Jimquisition: Resident Evil 6 Is the Epitome of Survival Horror

Sheo_Dagana

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chadachada123 said:
Sheo_Dagana said:
Does everyone forget about the parts in Resident Evil 4 where Leon ran about a battle field while a helicopter rained missle-death down upon enemies in your way? Or ran from boulders? Did they forget about the chain guns and the invasive QTE's that do little more than kick you back five seconds into the cutscene you were performing them in if you failed? Did they forget you had to fight a kooky cult of ne'er-do-wells who's ultimate purpose was flat and uninteresting? Did they forget you had to fight fucking Napoleon? Yet people are surprised at RE6's content?

That said, I loved RE4 and still enjoy RE6. No, it's not better than the classics and it's not better than 4, but I still don't feel like it's the weakest game in the franchise. Resident Evil hasn't been survival horror for a long time now, depending on what your definition of 'horror' is. This whole thing comes up every time a new Resident Evil comes out. "It's too much like a shooter now!" RE4 felt like an action/shooter game to me and I knew it was going this way for a while now.

RE6 IS a functional game, so it's not worthy of the scores it's getting. People are just being babies. If nothing else, be grateful that YOUR favorite Capcom franchise didn't get quietly swept under the rug.
I...had basically completely forgotten the absurdity of it all in RE4. Or at least, it makes a hell of a lot of sense...in context...I guess...or something.

And yet...the first 5/6 of the game (RE4) is pretty tense, pretty survival horror, especially in first-playthroughs where ammo is actually kind of scarce. For the most part, only the last fifth/sixth of the game goes awesome-action. The first third/halfish of the game is grounded pretty hard in survival-horror reality, with the middle 1/3-ish being pretty rough with those damn dogs and blind-wolverine-guys. Oh, and don't forget the invisible acid-spewing bugs that pop out from nowhere. And the right-hand guy of Napoleon who is weak to liquid nitrogen but is completely optional.

At the very least, compared to RE5 and (presumably) RE6, the pacing is far better in RE4, with it building up slowly and only turning truly action-shooty with no pretense of survival horror in the final act of the game and not the preceding 5/6 of the game.

I just see no way for Resident Evil 6, given my demo playing of it, to even come half as close to making me fear for my safety as a repeat playthrough of RE4 would. Every time I restart RE4 (and I have bought it 3 separate times, on GCN, on Wii, and on 360), I feel the same nostalgic tensing/fear that just isn't felt when replaying RE5 levels or while touching the RE6 demo.

Whatever you're seeing...I just don't see it, brah.
It all depends on what you view to be 'survival horror.' For me, it's the low chances of survival in a horrific situation. I have enough ammo to keep my nervous in RE6, but you can change that by increasing the difficulty. It's an oppressive world, to be sure, but I admit that it's not as well paced as Resident Evil 4.

Also, I wouldn't say anyone in Resident Evil 3 wasn't prepared for what was going on. It was Jill's second bout with the zombie menace and the game's other characters were Umbrella operatives that had an idea of what to expect (just not the volume.) Resi 3 was about the time I starte getting bored with the series. I outright hated Code Veronica and feel that it's the weakest game in the series, right next to 5.

I'm not saying anyone has to like 6, it just irks me when people put 4 up on a pedestal when it was a pretty whacky game from start to finish. The first time I roundhouse kicked someone's head and made it explode, I burst out in joyful laughter and kept trying to do it again.
 

chadachada123

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Sheo_Dagana said:
It all depends on what you view to be 'survival horror.' For me, it's the low chances of survival in a horrific situation. I have enough ammo to keep my nervous in RE6, but you can change that by increasing the difficulty. It's an oppressive world, to be sure, but I admit that it's not as well paced as Resident Evil 4.

Also, I wouldn't say anyone in Resident Evil 3 wasn't prepared for what was going on. It was Jill's second bout with the zombie menace and the game's other characters were Umbrella operatives that had an idea of what to expect (just not the volume.) Resi 3 was about the time I starte getting bored with the series. I outright hated Code Veronica and feel that it's the weakest game in the series, right next to 5.

I'm not saying anyone has to like 6, it just irks me when people put 4 up on a pedestal when it was a pretty whacky game from start to finish. The first time I roundhouse kicked someone's head and made it explode, I burst out in joyful laughter and kept trying to do it again.
Fair enough, and I can totally see, in retrospect, how awesome that would be for a gamer like myself if I was just picking up RE4 for the first time today as opposed to, dear god, over seven years ago when it was first released.

I am seriously wondering if you're older than me, and if so, by how much, because RE4 was my first "real" dive into anything that could loosely be called a horror game, and I've still only played through half of RE0 (love it in terms of character/atmosphere/everything, just can't stand the controls of a fixed-camera shooter). I've watched playthroughs of pretty much every RE game since, and love the backstory, but RE4 was the first game that tested me.

I was probably too scared to think about how awesome a head-exploding roundhouse was, heh.

I just...I want an old RE game (fewer enemies, open world-ish, etc), but with third person controls like in RE4. That's what I want a lot of. That's what RE5 and 6 are not.
 

Soak

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The fish, nooo, whyyy? Why did you have to include that picture of the fish? Now i fear the fish may find me. I want to hide, under my desk, in my closet, or anywhere, just hide, hide and hope the fish never finds me. I hope it will just go away again, back to where it belongs, neither continue to go after me, nor turn on my beloved ones. I don't want to imagine the things the fish would do to anyone getting in it's reach. Horrible, unspeakable things for sure, leaving no remains but a path of terror and dismay. Coming from the deepest detphs of the sea, where everything exists within darkness and death itself, noone and nothing from the surface is able to stop it...


ok, now back to topic.
Once again i find my thoughts perfectly put into words by you, Jim.

I'm not very much into Resident Evil, just because it never got me. Played one of the earlier titles at a friend, but never bought any copies for myself. Though, isn't it the same with Dead Space for example? Starting the series, you had to save the ammo for your mining tools not to run out of it when faceing necromorphs creeping up to you. Looking at the developers statements and footage for DS3, you can more or less stack a rocket launcher to your flame thrower, sitting on top of your mashine gun to throw everything at necromorphs and other humans alike, whenever you please to. Probably Dead Space wasn't a "hardcore survival horror" to begin with and probably DS3 will be more "horror" than i imagine, but it's easy to see where this is going. And to me, it is rather understandable!

When you make a game like Slender, you can make it close to however you want to and will get praised for it standing out of the mush of other games. When you make a big title on the other hand, there are so many influences, from other creatives working on the game who have awesome ideas they would like to include, to the publishers demands to make a title which has to give them as much prifit, most times by appealing to as many people as possible, especialy when it comes to sequels.
Sometimes we still get awesome "new" games from major publishers (for example Bayonetta, much praised for good reasons; right now i'm looking forward to get Dishonored), sometimes series live on by being both, innovative and staying classy at the same time (considering Bethesda you could take the Elder Scrolls-series; i like to point out Zelda on this one and think i'm able to found it properly, though this is always a topic of argument, for good reasons and for every game-series i guess). But often the game kinda gets killed in the process, at least for most fans. Be it Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, or [pick a series you liked, which then got in a direction you never wanted it to go].

The hardest question is, how to deal with this. You can try to accept, or reject the differences. Or you can try to lift the preassure and fears from most developers by changing the rules of the game called "market", by encouraging higher valuation of artistic freedom and expression, or new ways of funding games, or try something completeley different.

And still, i vote for Mitt Romney Style for President!
But what do i know of politics. I know it sucks (in short), but is there anything else to know about?
 

charliesbass

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Christ, even Spec Ops: The Line has better feeling shooting, and in that game you were mainly shooting American Soldiers! Aren't zombies supposed to be fun to kill? That's why zombies are so popular, right? Because they're scarier versions of us, and you don't have to get tied up with the moral aspects that you do when killing Arabs (or US soldiers for that matter) because they're already dead, and hell, they're a joy to kill. Resi6 just feels shallow, predictable and it completely not fun.
 

xPixelatedx

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nexus said:
This bizarre zealous rant just makes Jim seem like a nationalist, racist twat. Appealing to the ignorant stereotype that basically, "Japan is unsure of themselves, so therefore they're afraid, and therefore the west is superior".
Um, not sure about Japan, but the series director for Resident Evil did say they made the changes to this franchise based on western sentiments. They also went on to say they didn't think survival horror games would sell, and they want to be just like CoD.

I am just going to assume you didn't know about all that.
 

McMullen

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I usually like these videos, but I had to stop watching halfway through; the video track just kept repeating the same action montage over and over, and my attention span isn't short enough to watch multiple cuts and zooms per second for several minutes.

I realize that it's their bad montage and not yours, but it doesn't make it any less uncomfortable.
 

normalguycap

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I haven't logged in this website in years. Nothing was worth commenting about for me. But this got my off my rhetorical ass. This video's main message was brilliant. I'm happy to see Jim call out the gaming industry for what it has become. Fearful, profit-mongering bloated corporations churning out the same uninteresting bullshit as the next company. That's exactly why this generation of gaming has been the worst of all time.

Games have the chance to be something truly special. They should be enhancing the human condition, not weakening it. I miss the old days were things were much more unique and tremendously more entertaining. Thanks again Jim!
 

Coffeejack

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On the plus side, maybe they have a very clear idea of what the majority of their fans want from the series now.
 

EeveeElectro

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I feel like one of the few that actually enjoyed the game. No it won't win any GOTY and there was a good deal that pissed me off. Fighting the same boss about 5 or 6 times was a bit too much, even for RE standards. Pointless and grueling QTEs too ;_; I've never seen another game do as much as that.
I still enjoyed it and thought it was nice to mix it up a bit (maybe sticking to one thing at once though,I enjoyed Leon's campaign most because it reminded me a bit of the old games).