Anyone Else Upset at Resident Evil's Abrupt Genre Change?

[Hisoka_Ryodan]

Before everyone bashes me saying that I think Resident Evil 4 sucks, and that 5 will be horrible... I DON'T hate either of these games, and like them. However they are not Resident Evil.

I remember when I was 12 years old first playing Resident Evil 2 when the Licker jumps out of the huge mirror and getting being afraid to sleep for a week... When I played Resident Evil 1 Directors Cut and got impaled by spikes when I took the key out off the platform... I remember finding ammo in bathrooms, and on dead bodies... I remember the corny lock pick line, the horrible camera angles, running out of ammo, and being chased by Nemesis. I remember the dude with the golden guns and fighting that thing in the airplane. I also remember the Gamecube remake of RE1 which was extremely scary, and thrilling.

But what is this new crap? Why did they completely throw away everything Resident Evil was? Went from survival horror, to just another Shoot'um'up. Yes, Resident Evil 4 was a great game. But it wasn't Resident Evil. It wasn't scary... It didn't make your heart pound out of your chest... It didn't make you wonder if the next door was going to kill you. I believe that Resident Evil stood for a lot more then this, and with the current advances in graphics, I'm positive they could have made a survival horror game that would have left Superman hiding in his covers.

The new ones are gruesome... but not scary. Any game or movie can add gore, blood, and violence... But very few can actually psychologically scare you. They don't make you anxious and paranoid... I wish they would go back to when Resident Evil was more narrow of a game. To many games open up for a bigger audience, but then it just becomes another game.

That is my thoughts on the new direction of RE. Feel free to disagree, but if you praise 4 and 5 and have never played 1,2,3,0, or Code Veronica... Then shut up, your worthless!

[wip3outguy7]

Agreed.

I actually had issues starting with Nemesis and Code Veronica. I didn't like the series' shift to action. I enjoyed the slow, methodical pace of the original games. I think it's a formula that could have been built on and that the game style didn't have to change.

Zombie films of today draw many parallels. I feel the genre as a whole has lots its way. What made the original Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead so excellent were their slow, methodical pacing and the ultimate feeling of claustrophobia as the film marched on. The genre has been reduced to mindless headshots and "running" zombies. I think Directors are simply lazy and feel they need to up that pace of the films for them to remain interesting and scary.

I have a friend who argues this subject to death with me and it really gets under my fingernails.

Finally, I'm not saying the newer RE games are "bad" games - they just aren't "Resident Evil" games in my eyes.

[Mozgus]

Agreed again, but I've spoken on this enough on these forums. Glad to see some sensible people around here.

[Ack]

I don't know, Nemesis I was ok with, because even if it was heavy on the action, you still had the feeling of being stalked the entire time by something very big and nasty. It was an interesting feeling, because instead of just dreading what was in the room in front of me, I dreaded what might also be in the room behind me and what might be about to enter the room I was in. I still don't think it was as good a game as the first two, and Carlos annoyed me greatly. But I still hold it higher than Code Veronica.

Code Veronica tried to build up the horror by throwing lots of enemies at you from the get-go, but after the first half hour or so, the game came down to being more of an annoyance than the previous titles had. And the plot in that one...let's not go there.

[corn619]

I thought RE4 was really good. And to tell you the truth, Capcom gave it a needed evolution in gameplay. Capcom evolved RE in a good way. Konami really fucked up Silent Hill Homecoming. Thats the first SH game I have not beaten and returned after 5 hrs of play. The intensity that RE4 instilled was awesome and I have not felt that way playing a video game in a long time. I guess you can't make all the people happy all the time. But, you can make the majority of the people happy and I think Capcom did just that.

[Cassidy]

Wow. You were allowed to play RE2 when you were 12?

Tsk.

[Haoie]

I agree completely.

Survival horror purists, we are.

[CantStrafeRight]

Wow. You were allowed to play RE2 when you were 12?

Tsk.

I would have been around 10 when I played RE1 and it had no negative effects on me.

While I enjoyed the original RE games I have a feeling that they would run out of ideas for good puzzles after a few games so I don't mind playing the RE4 style games for now.

but I would love a remake of RE2 on ether the DS or a modern console(like the gamecube RE1)

[Hatta]

I'm not easily scared I guess, so I found the original Resident Evils frustrating and corny instead of scary. So I appreciated the shift to action. I had a lot more fun playing RE4 than other REs.

[Marspants]

I also agree. Resident Evil 4 was awesome, but I'm missing awesome static cam panic attacks I got from the older ones. The RE1 Gamecube remake was really fun for me, I wouldn't mind to see some more so long as the don't screw it up and threw in some worthwhile extras.