Games NOT Beaten 2017

[Segata]

Love REmake. RE4 is fun but overrated. CV is just bad.

[Ack]

RE5 was where I stopped playing the series. You know that super cop thing I keep mentioning? That was Chris Redfield in this one, to a T. I never felt a horror vibe, I just felt...well, sort of meh. This was it for me.

RE:CV is laughably awful in my opinion; the plot goes off the rails fast and stays off, never to return. Instead its now floating somewhere in space, a ghost train shooting for the moon that I don't want to ride. Which is a shame, because I liked Jill Valentine.

1. Seen this classic argument against Buff Chris a lot. Realistically though, do you blame him? He is the leader of a mercenary military faction that's job is to take out biomutants and monsters that tear people into pieces. Chris maybe popping a few pills and doing some weight lifting doesn't seem like a bad idea to me.

2. Think you might mean Claire for CV? Jill isn't anywhere in that one.

Wesker goes full Matrix in CV and it definitely is hilarious. The villain and STEVE were horrendous too... phew.

Yeah, you're right, I meant to say Claire. And yeah, I understand why Chris is buff. If I had his job, I'd probably be lifting weights like a hoss too. But it takes away from the horror element, because I know this is a guy who's pretty much as used to fighting these things as anyone could be. It's like trying to approach an anti-war game by giving me a Rambo-wannabe who misses the point of the message. It's a tough connection to make.

[Exhuminator]

Chris maybe popping a few pills and doing some weight lifting doesn't seem like a bad idea to me.

What kind of pills let you do this?:

[marurun]

I'm not a big fan of any of the few RE games I played, but I'm having trouble squaring the hate for Code Veronica with the reviews it received when it first came out. What did CV do to make it so reviled?

[Xeogred]

Chris maybe popping a few pills and doing some weight lifting doesn't seem like a bad idea to me.

What kind of pills let you do this?:

All the herbs add up.

Admit it, you all died laughing during this part. People still think about it to this day, it left a mark.

[Ack]

Chris punches rocks cause it gives him knowledge. He punches rocks cause it gives him piece of mind.

I'm not a big fan of any of the few RE games I played, but I'm having trouble squaring the hate for Code Veronica with the reviews it received when it first came out. What did CV do to make it so reviled?

I believe a lot of it is looking at it in retrospect. There are some interesting gameplay choices that make it more challenging, particularly at the start. But it's also where the plot of the series starts getting flat out bizarre. There's an annoying rich crazy crossdressing twin running Umbrella, they have facilities all over the world including Antarctica, and Wesker is basically Keanu Reeves from The Matrix.

And in truth, plot is what you have the most to focus on, because the core gameplay is still the same it's been since the original, with only some small tweaking. So for some folks, the Code Veronica formula is stale or old school in a way that is generally disliked (tank controls). With what is essentially static game elements not doing anything, we now look at the problems of the aging engine in an era where devs were getting better handling 3D environments and controls and have to contend with just how absolutely over the top the writing has become. At the time, I don't think we realized just how crazy things were getting. Looking back, it becomes much more obvious.

None of this means Code Veronica is a bad game; I wouldn't say there are any mainline games in the RE series which I have played that are truly terrible. Pre-RE4, the gameplay remains largely static, and RE4 and 5 have similar updated gameplay that works for a third person shooter action game extremely well. It's just that the horror element feels lost as we continue on, replaced instead by a story that is, frankly, bug nuts. I mean that as a technical term. And Code Veronica is where we see the series go from Dawn of the Dead to Day of the Dead and beyond.

Still, the controls are consistent, combat feels relatively good with proper use of sound effects and enemy reactions to imply that you are actually doing some damage, set pieces are pretty for their relative time period, hitboxes are never an issue...the tech side is down pat, even if the original portion of the series is antiquated. We generally just don't have to worry about these elements. Since the skeleton and muscles of the game are consistent, we end up forced to look at the outer layer to gauge quality when comparing throughout the series.

But as much as I may dislike it in comparison to the rest of the series, Code Veronica is still worlds better than The Ring: Terror's Realm.

[Segata]

Steve in CV is more annoying than where did you learn to fly face in Cybermorph. As mentioned, the plot is...something else. His voice acting is so god fucking damn annoying. It's bad as in fingernails on a chalkboard kind of way. You get to be around the cunt for the game. Dear god, it made the game unbearable. The game itself wasn't anything special. I like tank controls but it just felt more awkward to me in this game. It was the first RE touted to have full 3D rendered environments so that was neat at the time.

[Xeogred]

Visually, Code Veronica does not hold up very well at all either. They went full 3D for that one. I even think the PSX games (RE1 aside) look better because of all the pre-rendered backdrops and richer detail. Then you have REmake that dropped two years after CV, and Zero that followed... both GC games look incredible to this day. CV looks super flat and lackluster compared to all the original formula games and in a way that hurts it for me.

The boss fight with Steve requires you to be pixel perfect to dodge him, otherwise you usually have to take a hit or two from this fight and if you don't have herbs and hit the save point before this part, you're stuck and this is a game ending situation. Same with a certain fight on a helicopter. Two game ending scenarios is really bad quality control.

In RE2 you had the two discs and character scenarios, but it's kind of an optional little bonus. But not in CV. The back half of the game is backtracking through the entire thing again with the second character.

Lots of annoying enemies, like the stretchy humanoid blob things that can slap you from across the screen. A weird boss fight in foggy snow with a sniper rifle that's super annoying.

Compared to all the other classic styled RE's, it just really feels like CV lacked some quality testing and refinement. The bad story and characters don't help either.

[chuckster]

Yeah, RE7 really does feel too much like TCM in a weird way. I wonder how the Chris DLC is. I'm still irked that Chris isn't really Chris anymore though, if you've seen his new design and heard the new voice.

I know, I miss buff Chris, the new one seems so boring. I wish they'd have kept the voice the same at least. Also, I read a bogus reason they couldn't keep him the same was that the engine/facial model didn't work with the way he looked. Yet they could make all the boss monsters...

When I first played RE1 (It was the second game I got on PS1 at age 7 or so--the ESRB can suck it!) it was scary. When I got to be a teenager and returned to the game, it was gloriously un-scary but still tense. I guess that's why I didn't mind action RE, to me the series was about tense gameplay, campy presentation, and a story that at some point just threw up it's hands and left reality in the rear-view mirror.

That's why after 7 I really hope Capcom does more action RE as well as "horror" RE titles, there's room (and demand) for both.

Also, "Suck it, Wesker," is probably my favorite line from any video game.

Anyways, did you play The Evil Within by chance? I love the first game, but it was flawed. However 2 was probably one of the biggest surprises to me this year and I definitely think it's better than RE7 in my book. I would put both TEW games above post-RE5 releases. It really is what I wish RE was thesedays, naturally. It will be cool if Bethesda lets Tango keep making more.

'

Talk about games not beaten! I played a chunk the first EW (up to the part where a huge spider-thing chases you while on a bus or something like that), but I've not played the second. EW1 was an okay game but I ultimately lost interest. What killed it for me was the horror-melting pot of themes (it felt like they just threw every horror idea at the wall where the storyboard happened to be) and the gameplay that ended up feeling like a clunky Uncharted. It just didn't feel special in any way to me.

I may try the second one at some point though, I hear it's a big step up in many ways.

[ElkinFencer10]

RE4 is fun but overrated. CV is just bad.