Resident Evil
Even though RE is supposed to be about 10 hours long, I have a feeling it will take me a few weeks to get all of those in. I’m not sure what it is about this game but it is hard to get in a good long session. I know it isn’t the graphics because they are a significant step up from the original. And it is not the controls because I’m not using the tank controls. It just might be the atmosphere of the game. There is a constant dread I feel while playing, and that is not a bad thing. This is a survival horror. It is supposed to keep me at the edge of my seat and it does it really well. The only thing is, being constantly on edge is exhausting. Right now it is manageable for me in small doses, but not a marathon session. Maybe pandemic isn’t a great time to be going all in Resident Evil series. About an hour is the most I can take. And I don’t think I will be playing it during the week, being tired from work.
While playing today, I went up against a giant snake named Yawn. While fighting it I ran away like a true coward. While I was away, I heard my partner scream. I came back to see both, my partner and Yawn were gone. My partner was supposed to die here anyway, but he was going to leave me his shotgun. When I ran away, Yawn ate him with the shotgun.
I think I’m a third of the way through Jill’s playthrough. Once I’m done I will have to seriously consider if I have a Chris run in me. I don’t think there is enough difference between the two characters to merit another playthrough.
5/3/20
After a long hiatus, I return to Resident Evil. At this point I want to quickly get through it so I can start the RE 2 Remake. I had been gone for so long, I can’t remember where I left off. Took me a while to get my bearing . I had forgotten how jarring the sudden changes in the camera angles can get. Even the controls are starting to bother me. Movement gets thrown off completely when the camera angles change. It is pretty clear, the game was designed to have the up button be the move forward button. Even though directional movement is implemented now, game has a hard time keeping it straight once the angle changes. For example, Jill can be heading toward the camera (player is holding the stick down). Once you progress far enough, the angle changes and camera is now behind Jill. If you keep holding the stick down Jill will keep going up. But if you let go and then hold down, she will start going in the opposite direction. This gets frustrating quickly.
When I turned the game back on Jill had a metal tablet and a red zombie chewing her ass out. After getting rid of the zombie, I went around for a while trying to figure out where to put the tablet. With a little help from YouTube I finally got to the place I was supposed to go. Here Jill got molested by a rabid dog until she could shoot him down and headed into a toolshed. On the way there, she did find a magnum. This will definitely come in handy.
The atmosphere of this game never ceases to creep me out. The player is always tense about something popping up from somewhere just off the screen. The fixed angles, I had been bitching about few minutes ago, really ratchet the tension up. They take away the control from the player. There is a sense of helplessness that can only come from taking away the control of what the player can or can not look at. I find the journey from one typewriter to the next to be so draining that I need a break each time I reach the save point. As I have said before, this is not detrimental to the game. This is exactly what the intentions of the game makers were. It is quite extraordinary they original intent carried over so well in the remake. This is definitely not a given. You only have to look at Silent Hill series to see how completely a jump to the next gen system can backfire for the horror survival games.
The immersion Resident Evil creates by forcing the player to be vulnerable has been a remarkable consistent part of the series. When the series went more action in RE 5 and 6 were panned for losing the horror aspect. 7 was hailed as a return to roots. Now the new RE:2 has been universally critically acclaimed. I cannot wait to finish this one and move on to the Remake.
6/4/20
