Behold, the first open world Garten of Banban. That’s only half a joke. Every Banban after… I think 3 has placed everything around a central hub you continually return to, and this time said hub is like, this fuck-huge city with NPCs walking around, where the core areas you go to are landmarks within and such. Honestly when I entered it for the first time my immediate thoughts were ‘oh god they’re gonna make me search for a keycard in this haystack aren’t they?' but… by and large the game is rather benign about its padding. Not like it isn’t there, or anything — the game is evidently still on its quest to run out the steam refund timer by taking as long as possible to beat — but, as opposed to the endless hallways, forced backtracking and stupid platforming segments of previous Banban games, at least here things are stretched out in terms of things you can actually interact with. Minigames you have to do three times when just once could be enough. Points where you’re told to do something, you do it, and then the game moves the goalpost right when you think you’re allowed to progress. It’s still not great, mind you, but it's at least more interactive, and a bit less blatant about its intentions. If it continues down that road, then… look, it’s never going to be good, but at least an upward trajectory is… something?
And, admittedly, this is a step up. If not quite a return to... ‘form,’ it's at least trying to scurry back up to where it once was, like somebody rushing past all the enemies in a souls-like to get back to the boss as quickly as possible. There’s a genuine attempt at an atmosphere here — a focus on audiovisual elements, that… if still not making the game scary, are at least somewhat striking. There’s mood lighting. There are cockroaches scurrying across the floor. There’s background music. Creatures slamming against the walls as you’re exploring an area. There’s this one room with a wet floor where you see the corpses of these things hanging from the roof as you walk towards a silhouette in the distance and if they went with a higher saturation light it honestly would’ve worked. It’s not much, but it’s an improvement, and it gives some segments a bit more character than they’d have otherwise. Gameplay wise… it’s rather basic — and I wouldn’t say it’s like Garten of Banban 4 where it’s… honestly fun at points — but there’s some highlights. There’s a neat chase sequence where you not only have to parkour from building to building, but also figure out where exactly you need to actually go in the heat of the moment. There’s this section where you basically take an exam on how well you recognize some of the characters that was honestly a bit stressful? Maybe I'm easy to impress, or eager to be impressed, but while it’s not back on the upward curve — not yet — it's at least headed in the correct direction. Or something approximate to it. It's better than Garten of Banban 6, that's what I'm saying.
Unfortunately, there’s some new stuff here which… decisively does not make the game better for its inclusion. The drone, once again, is given an upgrade. And, once again, it’s horrible: now you can physically become the drone and fly it in first person and it controls exactly as well as you think it does. Hitting, or even just brushing a wall locks you in place for several seconds. The animation for this also forces the drone to recoil downwards, and if doing so should accidentally cause it to clip into something? Back to the start. Which is merciful, of course, but it makes even the simple act of going through a window a herculean task. Not even going into how the game will still have the drone in the last place you’d used it when you enter drone POV, forcing you to either back out and recover it or force the drone over vast swaths of map level just to get it where it needs to be. And also not even going into how one time I clipped into the wall and sequence broke the drone into another section entirely. And also there’s this one point of the game where it’s- where it’s literally just the baby chase from Resident Evil Village??? And yet they don’t understand what made the baby chase as standout as it was? The core of what makes that whole section work so well in RE8 is how simple it is: you see baby, you run back to where you came from, you pick one of the many hiding places the room provides you, and then you wait until the baby leaves. You’re not likely to die bar you actively attempting to throw yourself into the baby’s maw, which is then to its benefit: you don’t lose that initial impact of the baby just appearing through having to watch the cutscene again. Garten of Banban 7 fucks up in this regard: not only does the game telegraph hard that something’s about to barge into the room (where part of what makes RE8’s rendition work so well is how it happens out of nowhere) but there’s a full puzzle you have to do which involves summoning the drone and making it push buttons as you leap off of tables, all while you continually have to juke the baby around tables and rooms, all the while never quite telegraphing to the player what they’re actually meant to be doing. I didn’t even realize just what made the baby section work as well as it does until I saw this fuck it up, but I guess that’s one way of showing how imitation can be flattery. Sometimes you make it clear how the original is so much better.
Oh, yeah, sidenote, that rooftop chase I mentioned a couple paragraphs up? It literally begins with the threat right in front of you, and the area you need to initially get to… right behind it. I’m still waiting for that Euphoric Bros. masocore platformer, honestly. I still think that’s their true calling.
Aside from those notes… it’s a Garten of Banban game, I guess. A lot of the highs and lows are things I’ve already talked about previously covering the series. Its attempts at being scary, its attempts at delivering the Deep Lore are laughable at best, but in the midst of all this is this honest-to-god soap opera plotline which is honestly incredible to watch unfold, bolstered by a penchant for humour, of catching the player off guard, which… at least works more often than it doesn’t, even if here I noticed a couple jokes repeated from previous episodes. The voice acting remains as gloriously inconsistent as it's always been: pretty decent performances placed in conjunction with one of the developers speaking in monotone while constantly bumping the mike placed in conjunction with this... guy from Boston? guy with an Irish accent? desperately trying and failing to sound Australian. Gameplay wise, the modus operandi still seems to be padding, padding, padding: through making it take as long as possible to get from A to B, to having puzzles where the barrier to progress is “what am I even doing”, to hiding objectives where no player would assume they’d be. I’ve gotten the sense, perhaps, that this stretching out is on at least a little bit of a macro level as well, padding out this story as long as possible to make more games to get more $$$ from the kiddies who’re unironically eating this up, and Garten of Banban 7... does not beat those allegations — ending the plotline I thought the series was going down and cliffhanging on a completely new one. I know a non-zero amount of people here dropped after 6 for that reason, but if there’s actually an endgoal to all of this, if the games remain at least interesting in how they flounder then I’m still willing to keep going. I guess we’ll have to wait and see next time. 4/10.
And, admittedly, this is a step up. If not quite a return to... ‘form,’ it's at least trying to scurry back up to where it once was, like somebody rushing past all the enemies in a souls-like to get back to the boss as quickly as possible. There’s a genuine attempt at an atmosphere here — a focus on audiovisual elements, that… if still not making the game scary, are at least somewhat striking. There’s mood lighting. There are cockroaches scurrying across the floor. There’s background music. Creatures slamming against the walls as you’re exploring an area. There’s this one room with a wet floor where you see the corpses of these things hanging from the roof as you walk towards a silhouette in the distance and if they went with a higher saturation light it honestly would’ve worked. It’s not much, but it’s an improvement, and it gives some segments a bit more character than they’d have otherwise. Gameplay wise… it’s rather basic — and I wouldn’t say it’s like Garten of Banban 4 where it’s… honestly fun at points — but there’s some highlights. There’s a neat chase sequence where you not only have to parkour from building to building, but also figure out where exactly you need to actually go in the heat of the moment. There’s this section where you basically take an exam on how well you recognize some of the characters that was honestly a bit stressful? Maybe I'm easy to impress, or eager to be impressed, but while it’s not back on the upward curve — not yet — it's at least headed in the correct direction. Or something approximate to it. It's better than Garten of Banban 6, that's what I'm saying.
Unfortunately, there’s some new stuff here which… decisively does not make the game better for its inclusion. The drone, once again, is given an upgrade. And, once again, it’s horrible: now you can physically become the drone and fly it in first person and it controls exactly as well as you think it does. Hitting, or even just brushing a wall locks you in place for several seconds. The animation for this also forces the drone to recoil downwards, and if doing so should accidentally cause it to clip into something? Back to the start. Which is merciful, of course, but it makes even the simple act of going through a window a herculean task. Not even going into how the game will still have the drone in the last place you’d used it when you enter drone POV, forcing you to either back out and recover it or force the drone over vast swaths of map level just to get it where it needs to be. And also not even going into how one time I clipped into the wall and sequence broke the drone into another section entirely. And also there’s this one point of the game where it’s- where it’s literally just the baby chase from Resident Evil Village??? And yet they don’t understand what made the baby chase as standout as it was? The core of what makes that whole section work so well in RE8 is how simple it is: you see baby, you run back to where you came from, you pick one of the many hiding places the room provides you, and then you wait until the baby leaves. You’re not likely to die bar you actively attempting to throw yourself into the baby’s maw, which is then to its benefit: you don’t lose that initial impact of the baby just appearing through having to watch the cutscene again. Garten of Banban 7 fucks up in this regard: not only does the game telegraph hard that something’s about to barge into the room (where part of what makes RE8’s rendition work so well is how it happens out of nowhere) but there’s a full puzzle you have to do which involves summoning the drone and making it push buttons as you leap off of tables, all while you continually have to juke the baby around tables and rooms, all the while never quite telegraphing to the player what they’re actually meant to be doing. I didn’t even realize just what made the baby section work as well as it does until I saw this fuck it up, but I guess that’s one way of showing how imitation can be flattery. Sometimes you make it clear how the original is so much better.
Oh, yeah, sidenote, that rooftop chase I mentioned a couple paragraphs up? It literally begins with the threat right in front of you, and the area you need to initially get to… right behind it. I’m still waiting for that Euphoric Bros. masocore platformer, honestly. I still think that’s their true calling.
Aside from those notes… it’s a Garten of Banban game, I guess. A lot of the highs and lows are things I’ve already talked about previously covering the series. Its attempts at being scary, its attempts at delivering the Deep Lore are laughable at best, but in the midst of all this is this honest-to-god soap opera plotline which is honestly incredible to watch unfold, bolstered by a penchant for humour, of catching the player off guard, which… at least works more often than it doesn’t, even if here I noticed a couple jokes repeated from previous episodes. The voice acting remains as gloriously inconsistent as it's always been: pretty decent performances placed in conjunction with one of the developers speaking in monotone while constantly bumping the mike placed in conjunction with this... guy from Boston? guy with an Irish accent? desperately trying and failing to sound Australian. Gameplay wise, the modus operandi still seems to be padding, padding, padding: through making it take as long as possible to get from A to B, to having puzzles where the barrier to progress is “what am I even doing”, to hiding objectives where no player would assume they’d be. I’ve gotten the sense, perhaps, that this stretching out is on at least a little bit of a macro level as well, padding out this story as long as possible to make more games to get more $$$ from the kiddies who’re unironically eating this up, and Garten of Banban 7... does not beat those allegations — ending the plotline I thought the series was going down and cliffhanging on a completely new one. I know a non-zero amount of people here dropped after 6 for that reason, but if there’s actually an endgoal to all of this, if the games remain at least interesting in how they flounder then I’m still willing to keep going. I guess we’ll have to wait and see next time. 4/10.