stroopwafel said:
dscross said:
What was once a slow, tense, puzzle-led experience was transformed into a series of tacked-together Cool Gaming Moments. Resi 4 feels like the product of ten different minds in a super-macho staff meeting, rather than the singular creative vision of one man.
Here you are absolutely wrong though. RE4 is the absolute opposite of design by committee. That you prefer puzzle oriented/pre-rendered classic RE and don't like the merchant I can see as personal taste but RE4 objectively
was the product of a singular vision. That is what makes it so good. It's a labor of love and Shinji Mikami's magnum opus. This guy was on a roll in the early to mid '00s. Before that he directed RE Remake which is probably the best remake of any game ever.
While gameplay is the main reason I think they made a complete U turn, it isn't not the only reason I dislike the idea of it. I also dislike the direction they took in terms of story. Look, I'm a huge survival horror fan but even I agree that Resi needed a kick up the arse. By the time Resident Evil Zero arrived in 2003, all that clunky wandering around creepy-but-static mansions, sipping coffee through door opening animations and battling the fixed camera had started to infect the game's fun factor. It was time for a change.
Capcom knew this. And so the first iteration splintered off to become Devil may Cry, while another stab saw a new-look Leon S. Kennedy battling a monster with a hooked hand in a haunted house.
The iteration which made the most sense to me followed on from the excellent Code: Veronica - a fateful charge into enemy territory at Umbrella's European HQ; answers to the questions swirling around Oswald E. Spencer; a battle against a super-powered Albert Wesker; maybe even a revelation about the mysterious shadow company he'd joined, which I'd long suspected could emerge as the series' new Big Bad Biocorp.
Then Shinji Mikami stepped in and ruined it all with three simple words: "Umbrella was finished." Come again?
This is one of the biggest reasons I dislike Resident Evil 4. I'd spent the best part of eight years watching Umbrella get built up to the point where I was dying to take them down. That pleasure was snatched from me, suddenly and unceremoniously, in a single cut-scene.
And what were the series' iconic zombies and devastating viruses replaced by? A mutating midget in a pirate hat. An Emperor Palpatine clone with a giant scorpion tail. An army of quasi-intelligent parasite-infected villagers who were so savage they couldn't even use firearms... Except for the ones who could. What?
And what was Leon's motivation for being there? To save the President's daughter.
Right.
Resi 4's story had squat all to do with the rest of the series up to that point. Putting aside Leon in the lead role, Ada turning up unannounced and a cameo from Wesker, the game could be part of a separate series altogether. It's like Ubisoft deciding the Templars are a bit boring and those Assassins should battle little green men instead.
Compare that (again) to Metal Gear Solid, another stalwart of late nineties, story-driven action adventure gaming. Like Resi, it was a series born of individually conceived, separately told narratives. These were interwoven to form a larger mythology.
Hideo Kojima has gone on record to say he didn't plan it out all in advance, George Lucas-style. All the same, there was never a sense that the MGS team was making up the storyline as it went along. When Old Snake learns the true nature of MGS4's titular Patriots, a decades-spanning story is cast in an entirely new light.
The Resident Evil team seemed to lack this ability to spin a yarn and keep the big picture in mind. And it all came to a head with the end of Umbrella.
The problem is that so many times publishers think that as long as a videogame is fun, its storyline is often thought of as something which is just a bit of a bonus - the medium deserves better
But, as I've said, that disappointing plot twist isn't the number one reason I dislike Resident Evil 4. It's the gameplay. To be specific, it's the fact I spent 20-odd hours playing a brand new Resident Evil game wondering when I was going to get to the Resident Evil bits.
Picture your favourite contemporary game series - for the purposes of this example, let's say it's Call of Duty. Now imagine picking up Call of Duty: Red Insurgencies (play as the Soviet Secret Police, folks!).
On booting up the game you discover the template has subtly shifted: it's now an open-ended, emergent Bioshock-style shooter. All that linear action movie pacing has been taken out and there's nary an explosive set-piece in sight.
Or how about this: imagine excitedly loading the latest Final Fantasy, only to find the expansive overworld adventuring you know and love has been replaced by endless treks round lavishly decorated, sparsely interactive linear corridors. Oh, hang on...