Dino Crisis, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Capcom and the PS1 (golden age of survival horror)

[Morenatsu.]

I like dinosaurs.

 

[Ash]

You like fucking them in stuffed animal form, I know.

Dinos are cool yes. Their inclusion can't save a game from mediocrity though.

 

[Morenatsu.]

No, you got it all wrong. I like it when they fuck me in talking animal form, duh.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The original Alone in the Dark is barely even a game, it's a Dragon's Lair-style glorified interactive movie full of gotcha trial-and-error traps. Japanese devs took the formula and made a proper game with actual gameplay mechanics.

The original AitD have a lot of trial-and-error traps, but it has also more diverse and flexible game mechanics than RE. You can think RE as a subset of AitD.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

Just a reminder through the power of the Rebirth mods it is possible to play through Resident Evil 1-3 and Dino Crisis on modern systems with minimal issues.

 

[fork]

You could always play through them on modern systems with no issues at all through the power of emulation.

 

[fork]

Silent Hill 2 is utter shit in every way: It's even more linear than the original, the puzzles are completely retarded, and not in a good way, and the majority of the game game, i.e. the apartment building, the hospital and the hotel (and especially everything in between) is just boring as shit.

The only good Silent Hill is the original game.

Geez ease up with your push and pull baby. One minute you're saying stupid shit like Darkwood is crap, next you throw out total monocled statements like this. I rated you prestigious my man.

Well, thanks.

The thing about Darkwood is that I just don't enjoy the gameplay—at all. The perspective and controls feel cheap and the forced day/night-rhythm gets boring so fucking quickly. On top of that the procedural generation, which is too apparent and makes the map feel unnecessarily unrealistic.
The best I can say is that it at least feels like an honest effort (which is quite a compliment in current year). But it's still shit.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

I never played any of these games except Eternal Darkness which I liked a lot. Not even REmake but hey who knows what the future will bring.

 

[Ash]

The thing about Darkwood is that I just don't enjoy the gameplay—at all. The perspective and controls feel cheap

What. The. Fuck.

Aren't you a survival horror fan? As in old school tank controls fixed camera angles survival horror? Because if anything, fixed camera angles is what was cheap, and I am also an old school survival horror fan. It resulted in borked controls and limiting gameplay (e.g aiming) in the name of better graphics. Thankfully these things also enhanced the horror experience so we don't fault it so much for the limitations on gameplay, and they made up for it in other ways at least. Darkwood's perspective on the other hand is much more advantageous to gameplay. The controls are also perfectly adequate, no idea what you're blabbering about. You sure you're not just getting old and senile? Darkwood has better gameplay than any of those old fixed cam classics, yet also equal horror/tension/atmosphere.

the forced day/night-rhythm gets boring so fucking quickly

How long did you play it for? The nighttime is basically tower defense survival horror style, puts a squeeze on your resources, and escalates in difficulty and intensity as days go by. The first few nights are pretty boring, but it soon becomes some good shit. What do you dislike about it, that it forces you to drop what you're doing and return to base? What's the big deal, you can always continue where you left off the next day. Some of my most tense gaming moments were in trying to complete my current task or taking a quick detour on the way home for a risky grab at some supplies as the darkness approaches.

On top of that the procedural generation, which is too apparent and makes the map feel unnecessarily unrealistic.

Bullshit. I usually hate proc-gen but this is some of the finest implementation around. What's more the locations are still hand-crafted, all it does it shift the locations around, which keeps things interesting for replays.
The fact that it is so minimal in approach is what makes it good.

The best I can say is that it at least feels like an honest effort (which is quite a compliment in current year). But it's still shit.

Some of the fakest news I've read on the cuckdex. At least your previous post on the matter was spam-rated appropriately. Try the game again, it deserves better, and I think you deserve better, since I know you're old school and long for some good shit. Play the game on normal difficulty, iron man is not ideal for first playthroughs.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Darkwood looks like a boring game I wouldn't play.

 

[Ash]

I'm not surprised by your opinion at all, because you're a fucking retard. Fork on the other hand...

This is for fork:

 

[Morenatsu.]

Says the moron who refuses to play a game without shitty mods. Yeah, Ash definitely knows that some boring games released in the past decade totally aren't boring.

Go back to playing console shooters, loser.

 

[fork]

The thing about Darkwood is that I just don't enjoy the gameplay—at all. The perspective and controls feel cheap

What. The. Fuck.

Aren't you a survival horror fan? As in old school tank controls fixed camera angles survival horror? Because if anything, fixed camera angles is what was cheap, and I am also an old school survival horror fan. It resulted in borked controls and limiting gameplay (e.g aiming) in the name of better graphics. Thankfully these things also enhanced the horror experience so we don't fault it so much for the limitations on gameplay, and they made up for it in other ways at least. Darkwood's perspective on the other hand is much more advantageous to gameplay. The controls are also perfectly adequate, no idea what you're blabbering about. You sure you're not just getting old and senile? Darkwood has better gameplay than any of those old fixed cam classics, yet also equal horror/tension/atmosphere.

Yes, I love Resident Evil, I love the fixed cam angles, I love tank controls. That's probably why I don't enjoy Darkwood. That top-down perspective and twin-stick-shooter-style controls don't feel like survival horror to me, but remind of GTA, arcade games (polar opposite from survival horror) and indie shovelware. We are talking about survival horror here, you even acknowledge yourself that these things enhanced the horror experience. Tank controls with fixed cam angles are the perfect choice for this genre, since they create atmosphere and tension, they look great, and are perfectly fine from a gameplay perspective. I don't think you realise how much work goes into determining the exact cam positions for each scene in a game like RE so that they look great, feel tense and natural as well as play well. Calling fixed cam angles cheap and praising a lazy, ugly top-down view is crazy. Survival horror is more and better than a poor top-down shooter with modern survival elements.

the forced day/night-rhythm gets boring so fucking quickly

How long did you play it for? The nighttime is basically tower defense survival horror style, puts a squeeze on your resources, and escalates in difficulty and intensity as days go by. The first few nights are pretty boring, but it soon becomes some good shit. What do you dislike about it, that it forces you to drop what you're doing and return to base? What's the big deal, you can always continue where you left off the next day. Some of my most tense gaming moments were in trying to complete my current task or taking a quick detour on the way home for a risky grab at some supplies as the darkness approaches.

I reached the second hideout and stayed there for a few more nights before I gave up due to boredom. The gameplay-loop is just too repetitive. It's decline all-around. I don't want to hunt for resources, I don't want to craft, I don't want to hide every couple minutes and I don't want to trade. I want great atmosphere, great art, I want some puzzles, and I want great level design like the Spencer Mansion, not some flat wasteland. And yes, I want to play at my own pace, the short days and forced returns at night are not scary, they're just annoying. The game fails at almost everything I like and does too many things that I dislike.

On top of that the procedural generation, which is too apparent and makes the map feel unnecessarily unrealistic.

Bullshit. I usually hate proc-gen but this is some of the finest implementation around. What's more the locations are still hand-crafted, all it does it shift the locations around, which keeps things interesting for replays.
The fact that it is so minimal in approach is what makes it good.

I found the layout of the map so gamey that it destoyed the little bit of atmosphere the game had for me. Don't tell me people actually replay this game voluntarily? I was bored a few hours in and kept playing for a few more in the hope it might get better, but it didn't. A completely handcrafted map would've been a hundred times more interesting and might've convinced me to finish my playthrough, but the distinct, randomly placed locations were so obvious, I had no urge to explore the maps whatsoever.

The best I can say is that it at least feels like an honest effort (which is quite a compliment in current year). But it's still shit.

Some of the fakest news I've read on the cuckdex. At least your previous post on the matter was spam-rated appropriately. Try the game again, it deserves better, and I think you deserve better, since I know you're old school and long for some good shit. Play the game on normal difficulty, iron man is not ideal for first playthroughs.

Look, you accused me of saying stupid shit one moment and then prestigious crap the next. That's basically what I've been thinking about you as well, especially regarding Darkwood. I played the game for a dozen hours or so, not the least because of your praising it like that, on iron man, I gave it a fair chance, but it bored me. It felt like a competently made low-budget passion project that's utterly unfun and does everything wrong when it comes to survival horror. Great that you enjoy it. I don't.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Survival Horror? Is that like Minecraft or something?

 

[Ezekiel]

Jurassic World whatever the new movie is called succeeded, Sony will release some Adam Driver dinosaur movie, and still Capcom won't cash in on the dinosaur fandom with their own survival horror that is left dormant. But we need the twentieth zombie game in their other franchise. Honestly don't even think zombies are that popular anymore. Resident Evil is selling largely on inertia. Dinosaurs are harder to animate and code for, I think. In a Resident Evil game, most of the enemies are humanoids. In a dinosaur game, you have to animate a whole bunch of different species. I think that's one of the reasons there are few good dino games. But it's not an excuse.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Capcom is instead cashing in on the dinosaur fandom with a new dinosaur action game. Which is probably what a new Dino Crisis would've been anyways.

Resident Evil and "Survival Horror" is one of the more interesting example of Western developers failing to catch on. Here you've got something that is functionally a point-and-click adventure game made for consoles, and being on consoles where point-and-clicking controls with a d-pad would fucking suck, you're given direct control over your character instead of pointing and clicking to move around. With the release of Resident Evil in 1996, Capcom found a way to make money on a "Point-and-Click Adventure Game;" but despite that, the developers of the waning PC point and click adventure games never fucking copied it, and a few years after the two biggest makers of point and click adventure games in the West would be out of the Adventure game business. It's kind of funniest with LucasArts, because you could easily take something like Maniac Mansion and do a Resident Evil with it. Could've mixed in stuff they did in Zombies Ate My Neighbors too. Maybe that wouldn't have saved LucasArts Adventure Games, but it would've been interesting to see them take a stab at it, and it's always seemed weird they never did.

Anyways...the original Clock Tower is pretty fucking great. I think I'd put it over the original Resident Evil when it comes to horror them adventure games. Recently, like within this year I think, I was looking at the DS version of Resident Evil and visually it looks pretty cool. At a glance it looks like the old original release, but it's got new models for all the monsters, and I think they're actually an improvement of what was in the original while staying in the originals style. Looking at it kind of made me want to play it...which I'll probably never do.

 

[Alienman]

No Onimusha 1?

 

[Ezekiel]

Capcom is instead cashing in on the dinosaur fandom with a new dinosaur action game. Which is probably what a new Dino Crisis would've been anyways.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Jurassic World whatever the new movie is called succeeded, Sony will release some Adam Driver dinosaur movie, and still Capcom won't cash in on the dinosaur fandom with their own survival horror that is left dormant. But we need the twentieth zombie game in their other franchise. Honestly don't even think zombies are that popular anymore. Resident Evil is selling largely on inertia. Dinosaurs are harder to animate and code for, I think. In a Resident Evil game, most of the enemies are humanoids. In a dinosaur game, you have to animate a whole bunch of different species. I think that's one of the reasons there are few good dino games. But it's not an excuse.

Something you might be interested in, is that a small indy developer is making a retro-style dinosaur 'boomer shooter', inspired by Dino Crisis, called "Compound Fracture". The art style they have tried to replicate even has the jaggies from a PS1 era rendered game. Although I know it's not precicely what we wanted, I like boomer shooters a lot personally, so it's a nice alternative bit of dinosaur entertainment:

Also, on the main topic, I just started playing "Fatal Frame", because I like ghosts, Japanese mythology and folklore a lot more than say nondescript psychological horror (the same way I like solid science fiction plots like "Resident Evil" and "Dino Crisis"). A metaphysical world, that has an afterlife, has the implicit world-building, just as Doom with hell. I miss the days when we still got games like this. Atmospheric, culturally interesting, and something that would never have probably made it West except during the PS2 era, when everything was experimental.

I think that was the PS2's greatest contribution; this tendancy for hundreds of quality games to appear that most people didn't play, but were diamonds in the rough, and allowed for a wide latitude in experimentation. The opening moments were better directed than most Hollywood films today, but on this miniscule PS2 era budget by Tecmo. I'm going to try to play the whole series, starting with Fatal Frame 1, 2 & 3.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

No Onimusha 1?

Onimusha is great. It is however too bad that when they rereleased it recently it wasn't the better Xbox version.

 

[HereticGuy]

 

[Louis_Cypher]

I think some of these PS1/PS2 survival horror games do RPG stuff better than RPGs, and have better (more concise) SF/F plots. Similar to how boomer shooters like Heretic get 'dark fantasy' nailed way better than actual RPGs. Essentially the mansion in Resident Evil 1 is like a dungeon in tabletop. Each room is a scenario, resembling tabletop encounters. They each feel visceral, with few/important enemies, high lethality, not over-saturated mobs. The inventory is really limited. Atmosphere is astounding. Items matter, and are essential. The exploration, and clearing out of the mansion is damn satisfying. Rather than horror per se, RE 0/1/2/3/CV are more of an exploration game, with occasional jump scares. If anyone is wary of trying survival horror, due to the 'horror', know this; RE1 is actually a super satisfying map-revealing game, that does not overstay it's welcome. You can't afford to miss RE1 in a gamer's life.

I also think Resident Evil 1 remake is the pinacle of the genre, as someone else said. It's close to a perfect game.

It seems like in the last year or two, some indy developers have started to revive the genre, doing them as they were prior to RE4, before third-person-shooting came in. I think the one that looked most interesting to me, was "Tormented Souls", unless I'm mistaking one game for another. I've yet to play it, but it looked really close to RE 0/1. There are a couple like this now.

 

[Nutmeg]

Essentially the mansion in Resident Evil 1 is like a dungeon in tabletop. Each room is a scenario, resembling tabletop encounters.

This is an exaggeration, but it's not far from the truth either. Biohazard ofc. has its roots in Sweet Home, which was a JRPG and did the action much worse, but puzzles much better. Have you played it?

 

[Wunderbar]

I think the one that looked most interesting to me, was "Tormented Souls", unless I'm mistaking one game for another. I've yet to play it, but it looked really close to RE 0/1. There are a couple like this now.

Tormented Souls is more of an adventure game than a 'dungeon in tabletop', as it has infinite inventory space and a pretty low enemy/weapons/resource variety.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Hey Wunderbar
I vaguely remember you talking somewhere about an obscure RE clone set in a pretty cool sci-fi setting taking place in Mars
What was the name of the game and would you recommend it?