<3sRichardSimmons
Arcane
Welcome one and all to another installment of Simmons playing a critically well-regarded game that has been sitting in his backlog* and then finding it to be basically crap and whining about it.
(To be fair upfront, I have not completed RE4; I just got to the castle, and it's possible the game will redeem itself because I am apparently only about halfway through).
This is the only RE game I have ever played. I know that the series has a reputation for hilariously bad writing but... um.. this isn't hilarious. It's just bad. Here's a random sample from the first 15 minutes after Leon has mercilessly head-shotted about 25 peasants for no reason other than one of them being a murderous dick and then the rest of them slowly walking towards him in a vaguely menacing way:
"Something's happened to the people here".
Yeah dickhead, you shot them all in the face.
Anyways, then the game proper gets started and it's... nice and brown? and dark? and full of QTEs?
I know a lot of people bitch about the control scheme in this game, but that's honestly horseshit. The control scheme is a little awkward and "non-realistic", but it's fine, and guess what? You can apply those same criticisms to the control scheme of an isomorphic TB full-party RPG. The real problem here is twofold:
1. This game is CINEMATIC as fuck. I don't know that much about the history of cinematic games, so I'm not very qualified to talk about them, but I certainly know them when I see them and this one is Burt Reynolds Centerfold level of obvious. QTEs, on-rails sequences, context-dependent control scheme, etc.
2. The adaptive difficulty. Up until about halfway through Chapter 2 I had been enjoying the game's relatively high level of difficulty- especially the way it was economizing ammo. The game was politely informing me every so often that I was averaging around ~90% hit ratio and 0-1 deaths per segment. Then I hit the point where you're offered a choice between either a gauntlet or a miniboss. At first I went with the gauntlet and was then forced to fight around 20 enemies (including 3 chainsaw enemies!) with 25 rounds of handgun ammo, 3 shotgun shells, and 1 rifle bullet. Alternatively I could choose to fight the miniboss who required ~25 rounds of handgun ammo (plus some QTEs) to defeat. This was when I first started suspecting the game was fucking with me in a non-consensual way. After some frustration and headscratching over my repeated deaths, I shrugged and started not caring... and suddenly low and behold the miniboss only takes around 15 rounds to bring down and there are only 12 enemies (and 1 chainsaw) showing up in the gauntlet! It's a fucking Christmas Miracle!
No wait, sorry, it's just terrible game design.
That said, unlike many other critically lauded games that I've played and then bitched about, I'm still playing this one. I don't think it's complete shit, but if this is the best the franchise has to offer?... Well, I can find better games.
*Technically I played this one before, but I was in college and I was high on drugs and have no memory of it.
(To be fair upfront, I have not completed RE4; I just got to the castle, and it's possible the game will redeem itself because I am apparently only about halfway through).
This is the only RE game I have ever played. I know that the series has a reputation for hilariously bad writing but... um.. this isn't hilarious. It's just bad. Here's a random sample from the first 15 minutes after Leon has mercilessly head-shotted about 25 peasants for no reason other than one of them being a murderous dick and then the rest of them slowly walking towards him in a vaguely menacing way:
LEON: Hunnigan, I have some bad news. I've confirmed the body of
an officer. Something's happened to the people here.
HUNNINGAN: Leon, you need to get out of there. Look for a tower.
Follow the trail near it.
LEON: Got it.
"Something's happened to the people here".
Yeah dickhead, you shot them all in the face.
Anyways, then the game proper gets started and it's... nice and brown? and dark? and full of QTEs?
I know a lot of people bitch about the control scheme in this game, but that's honestly horseshit. The control scheme is a little awkward and "non-realistic", but it's fine, and guess what? You can apply those same criticisms to the control scheme of an isomorphic TB full-party RPG. The real problem here is twofold:
1. This game is CINEMATIC as fuck. I don't know that much about the history of cinematic games, so I'm not very qualified to talk about them, but I certainly know them when I see them and this one is Burt Reynolds Centerfold level of obvious. QTEs, on-rails sequences, context-dependent control scheme, etc.
2. The adaptive difficulty. Up until about halfway through Chapter 2 I had been enjoying the game's relatively high level of difficulty- especially the way it was economizing ammo. The game was politely informing me every so often that I was averaging around ~90% hit ratio and 0-1 deaths per segment. Then I hit the point where you're offered a choice between either a gauntlet or a miniboss. At first I went with the gauntlet and was then forced to fight around 20 enemies (including 3 chainsaw enemies!) with 25 rounds of handgun ammo, 3 shotgun shells, and 1 rifle bullet. Alternatively I could choose to fight the miniboss who required ~25 rounds of handgun ammo (plus some QTEs) to defeat. This was when I first started suspecting the game was fucking with me in a non-consensual way. After some frustration and headscratching over my repeated deaths, I shrugged and started not caring... and suddenly low and behold the miniboss only takes around 15 rounds to bring down and there are only 12 enemies (and 1 chainsaw) showing up in the gauntlet! It's a fucking Christmas Miracle!
No wait, sorry, it's just terrible game design.
That said, unlike many other critically lauded games that I've played and then bitched about, I'm still playing this one. I don't think it's complete shit, but if this is the best the franchise has to offer?... Well, I can find better games.
*Technically I played this one before, but I was in college and I was high on drugs and have no memory of it.
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