Identity Crisis 8
Words can’t define how grueling it was to see this game through till the end, I feel like my interest completely depleted and my mind checked out right after House Beneviento, but I’ll address my complaints further down the line, let’s get the good out of the way.
Pros
(+) I like the fact that the game has this children’s storybook backdrop and it’s very unusual for the franchise to include these kinds of fantasy-like elements (I say “these kinds” because we DO have supernatural Tamil villains who can super sprint and dodge bullets ala Wesker) which work even better when you’re getting your body torn open and your limbs cut off and re-attached, it all feels like you’re not a real person and the odds you face are artificial and insurmountable, you’re transported to this fantasy village with a giantess, a talking doll, mr magneto, even the minor bosses like the fan dude who charges at you (I like how the notes say he gets his own limbs chopped off of his body because of the fan) and then later his internal machinery catches fire and he starts breathing it at you.
I LIKE the creativity they had with this game, in a sea of “fleshy mutant with bulging eye that you’re supposed to hit” this game really had variety even though it’s still bullseye enemies yipee
(+) Ethan being mold cool but executed horribly and shouldn’t have even been a reveal
(+) House Beneviento and the Factory are overall really good segments even when their charm only works once and never again, Beneviento is the only time this franchise has attempted to be psychological in its horror delivery and it felt like for once RE could measure upto Silent Hill in being genuinely creepy and not over-reliant on gore-like elements
(+) The Duke is cool
Cons
(-) Pick one game that you want to call back on, you can’t keep oscillating between different past games that you want to reference. So, Castle Dimitrescu is RE1, Dimitrescu herself is our Mr.X callback so that’s RE2, the weapon
inventory/merchant/starting gankfest is a reference to RE4, the game itself extends the combat for RE7, and in none of these circumstances did I feel like the game faithfully reinvented the wheel, again this keeps contributing to how inconsistent and glued together a lot of the elements of this game feel, just slapped on without any depth or nuance.
(-) RE7 combat sucks and it works only for that specific game where you have limping mold chasing you flailing its tentacle arms around, revamping that almost sluggish combat so the game can have this quasi-action game approach feels so unnatural to play and especially on Hardcore this game is diabolical.
When I was at the Lycan hideout I legitimately zoned out, and there’s one specific reason why the action doesn’t work, the backstep speed, they made it really slow so that whenever an enemy approach you it feels like you’re backed up against an invisible wall only having to expose your back in order to run a few steps behind to put inches between you and the enemy. THIS SUCKS, I don’t get the sentiment of having a high-octane FPS game but actively limiting the player to 2 things, switching weapons and holding your arms up to guard, and the game wants you to guard A LOT.
WHY? In RE7 all the claustrophobic space made complete sense but in RE8 it just feels fucking stupid and counterintuitive to the very idea of making an action heavy game
(-) The bosses suck complete dick and the fact that even after 8 installments and countless spin-offs and remakes they keep releasing this unsophisticated bullseye enemies is so pathetic, and I’m going to be very candid RE could straight up not have bosses and it would largely improve on the quality of the experience,
Heisenburg and Moreau are SPECIFICALLY bad and even though I can give a pass to Moreau for being a filler boss Heisenburg doesn’t get a graceful pass from me, imagine building up this insanely cool character and then having no real payoff for it
(-) The game can be very easily segmented into multiple portions because of how distinctively the bosses and their designated areas work, Castle Dimitrescu, Moreau Lake, House Beneviento, Heisenburg Factory, Lycan Hideout, the Village open grounds, and not only are they structurally different but they also differ a lot in terms of gameplay, the cream of the crop here is Castle Dimitrescu, House Beneviento and the Factory while the rest are just really REALLY bad
Again, the word of the day is consistency and the game is capricious in execution, by the end of the game I nearly forgot that there were village survivors who burn to death in a house fire of which only you make out alive, had the game had you find survivors and set up some sort of “survivors of mother miranda” network instead of having you fight quirky and goofy villains as your only source of communication it could add so much more value
(+/-) The game is linear but it’s done tastefully in my opinion, there’s no deep pathfinding or having to traverse a maze like structure and even if you’re lost it’s very easy to backtrack your footsteps, the factory is the only “technical” section and believe me when I say I wasn’t even paying that much attention and I would still easily make it to where I needed to go, the game has you coming back to familiar areas and opening routes internally which means that it’s pseudo linear with very clear mission goals so the lack of sophistication makes it less frustrating but then it doesn’t replace the simplicity with quality action segments so it feels like they traded off routing in exchange for pretty much nothing.
Conclusion:
Don’t pick this game up, I can’t emphasize the amount of cringe I had to sit through towards the end, Ethan’s death feels inconsequential, the story reveal has no impact, the game wants to have emotional stakes but you really never warm up to Ethan Winters enough to care, you don’t really care about this damn stupid baby either. No task in this game that you perform feels connected to another, the village isn’t mysterious and I didn’t want to know anything about it, even with it’s small wins this game loses on all other fronts, I can’t sit and pretend this even passes as a quality title.
Pure, unfiltered, garbage.
Words can’t define how grueling it was to see this game through till the end, I feel like my interest completely depleted and my mind checked out right after House Beneviento, but I’ll address my complaints further down the line, let’s get the good out of the way.
Pros
(+) I like the fact that the game has this children’s storybook backdrop and it’s very unusual for the franchise to include these kinds of fantasy-like elements (I say “these kinds” because we DO have supernatural Tamil villains who can super sprint and dodge bullets ala Wesker) which work even better when you’re getting your body torn open and your limbs cut off and re-attached, it all feels like you’re not a real person and the odds you face are artificial and insurmountable, you’re transported to this fantasy village with a giantess, a talking doll, mr magneto, even the minor bosses like the fan dude who charges at you (I like how the notes say he gets his own limbs chopped off of his body because of the fan) and then later his internal machinery catches fire and he starts breathing it at you.
I LIKE the creativity they had with this game, in a sea of “fleshy mutant with bulging eye that you’re supposed to hit” this game really had variety even though it’s still bullseye enemies yipee
(+) Ethan being mold cool but executed horribly and shouldn’t have even been a reveal
(+) House Beneviento and the Factory are overall really good segments even when their charm only works once and never again, Beneviento is the only time this franchise has attempted to be psychological in its horror delivery and it felt like for once RE could measure upto Silent Hill in being genuinely creepy and not over-reliant on gore-like elements
(+) The Duke is cool
Cons
(-) Pick one game that you want to call back on, you can’t keep oscillating between different past games that you want to reference. So, Castle Dimitrescu is RE1, Dimitrescu herself is our Mr.X callback so that’s RE2, the weapon
inventory/merchant/starting gankfest is a reference to RE4, the game itself extends the combat for RE7, and in none of these circumstances did I feel like the game faithfully reinvented the wheel, again this keeps contributing to how inconsistent and glued together a lot of the elements of this game feel, just slapped on without any depth or nuance.
(-) RE7 combat sucks and it works only for that specific game where you have limping mold chasing you flailing its tentacle arms around, revamping that almost sluggish combat so the game can have this quasi-action game approach feels so unnatural to play and especially on Hardcore this game is diabolical.
When I was at the Lycan hideout I legitimately zoned out, and there’s one specific reason why the action doesn’t work, the backstep speed, they made it really slow so that whenever an enemy approach you it feels like you’re backed up against an invisible wall only having to expose your back in order to run a few steps behind to put inches between you and the enemy. THIS SUCKS, I don’t get the sentiment of having a high-octane FPS game but actively limiting the player to 2 things, switching weapons and holding your arms up to guard, and the game wants you to guard A LOT.
WHY? In RE7 all the claustrophobic space made complete sense but in RE8 it just feels fucking stupid and counterintuitive to the very idea of making an action heavy game
(-) The bosses suck complete dick and the fact that even after 8 installments and countless spin-offs and remakes they keep releasing this unsophisticated bullseye enemies is so pathetic, and I’m going to be very candid RE could straight up not have bosses and it would largely improve on the quality of the experience,
Heisenburg and Moreau are SPECIFICALLY bad and even though I can give a pass to Moreau for being a filler boss Heisenburg doesn’t get a graceful pass from me, imagine building up this insanely cool character and then having no real payoff for it
(-) The game can be very easily segmented into multiple portions because of how distinctively the bosses and their designated areas work, Castle Dimitrescu, Moreau Lake, House Beneviento, Heisenburg Factory, Lycan Hideout, the Village open grounds, and not only are they structurally different but they also differ a lot in terms of gameplay, the cream of the crop here is Castle Dimitrescu, House Beneviento and the Factory while the rest are just really REALLY bad
Again, the word of the day is consistency and the game is capricious in execution, by the end of the game I nearly forgot that there were village survivors who burn to death in a house fire of which only you make out alive, had the game had you find survivors and set up some sort of “survivors of mother miranda” network instead of having you fight quirky and goofy villains as your only source of communication it could add so much more value
(+/-) The game is linear but it’s done tastefully in my opinion, there’s no deep pathfinding or having to traverse a maze like structure and even if you’re lost it’s very easy to backtrack your footsteps, the factory is the only “technical” section and believe me when I say I wasn’t even paying that much attention and I would still easily make it to where I needed to go, the game has you coming back to familiar areas and opening routes internally which means that it’s pseudo linear with very clear mission goals so the lack of sophistication makes it less frustrating but then it doesn’t replace the simplicity with quality action segments so it feels like they traded off routing in exchange for pretty much nothing.
Conclusion:
Don’t pick this game up, I can’t emphasize the amount of cringe I had to sit through towards the end, Ethan’s death feels inconsequential, the story reveal has no impact, the game wants to have emotional stakes but you really never warm up to Ethan Winters enough to care, you don’t really care about this damn stupid baby either. No task in this game that you perform feels connected to another, the village isn’t mysterious and I didn’t want to know anything about it, even with it’s small wins this game loses on all other fronts, I can’t sit and pretend this even passes as a quality title.
Pure, unfiltered, garbage.