear.

That said, the combat is solid in RE4 and RE5 both, and RE5 offers a solid multiplayer campaign. They were still fun.

 

[ninja666]

Resident Evil 4 is fun, but it's far from godlike, and lacks most of what I enjoyed from the Resident Evil series-- claustrophobia, industrial/ sciency intrigue surrounding Umbrella

It's a wild guess, but there's a teeny tiny chance that there's no Umbrella in RE4 because there was no Umbrella at all anymore. Raccoon City with all of the Umbrella labs got nuked in RE3, remember?

Wesker is utterly absurd, an unbelievable villain with a laughable motivation and ridiculous superpowers which are entirely out-of-tone. He has almost no connection with the Wesker from RE1. The other villains can scarcely be called characters. Most upsetting, though, is replacing Jill with the hilarious, Ninja-jumping, cleavage-showing action hero who inexplicably bears her name.

Yes because the main villain of RE4 - a B movie-style evil cult leader that had a Harlequin costume-clad pale midget as his right hand was a super serious, not-hilarious-at-all villain.

Also, AFAIK, in RE4 Leon could roundhouse kick and suplex enemies, run 60 miles per hour from rolling boulders and had a knife fight with Matrix level of acrobatics at one point, while in RE2 he was a regular cop, so I'm not really buying the Jill argument.

 

[Silvanus]

It's a wild guess, but there's a teeny tiny chance that there's no Umbrella in RE4 because there was no Umbrella at all anymore. Raccoon City with all of the Umbrella labs got nuked in RE3, remember?

It isn't the bombing which destroys Umbrella (unsurprising, since I doubt a giant conglomerate would have labs and bases in just the one city); the corporation dissolves after its stock prices crash, after the Government turn against them. It's only shown in the opening cinematic of RE4 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlGo6GAIw0A].

It's such a cursory mention to the company which has served as the primary antagonists for the last four games, to dissolve in an opening cinematic.

Yes because the main villain of RE4 - a B movie-style evil cult leader that had a Harlequin costume-clad pale midget as his right hand was a super serious, not-hilarious-at-all villain.

Salazar is pretty hilarious, and the cult-leader (whose name escapes me) is two-dimensional, certainly. I agree. I still don't think it matches Wesker's plan to become a deity by dousing everybody on earth with mutant tentacle-disease, which is a sure recipe for divinity.

Also, AFAIK, in RE4 Leon could roundhouse kick and suplex enemies, run 60 miles per hour from rolling boulders and had a knife fight with Matrix level of acrobatics at one point, while in RE2 he was a regular cop, so I'm not really buying the Jill argument.

That's why I said the "too action-oriented" charge could be equally levelled at RE4.

 

[Rozalia1]

It's a wild guess, but there's a teeny tiny chance that there's no Umbrella in RE4 because there was no Umbrella at all anymore. Raccoon City with all of the Umbrella labs got nuked in RE3, remember?

Umbrella had labs worldwide and carried on as normal for quite a length of time until Wesker did them in. The loss of Raccoon city meant the loss of their top man (Birkin), but the rest was expendable (and besides they disposed of Birkin themselves anyway).
Heck their Paris lab later combined the T and G virus to create a virus that could sex change you into a near invincible Tyrant while allowing you to retain your intelligence showing Umbrella didn't even lose any data from Raccoon city.

Yes because the main villain of RE4 - a B movie-style evil cult leader that had a Harlequin costume-clad pale midget as his right hand was a super serious, not-hilarious-at-all villain.

Also, AFAIK, in RE4 Leon could roundhouse kick and suplex enemies, run 60 miles per hour from rolling boulders and had a knife fight with Matrix level of acrobatics at one point, while in RE2 he was a regular cop, so I'm not really buying the Jill argument.

Hard to nail down the exact point it really got silly with the villains. Morpheus the transsexual tyrant might be it actually... why not just make your villain a women if you want a female Tyrant?

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

It's a wild guess, but there's a teeny tiny chance that there's no Umbrella in RE4 because there was no Umbrella at all anymore. Raccoon City with all of the Umbrella labs got nuked in RE3, remember?

Umbrella Corporation is international. All that got nuked in RE3 were their Raccoon City facilities (and given how deep underground the one in RE2 is, some of their assets in the area may have actually survived the blast). If I'm not mistaken, Resident Evil: Code Veronica actually opens with Claire Redfield attacking an Umbrella facility in France, and the prison she's sent to is another Umbrella facility off the coast of Brazil. The game even ends at an Umbrella facility in the Antarctic.

It's been a while since I played RE4, but I think the opening dialogue of the game cements that what killed Umbrella wasn't the nuke, but the financial problems they ran into with all the federal investigations, lawsuits, investors jumping ship, etc. after their involvement with the Raccoon City disaster became public.

Anywho, on topic...

I guess I'm an oddity in that I enjoy both the old Resident Evil and the new Resident Evil. I haven't played RE6 yet and I'm in the middle of playing RE: Revelations right now, but I've otherwise played most of the games (never bothered with the Survivor, Outbreak, or Operation Raccoon City spinoffs). That said, I do think the games have been getting dumber and dumber. The camp in RE4 was intentional, constantly riffing on tropes of both its own franchise and Hollywood action flicks. Whenever Leon did something over-the-top like jumping through all those security lasers it was funny, because he'd spent the rest of the game snarking his way through every conversation, dropping more cheesy one-liners than Arnold Schwarzenegger, performing the same knife-throw-return as Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China, and just generally being a joke. Resident Evil 5 though was played completely straight, which made Chris punching a boulder just look ridiculously stupid. The series has always had its set pieces, sure... but we've gone from ones that make sense in context and could plausibly happen to Matrix-style martial arts fights in a gigantic ship-launched stealth bomber followed by a showdown in the middle of a raging active volcano that somehow isn't cooking everyone alive.

I happen to enjoy a little bit of stupid over the top action from time to time, but I can see where people who want a more grounded experience would be upset.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Oh I have learned to completely ignore fans of any series because you've hit the nail on the head: they are never happy. A prime example using Resident Evil:

4 comes out and, as you said, everyone loves it, but one thing people would like is the ability to move and shoot. 5 comes out and you still can't do that, so people start throwing fits. "It's two-thousand-whatever! Why can't I move and shoot?" 6 comes out and you can finally do that, but no one even bothers to mention it. The game is too action-y now. Sigh...


On the one hand, I do kind of understand why some people are upset. Resident Evil does feel like it has lost its connection to the roots of its series. Survival horror, where it was more about surviving encounters, not muscling your way through them with plenty of ammo. But on the other hand, some of these fans I feel will never be happy. They dream of a game that simply doesn't exist, because they have gotten so used to beating on Capcom that they can't survive if they stopped. If Capcom switched back to the gameplay style of the first three--limited ammo, hard-to-find health--then the fans would no doubt be upset that they are no longer playing as a zombie killing machine. If they switched to action, well...we've already seen how fans react to that.

 

[ninja666]

The camp in RE4 was intentional, constantly riffing on tropes of both its own franchise and Hollywood action flicks. Whenever Leon did something over-the-top like jumping through all those security lasers it was funny, because he'd spent the rest of the game snarking his way through every conversation, dropping more cheesy one-liners than Arnold Schwarzenegger, performing the same knife-throw-return as Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China, and just generally being a joke. Resident Evil 5 though was played completely straight, which made Chris punching a boulder just look ridiculously stupid.

That kind of stuff depends on attitude, really. While I agree that RE4 had its camp more justified, it doesn't mean camp in RE5 is automatically dumb and not funny. Chris, while not throwing 80s one-liners every sentence, is still an example of a stereotypical action hero seeking vengeance and nothing about him really says he can't do all the dumb stuff because it's too dumb. Plus, the overall tone of the game, which hasn't really changed since RE4, is a justification enough for me. I mean, a QTE with a Ghost Rider style chain-wielding zombie motorcyclist, a turret chase sequence where you wreak havoc to amounts of enemies the size of a small army, and a fight with a giant sea tentacle monster on a ship. How is any of this "straight" and serious?

 

[Mutant1988]

Hindsight is not always 20/20.

Sometimes worse things makes things you considered bad before look better. Either because you gained a greater appreciation for the old work when you've seen something worse or because you're wearing extra strong rose tinted nostalgia glasses (You remember it better than it ever were).

I also think it's a bit wrong to assume that it's necessarily the same people complaining between both games.

It might be an entirely different audience between each sequel. That makes the accusation of hypocrisy very dubious. Audiences are not amorphous blobs that all think alike.

 

[Kopikatsu]

I'm a huge fan of the series, to the point where my Twitch channel name is 'I LOVE RESIDENT EVIL WAY TOO MUCH'. I've played and enjoyed both the classic Resident Evils, and the modern ones, and I like both for different reasons. Already preordered Revelations 2, since I enjoyed how 'arcadey' 1 felt, even if it was nothing like the others.

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. The early Resident Evils were about uncovering what was happening with a group of people that were thrust unknowingly into the scene of a lab mishap. But the modern ones involve seasoned agents engaging in open conflict with terrorist organizations who are using the viruses as weapons. Of course it's going to sacrifice horror for action- that's simply the logical progression of the story.

My only complaint is that Capcom completely forgets about previous plot threads and then inserts substitutes for no reason. Jake Mueller is a great example of this. He could easily have just been Alex Wesker, in which case his connection to Wesker is already established in the earlier games, as is why his blood is special (Alex Wesker was sent to retrieve the Progenitor Virus by Spencer who'd discovered the secret to immortality, but once he got his hands on it Alex unsurprisingly dropped off the radar and was never heard from again)

 

[ninja666]

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.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

How is any of this "straight" and serious?

The set-pieces aren't serious, the tone is. The set-pieces of RE4 were over-the-top ridiculous, and Leon's responses to them tended to match. When Wesker taunts Chris, Chris responds with typical rugged stoicism. When Sadler taunts Leon, Leon responds with snark and jokes, straight-up making fun of them on a number of occasions.

Chris is an action hero that's serious about his job, no matter how stupid the things he encounters are. Leon is an action hero that acknowledges his status as an action hero and rolls with it, reveling in the stupidity of the things he encounters.

And that's where the difference lies. RE4 was pure camp, through and through. RE5 was over-the-top without any of the camp, in the same way that a Call of Duty campaign is completely over-the-top and yet played straight (IE: real modern warfare tends not to involve too many soldiers racing snowmobiles down a mountain while spraying a machine pistol at helicopter gunships, yet you the player are supposed to just take it in stride as something that just sorta happens in a normal day of combat for the characters because everything they do is equally ridiculous).

 

[Zenn3k]

So, recently I've been on a Resident Evil binge. I've played RE4, RE: Revelations, a bit of RE6 and at the moment I'm halfway through (I think) Resident Evil 5. Before I'll go further with what I want to say, I must admit that I don't consider myself a fan of the series, but from what I've played so far, these games seem incredibly fun. I've also had some playtime with the older RE titles (2 and 3) so I have experience from both "worlds" of this series.

What puzzles me, though, are fans of this series. From the looks of it, they just can't be pleased. With every new Resident Evil title there's always a lynch mob, ready to use their pitchforks and torches because apparently every new iteration is "bad" and "sucks". RE4 comes out - it's presented with a super good receptions, fans want more of it and to this day it's considered to be godlike. Then RE5 comes out and is instantly criticized for being "too action oriented" and "not scary", even despite basically being a carbon copy of RE4 with improved controls. A few years later, RE6 comes out and is instantly lynched everywhere by the fans for... guess what? Being too action oriented and not scary. While I can somewhat understand complaints in case of this game (because it literally was a straight up third person shooter), what I don't get is that since RE6's premiere, RE5 has all of a sudden started to be considered a good game, even despite constant disapproval from the people at the time of its release. Hypocrisy much?

A year later, a PC and console HD reedition of the handheld spinoff Resident Evil: Revelations comes out. It's generally met with very warm reviews, but still - hardcore fans are not satified. Why? Beats me. It's more like classic Resident Evil than RE4, RE5, and RE6 and yet people complain. The most hiliarious argument I've seen about it is that it's too easy to shoot accurately. I figure you all want this game to eliminate aiming altogether and return to the PSX era wonky auto aiming system?

I also don't get this constant complaining about lack of scariness in the newer RE games. Reality check, everyone - RE games were never scary. They were an homage to campy B movies about zombies, that also weren't scary. It was you who considered them scary because you most likely played them when you were tiny little kiddies and it's nostalgia working its magic.

I wonder what do these poor sods at Capcom have to do to make you happy, dear RE fans because apparently no matter what they do and what they improve over the former iterations, it's bad and makes the whole game suck.

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.

I purchased the RE1 release on PS4, having a blast, but yeah, its still scarier than anything new I've played in the last 10 years.

 

[Zenn3k]

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.

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

 

[ninja666]

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.

 

[Casual Shinji]

What puzzles me, though, are fans of this series. From the looks of it, they just can't be pleased. With every new Resident Evil title there's always a lynch mob, ready to use their pitchforks and torches because apparently every new iteration is "bad" and "sucks". RE4 comes out - it's presented with a super good receptions, fans want more of it and to this day it's considered to be godlike. Then RE5 comes out and is instantly criticized for being "too action oriented" and "not scary", even despite basically being a carbon copy of RE4 with improved controls. A few years later, RE6 comes out and is instantly lynched everywhere by the fans for... guess what? Being too action oriented and not scary. While I can somewhat understand complaints in case of this game (because it literally was a straight up third person shooter), what I don't get is that since RE6's premiere, RE5 has all of a sudden started to be considered a good game, even despite constant disapproval from the people at the time of its release. Hypocrisy much?

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.

 

[ninja666]

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?