We are about a fourth of the way through 2024, and so far this port of Resident Evil might be the only game I have played to completetion this year. I'm at the final stretch of getting my Bachelor's degree, so in the rare times I can actually sit down and play a game, it's typically something I can turn my brain off to while talking with friends. I have played the original Resident Evil games enough to be able run through them in my sleep, so I occasionally pop one in when I have a couple of hours to spare. However this particular version of RE1 has alluded me for a while, so I decided to give it a spin AND MAN, did I love this!

Beyond some of the more DS-specific additions, the minor tweaks Deadly Silence makes to the gameplay of Resident Evil probably makes it the best playing of any of the classic tank controlled entries.

You can do a 180° turn, the knife is bound to the left bumper and no longer takes up an inventory slot, you can reload mid-clip without having to go to the menu, you can switch auto-aim targets, and can SKIP DOOR ANIMATIONS AMD CUTSCENES! In terms of base gameplay, the is without a doubt the best classic RE games has ever played. It's so good that I'm legit angry that CAPCOM never did similar ports for RE2 or RE3.

The new Rebirth mode has a bunch of curveballs for returning fans like me. This includes stuff like new puzzles and remixed enemy encounters that now include multiple enemy variants in the same room, which never happened before! The only thing that isn't a straight upgrade (outside of the lower resolution and more compressed FMVs and backgrounds) is the music, which just sounds a bit to tinny to me.

It has always baffled me that CAPCOM hasn't attempted to make their classic entries more available. As cool as the remakes are, I don't believe they actually replace the originals (even if I think REmake is better than RE1), and people should be able to play them without having to resort to becoming a fucking nerd and setting up an emulator.

I know gamers think that just cause it's easy to set up that everyone could just emulate stuff, but I'm not gonna lie, if it wasn't for things like the PS1 Classics on the PS3, there would be no way my 12 year old ass would have gone through the effort of setting up EPSXE just to play RE1 back in 2010. Having a more convenient way for people to play older stuff is how new folks typically find classic games like these, and it's a real shame that older games are just left to languish on older hardware, which only really benefits folks selling this stuff on the second hand market to dorks with too much money to spend.

Rant aside, Deadly Silence is so good that it elevated a game that I only sorta liked enough to revisit occasionally, to one that I am itching to jump back into again! IT'S SO GOOD, DUDE!

Alongside Red Candle Game's debut title, Detention, Devotion is probably my favorite horror game of the 2010s.

It is such a shame that this game will mostly be known for the controversy surrounding it, rather than for how well crafted of a horror experience it actually is.

I am firmly in the camp that we no longer need Silent Hill as a franchise any more, because there are so many new games out now that explore similar themes in more unique ways and through more novel lenses that any future Silent Hill game will only be held back by it's franchise's own baggage.

I think one of the few developers that has taken cues from the Silent Hill games while doing something fresh instead of just solely aping SH's gameplay, visual aesthetic or vibes is Red Candle Games. The two games they have released so far are two genuinely fantastic pieces of media, and are some of the few video games that feel truly "mature" in a way most aren't. Less in terms of graphic violence or any explicit content presented, but more so in the level of understanding and tact Red Candle Games employs when broaching the subject matters they wish to address in their games.

Despite being blacklisted off of major storefronts like Steam and GOG, Devotion is available to purchase on Red Candle's own website for under $20. If you have even a slight interest in this game or Detention, I implore you to play them!

P.T. was a neat little demo and was a great piece of marketing, but nothing about it really sold me on the idea that Kojima should be involved with Silent Hill. If anything, the amount of 4th wall breaking and the use of big name actors within this demo told me that Kojima probably never touched a Silent Hill game in his life, and it was probably easier for him to use the IP as a jumping off point rather than having to pitch a new IP to the other Konami execs.

Considering what went down not long after this demo was published, a lot of people wanted to believe that this game was this big 5-D play by Kojima, and was some sort of big "Fuck You" to Konami. But let's be real, it was just Kojima dabbling in something new (to him) after being shackled to MGS for a billion years. He brought some of his cool actor/director/art friends onboard so they could make something spooky. Sadly, due to a lot of internal politics and mismanagement at Konami prior to the release of MGSV (some of which Kojima was responsible for himself), things fell through and Silent Hills was one of the casualties.

I've stated it a billion times, but I am not the fondest of Kojima's work, and while I don't think his Silent Hill game would have been all that great as an actual Silent Hill game, I do think he has the ability to make a really unique horror game. Hopefully Overdose turns out alright.

I originally played this game a few years ago with just the bots and had a real hard time enjoying it, but getting the fan servers up and playing it all the way through with some pals has elevated this game to my top 5 RE games.

Outbreak fucking rules and I can't believe how well it actually makes co-op survival horror work! Now is probably the best time to play Outbreak, with voice chats services like Discord making it easier to create plans and strategies with your friends than it ever was back in the day.

Setting the game up so that it'll plan online again is a 10 minute job, so if you have a semi-functional PC from the last 10 years that can run a PS2 emulator, and if your a classic RE fan, you owe it to yourself to check this one out!

This is the rare-ish special edition of D that was released for the 3DO back in the day. The base game is largely the same, though it does feature some extended and reworked cutscnese that look a fair bit better than their original counterparts. You can also unlock a secret trailer for the unreleased version of D2 for the Panasonic M2.

It's the bonus disc that holds a lot more of the interesting stuff, like trailers, dubs for different languages, a scene comparison thingy (where you can see what changes were made to which cutscenes), and even a small visual novel companion piece (which has been translated online, if you are wondering).

If you aren't fond of D, this isn't gonna change your mind, but as a WARP ENTHUSIAST, this was a really neat little package.

(IIRC, this is also one of the two games Fumito Ueda worked on at WARP before joining Sony to make Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, which is neat!)

I'm not the biggest fan of most of Kojima's works, but prior to the Phantom Pain I was able to finish most of the mainline MGS games. I bounced off this one pretty hard, sadly. The base gameplay is pretty tight, but I think this is the game where I really started to loathe the open-world game design being shoehorned into everything, as this game felt especially barren.

No matter how you try to spin the story, be it one that was cut short before it could be completed, or some auteur meta take on MGS sequels like MGS2 (yadda yadda "PHANTOM PAIN" yadda yadda), this one feels half-baked in a really apparent way. I think that's probably due to both Konami being shitty and Kojima being shit at properly allocating funds, but either way this one's incomplete.

I dunno, the game is not bad enough to be 'bad', but I'd struggle to say if I'd ever be willing to pick it up again.

My initial post about RE0 was largely based on my first playthrough of the game from over a decade ago, and a few subsequent attempts made thereafter. It took until last week for me to really sit my skinny ass down, grit my teeth and take it all in.

At times it was painful, and there were even points where I thought I couldn't take it anymore (it was just so LONG), but after enough squirming and screaming, I was able to get into it's rhythm and see it through. After RE0 was done with me, I was able to limp away with an experience that was (mostly) fun.

My favorite in the series, and I am not saying that because I had to go through the dull process of soft-modding my Wii to get it (and the Fatal Frame 2 Wiimake) to work.

Despite it's use of an over-the-shoulder camera, Fatal Frame 4 feels decidedly classic in a time where classic survival horror was no longer in-vogue. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the reason Nintendo got cold feet when it came to publishing it abroad (among other reasons).

Luckily, in the year of our Lord, 2023, people from across the globe can finally play this bad boy through it's remaster, it's just a shame it took so long to get here. Better late than never, though!