Bought this over the last sale and I definitely have mixed feelings about it. On the plus side, exploring the mansion is tense and exciting. I started off on hard and after an hour or so I restarted on normal. Scarcity of resources is a big part of this game. On hard I found it was too stingy for my liking. On normal I don’t want to waste items, but I haven’t felt the pinch too much yet. Unfortunately there is also scarcity when it comes to saves.
You can save the game only at specific areas, and only if you have the necessary item. SO far I have enough of these items, but I want to save more - not because it has been super difficult, but there is a lot of backtracking. With this backtracking is a lot of loading screens. Each one doesn’t take long, but there are a lot of them.
One other negative is that this feels like a point and click game where the player needs to collect items and backtrack to where those items are useful. I have revisited areas a bunch of times. This is compounded because doors are locked with different keys. The camera and movement can’t be a little wonky.
Combat doesn’t feel very good either. Aiming where I want to is a pain, and there seems to be a wide margin off error for making a successful shot, so I never know how well I need to aim.
Don’t get me started on the limited number of inventory items that can be carried and when you want to switch you need to visit one of the few storage boxes. A couple one way doors make this more time consuming then it needs to be too.
While the game looks good enough, with all of the intentional inconveniences the game throws at the player, you can tell this was made in a different era. Had anyone had the patience to finish this game?
Well, it is 100% classic survival horror. I think all the problems you have is exactly what Resident Evil used to be. Which is why I find it weird that some people wants games to go back to this. I’m thinking that if those people actually do get something like that they won’t buy it. We’ll see what happens to the RE2 remake.
It’s a shame that some of the old conventions are a tradeoff, however: player-controlled camera is convenient, but fixed camera angles, although awkward, can be much more interesting and atmospheric.
I beat Resident Evil on PS1, then on Gamecube, then this one as well (it’s a remaster of the Gamecube remake, phew!). I still think it’s a must-play for any survival horror fan and it still looks fantastic. Plus, it’s literally the first real survival horror and it coined the term to boot.
[quote=“Woodlance, post:2, topic:120527, full:true”]I still think it’s a must-play for any survival horror fan and it still looks fantastic. Plus, it’s literally the first real survival horror and it coined the term to boot.
[/quote]
I like RE a lot and I can cope with the old school mechanics just fine (the backtracking and puzzle linearity has aged badly, but the limited inventory space and savegame management are still used in very successful recent survival games).
BUT, this is not the first survival horror (although it did codify the genre, b y being crazy successful and by naming it). We can argue whether the campiness/graphic fidelity of Alone in the Dark (the 1992 version) and other games from that period copying the template takes away form the horror component, but stuff like Clock Tower (the 1995 version, man all this games have too many sequels/reimaginings) shares so much of the structure of RE and other survival horror games that it’s just wrong to ignore them :P (plus, CT is scary as shit). In strict terms, RE is an Alone in the Dark clone with a Clock Towerish structure throw on top of it (less open, more narrative, more focused threat).
I played for about 10 hours and I think that’s enough. I made it out of the house to the next typewriter / item box location. I then realized I was out of ink tapes so I couldn’t save anymore. I knew I was low because I was saving more liberally than intended since I doubted I was going to finish. I wanted to get as far as I could ‘comfortably’. I probably should’ve played on easy instead of normal.
This felt more like a traditional point and click adventure game with a threat layer and limited resources added on top of it. It wasn’t bad but the annoyances I mentioned last post definitely brought it down from, “Man I want to play this!” down to “I’ll play it until it becomes too much of a drag.”
I should try playing Resident Evil again and see how it holds up for me.
That was one of those games that I remember vividly from my youth. A bunch of college friends all huddled on a couch in the dorm common room watching intently as one person played through the game on a Playstation 1.
A lot of the game is about memorization and planning, really.
Not knowing the efficient path can be infuriating, but if you know exactly what items to pick up and the most efficient route, you will barely hit the inventory item limit. Plus, you can ignore most enemies. In particular, you can step back out of the zombies attack range and be able to ignore them completely. There’s an achievement for finishing the game with only the knife, and it’s not even that difficult (doing it on easy is allowed).
