Let's talk Resident Evil and Capcom: Why the hate?

[Drizzitdude]

So there is something that has been bothering me for a long time, why is it everybody seems to hate Capcom so much? It seems odd to me that a company the produces such high number of high quality games is so often ignored or bashed on for simply being Capcom. Granted, the fact they release a "complete/extended edition" for whatever game they release half a year later is scummy, but certainly not the the degree where people should feel the need to bash on the company whenever someone brings them up. I have to say that the most recent installment of the Resident Evil series is a prime example of something that is universally hated, despite many people having never even tried it.

Let me get a couple things out of the way first. Yes Resident Evil 5 was nowhere near as good as 4, yes Chris punching a boulder was stupid. But the fact of the matter is the gameplay was for the most part solid, and a great deal of people found a lot of replay value in it with various costumes, weapon unlocks, mansion throwback dlc and the mercenary mode. But when it comes to 6 I have absolutely no idea where the massive amount of hatred towards the game comes from. Capcom listened to the feedback from their playerbase and responded with much tighter gameplay and responsive controls, easy ui and menus and added more mobility and flavor to the character in the forms of unique weapons, the ability to dodge roll to land on your back, and a new melee/counter system. The moronic AI partner from before was replaced with a much more useful and intelligent one, and they allowed for a variety of playstyles with addition of multiple crossing campaigns, seems like what should have been recipe for success yet the reviews and overall backlash form the community was prominent. So what went wrong? For the life of me the only complaint I can say about the game is the lack of different weapons and upgrades that added so much replay value to 5 but other than that I don't get what the issue everyone had with the game really was.

The same thing could be said with Lost Planet 2. This game was a fantastic successor to the previous one, and added a overwhelming amount of characer/weapon customization, awesome boss fights, tons of replay value and the ability to combine multiple VS together into a giant awesome death robot. Keeping with capcoms style the game also featured a great deal of mobility with the grappling hook allowing you to get across the map, scale building, rappel from ceilings and most importantly ride Akrids weakpoints and shoot them during the rodeo. But again, despite all its fantastic upsides, it got mostly unfavorable reviews and was went under most peoples radar and the only complaint I had about the game was the Akrid were put the side for the latter half the game(think about it capcom, do I want to fight giant alien monsters....or dudes with guns? Easy question).

This once again occurred with the release of Dragon's Dogma, a game that is by far the best rpg I have played in my life, I can not go into enough detail about what made this game work so much. It did a great deal right, made a beautiful open world rpg with intense action combat and a huge variety of creatures to slay and bosses to fight with a variety of party members. Yet the only thing I heard people comment on was "pawns don't shut up!" and "omg no fast travel" which were not only minor problems, but problems that could be fixed very easily by going to a table in a tavern and telling your pawn to shut it, or by buying the fast travel stones in a shop in Gran Soren where they are readily available. But nope, things like this lead to 6-7/10 scores. So what gives fellow escapists? Why do people hate capcom games so much when they offer so much variety and for the most part, continue to update and improve on their old formulas? Resident Evil 6 had different campaigns that allowed for a variety of experiences, from the classic survival/puzzles experience to the over the top action sequences yet people complained that simply wasn't RE4. What would it take to make people happy? How is it games like the mentioned can get 6/10 scores for minor issues when something like battlefield and call of duty can get 9/10 when they offer nothing changed or refined from their previous installments?

 

[Casual Shinji]

I can only speak for myself, but Resident Evil 6 was absolute dogshit. Capcom didn't listen to the feedback of their playerbase, they looked at all the money CoD was raking in and figured they wanted a piece of that so they butchered the franchise beyond repair.

RE5 was already a step in the wrong direction, but at least it still had the beefy gunplay. RE6 was like playing a Grand Theft Auto game with the camera zoomed in. Every action you performed felt flacid and limp, the aiming reticle was a nightmare, and your character's walking animation lacked any weight or heft.

Capcom doesn't know what the fuck it's doing anymore, but then so is Square Enix and Konami.

 

[Zhukov]

I group them with Nintendo. I don't like them, I don't hate them. I nothing them. I shrug in their general direction. They make games that are played by people who are not me and I play games that are made by people who are definitely not Capcom.

Oh, and Dragon's Dogma was horrible. Respawning enemies that you keep having to fight over and over because the fast travel system was a piece of crap and pawn that don't shut up and cannot be made to shut up no matter how many times you sit them on the dunce stool.

I will agree that I don't quite get some of the RE6 criticism. People said it was too action-y and no horror, but those same people loved the hell out of RE4 which was all cheesy action and no horror. If you want to say RE6 is a bad action game then go ahead, I'll agree, but I don't see how it was too much of an action game.

 

[Drizzitdude]

DmC: Devil May Cry. I know this site has plenty of people who find it enjoyable for their own reasons. But as someone who invested a lot of time into the series, it's lacking in a lot of ways... and no it's not just the hair.

Overall I think DmC wasn't bad. Sure it took a turn from where the original plot was, but the gameplay was still there and mostly intact. The only annoying element in the game was enemies that can only be damaged by angelic or demonic weapons, they completely took away your ability to create your own maddening combos and said "NO! Only the scythe will hurt this one!"

Oh, and Dragon's Dogma was horrible. Respawning enemies that you keep having to fight over and over because the fast travel system was a piece of crap.

I can't even fathom where this complaint comes from. Once you hit the end game and newgame+ you can just buy portcrystals and place them all around the map. Fast travel in and of itself it just a way to turn the idea of adventuring into a matter of convenience. A game developer could build a beautiful world, but players won't see half of it because they will be too busy dealing with the quests directly next to towns and previously discovered locations. It is like seeing pieces of the big picture. I can remember the entire map layout from every river, rock and cave in Dragon's Dogma, but I for the life of me could not tell you any defining features about areas in skyrim or oblivion because I was far too busy warping all over the place to care about the in-between.

The only problem I really even had with the game was the fact the same level enemies respawned in the same area no matter how far you got, but in the end-game those enemies are replaced with much more difficult and hellish varieties to change things up. Saying a game was horrible when it has one of the most innovative combat systems in its genre simply because of minor problems that have no effect on your completion or progression is just plain insulting. Not only that it also is telling the gaming industry that you don't want innovation, your don't want change. You want Battlefield 8 World at Black-Ops Warfare because that is obviously the only safe choice.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I will agree that I don't quite get some of the RE6 criticism. People said it was too action-y and no horror, but those same people loved the hell out of RE4 which was all cheesy action and no horror. If you want to say RE6 is a bad action game then go ahead, I'll agree, but I don't see how it was too much of an action game.

RE4 was horror in the same way that the Evil Dead or Nightmare on Elm Street movies were horror. It was that 80's indulgence where a lot of it was silly, but it could be seriously creepy when it wanted to be. As a matter of fact most of the gameplay was creepy and eerie - It was only the cutscenes where things got completely goofy.

But the one thing that makes RE4 still very much a Resident Evil game and RE6 not (apart from satisfying action, great pacing, and atmospheric visual and sound design) was that the former had you alone and isolated against overwhelming odds. You were alone and cut off from the rest of the world to face this group of creepy weirdos and their Frankenstein monsters. In RE6 you were suddenly fighting a war and globe trotting around with a combat buddy. Resident Evil 7 apparently even has the tagline "The war ends here."

Both RE5 and 6 also tried to instill genuine drama, while RE4 was fully aware of how silly it was. That doesn't mean things always need to be silly, but a game with a premise like the Resident Evil franchise benefits from not treating its audience like fools. We know these scenarios are dumb, so the game shouldn't try to play it straight. We're here for the fun, so it helps when the game joins in on it.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Oh, and Dragon's Dogma was horrible. Respawning enemies that you keep having to fight over and over because the fast travel system was a piece of crap.

I can't even fathom where this complaint comes from. Once you hit the end game...

Maybe that's where the complaint comes from.

Dragon's Dogma has a beautiful world, but it's completely sullied by the game forcing you to fight the same stupid fucking pack of wolves or bandits every couple of steps. The combat is at its best against the huge bosses that you can climb and stab in the face. The rest of the combat's not bad, but it certainly ain't good enough to justify throwing you against a trash mob every three steps.

It's a shame because I really liked Dragon's Dogma at first, but it just gets so, so tedious so quickly. And no, the problem isn't fixed when the enemies are all replaced, because they just replace one set of tedious trash mobs with another.

Not only that it also is telling the gaming industry that you don't want innovation, your don't want change. You want Battlefield 8 World at Black-Ops Warfare because that is obviously the only safe choice.

Yep, obviously he's telling the industry that all he wants is military shooters, regardless of what other games he might like.

I mean, Jesus Christ, just because somebody doesn't like one RPG it doesn't mean that they just want military shooters for the rest of forever.

 

[Zhukov]

Oh, and Dragon's Dogma was horrible. Respawning enemies that you keep having to fight over and over because the fast travel system was a piece of crap.

I can't even fathom where this complaint comes from. Once you hit the end game and newgame+ you can just buy portcrystals and place them all around the map.

You mean the fast travel stops being crap once I've finished the game?

Thank goodness! How useful!

Fast travel in and of itself it just a way to turn the idea of adventuring into a matter of convenience. A game developer could build a beautiful world, but players won't see half of it because they will be too busy dealing with the quests directly next to towns and previously discovered locations.

That must be why the developers of Dragon's Dogma created a drab, dull greyish-green world where everything looks the same.

It is like seeing pieces of the big picture. I can remember the entire map layout from every river, rock and cave in Dragon's Dogma...

I can't remember much about the world. One brown hillside with some trees looks much like another.

I sure can remember the road between the starting town and the main capital city though... because I had to walk down it thirteen fucking times. And I had to kill those two packs of goblins and the two flocks of harpies every fucking time.

Saying a game was horrible when it has one of the most innovative combat systems in its genre...

"The most innovative combat system". You mean the system where you press this button to swing your weapon, this button to block and these buttons over here to use your class abilities? Unless you have a ranged weapon, in which case it's hold this button to aim and this button to fire.

Gosh. The innovation. It burns.

To be fair, the combat could actually be fun at times. (Well, so long as you played the fighter class, since every other class was either "fighter but worse", "third person shooter" or "stand here and watch the spellcasting progress bar".) Killing big monsters could be fun. The first time. And perhaps the second time. Less so by the eleventh time you've killed the same fucking chimera.

... simply because of minor problems that have no effect on your completion or progression...

Oh, and those problems sure had an effect on my completion alright. They caused me to quit long before completing the game because I have better things to do than waste my time trudging down the same fucking road for the tenth time, killing the same fucking monsters for the tenth time, all while listening to my braindead, non-character NPC pawns comment on some goat droppings for the tenth fucking time.

...is just plain insulting. Not only that it also is telling the gaming industry that you don't want innovation, your don't want change. You want Battlefield 8 World at Black-Ops Warfare because that is obviously the only safe choice.

If "innovation and change" results in a drab, boring fantasy RPG set in a world indistinguishable from every other fantasy RPG, in which I play the chosen one who wonders said dull world killing hundreds of monsters and completing quests (that usually revolve around killing monsters) while occasionally having to endure writing and dialogue that would be pelted with rotten tomatoes and laughed out of town in any other medium... then no, apparently I don't want innovation and change.

 

[Ninjamedic]

Let me get a couple things out of the way first. Yes Resident Evil 5 was nowhere near as good as 4, yes Chris punching a boulder was stupid. But the fact of the matter is the gameplay was for the most part solid, and a great deal of people found a lot of replay value in it with various costumes, weapon unlocks, mansion throwback dlc and the mercenary mode. But when it comes to 6 I have absolutely no idea where the massive amount of hatred towards the game comes from. Capcom listened to the feedback from their playerbase and responded with much tighter gameplay and responsive controls, easy ui and menus and added more mobility and flavor to the character in the forms of unique weapons, the ability to dodge roll to land on your back, and a new melee/counter system. The moronic AI partner from before was replaced with a much more useful and intelligent one, and they allowed for a variety of playstyles with addition of multiple crossing campaigns, seems like what should have been recipe for success yet the reviews and overall backlash form the community was prominent. So what went wrong? For the life of me the only complaint I can say about the game is the lack of different weapons and upgrades that added so much replay value to 5 but other than that I don't get what the issue everyone had with the game really was.

Right, I'll keep this as short as possible since I'm not in the mood for starting a slagging match, but for me, RE5 was the point the series lost most of what it was in favor of trying to appeal to the COD fans (who would just keep on playing COD) and 6 was the point where that loss of identity was complete. The quirky explotiation horror series I loved became yet another "military man saves the world from terrotists" plot. They're Resident Evil really only in name.

5 had everything, world in danger, an armory of weapons with next to no actual variety guaranteeing that you'd only use 1 of each weapon type at best, fucking turret sections, even worse QTE's, and the cherry on the cake, cover based shooting.

Also, why are Chris and Sheva given next to nothing for this "mission"? I'm guessing Chris drunk an entire keg one night and plowed a tractor into HQ. Though the redshirts get all fancy equipment.

The problem with 5's gameplay is that it was changed but the rest of the game didn't reflect that. In 4 there was a balance, you had range, the enemies didn't, that had numbers, you didn't. It was you against an entire horde and it was imperative to keep your distance.

Cue 5 and now you just charge in with little worry. You have an axe? Well I KNOW JEET KUN DO! The co-op change didn't help either, it shows that it was a change midway through development with all of the gimmick parts of levels and otherwise having twice the firepower for any situation. The bosses also degraded into timing puzzles instead of actual challenge. Did I forget to metion the next to no originality in the enemies?


Overrall, it wasn't terrible, just sloppy, lazy and disappointing. All Lost In Nightmares did was show a brief glimpse into what the game could have been.

 

[Zhukov]

I will agree that I don't quite get some of the RE6 criticism. People said it was too action-y and no horror, but those same people loved the hell out of RE4 which was all cheesy action and no horror. If you want to say RE6 is a bad action game then go ahead, I'll agree, but I don't see how it was too much of an action game.

RE4 was horror in the same way that the Evil Dead or Nightmare on Elm Street movies were horror. It was that 80's indulgence where a lot of it was silly, but it could be seriously creepy when it wanted to be. As a matter of fact most of the gameplay was creepy and eerie - It was only the cutscenes where things got completely goofy.

But the one thing that makes RE4 still very much a Resident Evil game and RE6 not (apart from satisfying action, great pacing, and atmospheric visual and sound design) was that the former had you alone and isolated against overwhelming odds. You were alone and cut off from the rest of the world to face this group of creepy weirdos and their Frankenstein monsters. In RE6 you were suddenly fighting a war and globe trotting around with a combat buddy. Resident Evil 7 apparently even has the tagline "The war ends here."

Y'know, I don't ever recall being creeped out while suplexing Spaniards. Or mowing them down with a shotgun. Or setting them on fire with incendiary grenades. Or trying to line them up so I could hit three at once with that one piercing pistol.

It was quite a hoot really. It could be a rather frantic hoot at times (well, two times - the village at the start and the cabin siege), but if that's enough to qualify a game as horror then I could say the same for Mirror's Edge.

As for isolation, that's basically the norm in video games. A lone action man charging through hordes of enemies. Hell, RE4 was less isolating than many games, what with the shrieking schoolgirl following me around half the time.

 

[verdant monkai]

Let me get a couple things out of the way first. Yes Resident Evil 5 was nowhere near as good as 4, yes Chris punching a boulder was stupid.

NO

It was awesome. It showed the build up of years of hatred and resentment for how Wesker betrayed the S.T.A.R.S years ago, and those feelings came out in an eruption of superhuman strength! in the refusal to let Wesker take the life of another of his comrades.
WAI DOO PEPPLE N0T UNDRSTANDD!!!????


Capcom is an odd entity for me. I love Capcom's games, some of them rank among my favourite. But I'm not a fan of Capcoms business practices, like on disc DLC 'n' shit. So I would say I like Capcom but just not their way of doing business.

 

[Cyrromatic]

The hate Capcom gets, at least when it comes to the Resident Evil aspect of things, is that they seemingly have the capacity to make good games with bold new directions á la Resident Evil 4, but then get carried away with mindboggingly dumb decisions. When they announced that they were going to implement some Call of Duty aspects into RE6 so more people would be appealed is the prime example becuase that level of logic is best reserved for small children. "If I paint this pear red it will taste like an apple!" And then you start spasming from food poisoning and all you get is a collective sigh from the people watching you trash about on the floor, vomiting everywhere.

 

[RJ 17]

I will agree that I don't quite get some of the RE6 criticism. People said it was too action-y and no horror, but those same people loved the hell out of RE4 which was all cheesy action and no horror. If you want to say RE6 is a bad action game then go ahead, I'll agree, but I don't see how it was too much of an action game.

The difference is the lead-up to the games. Before RE6 came out, Capcom announced that they were "Trying to appeal to a broader market" or some such thing. The gaming community has heard this line before and, generally speaking, assumes that line to mean "This game is going to be bland, homogenized crap".

Now I'm one of the types of people that go with the motto "don't knock it till you try it", so I can't personally fault RE6 for anything since I haven't actually played it. But I'm not a big RE fan and never really have been. I've got friends that are big RE fans, though, and according to them that's what the problem was with RE6: it might as well have been another chapter in the Gears of War franchise. No survival-horror elements to be found, just a generic 3rd person shooter. I can't say if that's necessarily a terrible thing, but it seems like the trend among most fans of the survival-horror genre is that they want a return to what originally defined the survival-horror genre, and that wasn't a Michael Bay action movie.

Another example of what I'm talking about is the general disdain for Dead Space 3. Yet another game that was made more actiony "to appeal to a broader audience". Simply adding in a 2nd player got everyone's panties in a bunch.

OT: Personally I don't really care all that much about Capcom. Really the only games I ever seriously played from them were the Mega Man games way back in the day. When Capcom all but abandoned the franchise, I pretty much stopped playing Capcom games all together. Not because I've got a grudge against them, they just no longer offer anything that appeals to me.

 

[Eve Charm]

You'll get hate on any game that even if it's a good game, if it's worse then other titles in the series, effectively making the series and story worse, it deserves some hate. Not saying RE 6 was horrible, but hell the RE that was an 3ds title was basically better then it in everyway >.> An 3ds title.

I liked dragons dogma but that and street fighter X tekken made capcom the Poster child of why on disc DLC is a bad thing. You can argue till your blue in the face if people should have a right to all the things on the disc they sell you, but the downright absolute BS came from the dlc only being a switch that gave you access to the content or not and hackers having and accessing content an LEGIT user wouldn't even be able to to PAY for for MONTHS. Armors were rampant in dragons dogma before they came out and to get them you either had to give everything or know an hacker, once they hit forget trading because 90% of the trades after a bit were people just wanting that DLC armor. Also how do people get away for months playing ranked online matches with unreleased characters in cross tekken and not getting banned is beyond me, Way to completely unbalance a game and punish the customers that buy and play your game the intended way.

 

[michael87cn]

Resident Evil 6.

No Megaman games for like, ages. No Megaman Legends 3.

Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter. No new Breath of Fire game for ages.

Crapcom hasn't done anything good for a while now.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Y'know, I don't ever recall being creeped out while suplexing Spaniards. Or mowing them down with a shotgun. Or setting them on fire with incendiary grenades. Or trying to line them up so I could hit three at once with that one piercing pistol.

It was quite a hoot really. It could be a rather frantic hoot at times (well, two times - the village at the start and the cabin siege), but if that's enough to qualify a game as horror then I could say the same for Mirror's Edge.

What's creepy is subjective ofcourse. But you can't tell me you didn't feel even the slightest anxiety when first entering the labyrinth and hearing growly noises all around you, or when having to survive the run-in with Sazalar's "right hand", and ofcourse the Regenerators?

The action itself was designed to really tense you up. You couldn't pan the camera in 360 degrees, only around Leon's peripheral vision, making you constantly paranoid whether something was sneaking up behind you. And once the parasites started to errupt from enemy heads at random, shooting villagers/monks down and knifing them became even more of a risky endeavour. This in tandem with the fantastic visuals and sound design made for a very effective creep factor, where you're always kept somewhat in the dark about what will occur next.

This is what made RE4 (as well as some earlier entries in the franchise) ultimately "scary"; Walking into a unfamliar situation, and not knowing whether or not you'd be able to handle it.

As for isolation, that's basically the norm in video games. A lone action man charging through hordes of enemies. Hell, RE4 was less isolating than many games, what with the shrieking schoolgirl following me around half the time.

It is, and a lot of games use it to their benefit. Like horror themed games. If you were to compare RE4 and RE5, the former made you feel trapped, while the later made you feel like you were traveling. Eventhough in both you play a one-man army.

 

[Catfood220]

I don't hate Capcom, I suppose that some of their business practises are bit dodgy, but in a world where the likes of EA exist, they really don't seem so bad.

I do have to say that Resident Evil 6 is possibly one of the worst games that I have ever had the pleasure of playing. I pledged after playing the demo not to spend any money on this game. However, I have a friend who, well you could take a shit, put a Resident Evil badge on it and press it into a game disk (which I think they actually did with Resident Evil 6) and he will still buy it.

Well, I borrowed this game, got through 2 of the supposedly good Leon missions and returned it along with a 5 minute rant about everything that was wrong with the game. The worst bits included an ambulance that came along without any warning in the middle of a battle. First time this happened I was like "what the fuck?" Then it happened again, third time I stayed away from that area and watched as the ambulance came crashing in. I don't want my hand holding but for fuck sake, at least give me a warning when you are ranking my performance at the end of the level.

Also, the thing that finished it for me was the zombies in the cemetery doing commando rolls when I tried to shoot them. Zombies doing commando rolls. Fuck off.

The good bit I could think to praise was the fact that Helena was almost indestructible, which makes me wonder why they sent the soft and squidgy Leon and not her alone to solve the problem.

 

[CyberSinner]

The Dragon's Dogma is a bald face lie. I have fast traveled in most of my gameplay. I am only halfway with the main story and I have portcrystals all over the god damn place. The point is putting your portcrystals where they belong. Places you know you'll have to visit multiple times. Serens is level 35 and I don't remember him ever walking anywhere once he got a few portcrystals going around the map, I am not even finished with the game since I just finished the Wrym Hunt. There are plenty of portcrystals in the game, and oh my god a game that makes you work for its fast travel instead of giving it to you right away. The only thing I'd like to see in the next game is mounts or carriages, simple as that.

I don't hate Capcom. When Capcom is GOOD they are Good. When Capcom is Bad they are Bad. The problem is that unfortunately is their track record. I think most of the hate comes from the fact that we are all well aware that Capcom makes good game, so when they come out with crap it makes most of their fans go into a tissy. Because we know they are capable of much more.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I hate that they gave us that fantastic Resident Evil remake on the GameCube, and failed to give Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, and Resident Evil: Code Veronica the same treatment.

I can't speak for Resident Evil 6 though. I followed the game's development, decided that it didn't look very good, and opted to save my money. When the price plummets during a Steam sale maybe I'll pick it up, but I don't really want to spend more than $10 on it. I'm far more likely to pick up Resident Evil: Revelations anyway.