Capcom Resident Evil 4 Remake - out now for PC/Playstation/Xbox

[KIss My Ass]

Rev 2 had the best combat of the whole franchise.

 

[Cross]

lul rat fuck border crosser Luis and simp Leon


Is it me or facial animations only got worse since RE2 remake?

This really puts into perspective how much graphics/presentation 'improvements' in games made after the mid-2000's have just been diminishing returns, if that. Not only do the new music, dialogue and voice acting sound lousy, but the characters in the remake look blander and less expressive than the ones from the original. It's like one of those modern remakes of an 80's movie that saps out all the fun of the original.

 

[Zombra]

This really puts into perspective how much graphics/presentation 'improvements' in games made after the mid-2000's have just been diminishing returns, if that. Not only do the new music, dialogue and voice acting sound lousy, but the characters in the remake look blander and less expressive than the ones from the original. It's like one of those modern remakes of an 80's movie that saps out all the fun of the original.

Of course, when your parents said the same thing about the media and remakes you liked when you were younger, they were objectively wrong.

 

[Ash]

I haven't watched much RE4 gameplay. Was just informed the game has crouch stealth. After I said about Callisto Protocol only yesterday,

"I'm in that place where the Last of Us clicker-like enemies start to appear. This place looks so good. Funny there's that whole setup with him trying to be super quiet while hanging upside-down and then when I actually get to playing again, I give them an easy beating and later sneakily stab them in the back of the head one by one. This is horror? Game's rather easy. Glad Resident Evil never adopted the stupid crouch makes quiet shit. But I never played Village and barely played 7.

"Stealth is exceptionally bad. Just this very boring circle-crouching around the blind enemies, loudly one-shot killing their buddies within two feet of the other, and repeat, and repeat."

Getting so tiresome how everyone wants to make the same games. Crouch makes quiet sucks almost every time. Guess I can count on crouching behind raptors if Dino Crisis ever comes back.

I am totally behind the notion that:

1. this game having stealth is retarded. The original was action all the way, with a slight survival horror base. It excelled at this. Why dilute that?
2. AAA devs are making the same dumb game over and over at this point (barebones stealth is added strictly as an option to not exclude any type of player, with intent to optimize sales and provide illusion of meaningful choice/depth).

But what I don't get is why crouch to stealth is allegedly so bad? Isn't there literally only one game that does not do this (Thief)? Ergo by your metric every other stealth game is garbage?
Tenchu (the very first 3D stealth game ?) was the opposite direction, you ran with ninja grace (silent running by default) and I love that game. Deus Ex has crouch to silence footsteps and reduce visibility. It makes sense - trade movement speed for better sneaking. Not some grave game design crime. But still, fuck aAA modern stealth. It is trash. With real stealth design crimes such as unlimited see through walls and just about every other hand-holder imaginable. Crouch to stealth is the least of my concerns with modern stealth. But that all said, I would like to reiterate that it has absolutely no place in any well-meaning Resident Evil 4 remake. Stealth does not, period.

 

[Ezekiel]

I haven't watched much RE4 gameplay. Was just informed the game has crouch stealth. After I said about Callisto Protocol only yesterday,

"I'm in that place where the Last of Us clicker-like enemies start to appear. This place looks so good. Funny there's that whole setup with him trying to be super quiet while hanging upside-down and then when I actually get to playing again, I give them an easy beating and later sneakily stab them in the back of the head one by one. This is horror? Game's rather easy. Glad Resident Evil never adopted the stupid crouch makes quiet shit. But I never played Village and barely played 7.

"Stealth is exceptionally bad. Just this very boring circle-crouching around the blind enemies, loudly one-shot killing their buddies within two feet of the other, and repeat, and repeat."

Getting so tiresome how everyone wants to make the same games. Crouch makes quiet sucks almost every time. Guess I can count on crouching behind raptors if Dino Crisis ever comes back.

I am totally behind the notion that:

1. this game having stealth is retarded. The original was action all the way, with a slight survival horror base. It excelled at this. Why dilute that?
2. AAA devs are making the same dumb game over and over at this point (barebones stealth is added strictly as an option to not exclude any type of player, with intent to optimize sales and provide illusion of meaningful choice/depth).

But what I don't get is why crouch to stealth is allegedly so bad? Isn't there literally only one game that does not do this (Thief)? Ergo by your metric every other stealth game is garbage?
Tenchu (the very first 3D stealth game ?) was the opposite direction, you ran with ninja grace (silent running by default) and I love that game. Deus Ex has crouch to silence footsteps and reduce visibility. It makes sense - trade movement speed for better sneaking. Not some grave game design crime. But still, fuck aAA modern stealth. It is trash. With real stealth design crimes such as unlimited see through walls and just about every other hand-holder imaginable. Crouch to stealth is the least of my concerns with modern stealth. But that all said, I would like to reiterate that it has absolutely no place in any well-meaning Resident Evil 4 remake. Stealth does not, period.

Are we only talking about 3D games? Metal Gear Solid didn't do it either until number 4 when Kojima decided he had to copy one of the crappy parts of Splinter Cell. It hurt Snake so bad he had to take painkillers and stretch his back every twenty minutes or so. Zelda is in the same genre as most of those movie games, action-adventure, and doesn't do it around guards who will instantly capture Link.

You could balance the enemies against quicker, upright walking. Notice that in almost every single one of the crouch makes quiet games, the enemies walk at a snail's pace. Increase their speed and make them less myopic until the player is no longer overpowered sneaking upright.

Aside from being slow, always crouching down really low to get anywhere doesn't look cool. Reducing visibility at a distance is fine, but crouching just to move behind enemies when they are everywhere is tiresome and visually really lame after a short while. I'm okay with like Schwarzenegger doing it because it's always brief. But all the time? No, screw that. Uncool.

 

[Ezekiel]

Being in a crouching position would also make it take longer to disarm them and get at their throat/mouth. A kind of tip toe would look better, if the regular walk makes noise in the game. But not too slow!

It might just be Ashley that crouches. I wouldn't like that either, though. Would prefer using obstacles to slow or stop them, like before, but done better.

 

[Zombra]

But what I don't get is why crouch to stealth is allegedly so bad? Isn't there literally only one game that does not do this (Thief)? Ergo by your metric every other stealth game is garbage?

First, the fact that Thief lets you walk quietly is an indicator that good stealth games should let you walk quietly.

Second, as Ezekiel has mentioned, not all games use crouch stealth, only the ones that blindly follow the convention ... and admittedly there are a lot of them.

Third and leaving the rest aside, mainly I completely hate "crouch = quiet, standing = loud" because it's blatantly ridiculous. It is only a thing in games because it is a thing in games and for no other reason. Imagine if every game that had combat in it made you cluck like a chicken every time you fired a gun or swung a sword, because that's what happened in some other games before.

BOCK BOCK BOCK BGAWWWK

BUCK

BUCK

BUCK

BGAWWWK

After you played the 600th game where combat made you cluck like a chicken, you'd say, hey this is still fucking stupid, wouldn't it be better if games stopped doing this? And once you had that thought, it would not leave your head, and your annoyance would refresh every time you heard that goddamn

BRAWWWWK

BUCK BUCK BUCK BUCK

 

[Ash]

"You could balance the enemies against quicker, upright walking. Notice that in almost every single one of the crouch makes quiet games, the enemies walk at a snail's pace. Increase their speed and make them less myopic until the player is no longer overpowered sneaking upright."

The sole interesting point. everything else you guys said was a variation of "muh realism" and an inability to suspend disbelief in a video game.

Oh and Thief did it different therefore good. Well, to that I respond with a similar non-answer by bringing up the Arnie mention: if Arnie did the crouch-walk in all his best movies, then it is also good.

Unrelated note: Urgh, Some Drunk Guy is back. Well, glad you're not dead at least. Now play more good quality games, King Molepopper.

 

[Zombra]

Everything else you guys said was a variation of "muh realism" and an inability to suspend disbelief in a video game.

Suspension of disbelief is for times when an unrealistic thing is necessary for the story or medium to work. If you want to create a believable world, you don't just throw in unbelievable things for no reason.

In a first-person shooter, realism demands that if you get shot one time, you should at minimum stop fighting immediately and go to the hospital. If you get shot twice, you are definitely out of action. And a white box with a red cross on it can't heal bullet wounds instantly. Yet this would mean that most FPS games could not exist at all, so we suspend our disbelief in order to be able to play a fun game even if we get shot sometimes and it makes no sense.

In a city exploration game, it would be prohibitively expensive to accurately model a million unique buildings inside and out, along with the 8 million unique citizens that live in them, so it's necessary to cut corners (a LOT of corners) in order to ship such a game; yet these games can still be played and enjoyed even if the vision of a "real city" in a game isn't possible yet.

Since there is no such need for "short = quiet", it is dumb to expect critics to willingly suspend their disbelief. If there was a reason for it I would be happy to accept it. And no, "dumb people are used to it" is not a valid reason.

 

[Ash]

I STRONGLY disagree. Rules of reality should absolutely not dictate rules of game design that heavily. e.g it was never absolutely necessary for RE4 to feature a merchant with infinitely deep pockets, that followed you wherever you went (or was even ahead of you always, rather), and would even come back to life next encounter if you killed him. Oh and gave you cash for elaborate shooting ranges he set up for shits and giggles. They included him because fun. FUCK muh realism retards. It helps to serve immersion and gameplay intuition, but not really anything else, and forcing it into games so autistically the past two decades has resulted in some serious decline. The only genre I truly value a semi-elaborate degree of realism is in serious survival horror games and "immersive sims", and even then there is an upper threshold that absolutely not be passed for the sake of good gameplay.
Crouch to stealth does have a purpose. It's simple and convenient, doubles with crouching, and it acts as a solid trade-off (movement speed for stealth). It makes all the sense in the world that it is game design standard.

 

[Zombra]

I STRONGLY disagree. Rules of reality should absolutely not dictate rules of game design that heavily. e.g it was never absolutely necessary for RE4 to feature a merchant with infinitely deep pockets, that followed you wherever you went (or was even ahead of you always, rather), and would even come back to life next encounter if you killed him.

There were actual gameplay reasons for all of this; none of it was "just be wacky because who cares".

It acts as a solid trade-off (movement speed for stealth).

Which walk quietly also would, so this argument is irrelevant. Stop saying it.

It's simple and convenient and doubles with crouching

FINALLY we get to the only valid reason for crouch-only stealth: "too many buttons makes a game teh hard". It's valid, but STILL STUPID. Man up and learn to press another button.

 

[Ash]

Waste of input space and player's limited muscle memory capacity that can be used on something more important than "this sucks because it is not REALISTIC!!!!"

Also no talking about manning up when discussing video games pls.

P.S I gave you a dancing donut bro because he is the antithesis of realism, and he is coming for you to gobble up all your stupid overly realism-chasing games.

 

[Ezekiel]

Well, to that I respond with a similar non-answer by bringing up the Arnie mention: if Arnie did the crouch-walk in all his best movies, then it is also good.

Predator:

Almost the position Snake had when he held a weapon, before MGS4 with its stupid crouch:

Why would he crouch low? That's retarded. Unless he's coming out of a clearing where everyone can see him, coming up to some tall grass like here:

I can't remember if he crouched low in Conan the Barbarian's sneaking.

 

[Wunderbar]

Devs prefer to use crouch stealth as opposed to sneaking while standing because it's easier to read. You press the button, your character crouches, and it is immediately clear that you're now in a 'stealth mode'.

 

[Zombra]

Devs prefer to use crouch stealth as opposed to sneaking while standing because it's easier to read. You press the button, your character crouches, and it is immediately clear that you're now in a 'stealth mode'.

Yes .. well firstly, I touched on this above with the clucking chickens. Just because it's a thing people recognize doesn't make it make sense or the best option. There are other, less silly ways to make it readable.

Secondly .. this is a gripe I have with the evolution of PC UI to console controls. Hear me out. Back in the day, modifier keys such as sneak and aim were designed for keyboard players, people who could type and were comfortable with holding down a modifier key like Shift or Ctrl. You would "hold to crouch" or "hold to sprint". So you didn't need to show the player visually what mode they were in, because they knew intuitively when they were holding down the Shift key and when they were not. With the advent of consoles and fewer buttons, everything had to be made into a toggle because controllers aren't built to allow for held modifiers, and suddenly cross platform games no longer allowed you to hold a key down to modify behavior. Overnight, PC players no longer instinctively knew whether they were already sneaking, crouching, or running; they could use their memory to recall whether they pressed the button a moment ago, but this is very different from the instantaneous feel of your finger already holding down Shift. Now the controls were 'press X to sneak' AND 'press X to run', which I guess made sense for controllers but is not ideal for keyboards. 'Hold Shift to walk' and 'release Shift to run' is flatly superior. Only when keyboard players were forced to use console controls was it necessary for developers to give the player visual information about something they previously knew instinctively. Thus, the short = quiet convention.

For those who might not think this is a big deal, disable your Shift keys and only use Caps Lock from now on. See how long it takes before it's irritating.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I would like to see a game where crouch is implemented, but you don't have to crouch to stealth. As long as you walk slowly, you will make little noise, but the function of the crouch is more based in reality , like getting behind short cover or under objects like tables or counters. So the crouch button function like how you would crouch in real life playing hide and seek. Crouching in plain sight would be useless and you walk slower, but crouching behind a box is necessary.

 

[Wunderbar]

With the advent of consoles and fewer buttons, everything had to be made into a toggle because controllers aren't built to allow for held modifiers, and suddenly cross platform games no longer allowed you to hold a key down to modify behavior.

counterpoint - analogue stick that differentiates between 'hard push' and 'light push'.

I would like to see a game where crouch is implemented, but you don't have to crouch to stealth. As long as you walk slowly, you will make little noise, but the function of the crouch is more based in reality , like getting behind short cover or under objects like tables or counters. So the crouch button function like how you would crouch in real life playing hide and seek. Crouching in plain sight would be useless and you walk slower, but crouching behind a box is necessary.

crouch stealth is basically streamlining. Why have two different ways to sneak, when you can have just one, catch-all sneak ability that covers both 'move slow but quietly' and 'reduce your hitbox so you can hide behind waist-high props'?

 

[Ezekiel]

For those who might not think this is a big deal, disable your Shift keys and only use Caps Lock from now on. See how long it takes before it's irritating.

Unrelated, but I dislike that about some of Sony's ports. Horizon and I think Days Gone have no hold to walk button on keyboards. Only a toggle.

 

[Zombra]

counterpoint - analogue stick that differentiates between 'hard push' and 'light push'.

Fun (?) fact, I played Sinking City on controller beginning to end. Didn't want to but analog stick was the only way I could walk

 

[Ash]

Devs prefer to use crouch stealth as opposed to sneaking while standing because it's easier to read. You press the button, your character crouches, and it is immediately clear that you're now in a 'stealth mode'.

Yes .. well firstly, I touched on this above with the clucking chickens. Just because it's a thing people recognize doesn't make it make sense or the best option. There are other, less silly ways to make it readable.

Secondly .. this is a gripe I have with the evolution of PC UI to console controls. Hear me out.

what will you guys come up with next? Hold/toggle options have been a thing on consoles relatively standard since the 90s.

 

[Alienman]

Any military will tell you it's good to become a small target/avoid getting spotted, so stealth crouching is not totally out there. But if we talk indoors sneaking in tight spaces, you would probably sneak around upright.

 

[Alienman]

lul rat fuck border crosser Luis and simp Leon


Is it me or facial animations only got worse since RE2 remake?

I love that to write for a "modern audience", you can't even have a character be "sexist". It's such a joke. In the future, every character will be bland and the same, not to offend anyone.

 

[NSNP]

Constant music seems to be a trend in all audiovisual mediums, be it movies, television, or video games. Compare the constant stock music of a Law & Order episode to the quietness of a Columbo episode. Who knows why this became such a trend? Even an energetic, blockbuster-style action game like Resident Evil 4 seems thoughtful and contemplative compared to modern games. I haven't played RE4 in a long while but I still remember the thick atmosphere of the village at night after rescuing Ashley from the cathedral. You can bet a million bucks that the remake will fail to recreate such moments.

The music doesn't even match the scene itself. It feels like music for an ongoing chase, not a moment where the characters can catch a breath and get into any dialogue. At least movies and TV shows had the sense to Mickey Mouse their soundtracks in the middle of their circlejerking over quantity over quality and not wanting a single second of silence. Hopefully there'll be more scrutiny thanks to the original RE4's popularity.

 

[Ezekiel]

lul rat fuck border crosser Luis and simp Leon


Is it me or facial animations only got worse since RE2 remake?

I love that to write for a "modern audience", you can't even have a character be "sexist". It's such a joke. In the future, every character will be bland and the same, not to offend anyone.

In real life men are ever less likely to talk like Luis in the original scene as well. But this game takes place in 2004, not 2023. It's like the RE2 and 3 remakes. Instead of fashion inspired by the '90s, they gave Jill and Claire the standard current day slim jeans and tank top and ordinary hair that are in every other modern game and movie. All they had to do was look up '90s fashion on a search engine or see what fashion magazines were publishing at the time.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Thief (original Thief) had crouching for stealth too. You used it to make your footsteps quieter, and you were less visible while crouching. It’s not even really different than what Splinter Cell does beside maybe being slightly more visible in Splinter Cell while standing when it’s not pitch black.

I wonder if stealth in this is something they’re doing because they want it to be a universal mechanic that’ll play more of a role in the sections where you control Ashley. It could also be they’re folding the idea of the Ashley sections into Leon. But it could be that they fleshed out the Ashley sections, and as opposed to just introduced a new gameplay idea when that happens, that they something you can do regardless of who you play as.

Stealth was played a minor role in the original game. You could avoid enemies in the opening section. And you could lose those big blind guys with the giant claws, (The Garrador) which made them far easier to fight, by being quiet and moving slowly (or not at all) on metal floors.