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41 year old man plays Resident Evil games for the first time, mostly hates them

Joined
Feb 28, 2011
Messages
4,099
Location
Chicago, IL, Kwa
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:

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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Disciple

Savant
Joined
Feb 18, 2018
Messages
269
RE4 was the point where the franchise shamelessly sold out for mass appeal and turned into a shooter. Play the first two entries (the originals, not the remakes) if you want a proper taste of what is Resident Evil.
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

Guest
I like the DMC way of difficulty where the game asks after like four or five deaths if you want to be a little bitch and switch to easy mode.

No matter how nicely they word it, it always reads like: "Sup fag, we noticed you REALLY suck at this game. Like, outrageously suck. So check this, instead of having you drive to Gamestop and trading this game in for store credit or some shitty shooter how about you turn the difficulty down? We don't offer this often but because you're so garbage we have had to forcefully interrupt your gameplay cycle of respawning and dying to stop your suffering. Choose wisely, dipshit."
 

fork

Guest
RE4 was the point where the franchise shamelessly sold out for mass appeal and turned into a shooter. Play the first two entries (the originals, not the remakes) if you want a proper taste of what is Resident Evil.

This.

Resident Evil 4 is utter shit in every regard. The charming bad story turned into pure shit, linear ugly corridors worse than Call of Duty that don't derserve to be called level design, QTEs, the item management turned into retarded tetris, enemies dropping loot etc. It has nothing of what made Resident Evil great and even beyond that it's just a bad game, terribad even. It was probably the first time I consciously noticed the decline.

Play the originals, which are some of the best games of all time! You can play the first REmake though, which is one of the only remakes in gaming history which treats the source with respect and actually kind of improves upon it. RE3 and Zero are also worth playing if you like the original formula.
And if you want to play 'RE4 but good', play Dead Space.

Edit: You can use RE4 as a kind of retard-detector though: there are hordes of posers who think that by mentioning how great RE4 is they'd gain some kind of old-school or street credibility or something; little do they know how they're outing themselves as utter imbeciles, since RE4 really is one of the earliest examples of the decline an a prime example of bad game design in general.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Mark Richard

Arcane
Joined
Mar 14, 2016
Messages
1,192
Resident Evil reinvented itself because the series was becoming stale, even by the standards of superfans like my friend who has every single piece of merchandise and can recite the details of each game's story with perfect clarity (I once made the mistake of asking him, and he chewed my ear off for 20 minutes before I was able to calm him down long enough to order at the drive-through we were parked at). Other games like Dino Crisis, Ronin Blade, and Parasite Eve tested the limits of the formula.

I don't feel the need to choose between the old and the new, enjoying both. RE4 had a great environmental targeting system as well as obstacles to take advantage of that, and aside from a brief sequence in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, it's one of the few games to truly capture the intensity of being hunted by a mob.
 

Maggot

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 31, 2016
Messages
1,243
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
RE4 is a glorified rail shooter with piñata loot "zombies" that stop running and start shuffling once they reach a certain distance to you so that you can get easier headshots.
 

Morpheus Kitami

Liturgist
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
2,476
Its been a long time since I last played it, probably ten years, so I don't really remember much about the gameplay beyond it becoming the template for every third-person shooter afterwards, but the humor starts up around when you enter the castle, which is also where the game shifts straight into action territory. Or further into it, if you prefer.
 

Talby

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 15, 2008
Messages
5,507
Codex USB, 2014
RE4 is a masterpiece. Great gameplay and pacing. Fun B-movie story with cheesy dialogue and villains. Leon in this game is like Bond or Schwarzenegger with his one liners, except all of them are lame - it's kind of endearing. The RE formula had become stale by around the time of Code Veronica, so it was worth trying something new. It's more action oriented, but definitely still survival horror. I think the retards bitching about it may be confusing it with RE5, because that's where the series really shifted into just being a third person shooter with some horror themes.

RE5 and onwards are shit, yes, but you shouldn't hold that against RE4. Blame Capcom for not understanding what made RE4 good.

Anyway OP is a tryhard faggot.
 

vota DC

Augur
Joined
Aug 23, 2016
Messages
2,258
. It's more action oriented, but definitely still survival horror.
You need to use the brain rather than unlocking 100% without effort even on high difficulty like in new Tomb Raider games, for example it isn't wise to pick shotgun version 1 upgrade all, then sell and pick 2 upgrade all and then sell and pick 3 and upgrade all because means little money for other weapons.
But outside merchant there aren't many elements.....you are truly encouraged to exterminate everything, even crows to get pesetas because the game will check if you are low in ammo and give them. Inventory space is limited but without keys and quest items there is enough space for handgun, shotgun, rifle and healing items....with inventory upgraded even machine gun, magnum and grenades.
 

Biscotti

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
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Messages
561
Location
Belgium
RE4 being the epitome of the franchise is the mainstream opinion, but considering we're on the Codex I halfway expect the average user to default to the conclusion that the mainstream opinion is wrong and can be safely ignored.
Play REmake if you want the quintessential RE experience.
 

Can't handle the bacon

Guest
It was fun for its time but I wouldn't play it again today. It also change the RE formula too much, and led to the atrocity that was 5, and the worthless garbage that was 6.

Do read up on "Los Illuminados" lore from this game, though, it has some sick references to real-world stuff.
 

Tehdagah

Arcane
Joined
Feb 27, 2012
Messages
9,235
. It's more action oriented, but definitely still survival horror.
You need to use the brain rather than unlocking 100% without effort even on high difficulty like in new Tomb Raider games, for example it isn't wise to pick shotgun version 1 upgrade all, then sell and pick 2 upgrade all and then sell and pick 3 and upgrade all because means little money for other weapons.
But outside merchant there aren't many elements.....you are truly encouraged to exterminate everything, even crows to get pesetas because the game will check if you are low in ammo and give them. Inventory space is limited but without keys and quest items there is enough space for handgun, shotgun, rifle and healing items....with inventory upgraded even machine gun, magnum and grenades.
Mikami himself said RE4 isn't a 'survival horror', this is a meme created by horror fans who felt guilty about enjoying RE4, they rely on revisionism to blame RE5 for everything RE4 did.

(Also ironically RE5 was more on the survival side since it has a small inventory menu and everything runs in real time)
 

Talby

Arcane
Patron
Joined
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Messages
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Codex USB, 2014
Mikami saying something doesn't make it true. Real-time inventories has nothing to do with survival horror, just shitty design. Inventory sizes doesn't make something survival horror, either. Silent Hill has an unlimited inventory.

You can kill all enemies in RE4, but you can do that in every RE game. Even REmake gives you more than enough ammo to kill every single enemy in the game and still have some left over. The only way you're going to run out of ammo in an RE game is if you stand in the save room shooting at walls. It would be more accurate to say that the threat of running out of ammo is a hallmark of survival horror, without every really delivering on that threat - just the idea that you could run out of ammo in a crucial moment is enough. Survival horror is more smoke and mirrors than any other genre.
 
Joined
May 6, 2009
Messages
1,875,971
Location
Glass Fields, Ruins of Old Iran
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.
Leon has been though a zombie-infested city before so you have to excuse him for being a bit testy about people advancing slowly toward him.
 

Tehdagah

Arcane
Joined
Feb 27, 2012
Messages
9,235
Mikami saying something doesn't make it true. Real-time inventories has nothing to do with survival horror, just shitty design. Inventory sizes doesn't make something survival horror, either. Silent Hill has an unlimited inventory.

You can kill all enemies in RE4, but you can do that in every RE game. Even REmake gives you more than enough ammo to kill every single enemy in the game and still have some left over. The only way you're going to run out of ammo in an RE game is if you stand in the save room shooting at walls. It would be more accurate to say that the threat of running out of ammo is a hallmark of survival horror, without every really delivering on that threat - just the idea that you could run out of ammo in a crucial moment is enough. Survival horror is more smoke and mirrors than any other genre.
Mikami literally directed it? A game that missed the point of RE4 would be Village, not RE5. RE5 is RE4 with better melee finishers and a real time inventory

"would be more accurate to say that the threat of running out of ammo is a hallmark of survival horror, without every really delivering on that threat"

Not the case of RE4, maybe except for the first half-hour
 

Nutmeg

Arcane
Vatnik Wumao
Joined
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Messages
19,794
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Mahou Kingdom
RE4 is fun until you start taking it seriously and realize you can just run around everything. Actually shooting the enemeies is mostly larping. So, you only need to fight bosses and do the QTEs. Not that there's anything wrong with the bosses, it's just there's a lot of pointlessly running past things to get to them.
 

Tacgnol

Shitlord
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
"Something's happened to the people here".

Yeah dickhead, you shot them all in the face.

They started it. By this point Leon has found a cupboard full of skulls (in the first house he encounters by the bridge), been outright attacked by several peasants, found the corpse of a female peasant impaled through the face and seen the corpse of a police officer impaled and being burnt.

That's all before he decides to recreate the Siege of Acre in one of the peasant houses.

I think you could quite reasonably assume they have hostile intent by that point. The guy with a chainsaw turning up just seals the deal.
 

vota DC

Augur
Joined
Aug 23, 2016
Messages
2,258
You can kill all enemies in RE4, but you can do that in every RE game. Even REmake gives you more than enough ammo to kill every single enemy in the game and still have some left over. The only way you're going to run out of ammo in an RE game is if you stand in the save room shooting at walls.
In 4 if you are backtracking in a wide area where you already picked up everything and there Is a lone zombie you are punished if you avoid It: killing It will reward you with pesetas, ammos, grenades or healing items. The more enemies you avoid the worse your weapons will be and the less ammos you will have.
 

Tacgnol

Shitlord
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Even REmake gives you more than enough ammo to kill every single enemy in the game and still have some left over.

I'm not sure about that on hard mode. On normal that's definitely true. On hard mode the game only contains 48 shotgun shells for Jill and 60 for Chris total, 12 magnum rounds and 6 acid shells and 12 incendiary shells.

Enough to kill everything? Maybe, depending on your definition of everything. Crimson heads for instance are tougher than regular zombies, do you only include the two mandatory Crimson Heads in the count?
 

Ravielsk

Magister
Joined
Feb 20, 2021
Messages
1,514
RE4 is like a box of chocolates with a few bonbons of excellent quality but packaged in the shittiest greasiest paper shell the butchers shop could provide.
It has some really good ideas for a horror game such as the limb damage system, laser sight aiming or the third person camera(which in 2004 was still a novelty) but all of that is used for a bellow average action flick that only works because games like that were a novelty at the time of its release. This is also why every subsequent RE game after 4 was more or less critically panned as being shit because once the "Wow factor" weared off nobody was really amazed by Chris punching boulders or Weskers anime powers.

The thing is that RE4 could have been a great start to a great new era if only Crapcom did not take the exactly the worst lesson it could have takes from it. For example the limb damage system is a great way to have a action horror game with limited ammo as it lets you have limited ammo without making the player completely incapable of dealing with enemies. In a mansion style level like previous RE4 games this mechanic would fit like a glove but RE4 sabotaged it entirely by not having a single level you actually are incentivised to visit more than once. The enemies each requiring a slightly different approach and weapon to take down would work equally well in the old formula, like for example a sniper enemy could require you to use a rifle to unblock an new chunk of the level. The bigger inventory could have easily been compensated by forcing the player to carry in it puzzle items(like the old games)
along side weapons and ammo. None of this however happened and instead Capcom used the RE4 as a template or strip out everything from the old formula.

You see at the time they were testing how interested people were in the classic RE formula, which why alongside RE4 the released Origins and the remake of the first one. The problem? All three started as Gamecube exclusives. Only RE4 was later ported to other platforms so logically Crapcom figured out that nobody likes the old RE format because it selling fewer copies on a singular (nintendo) platform proves that people want "moar action". Yes, they were that stupid and yes it took them approximately 15 years to realize this mistake with RE2 remake only to then repeat the exact same mistakes with RE3 remake.

So while RE4 might not be entirely crap its the game that caused the whole series to go down the drain.
 

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