Month: February 2021

So I ended up binge playing the RE2 and RE3 remkes all the way through and then went back to RE7. And just recently I finished RE7, and…

Holy crap, that was good. That was an experience. I went in basically totally blind as to what to expect (beyond being captured by a crazy backwoods family and then chased by a big guy with an axe), and I think I highly recommend doing the same if possible because the protagonist Ethan Winters is similarly clueless and there are a lot of layers to peel back on a very horrific metaphorical onion.

So yeah, because of that I feel like I shouldn’t actually get into any details except that the game gets my highest stamp of approval. This was well put together by a team that wanted to excel at their goal, and their goal was to scare the crap out of us while also telling a very compelling story. The visuals are realistic, the character modeling excellent and the acting is good enough to keep you well immersed in the unfolding insanity. And oh, the gore! Not a game for the faint of heart, this one. It is downright brutal, but held back just enough that it’s also hard to desensitize yourself. And although the first-person mode is a departure from the rest of the series, you definitely can’t beat it for horror purposes, especially if you pair it with some surround sound headphones so you can spin in paranoid fear at the slightest weird sound behind you. Sometimes that paranoia might save your life.

The creepies are crawly and the boss battles are excellently done, particularly in the beginning where brute force won’t get you far compared to awareness of your surroundings. Sometimes the particular subgenre will switch up on you as well and you’ll have to adapt to and survive a new kind of crazy.

RE7 fits neatly into the lore while being its own thing, and what a moody, scary, fantastic thing it is. If you like horror games and you haven’t done so yet you need to play it, period.

Or perhaps I should say: JOIN US. ACCEPT HER GIFT.

The Resident Evil franchise from Capcom is one of the granddaddys of the survival horror genre in video games, not to mention zombies.  Full disclosure that I never played the original 1996 game beyond a short demo, which was enough to turn me off because no amount of novelty was going to get me past the absolutely atrocious writing and voice acting. In particular I will never forget this early exchange between two members of an elite Special Forces team:

Dude (cheesy voice): “Jill, can you use a gun?”

Jill (girly voice): “I think so…”

I guess no offense to those of you who soldiered on, but I was out and I’ve never gone back, even when they eventually rebooted it. Same reason I have the unpopular opinion that Silent Hill 2 is not the greatest thing ever — it was a cool concept and setting but that dialogue just felt like I was getting my teeth pulled. I’m one of those weirdos who doesn’t skip cutscenes or even questgiver text when playing a game so I find it rough if that’s not clicking for me.

Luckily for my relationship with RE, Resident Evil 2 debuted in 1998 and felt much improved and immersive, even if running from zombies was interspersed with trying to find heart-shaped keys. I also liked the innovation of the disc it came on being 2-sided — on one side you played through the game as rookie cop Leon Kennedy, and on the other you played college gal Claire Redfield, and their stories intertwined and diverged in intriguing ways after a shared beginning. On top of that, once you completed the game you unlocked a second run-thru which wasn’t just the usual “same-game-but-you-keep-your-upgrades” but provided new scenes and even an extended ending that represented the truly complete story.

You basically got 4 complete games for the price of 1, which is a heck of a thing to consider in this modern era where you’re lucky to get a no-frills experience that works without day 1 patches, microtransactions and DLCs. The dialogue was still sometimes funky but not teeth-grinding and really, it’s a deserved classic. Resident Evil 3 followed up the next year and was a major upgrade for the character of Jill Valentine (yes, that Jill quoted above) while also remaining one of the more intensely terrifying experiences I’ve had playing any game.

After 3 the series took a different tack and even though I played RE 4 and RE 5 I completely took a pass on RE 6 or any of the other seemingly innumerable spin-offs like Code: Veronica. They might have been good or at least enjoyable, but it wasn’t until this year when I finally fired up Resident Evil 7 that I got hooked back in.

Because holy shit is RE 7 impressive. And immersive. I may have to do a whole blog about it when I finish but so far the controls, the acting, everything is just amazing, particularly while wearing the new headphones Dawn bought me so I can hear the measured tread of the thing chasing my protagonist. It’s a completely different play style than the old games but the scares are there and the puzzles are worked in enough I can suspend my disbelief.

Now perhaps ironically, it’s so good that I started paying attention to the recent RE output again. I watched the demo for RE 8 and it was jaw-droppingly gorgeous (even when horrific), and noted there was a free demo for the Resident Evil 3 remake. I was vaguely aware they had done remakes of 2 and 3 but hadn’t been all that interested since they basically just looked like 4 with their over-the-shoulder viewpoints and such. Lo and behold though, after a few minutes of playing that demo I broke down and bought RE 2 and 3 both because there was a special sale of a “Raccoon City bundle.” I hate bad dialogue and pacing, but I’m an absolute sucker for the opposite and the remake was hitting my buttons. It was this lore and these stories revisited with the more mature pass (not just mature in terms of adding F-bombs) I always dreamed of.

So two things: one, RE 2 was hard for me to pull myself away from because I found it just that immersive. RE 3 I have to take breaks from because I’m once again finding it just that terrifying. You know it’s a good boss fight when it ends and you let out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding, and if there’s any regret it’s that sometimes I can’t stop to appreciate the apocalyptic scenery fully while running for my life.

I’ve heard people were unimpressed or even disappointed with these new iterations but I don’t get it. I suppose maybe if you paid $60 but then again that’s why I am the patient spider with my game purchases. There are no microtransactions and all the content and unlockables are included with the exception that you can buy some extra outfit options as DLCs. And there’s a try-before-you-buy demo, which is something that at some point fell out of style and I dearly wish every major game still had. The cynical side of me says that’s because the current AAA game industry model seems to be getting as many people as possible to buy or pre-buy a new game based on hype alone, which seems more often than not to lead to either buyer’s remorse or a sunk-cost denial of day 1 problems. There’s no guarantee that a playable demo couldn’t just represent some finished bit that works while the rest doesn’t but it’s at least something. A good one shows the company has some pride in their work and gives you your taste of what to expect, and it feels better than going in completely blind. That used to be how games were marketed, by presenting the public with the opportunity for informed decisions. I turned away from the original RE because of a demo, and then RE 2 got me back on board. Now, in a lot of cases it seems like companies market them by hiding as much as possible, and sometimes in intentionally malicious ways, to the point where Cyberpunk 2020 is getting CD Projekt Red sued not by angry consumers (or not just by angry consumers) but by their own investors.

But I digress. These remakes float my proverbial boat in a way I completely did not expect, evoking the nostalgia of the originals but being new experiences in their own right.

Oh, and like in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, you can choose whether to rapidly tap buttons during events or just hold them down. You didn’t get that choice in the old days, and my old bod again appreciates the option.

“Get back on topic!” said the handful of readers of this blog. Maybe.

So to assuage this no doubt nonexistent controversy, I’m going to mention a few zombie video games in development. One I’ve played a demo of, the others are just pure conjecture from trailers, etc.

I guess let’s start with the one I actually played, courtesy of a free demo period on Steam which at the time you read this will have ended the previous day. We are timely as ever! I did post about it on our ZR Facebook page over the weekend, so maybe some of you saw that. Anyhow:

The Last Stand: Aftermath

This one’s an interesting concept. Instead of guiding a single character or group of recruits through a zombie apocalypse scenario, you have “volunteers” that you control through the game world one at a time, sneaking through zed-infested neighborhoods seeking gas for your car and supplies for your compound. Oh also doses of anti-viral, since you’ve been infected by a new strain of virus and don’t have long to live. The anti-viral only temporarily slows the progress of the disease, so you’re basically doomed no matter what.

“You” is a temporary concept by design, though. The car you travel in, gas up, and (most importantly?) load supplies into has a beacon in it and will get recovered by the compound when you meet your untimely end, one way or another. Then the next day you pick from one of three new volunteers who have shown up back at home base and start off again. Same car, different fodder. Life is cheap I suppose, while working cars are not. The supplies your last run picked up can be used to help out the new guy (or gal) and hopefully they’ll get further along. It’s sort of similar to Hades except instead of being an immortal who keeps reincarnating when defeated, you’re guiding a never-ending(?) stream of different folks who know they’re going out but basically want to do some good for the tribe before they die.

I was a little muddled on the objective but I believe it’s to get beyond “The Wall” and then…? But it’s not like I got very far, only a few neighborhoods before I stirred up one too many zeds… when they get riled enough to start running after you it seems to be game over for that particular survivor, or at least I couldn’t find any way to get out of that. In fact I couldn’t even seem to traverse obstacles that I’d jumped over or through just a minute before and which I would have dearly loved to put between me and them. That and an unfortunate problem of not being able to see your character or zombies at times because of an imperfect isometric viewpoint is a frustrating bit because some of the other activities like sneaking and distraction and such are fairly intuitive and, dare I say, cool.

But since the game is still in pre-release there might be time to smooth out the kinks, so worth keeping an eye on, especially if you’re a fan of rogue-like (or “rogue-lite”) games. It definitely preserves the high body count a zombie movie often involves!

Posting about Control feels a bit like being one of those reviewers who had to give their thoughts on Wandavision based on the first three episodes they were provided by Marvel. It’s not presented in the trappings of a sitcom but I feel like there’s a similar thought that maybe the rug of my perceptions will be yanked out from under me as I continue playing, and that’s acknowledging that things have already gotten really effing weird.

On its surface Control is a third-person shooter experience with superpowers tossed in. You play as Jesse Faden, a drifter who as the game starts seems to have drifted her way into the lobby of the Federal Bureau of Control (name drop!) at your behest.

No, really. Jesse narrates to herself as she goes along but also has internalized discussions with someone and as far as I can tell, that someone is you the player. If it turns out not to be the player, well, that’s one of the possible rug pulls that has me intrigued (and possibly unsettled). The lobby of this government agency is deserted and Jesse has next to no idea why she’s there, but as you explore a bit you pass portraits of directors and such and… uh, why is there a portrait of a janitor on the wall next to those, his back turned from your gaze?

You’ll meet that very janitor shortly and he is as enigmatic as he is Scandinavian, and says you must be here for the job as his assistant. Perhaps surprisingly, Jesse agrees with this even though she makes clear it wasn’t why she came. She’s no stranger to grunt work.

But then Jesse meets the Director of the FBC. And then Jesse is the Director, and the portraits you passed a few minutes ago now have you in them complete with nice suit and nameplate.

Of course the building turns out to be in lockdown due to an invasive and hostile presence and you have to stop it, often by shooting things or blowing them up, and in fact the environment turns out to be delightfully responsive to destruction even before you get your first psychic superpower. Afterwards, holy crap does shit get torn up in satisfying manner and that is (forgive the phrasing) a blast.

But nested on top of that is a huge labyrinth of mindfuckery where reality warps unexpectedly and break rooms become portals to other planes of existence. Jesse navigates all this with a degree of aplomb, even hinting to you that all the weirdness is a relief to her after years of stressing out at the mundane world and what she always felt was a veneer of normalcy laid over… something. That said, she’s both Director and Janitor’s Assistant now and has cleaning up to do.

The most fascinating bit which I only realized after I’d purchased the game and started playing it is that not only is it developed by the same team that did Alan Wake and Max Payne but Control goes a step further and is actually set in the same shared universe as the former. The events of Alan Wake are not the only anomaly in the world and the FBC was founded to keep tabs on and address such things so that the general public could go about their lives with a minimum of possessed former people trying to murder them. There’s all sorts of missives and dossiers to find detailing these activities, although a lot of it is redacted (even to the Director?! hmph). Well maybe that’s because the former Director is still talking to you from beyond the grave. Not to mention there’s The Board, which doesn’t seem to be made up of people at all.

Anyhow, much like in Alan Wake there’s a lot to think about and be creeped out by in between the blasting and I very much appreciate that. And there’s Ahti the Janitor and yes I’ll spell that with a capital J because hoo boy is he ever something more than he seems — but he’s also a foulmouthed Finnish(?) custodian who keeps muttering idioms that I suppose might make more sense if you were Finnish as well. If you’re a conspiracy buff you’ll probably also be pleased by a lot of easter eggs regarding various lore along those lines like MK Ultra.

And then you blast more baddies with your mentally reconfiguring gun (which might have been Mjolnir or Excalibur in a previous life?) and use your telekinesis to slam an explosive cannister into some fool’s head and send him ragdolling across the room. It’s this strangely satisfying dichotomy of Ego and Id and I have been totally there for it.

The Ultimate Edition debuted this year and I got it on sale, natch. Been well worth the pricetag for me even if the bottom drops out before the end, but when all was said and done they stuck the landing with Alan Wake so I have similar hopes here that when the answers to the questions start coming, they will at very least be tantalizing rather than disappointing.

In the meantime, pew pew. Boom.