Name one thing that A Link to the Past does better than A Link Between Worlds.stroopwafel said:Noooooo. Those are some of me favorites. I don't think ALttP aged poorly(that goes for most of the top tier snes games). A Link Between Worlds felt more like a (really good) homage to me rather than a genuine successor.
Graphics? ALttP has aged better than some of the 3D titles that came before it, but it doesn't have the charm of other 2D titles from the era. ALBW has the advantage of full 3D models and better graphics all round.
Story/characters? Not that ALBW is a masterpiece, but it actually does have...well, characters, that you get to know and rescue rather than nameless maidens. Hilda isn't the deepest antagonist in the world, but she does at least have motivations beyond "I'm evil."
Gameplay? Mostly identical, but ALBW does add another, ahem, 'dimension' with its wallhopping segments.
ALttP is arguably the more influential title, but I can't think of anything it does better than ALBW. Heck, I even rank Minish Cap above it, which also uses a similar template (at least as far as the layout of Hyrule goes).
All of that's true, but a few points:Casual Shinji said:It introduced us to Leon, Claire, and Ada; three of the most popular Resi characters, it was the first introduction to Racoon City, the police station is still one of the most beloved settings in the franchise, and the zapping system was pretty unique at the time and still sort of is. It had Lickers, it had Mr. X, it had Hunk.
It had a lot of new characters, monsters, and environments that have become iconic in the franchise. It's not too weird that people still hold it in high regard.
RE3 was a continuation and slight refinement of 2, but it didn't have the same level of cool, new shit.
-Are we really crediting RE2 with "introducing" Raccoon City, when we only spend 5-10 minutes in the actual city itself before transitioning to an entirely indoor environment? If anything, I'd say RE3 gets that score.
-RE2 gave us Lickers, Mr. X, and Hunk. Hunk is a character who's basically the Boba Fett of Resident Evil, a man with no personality or backstory (barring EU stuff), but everyone seems to love. Lickers, I'll grant you. But while RE2 gave us Mr. X, RE3 gave us Nemesis, which is basically Mr. X on steroids.
I'm not dismissing RE2 (as I said in my OP, I actually like the game), but you yourself point out that RE3 is a refinement of RE2. I'd argue that execution trumps conception in most cases.
Nowadays, maybe. But I remember the good ol days when Halo 4 was considered the worst. Before that it was Reach.DefunctTheory said:Wasn't Halo 5 considered the worst one by the fanbase?
Personally the worst Halo game I've played is ODST, but Halo 4 takes the second worst spot for me. If anything, it might fall into the category of overrated for me, but it's the strangest case of "overrated" I've seen, because I remember being there when Halo 4 launched. I remember how I hated it, and how most of the fanbase seemed to hate it, but since Halo 5 came out, people now seem to love the game. And in fairness, I don't consider Halo 4 to be a bad game per se, but I do have a chunk of bile reserved for it.
No-one could shoot while moving prior to those games either, so I don't see this as an issue. I'm fine with the 'run or shoot' system - adds to the suspense.dscross said:For my money, because Capcom couldn't decide which conventions were essential to Resident Evil as a brand and which should be abandoned. This would also explain why the hardened government operatives of Resis 4 and 5 can't aim and run at the same time, a feat even weedy writer Alan Wake can manage.
I can sympathize with most of that bar the voice acting - honestly, the RE4 voice acting is pretty good. I mean, prior to this, we had RE1 (ugh), and RE3 had its share of wonky voice acting/dialogue.dscross said:In contrast, Resi 4 saw a series stuck in a rut go so far to the opposite extreme it became barely recognisable, aside from a few superficial similarities - returning characters, so-bad-it's-brilliant voice acting and a surplus of potted plants.
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.
On a purely mechanical level, it is a remarkable game. It deserves the plaudits received and can rightly be held up as the landmark title which gave us Gears of War et al. In that respect, Capcom nailed it.
But here's the big problem: Resident Evil 4 is not a Resident Evil game. And that's the one thing it should have been, above all else.
That aside...well, I'll come out and say that RE4 is my favorite Resi game, and this is someone who played numerous RE games before it (all the main ones at least), and it does get a spot in my top ten. If RE4 has a problem, it's that plotwise, it is a departure from everything that comes beforehand. The fall of Umbrella is relegated to the intro cutscene, and very little in the plot feels that connected to what came before. However, I can forgive RE4 for that because a) its gameplay is enough to carry it, and b) in the context of the wider series, it's easy for me to see where RE4 falls in. It's the transition period between everything that came before, and everything that came after. It feels like a test bed for Capcom to try a new style before getting onto the wider plot. In that context, I can forgive it for its plot shortcomings.
"Red Insurgencies" could easily fit in with Call of Duty. Something like BioShock could also work.dscross said: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.
To be frank, almost any game that involves firearms of some kind could serve as a CoD game, because we've run the full gamete from WWII to outer space. CoD is to FPS what Final Fantasy is to JRPGs - numerous self-contained installments/sub-series that are connected by only a few key elements.
As I've kind of established, for me, execution>conception. If I'm judging RE4 purely on the merits of its story and how it fits into the overall mythology, then it doesn't do too well. If I'm judging it on its own merits, then it's excellent.
...Final Fantasy X?dscross said: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...
I jest, I know you mean FFXIII, but I have to ask, what separates FF13 from the series as a whole? By itself it doesn't strike me as being linearity, and Final Fantasy doesn't have one single setting, and it left behind its medieval settings from FF7. Wary of commenting too much (FF10 is the only FF I've played), but the point is, those points above don't strike me as being inherent issues, only just part of why FF13 isn't well regarded by many people.
Well, that I disagree with. RE doesn't have the best story in the world, but there's plenty of worse examples out there, many of which have been mentioned on this very forum. I actually quite like RE5 as well, albeit not as much as 4, and a lot of the reason is that it does have a better plot that's better connected to the series's mythology.stroopwafel said:You keep hammering on about the story but really it's never been the game's priority. It's subject of parody for a reason. I can't think of a storyline that is more shite than Resident Evil so it boggles my mind someone buys these games for story. It's what Defunct says it's the 'spirit' of a game that is worth maintaining and that is what Resident Evil 4 does and RE5 and 6 didn't do. With RE4 I definitely felt I was playing Resident Evil, but evolved. With RE5 and 6 I definitely did not and that is because the director, again, didn't understand the spirit of the games and what made them unique(namely the atmosphere and incremental dread).