Opinions: Resident Evil 4/5/6 suck as horror games...

Broken Shotgun

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In 2005, everybody loved RE4 for supposedly 'reinventing' the survival horror genre. But in my view... it kind of killed it. It has taken so many years for survival horror to feel great again, with recent games such as The Evil Within 2 and The Last of Us (even if that's more so an adventure game) really shining through, in an industry where people's expectations run riot. But Resident Evil doesn't really feel right anymore.

I was a big, big fan of the franchise, beginning in the days of the first PlayStation. The same with Alone in the Dark, and also Silent Hill. I played Resident Evil 2, when I was in high school, and I soon played catch-up, buying the rest of the series. No game moved me the way that game did, and the remake was absolutely nothing like the original in any capacity. But the remake in 2002 was boy, a dream come true. I'm not able to say enough good things about that game. It was so freaking awesome to get a GameCube back then and play a glorious game a second time with way, way cooler graphics and stuff. And my interest never let up at all. Because I played through them all as a teenager, doing marathon runs countless times, normally all week long if I had to. All of them are great, atmosphere filled, tension yielding experiences. So long as we're referring to the titles released prior to 2005. Save for the dull spin off stuff, I guess, I don't have anything bad to say about the old games at all. Then what happened, exactly?

RE4 to me is NOT, I repeat, not a bad game in itself. But as a Resident Evil game? It's... HORRIBLE! I've always been annoyed at Capcom for not wrapping up the Umbrella story properly, and the tone of the game is too Hollywood-ish as well. OK, they kind of did resolve this issue with Umbrella receiving their undoing, by developing a, *DRUM ROLL PLEASE* - an on-rails shooter. I'll take a momentous pause here... and say it again. An on-rails shooter - called The Umbrella Chronicles! That was the grand finale for our heroes wiping out Umbrella after all they went through, until 7: Biohazard introduced a 'good' "Blue Umbrella" (or whatever they're indirectly getting called by the fans). But all in all, the series is nothing like how it began any more, and it shows.

I feel like Capcom has lost their touch, and so they are just copying other trends. I didn't know Revelations 2 was copying The Last of Us. I mean, I know that game was out in 2013 and Revelations 2 got released in 2015 (initially as episodes, then a full retail version followed). But I actually played The Last of Us for the first time in 2017... and right away, it hit me that Revelations 2 was nothing but a sheer rip-off, in its game mechanics and its story as well. And here I thought it was actually one of the better entries in recent years. Aw, how I was fooled...

The same fate befell Silent Hill too. Team Silent ended their run with the series in 2005, which was the beginning of the end in my view. I suspect Capcom taken their games in a more action focused route was partly why this occurred. Konami wanted to put an American stamp on the series, because that's actually good for J-Horror lovers. No? This is probably the dumbest decision they've ever made as a company, apart from the whole breaking-up with Mr. Kojima nonsense and the arcade machines plugging they carried out right after that, and also going on about merchandise at E3 the other week there, and advertising other things that no one cares about. Meanwhile, a handful of the gaming industry's top franchises from the golden era of Konami, are dead on arrival.

The difference is... Konami may have indeed quit while they were ahead. Well, sort of. But OK, that surely will forever suck for fans of the series that pine for more entries, just like I do. But it's bittersweet. The old games will always be there. We can fortunately pretend that the crappy Xbox 360 and PS3 games were never a thing, and let's not forget the awful HD collection too. But the thing is... Capcom IS going to continue milking the utter sh*t out of Resident Evil, and this worries me.

I don't know if 7: Biohazard was someone's idea of having a joke. It is the biggest 'not a Resident Evil game' Resident Evil game there is, and in retrospect, it's just not particularly very interesting. Yeah, it was a so-so game back in 2017 and one that served as something of a surprise for the fanboys, because of its limited build-up. I'll admit that it was kind of a different take on the series. Now, looking back on it, both this and RE4 are not really good games that go well in the true lore of the series. On their own, yeah, I'll give them fairer criticism. But Capcom loves slapping that name on the cover for to make a fast buck. They pretended it was a horror game, only to do a swerve... and make it an action game again, with Chris 'Shemp' Redfield saving the day, yet again. Although he feels like an absolute pansy compared to the Chris that took down Wesker and co, all those years ago. Not to mention, it really doesn't look like Capcom even gave a crap about hiring an actor to do his modeling, because whoever they paid to do the part is somebody who doesn't even remotely look like him. That should show you good people by now, that Capcom sees the series as a profit, whereas guys like Shinji Mikami did it with pride.

The Resident Evil 2 remake is the gayest, dumbest remake of all time. It feels like a parody, actually. Mr. X sucks. The whole game feels generic and good, but ultimately forgettable. There's no crows, or spiders. The ivy plant things were replaced by stupid-looking zombie plants. You encountered the zombie Brad Vickers in the original game to acquire a key, yet now he is suddenly absent, and they will probably remake Resident Evil 3: Nemesis someday soon, which makes his absence somewhat puzzling to me. What the hell, Capcom?

You feel no major tension whatsoever on the way to the lab with Ada and Sherry - which was one of the original game's ultimate highlights. No making jokes about it, this felt so watered down indeed. It's like, poof, you're there already. Who believed it was a bright idea to darken everything in just about every darn room you're in? Honestly, I don't know what the plants are called, nor do I give a damn. The story kind of sucked, and felt rushed. It was highly disappointing in just about every aspect. Not to mention, what was up with Leon and Claire hardly seeing one another? Claire and Leon only meet like once or twice, and when they do butt heads, they act like those characters in the Twilight movies, being all cute and really, there was hardly any mentioning of Claire's desire to look for Chris, and you don't see her knife on her costume, and she never finds his diary. Side characters had more screen time, sure, but that amounted to nothing really overly important, and the DLC was just plain garbage. And in the main game, both characters share a few of the same scenes and boss fights, instead of having unique ones. They just cut and pasted stuff, everywhere.

I also feel the same way with Alone in the Dark, and the original is a milestone in horror gaming overall. In fact, it was the one game that made the Resident Evil series possible. It started out as a fun series in its own right, but then changed over time. We got an open-ended sequel, that was a reboot of sorts, then we got another reboot 6 years later, but it is a radically more lame reboot, that was followed by two terrible films, and then a third reboot that was way worse than the first two combined. No wonder nobody cares about it anymore. I'm just sick of all these legendary franchises getting destroyed by greedy corporations.

Anyway, check out this video from a passionate fan. I used to be friendly with him, too. That was until, these two arseholes had him turning against me a year ago during some pointless debate about him 'misleading' the fans.

 

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