Holy shit there are a lot of these. But at least they're short.
So the Trails games weren't for me, I put 30 hours into the first Trails game and I wanted to bash my head against the wall the whole time. So the fall back plan is to jump ship to the Resident Evil games, where even if they're bad they're only like 8 hours long.
So I will be playing all the RE games I can manage to play on modern consoles. Starting with....
Resident Evil Director's Cut - Ps1 Classic.
Thanks to my never used Ps1 Classic I was able to play the original game that started it all. The very first Resident Evil game on Playstation 1....but the updated Director's Cut which I have honestly no clue what they changed, because I don't think I ever even saw the Non-director's cut version as a kid. The first few hours into the game was quite a trip down memory lane, I was rather surprised how much of the game I remembered considering I've not played this in close to 30-years.
Resident Evil 1 is the first adventure with Protagonists Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine. They are members of a SWAT team type of police force in nearby Racoon City. When one of their team helicopters goes missing in the mountains, the other squad is sent to go looking for them. This live action FMV shows the team immediately attacked by zombie dogs and chased into a mansion in the woods for "safety". Little do they know the horrors that await with in.....
It's zombies....that's what awaits them.
You get to pick which character to play through the game Jill or Chris and each character provides some bonuses and disadvantages for the game ahead. Jill gets a lockpick which grants access to rooms earlier than Chris. But Chris gets more item spaces, which in a game with tight inventory management is sort of the better option. Though this choice really showcases how well thought out and designed RE1 was. Jill was considered the "easy" mode playthrough because you got access to stronger weapons way faster than Chris. Stronger weapons meant you didn't need as much healing on hand because you were going to blow through enemies before they could hurt you for the most part anyway. Chris effectively was "hard" mode because he was expected to have more healing and ammo on hand to compensate for weaker early game weapons. But by the late part of the game it didn't matter who you picked really.
What was really fun about playing RE1 again was going back to memorizing the layout of the mansion, remembering locked doors for when I would get a new key. Though I don't remember how obtuse some of the puzzles were, and several I had to look up. All in all it was a fun playthrough and once I got used to the tank controls it was quite fun to juke my way around zombies to save ammo and break their legs like Steph Curry dodging a defender with tricky foot work. Tank controls were always kind of a screwy thing to get under your thumbs but once you get used to it, it becomes second nature. Being forced to stop and shoot is still jarring though because it goes against today's run and gun action gameplay. But it does add to the tension of can you drop this zombie before it grabs you? Should you fight, or run? Do you have enough ammo for the boss? These choices fill RE1's runtime and it adds a level of skill to the game that I think a lot of people overlook. After several playthroughs as a kid I remember being able to get through the game without killing anything except mandatory fights, and would have so much leftover ammo that I could have fun with the magnum and not even worry about it.
Damn I can't remember the last time I was able to beat a game in a single sitting either. That was really refreshing. Jill finds out that the mansion was actually a secret lab where they discovered a virus that turns people into zombies and creatures, and Wesker is a piece of shit. As a stand alone story it actually works quite well, you blow the mansion up, you blow the Tyrant up, but Wesker escapes. Effectively you save the day from the virus and what not but enough of a lose end in Wesker and Umbrella remain that they had plenty of room for sequels......I bet they make at least two more of these games.
Interestingly enough the second playthrough was a cocksucker, because now you can't see the zombies and I got about halfway through this playthrough as Chris before realizing I didn't have enough memory of the game to know where all the enemies were and got tired of dying. Replay value was King back in the day where people would only get a few games a year and you had to really milk the runtime of a game. Developers knew this and added all kinds of NG+ modes to games to keep things interesting as you played.
So the Trails games weren't for me, I put 30 hours into the first Trails game and I wanted to bash my head against the wall the whole time. So the fall back plan is to jump ship to the Resident Evil games, where even if they're bad they're only like 8 hours long.
So I will be playing all the RE games I can manage to play on modern consoles. Starting with....
Resident Evil Director's Cut - Ps1 Classic.
Thanks to my never used Ps1 Classic I was able to play the original game that started it all. The very first Resident Evil game on Playstation 1....but the updated Director's Cut which I have honestly no clue what they changed, because I don't think I ever even saw the Non-director's cut version as a kid. The first few hours into the game was quite a trip down memory lane, I was rather surprised how much of the game I remembered considering I've not played this in close to 30-years.
Resident Evil 1 is the first adventure with Protagonists Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine. They are members of a SWAT team type of police force in nearby Racoon City. When one of their team helicopters goes missing in the mountains, the other squad is sent to go looking for them. This live action FMV shows the team immediately attacked by zombie dogs and chased into a mansion in the woods for "safety". Little do they know the horrors that await with in.....
It's zombies....that's what awaits them.
You get to pick which character to play through the game Jill or Chris and each character provides some bonuses and disadvantages for the game ahead. Jill gets a lockpick which grants access to rooms earlier than Chris. But Chris gets more item spaces, which in a game with tight inventory management is sort of the better option. Though this choice really showcases how well thought out and designed RE1 was. Jill was considered the "easy" mode playthrough because you got access to stronger weapons way faster than Chris. Stronger weapons meant you didn't need as much healing on hand because you were going to blow through enemies before they could hurt you for the most part anyway. Chris effectively was "hard" mode because he was expected to have more healing and ammo on hand to compensate for weaker early game weapons. But by the late part of the game it didn't matter who you picked really.
What was really fun about playing RE1 again was going back to memorizing the layout of the mansion, remembering locked doors for when I would get a new key. Though I don't remember how obtuse some of the puzzles were, and several I had to look up. All in all it was a fun playthrough and once I got used to the tank controls it was quite fun to juke my way around zombies to save ammo and break their legs like Steph Curry dodging a defender with tricky foot work. Tank controls were always kind of a screwy thing to get under your thumbs but once you get used to it, it becomes second nature. Being forced to stop and shoot is still jarring though because it goes against today's run and gun action gameplay. But it does add to the tension of can you drop this zombie before it grabs you? Should you fight, or run? Do you have enough ammo for the boss? These choices fill RE1's runtime and it adds a level of skill to the game that I think a lot of people overlook. After several playthroughs as a kid I remember being able to get through the game without killing anything except mandatory fights, and would have so much leftover ammo that I could have fun with the magnum and not even worry about it.
Damn I can't remember the last time I was able to beat a game in a single sitting either. That was really refreshing. Jill finds out that the mansion was actually a secret lab where they discovered a virus that turns people into zombies and creatures, and Wesker is a piece of shit. As a stand alone story it actually works quite well, you blow the mansion up, you blow the Tyrant up, but Wesker escapes. Effectively you save the day from the virus and what not but enough of a lose end in Wesker and Umbrella remain that they had plenty of room for sequels......I bet they make at least two more of these games.
Interestingly enough the second playthrough was a cocksucker, because now you can't see the zombies and I got about halfway through this playthrough as Chris before realizing I didn't have enough memory of the game to know where all the enemies were and got tired of dying. Replay value was King back in the day where people would only get a few games a year and you had to really milk the runtime of a game. Developers knew this and added all kinds of NG+ modes to games to keep things interesting as you played.
