October Together Retro: Golden Age of Survival Horror

[noiseredux]

Been a very busy week, but I did make a little bit more progress in RE last night. Um, I played the "Moonlight Sonata" to open that secret entrance. I remember that part of the game blowing my fifteen year old mind back in the day. I mean... it was a real piece of classical music used in a game, but it was used in a way that made SENSE in context of the game. It wasn't like, y'know the title screen to that collection of Genesis games on Sega CD or an interactive encyclopedia that was just showing off that redbook audio could be done with the CD-ROM format. Rather, there's a plot-related REASON to have this piece of music in the game. And it's performed on piano IN GAME rather than as background music. Ugh, this game is so good.

Also I made it to the snake boss and Richard beefed it. I grabbed his gun and booked it across the mansion to the save room before realizing I had forgotten to snatch the death mask behind the snake. Dammit. I'll have to go back there. Bah!

[Exhuminator]

I just want to note that I've been playing Silent Hill 2 when I can. I've got about 3.5 hours in it. I'm currently saved at the hospital. Right now I'll just say SH2 is much improved over SH1, but I'm not yet sure what I think of this game.

I have some PS1 horror games I'd like to play this month if I have time. We'll see. Real life has been, and will continue to be, extra demanding this month for me, which impacts the ol' gamey time unfortunately.

[Ack]

No worries, Exhum. I'm in the same boat. I'm actually leaving to spend a week in Italy in a couple of days. I'm glad you're experiencing Silent Hill 2, even if it isn't growing on you, and I'm glad you made it through the hurricane ok.

[Xeogred]

Knocked out 2 last night. Is that a 4/10 rank, or 13 stars? No idea. I forget that stomping enemies to death counts as melee kills. So maybe I did unlock the special melee weapons in SH3 too... since I always curb stomp those fiends.



Also knocked out Born From a Wish this morning which was very cool.

Do you guys like the noise effect on or off in these?

Might start 4 up today, but it was very misty and dark this morning while I did my grocery run... think SH3 might be calling for today! I think I'll do Hard/Hard, but have fun with the special unlocks.

I don't think it counts, but I might try out Castlevania Curse of Darkness this weekend too.

Been a very busy week, but I did make a little bit more progress in RE last night. Um, I played the "Moonlight Sonata" to open that secret entrance. I remember that part of the game blowing my fifteen year old mind back in the day. I mean... it was a real piece of classical music used in a game, but it was used in a way that made SENSE in context of the game. It wasn't like, y'know the title screen to that collection of Genesis games on Sega CD or an interactive encyclopedia that was just showing off that redbook audio could be done with the CD-ROM format. Rather, there's a plot-related REASON to have this piece of music in the game. And it's performed on piano IN GAME rather than as background music. Ugh, this game is so good.

Also I made it to the snake boss and Richard beefed it. I grabbed his gun and booked it across the mansion to the save room before realizing I had forgotten to snatch the death mask behind the snake. Dammit. I'll have to go back there. Bah!

Poor Richard trapped in a cycle of death... will it be the snake or the shark?

[pierrot]

Also, I totally forgot that I have Silent Hill 3. Would it be completely crazy to play SH 3 without having played either of the first two?

I get that SH1 isn't going to be love at first sight for most, but SH1 and SH3 are directly connected.{...}

I say give SH1 a shot but if it doesn't gel with you, yeah just check out the others and don't worry too much about it. Even SH3 is ultimately pretty self contained in the end but your experience might be a little enhanced if you know some SH1 context before going into it.

Only thing is, I just don't own any Silent Hill games other than 3, and since my backlog is so large, and I already bought a pretty pricey game a little over a month ago, I'm pretty much going to be sticking to games I already own. Also, I'm not really getting through as many games on that overzealous list I started with, anyway (no surprise). I'll probably just see if I can beat Enemy Zero, and D2 the rest of the way, and maybe I'll have time to start either Dino Crisis, or Blue Stinger.


Anyway, I did finish Deep Fear, and it was really not too bad. The main thing is that it's just trying to be Resident Evil, but underwater, with some air supply business (not this air supply). Where it fails is really in all the comparisons that are inevitably drawn to Resident Evil, and how poorly it tends to stack up in those comparisons. However, on its own, in a bubble, it's fairly solid. The air supply mechanic is such that in most rooms, throughout the game, there's a limited amount of air, indicated by a two digit 7-segment display in the top right corner (as a percentage, apparently). When it drops below 20%, the room is cast in a dark, crimson mood, and the numbers in the upper corner turn red as well. Early on in the game, John Mayor finds a respirator that he will automatically put on his face once the air supply in a room reaches zero, or if he enters a room that's been flooded with water. That time he takes to do so can be pretty detrimental, if one is already in the midst of combat with some sort of creature, though. Once John puts on the respirator, he has a limited amount of air, that is indicated by a thin blue bar underneath his health bar. Once this air supply runs out it starts to affect his health, and once that hits zero, it's game over. (I actually never encountered the scenario where the air supply for his respirator completely ran out, though). Generally, when getting into a new area, the air supply system is not doing so great, so the first task is usually to find an air supply control unit, and boost up the air supplies in the entire block. These units are also where one can save, although some points in the game, as well as some units, will not allow any saving. However, one thing every unit will allow is refilling the respirator's air supply, once that has been acquired, so this is probably why I never had to worry about running out of air with the respirator.

Sort of a side note, I found out after getting the torch, that Anna meant that I needed a welding torch, in order to remove the wiring panel, to rewire the door. That makes a lot more sense. Similarly, though, there's a point toward the end of the game, where John is told to throw some wires onto a brick of C4, in order to send a current to blow it up with, and I'm thinking, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa. John, you need to be asking way more questions, like: "Is the current switched?"; "Is it normally not conducting?"; "Where is the C4 going to be bonded to, to ground it, in order to conduct?"; "Why are these wires fitted with suction cups?"' He didn't seem to care too much about his own life at that point, though, since he just slammed the suction cups onto the C4, and crammed it into the terminal that the wires were in.

At any rate, the thing that probably holds Deep Fear back the most is the god awful aiming, and camera angles that usually provide cover for the monsters. The right shoulder button makes John pull out his equipped weapon, and, usually, aim at the nearest enemy. A lot of times, hitting the monsters with a shot from anything other than the Glock, or the underwater gun will cause them to shift their position, out of John's line of fire, and then the fun begins. At this point, one has to readjust John's aim, using the left or right directional buttons, in order to rotate John in place. Getting back to a point where the enemies are back in the line of fire, though, is typically very tedious, and there's very little indication, most of the time, that the shots aren't actually registering as hits. The other option is to hit the right shoulder button again, to have him put away the weapon, then have him draw it again, at which point he'll auto aim, but this takes a lot of time, and the enemies are constantly walking (and sometimes lunging) forward. This brings up an interesting control design quirk: Depending on the controller used, the down directional button does something different. With the standard D-pad configuration, holding B, with the down direction will allow John to do a backstep (more like a hop), while he has a weapon drawn, which can be useful, but it's a little unintuitive in how long the down button has to be held for him to actually execute the maneuver (tapping the direction will make him just kind of jitter in place). With the analog stick, the down direction will cause John to do a quickturn. Basically, though, the analog configuration makes it so that John doesn't have a way of backing up, and really, even with the D-pad, backing up is too slow to really help in any situations, but the backstep is very helpful in tons of places. With the camera angles, enemies always seem to be hanging out right behind camera transitions, so the options are usually to wait in place for three or four minutes for the enemies to actually move into view, or run up, and probably get smacked in the face by an enemy that is right behind the transition. The aiming is so bad that starting to fire before the enemy is in view is usually just a waste of bullets, but they could actually be around two corners, on the other side of the hallway, giving off audio cues, but since the camera is almost always pointed in the opposite direction of where you would want to be able to see, it almost forces you to wait in place for what seems like an eternity.

That's really the bulk of the complaining I have to do about the game. The rest is more about some of the lackluster things in the game, like the settings. It's an interesting idea to have this underwater theme, but the areas are kind of dull, and mostly feel the same. Deep Fear is probably an overall smaller game than the original Resident Evil, but it still spans two discs. This is probably due to all of the FMV cutscenes in the game (which are kind of rough, but still fairly good for the time, and numerous), and the fairly high quality backgrounds, which show pretty minimal signs of compression artifacts. The fact remains though that none of the backgrounds will distinguish themselves very much. It all basically looks like the same underwater facility. The sound design is pretty good, though, and while I don't know if there's really anything too memorable in the soundtrack, it's at least quality, throughout. Presentation-wise, everything is fairly good here, aside from one thing, which would potentially be a bonus for some: The voice acting. It is atrocious. You have never in your life seen such lifeless, awkward delivery of lines, I almost guarantee it. These scenes are so terribly acted, they almost make The Room seem Oscar-worthy. Standout characters in this department include Danny, Gena, Debois, and Sharon. The characters do still feel like they have some-- character, anyway. I actually kind of like the story, too. It probably could have been a bit better if the lines were delivered better in the cutscenes, but it's a pretty interesting premise, involving NASA. So I'm cool with it. Not really sure about a couple details in the end, like whether or not the "virus" was intentionally spread, or why John is just unaffected by it throughout the game.

So, it's a fairly solid game, that's not really remarkable at all, but doesn't do a whole lot wrong, either. It's fairly easy, and the fact that ammo, and the base healing items are essentially infinite makes it not really feel like much of a survival horror game, but it's still a decent ride. I'd probably give it a solid B, maybe a B-. I have to say that I actually quite liked Rambo. I don't even like dogs, and especially not English Bulldogs, but something about Rambo always made me laugh. I was happy to realize that he wasn't this hideous blob monster that I killed in one of the hallways at the end of the game. Also he likes burgers, so--. Good boy, Rambo.

[Ack]

Dude, Pierrot, my copy of D2 is bugged. I'd love for you to play through it and hear your thoughts.

[Xeogred]

Okay so the sound design of SH3 is absolutely insane with headphones. SH2's was awesome, but this is on a completely different level.

Having a blast playing on Hard with the Uzi. Think Hard might have more enemies? I notice health items are very infrequent, so I need to be careful even with all the extra weapons. I also got the Beam Saber haha.

[Exhuminator]

I'm actually leaving to spend a week in Italy in a couple of days.

Hopefully for pleasure, not business! I'm also gonna be gone from ye olde dork cave for a week this month. Flying to the other side of our continent for a vacation. That's one of the things that will impact my gaming time this month.

I'm glad you're experiencing Silent Hill 2, even if it isn't growing on you

It may yet win me over, here's hoping. I can at least understand why people look so deeply into this game. There's a lot of symbolic imagery/elements that could be perceived subjectively.

and I'm glad you made it through the hurricane ok.

Thanks man. Yeah Michael was a cat 1 when it went over my neck of the woods. Our power was out for 17 hours, knocked a tree over my driveway, and felled another tree in my yard. The toppled trees at least gave me and my chainsaw something to do while we waited for power to return. After Irma and Michael, I've had enough of hurricanes for the foreseeable future.

[pierrot]

Dude, Pierrot, my copy of D2 is bugged. I'd love for you to play through it and hear your thoughts.

That's definitely the goal. I'd probably rather just skip right to D2, but I haven't played it to this point, because I've always felt strongly about playing through Enemy Zero first, for whatever reason. They both seem to be relatively short games, though. I played a bit of Enemy Zero tonight actually. It is creepy af, tho. Totally died trying to get to the elevator. Not really sure exactly how I get a gun.

What's bugged in your copy of D2, by the way? Looks like it's not a cheap one to get a hold of now. That's a bummer.

[noiseredux]

unfortunately the limited saves in RE provide a negative side effect: it means that I won't fire the game up unless I know that I have a couple of hours to make some actual progress. If I find myself with like 30 mins to game, then I'll just play Arena Of Valor or something like that. It's too bad. I get the whole "limited saves add to the survival horror experience" argument in theory. But in reality... it just doesn't always fit into my life. I mean, just gimme babby mode that lets me save anywhere as an option. (Come at me).