I recently received a very kind comment, where someone said that they enjoyed my reviews in spite of the fact that I give all their favorite games two stars. That’s just an unfortunate side-effect of beating hundreds of games; the potential for a novel experience shrinks while the bar for excellence goes up. Also, I only write a review when I feel strongly about a game, which means it’s either something I love (rare for the aforementioned reasons) or something I’m particularly dissatisfied by. So, I hope no one takes it personally when I say that this game is slop.
I’m fine with remakes. In fact, I endlessly talk about how REmake might be my favorite game, and I even enjoyed the remake of 3, the one people don’t like. It has plenty of flaws, but at least I know why it exists. I can feel its thesis: it wanted to take a game designed to evoke Terminator, and cut down on all the parts which didn’t fit the explosive pacing. So, out goes the clock tower, in comes the rail gun. With this game though, I feel absolutely no thesis, since it doesn’t commit to either a new direction or general refinement. The main problem I had with the original was its pacing, with hours in the middle where there’s hardly any mechanical escalation. In the remake, this issue isn’t corrected, but doubled. Now you have asinine sidequests ranging from rat-stabbing to item fetching, randomly grinding the game to a screeching halt. The difficulty adjustment system from the original would elegantly tune supply levels for each area, and the new system tries to do it in the same way, but players can now craft ammo of any type at any time, trivializing challenges on demand. Knifing an enemy on the ground was perfectly simple, now it’s cluttered with contextual prompts. Even simply dodging an attack is cluttered, with a few scarce attacks requiring contextual dodges, which didn’t feel great in the original even when it was kept outside of core combat. People were ok with knife durability in RE2, so let’s just throw that in while we're at it, despite how the flow of combat was originally designed around its constant use. People didn’t like Ashley in the original, so let’s give her infinite health, making it beneficial when she gets hurt intercepting attacks. Let’s expand the treasure-combination system to the point where players have to futz with crafting every time they visit a merchant, because it’s a safe change we can sell as a new feature. The list goes on with complaints like how most encounters begin with enemies teleporting behind you, a hit-or-miss new script, and so on, but the point is that none of these changes are even in service of a greater goal. The core experience isn’t revolutionized even a tenth as much as the other modern remakes, it isn’t scarier or more action-packed, the mechanics are less elegant, and the problems were, at best, left untouched.
That’s why this game is just slop to me. It's a disinterested ladling of content onto the beige plastic lunchtray that is my psyche. It wasn’t created through passion, but to fulfill an obligation. Resident Evil remakes are safe investments, so Capcom felt obligated to rearrange a near-perfect formula, even without a creative vision for it. All it was intended to be is “more”, a version of Resident Evil 4 they could port to the next few generations of consoles for $70 instead of $20. Well, they certainly achieved THAT goal, but if their idea was truly to recreate the magic of Resident Evil 4, they didn’t even come close.
I’m fine with remakes. In fact, I endlessly talk about how REmake might be my favorite game, and I even enjoyed the remake of 3, the one people don’t like. It has plenty of flaws, but at least I know why it exists. I can feel its thesis: it wanted to take a game designed to evoke Terminator, and cut down on all the parts which didn’t fit the explosive pacing. So, out goes the clock tower, in comes the rail gun. With this game though, I feel absolutely no thesis, since it doesn’t commit to either a new direction or general refinement. The main problem I had with the original was its pacing, with hours in the middle where there’s hardly any mechanical escalation. In the remake, this issue isn’t corrected, but doubled. Now you have asinine sidequests ranging from rat-stabbing to item fetching, randomly grinding the game to a screeching halt. The difficulty adjustment system from the original would elegantly tune supply levels for each area, and the new system tries to do it in the same way, but players can now craft ammo of any type at any time, trivializing challenges on demand. Knifing an enemy on the ground was perfectly simple, now it’s cluttered with contextual prompts. Even simply dodging an attack is cluttered, with a few scarce attacks requiring contextual dodges, which didn’t feel great in the original even when it was kept outside of core combat. People were ok with knife durability in RE2, so let’s just throw that in while we're at it, despite how the flow of combat was originally designed around its constant use. People didn’t like Ashley in the original, so let’s give her infinite health, making it beneficial when she gets hurt intercepting attacks. Let’s expand the treasure-combination system to the point where players have to futz with crafting every time they visit a merchant, because it’s a safe change we can sell as a new feature. The list goes on with complaints like how most encounters begin with enemies teleporting behind you, a hit-or-miss new script, and so on, but the point is that none of these changes are even in service of a greater goal. The core experience isn’t revolutionized even a tenth as much as the other modern remakes, it isn’t scarier or more action-packed, the mechanics are less elegant, and the problems were, at best, left untouched.
That’s why this game is just slop to me. It's a disinterested ladling of content onto the beige plastic lunchtray that is my psyche. It wasn’t created through passion, but to fulfill an obligation. Resident Evil remakes are safe investments, so Capcom felt obligated to rearrange a near-perfect formula, even without a creative vision for it. All it was intended to be is “more”, a version of Resident Evil 4 they could port to the next few generations of consoles for $70 instead of $20. Well, they certainly achieved THAT goal, but if their idea was truly to recreate the magic of Resident Evil 4, they didn’t even come close.
3 Comments
While I mostly agree with your criticisms of the gameplay, you don't give any credit to the improvement in character development. That I think is the one area the remake wins handidly over the original.
@rubenmg The resource management angle you brought up is one I thought about a lot, since the whole parry/durability/inventory paradigm seemed to point towards a new mechanical direction. However, I don't think they committed to it neeeeeeaaaaaarly enough. It would have been genuinely cool if your knife felt like your final lifeline to get out of sticky situations, but like... in the new water hall section, you can just stop fighting and walk back to the merchant to repair it. Enemies will helpfully drop boot knives when you run out. It's the same problem as the ammo; the difficulty isn't tuned to where you actually need to use everything at your disposal. That's why I started selling most of my scrap in the back half, I knew the game would never call me out on my ammo usage as long as I didn't start intentionally blasting at the wall. So, the resources being unnecessary opened up my inventory space, granting more room for supplies + extra money, making it extremely easy to manage my knife and ammo. Lots of mechanical overhead for little benefit.
Come to think of it, I bet the game feels way more interesting when going for Hardcore S+. No time for bad sidequests, and you probably have to use every trick at your disposal to make it through. I've done highest difficulty S+ in the other remakes, and I wasn't interested enough to do it here (hell, probably not even going to play the DLC I already paid for oops), but maybe I should force myself to do that.
@Kasunex I blame RE8 for that. It smothered any remaining care I had for story in this series, which is amazing when I still *slightly* cared after 6. I don't even know how it lasted that long. I have shit taste.
Come to think of it, I bet the game feels way more interesting when going for Hardcore S+. No time for bad sidequests, and you probably have to use every trick at your disposal to make it through. I've done highest difficulty S+ in the other remakes, and I wasn't interested enough to do it here (hell, probably not even going to play the DLC I already paid for oops), but maybe I should force myself to do that.
@Kasunex I blame RE8 for that. It smothered any remaining care I had for story in this series, which is amazing when I still *slightly* cared after 6. I don't even know how it lasted that long. I have shit taste.
This comment was deleted
rubenmg
5 months ago
I agree on the pacing problems (regarding distractions mostly) on both games, being worsened in the remake, yet they are not that insistent to harm the action much. It is true that the sidequests in particular are quite underwhelming, but them being optional make them as much of a hindrance as the shooting gallery on both games at most (I still would prefer the sidequests not to be present in any form).
While I have some problems with the knife (parrying is a shortcut to get away from some of the most tense moments and I’m not convinced with the usual melee being almost entirely erased), it has a lot of sense with what they are doing now, which is the same thing they are doing with the craftable ammo. Both the craft items and the knives usage appoint to a more resource heavy game. The knife is a shortcut to get away/prevent dangerous situations (that's why there’s durability) and yes, as you said, you can conveniently craft the ammo you need at the moment, but resources being shared for various crafting items and occupying quite some space in the inventory look to me like another layer of decision making and resource management. The combat knife being repairable and upgradable more or less confirms its new status as resource, just as the body armor new usage to a lesser extent.
About Ashley, I have the general same thoughts as the original. She only gets hit by chance and very rarely needed a herb then or assistance now to recover. I guess it had some interest to decide on giving her some of the precious heal in the original, but it is also interesting now that she stays in the same spot after being hit so that you cannot ignore the problem and run away, both options seem alright on their own to me.
Finally, I agree that there is a suspicious impersonal automation on releasing remakes nowadays (in general and in RE case) that make me doubt about intention. In any case, I prefer not to guess (or for the guess to affect my thoughts) and instead try to focus on what actually came out.