Resident Evil HD Remaster announced

[Wunderbar]

Looks neat, even if it's ultimately pointless. Warning - annoying streamer.

 

[Wunderbar]

Yeah i agree that RE4's actiony combat doesn't work in RERemake's environments and that trying to merge them together is a sacrilege, BUT
Someone reverse-engineered RE4HD's engine and made a frickin singleplayer mod with new levels/items/hud/etc. It's fascinating.

 

[Roguey]

Time to shoot another sacred cow - this was okay, but I didn't really like it that much. The inventory restrictions are ridiculous; I was constantly having to backtrack to item boxes to store things or get a lighter and fuel to burn some bodies and then having to backtrack again to put them back. And this was with Jill who has two more slots than Chris, who I'm sure is even more aggravating to play.

The puzzles were fun to solve, though I ended up being too observant to get the Jill sandwich cutscene so I had to look it up later. Combat was dull and only a challenge because of the awkward controls and camera angles. I vastly preferred the previous REs I've played to this (4, Revelations 1 and 2, 7). 7 was certainly a far more palatable execution of what this was going for. I'm giving the 2 Remake a chance, but only because they've updated the gameplay. I wouldn't bother with another item management sim.

 

[Ash]

Sacred cow according to the 'tards. The inventory management & backtracking demand is much more reasonable in the original game because there is none of that burning bodies nonsense in it. The original game is the sacred cow and what began the series' everlasting fame, and coined the term "Survival Horror".
It should be an unwritten rule that all remakes are total shit or inferior. It comes with the territory, as you have to be creatively bankrupt to slavishly recreate thousands of assets and concepts that have already been made by another. Of all the remakes I've played they all ruined the original game in some way. The closest I can think of right now to being acceptable was the Spyro the fucking Dragon remake, and even that pissed me off slightly.

It is a real shame that you missed out on a bunch of mid-late 90s classics and are only approaching them now in butchered remake form. FF7, RE1, RE2...these are not remotely the same games as their original releases at all. They're weird batshit as hell reimaginings.

 

[Machocruz]

REmake 2 gives you character capacity upgrades, which is a good compromise in theory. But they give them to you too early imo. Like most current day AAA games, they pussied out on scarcity.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

REmake 2 gives you character capacity upgrades, which is a good compromise in theory. But they give them to you too early imo. Like most current day AAA games, they pussied out on scarcity.

That's in normal mode. In hardcore mode the upgrades are more separated from each other: One is in a strong box on the police station, the other in the sewers in a room you access through an elevator. At the point you have both upgrades you also have to deal with the improved weapons and the railgun (taking two slots in the inventory each), and also in the sewers you recollect a lot of items that fill your inventory very quickly (key items like the chess pieces). Even with the upgraded inventory you have to go back to the storage boxes quite often in this difficulty.

This thing is worse designed in both REmake 3 and Village. In Village is a tragedy that key items are not stored in the normal inventory, but in a different infinite tab for these core items, RE4 style.

 

[Norwood Detective]

Time to shoot another sacred cow - this was okay, but I didn't really like it that much. The inventory restrictions are ridiculous; I was constantly having to backtrack to item boxes to store things or get a lighter and fuel to burn some bodies and then having to backtrack again to put them back. And this was with Jill who has two more slots than Chris, who I'm sure is even more aggravating to play.

The puzzles were fun to solve, though I ended up being too observant to get the Jill sandwich cutscene so I had to look it up later. Combat was dull and only a challenge because of the awkward controls and camera angles. I vastly preferred the previous REs I've played to this (4, Revelations 1 and 2, 7). 7 was certainly a far more palatable execution of what this was going for. I'm giving the 2 Remake a chance, but only because they've updated the gameplay. I wouldn't bother with another item management sim.

To me, RE 7 feels like an amateurish attempt to create something similar to RE 1 or 2.

Combat is often not well integrated with the rest of the game and instead is generally just (extremely clunky) shooting galleries that are virtually separate to the areas that will you backtrack through or generally navigate, whereas in RE 1 & 2 enemies are commonly in areas that you will have to backtrack through so that you need to decide if you should kill them or just run past them every time.

That is, it feels like there are separate combat and general exploration/puzzle solving areas, whereas these are integrated in RE 1 & 2.

Also, RE 7 is severely lacking in enemy variety and has very easy puzzles.

 

[Machocruz]

There is a game called Them and Us, a big time RE1 clone. It starts you out with only TWO inventory slots. But soon after you get a backpack that gives you I think four more. But also you can drop items anywhere and they will stay there, like in an immersive sim: you can make little stash areas kind of like SS2. Of course this tells you this game was not made in Japan, who have not yet embraced this idea

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Resident Evil Zero did the drop items anywhere thing; don't recall whether it improved puzzles and tension or not.

 

[Norwood Detective]

Resident Evil Zero did the drop items anywhere thing; don't recall whether it improved puzzles and tension or not.

It also removed item boxes, so it's hard to say if adding that ability would improve the classic formula; I just dropped items in one or a few spots per area in a way the sort of emulated item boxes.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Resident evil zero can feel very sluggish on a first playthrough, just because how the item system works. However, it gets better the more you replay the game. When you know the game's layout, it rewards your knowledge of the map allowing you to speed up the pace of the game. But as you said before, it's not an improvement of the original inventory system, it's more a new thing. And back in the day when the game was released on Gamecube it wasn't very appreciated.

 

[Tacgnol]

REmake 2 gives you character capacity upgrades, which is a good compromise in theory. But they give them to you too early imo. Like most current day AAA games, they pussied out on scarcity.

That's in normal mode. In hardcore mode the upgrades are more separated from each other: One is in a strong box on the police station, the other in the sewers in a room you access through an elevator. At the point you have both upgrades you also have to deal with the improved weapons and the railgun (taking two slots in the inventory each), and also in the sewers you recollect a lot of items that fill your inventory very quickly (key items like the chess pieces). Even with the upgraded inventory you have to go back to the storage boxes quite often in this difficulty.

This thing is worse designed in both REmake 3 and Village. In Village is a tragedy that key items are not stored in the normal inventory, but in a different infinite tab for these core items, RE4 style.

In Hardcore they also removed several inventory upgrades so you only end up with 16 slots max rather than 24.

Considering how many weapons in remake 2 take up 2 slots (and how ammo stacks are so small), 16 ain't a lot in the grand scheme.

 

[Machocruz]

Resident Evil Zero did the drop items anywhere thing; don't recall whether it improved puzzles and tension or not.

Dont think it did. But such a thing is convenient when you have inventory limitations. Still, it's uncommon in Japanese games, for some reason.

Them and Us also allows you to pick between fixed camera angles or behind the back TP. So now that argument doesn't have to occur anymore .

 

[Tacgnol]

Resident Evil Zero did the drop items anywhere thing; don't recall whether it improved puzzles and tension or not.

Dont think it did. But such a thing is convenient when you have inventory limitations. Still, it's uncommon in Japanese games, for some reason.

Them and Us also allows you to pick between fixed camera angles or behind the back TP. So now that argument doesn't have to occur anymore .

Zero inventory management was awful because inventory space was limited and so many items were used in multiple puzzles. So if you dropped items in inconvenient places you had to do a lot of backtracking to retrieve them.

It actually ended up being far less convenient than just using the interconnected itembox in save rooms in previous games. It's a shame they didn't implement both in Zero.

 

[Machocruz]

Zero inventory management was awful because inventory space was limited and so many items were used in multiple puzzles. So if you dropped items in inconvenient places you had to do a lot of backtracking to retrieve them.

It actually ended up being far less convenient than just using the interconnected itembox in save rooms in previous games. It's a shame they didn't implement both in Zero.

I'm all for mixed approaches for this style of game. I used the example of immersive sims, but they usually have larger inventories and lack of item puzzles, and you are quite fine not stashing at all. To me it's just a fun little detail.

T&U doesn't have item boxes from what I've seen so far, so you either drop items where you want or have to go back to the room where they are found when you have space again.

Personally, I'm not sure if puzzle pieces should be part of the equation anymore. I think the choice should be between whether you take more weapons or more ammo or more healing or whatever things are applicable to your survival.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Resident Evil Zero did the drop items anywhere thing; don't recall whether it improved puzzles and tension or not.

Like the original Alone in the Dark (1992).

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I have no problem in general with restrictive inventory systems; some games make use of them to great effect, and yes, survival-horror as a genre greatly benefits from well-implemented resource scarcity and limited inventory. But as someone who completed REmake for the first time around 3 months ago, I think it's crazy to say that REmake does this well. Having to backtrack through the mansion/residence 15 times because you guessed wrong about which arbitrary key will be needed at the opposite end of the unexplored map is total bullshit. It adds nothing to the difficulty, tension, or ambience whatsoever; it's only there to artificially pad out the game's relatively short length. The game shines when it's focusing on horror, puzzles, and camp, but the constant backtracking required by the limited inventory constantly interrupts those strengths. Not to mention the complete pants-on-head retardation that is the fact that if you have an empty weapon in your full inventory the game won't let you pick up ammo for said weapon. That might be one of the single fucking stupidest design decisions I've ever seen.

In general I really liked the game, more than Roguey seems to have, but the moronic inventory system led me to delay a Chris playthrough, because I just couldn't muster enthusiasm for an even more limited approach to it.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

The way these games work is that you find the closed doors first, and then you find the keys as you progress. If you find a key and you don't know where it belongs to is because you didn't pay enough attention to the game's environments, or because you didn't explore enough.

There are very little moments in classic RE games where the backtracking is handled poorly. The most offender is the longshot in RE Zero. Not because inventory limit or anything, just because the game forces you to go back to the train ruins to pick an item that you probably forgot that even existed.

 

[Zombra]

Exactly TheHeroOfTime. These games reward you for actually paying attention and involving yourself in the world. You get that 'aha moment' when you say "A key with a hula girl on it, where have I seen a hula girl before?" If you don't get that moment it's your fault, not the game's. Otherwise you're just following quest markers, and fuck that.

 

[Machocruz]

You can still have the aha moment if keys don't take up inventory space, because that comes from memory/recognition, not inventory-item box juggling (which may bring it's own satisfaction to some but not others). I can take it or leave it going forward. It's part of the whole that Capcom intended, with RE1 in particular being a very gamey game.

Sweet Home has some interesting answers, but that's for another day...

 

[Zombra]

You can still have the aha moment if keys don't take up inventory space

No you can't. That's the opposite of environmental engagement bro, because now you no longer have an incentive to think at all. You just see "Oh a lock, I'll spam my key inventory and see if one works."

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

The whole point of the inventory system is to make the player decide between wearing utility items (Weapons, ammo, health) or wearing key items (Keys and required items to solve riddles). If you wear a lot of utility, then you don't have enough space to carry the key items and you're forced to travel a lot. Which can result in wasting time (Another core element of these games. They reward you giving unlockables if you complete the game under certain conditions) or death for going through some areas filled with enemies (Losing progress). If you wear a lot of key items, then you don't have space for utility and you are more vulnerable facing enemies, which can result in wasting time (Taking alternative routes to avoid combat at all costs) or death (losing progress). The key to "win" is the balance and good decision making.

That's the system that makes these games work. Without it, there's no reward or punishment for making good or bad decisions. The game becomes a ride from point A to point B shooting enemies, healing and solving riddles. There's also no need for a complex map with rooms to explore and alternative routes, since the game becomes more prominently linear. In summary, it ends being a Resident evil 4, a complete different thing.

Just to talk more about this topic. Resident evil outbreak tried to expand the formula adding two new things: Infection (A time limit) and the possibility of blowing up closed doors wasting ammo (Usually valuable ammo, like shotgun's). Also it tried interesting tricks through the different scenarios, like infinite spawning enemies. They were rough around the edges (And they were online multiplayer games... for Playstation 2 in 2004), but the Outbreak spin-offs are between the most ambitious games of the series.

 

[Machocruz]

No you can't. That's the opposite of environmental engagement bro, because now you no longer have an incentive to think at all. You just see "Oh a lock, I'll spam my key inventory and see if one works."

That doesn't follow. Keys in these kinds of games are distinctly marked, there would be no need to spam them to see if one works. And your scenario has nothing to do with that or incentivizing thinking, it's recognition. You come across the thing that the hula key opens, then later find the hula key, which gives you the 'aha, I saw something to do with a hula before.' There is nothing to figure out or consider there, and inventory space is not a part of that stimulus.

 

[JDR13]

There is a game called Them and Us, a big time RE1 clone. It starts you out with only TWO inventory slots. But soon after you get a backpack that gives you I think four more. But also you can drop items anywhere and they will stay there, like in an immersive sim: you can make little stash areas kind of like SS2. Of course this tells you this game was not made in Japan, who have not yet embraced this idea

I just checked it out on Steam. Calling it a clone is an understatement. How in the hell are they not getting sued?

 

[Zombra]

No you can't. That's the opposite of environmental engagement bro, because now you no longer have an incentive to think at all. You just see "Oh a lock, I'll spam my key inventory and see if one works."

That doesn't follow. Keys in these kinds of games are distinctly marked, there would be no need to spam them to see if one works. And your scenario has nothing to do with that or incentivizing thinking, it's recognition. You come across the thing that the hula key opens, then later find the hula key, which gives you the 'aha, I saw something to do with a hula before.' There is nothing to figure out or consider there, and inventory space is not a part of that stimulus.

Nope. You don't get it. Having the memory and foresight to bring the right key to the right door, and choosing what to leave behind and which keys to take on a run and which to save for later, all take actual thought and engagement. In other words, gameplay. Managing inventory space is absolutely, 100% part of that stimulus. Pushing the 'unlock door because I probably have the key' button is not gameplay. It's OK if you think they are equal, but if you do, you are stupid and wrong.