Resident Evil
It is time for Jill to head back to the mansion. Almost at the end and I’m finally getting the hang of the controls. The trick is to not touch the second joystick. Once inside the residence it is a pretty straightforward path without too many branching pathways.
There are a few moments where the game feels like it is being padded. The back and forth with the keys is clearly done to increase the game times and make the residence feel bigger than it is. This area has another one of those jump scares this game is famous for. Jill steps into waist deep water. I initially thought she was going to get electrocuted when she steps into the water, but it is far worse. There are two sharks in the water. Once Jill steps in there they come for her. And then it is a race to get to the platform before getting eaten by the either one of those sharks.
Jill then has to climb down a ladder, and she is underwater with only glass between her and the sharks. These sharks are getting unnaturally aggressive. They keep running into the glass until it cracks. I don’t think the glass ever actually breaks, but it sure felt like it would when I was playing it. At the same time something else has gone wrong and it looks like the water pressure is increasing. Jill must override the emergency shutdown protocols to bring the iron curtain down before the water or the sharks burst through and drown and/or eat Jill. All this while an alarm is blaring to raise the player’s blood pressure.
Once done, Jill drains the water and steps out. One of the sharks is on the ground looking pretty dead. But once Jill gets close to, it flails arounds. This jump scare really got me. I had to stop playing for a bit because of how mad I was that it got me with this dumb scare. When I started again, I had the volume down and listened to a podcast instead. My stress went down to manageable levels after this. The sound design is a major portion creepy ambience of Resident Evil. There is one more instance when the shark can get Jill. The trick here is to turn on the electricity and fry up the shark. By this time I’ve had my fill of sharks for all of 2020.
Jill passes by a door and hears somebody talking inside. She opens the door to see Barry, but there is no one else in there with him. When asked, he says he has been talking to himself. Either Barry is losing his sanity or lying. It is more likely to be the second one. He does seem more guilty than scared. When Jill walks out of the room, Wesker is looming on the other side of the door. Where these guys are popping up from? The whole mansion feels empty when I’m playing, and then all the survivors show up at the same time. Wesker also comments on Barry’s erratic behavior. I’m pretty sure Wesker is working for Umbrella Corp. His detached, cool under pressure attitude feels off, but I think I might have heard “Wesker is evil’ on a podcast too. I’d much rather cast my lot with Barry than Wesker.
With Jill run coming to an end, I’m sure I will at least play a little bit of Chris run, too. But the game is barely different between the two characters. I don’t think I will finish the Chris run all the way through. Even though it will probably be faster to get through I’m kind of ready to move on to a new game.
I appreciate the subversion of boss battles wherever I can get them. Plant 42 is the second plant we have to get past. This first one Jill unloads poison into and there is no need to actually fight it. The second one is a puzzle about making a new batch of poison and killing off the plant 42. Something that is tangential to the game, any time I see the number 42 I always wonder if it is an allusion to Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Maybe this plant was supposed to be the answer to every question in the universe and I fed it home made weed killer. Even when I give it a vegetarian Raid, Barry has to come in and use a flame thrower on it to put it down. I’m sure this is how a physical fight with Plant 42 would have also ended. The devs didn’t make two different cut scenes based on how the player decides to tackle this boss. As a result, the cut scene feels disjointed with the poison strategy. I think it would flow more smoothly with the actual fight. Once this whole ordeal done Jill gains a Helmet key. This will open up any doors that remain locked by now. And I don’t think there are too many of those anyway.
6/5/20
