Has Your Favorite Resident Evil Game Changed Over The Years?
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Which titles have gone up (or down, for that matter) in your eyes as the series has changed and moved in different directions?
To be honest, I haven't played any RE games in at least two years. RE2 and RE:R seem to be the only titles in the series that I ever bother to play beginning to end anymore (maybe RE3, can't remember the last time I tried it.)
Besides, I can always pop 28 Days Later or [REC] or Shaun of the Dead into the DVD player if I'm hankering for some vicarious zombiewhacking. -
I think my favourite ones have not changed over the years, but things like Code Veronica HAVE.
CV and 4 has really gone down in my all time list of favourite Resi games for the simple reason (for me) that they were NOT my cup-o-tea to start with. Because they were on new platforms at the time they WOW-ed me, but after the gloss of that WOW factor wears off you realise that there is a lot of filler and not much substance!
If I was ever to go back to them now it would be for the Mercs/bonus games, NOT the main story games.
Were as I could still go back to my favourite Resi game now and spend 2/3 hours to blast through it and still love every second of it, Resi 2 for me has stayed at the top of the list.
Also I personally don't think any of the newer Resi games will have much of the longevity of the older ones, is that just me getting too old or is it that they haven't got as much substance as the old ones? I don't know, I just know that's how I perceive them? And except for the newest mobile phone games and these new 3DS ones, I've played all the newer Resi games and they have left me cold! I've played them once or twice and just left them wanting to go back to them, but ultimately have just left them sitting there and playing something else instead!
It's not just Resi though, Silent Hill has gone the same way, the last couple of them have just been played a couple of times and I'm just not interested. I played Shattered Memories on the Wii first and loved the controller interactivity, then played it on the PS2 and had just as much fun, but I've had the PSP version sitting in the machine that long I' almost forgotten about it.
Great idea for a topic by the way ZW. -
I played through RE5 with a voracious appetite. I played it halfway through over again... and then just gave up. I haven't re-played RE4 much, just to write the guide before release date and then once again: but then I only played the core game and not the mini-games. Perhaps it has gone downhill a bit as a series. :(Thanks to the PSOne Classics re-releases on PSN I've downloaded and replayed RE:DC, RE2, and just today bought RE3 over again. Resident Evil 3 was one of those games where I developed no first impression immediately, because I was hired to write the guide for it, it was my first guide, and I was scared shitless. But lately I've been thinking about RE3 and how it wrapped around RE2 and how the ammunition making system was really interesting, especially how your ammo improves each time you make it. Plus there was the Nemesis and trying to see where he pops up and whether you can get him to pop up somewhere else. Though I bought it (it's now just $2.99 on PSN!!!) I won't get to replay it until after my current project is done and after I've finished Vagrant Story at least once. But yeah, I think RE3 has gone up in my opinion over the years, whereas the rest have diminished quite a bit.I'd say my fave REs of the series are, in order:
- Resident Evil 3
- Resident Evil GC Remake
- Resident Evil 4
- Resident Evil 2
- Resident Evil 5
- Resident Evil: CODE Veronica
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Consistently I've always favored the original 2 games the most, with the Remake a close third. But outside of playing some Co-Op with a few people and the Gold Edition extras (which I waited for, rather than quickly purchasing as DLC) for RE5, I have struggled to replay any games since I played through 1:Director's Cut and 2 as PSN downloads on my PSP about a year ago or so. I kinda really want to replay the Remake of all of them, but I struggle these days to find the effort to believe I still care that much about the series seeing as I believe Capcom really stopped caring about it prior to RE4 or so. Mikami's work on RE4 is still exceptional and the impact of the gameplay itself in games still these days cannot be questioned. But while I enjoyed it at the time and still have good feelings about it as an experience, it was a sign of the end of my ongoing interest in the series.
If I was to rank them now it'd probably be RE2, followed closely by RE1 (DC edition more in particular), the the GC remake. RE3, RE4, RE5, and Code Veronica at the bottom.
Ironically with the series 15th Anniversary due in a few days, I was really hoping Capcom might be looking forward to celebrating something of the series but it looks more and more unlikely, especially now given the recent events in Japan itself which likely put hault to anything that may have been considered. Clearly the company also struggles somewhat on where to take the series after RE5 and sadly I find myself not caring about this issue when previously (say when Capcom took years to do RE4) it was a big issue.
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RE2 remains at the top of my list simply because it's dripping with atmosphere. The art direction is impeccable beginning to end. And the musical score is nothing short of sheer genius. None of the other games can hold a candle in this regard.
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Interestingly a rumor popped up today via Famitsu and reported online that Capcom is looking at porting, yet again, RE4 and Code Veronica to X360 and PS3. Personally I think they're two of the worse options to do this to, RE4 because it's been on so many platforms already and Code Veronica for being often ranked as the least fav in the series, much like in this thread. I'd rather see something like the Remake ported.
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Rombie said: Interestingly a rumor popped up today via Famitsu and reported online that Capcom is looking at porting, yet again, RE4 and Code Veronica to X360 and PS3.
Such as, here?: http://www.1up.com/news/capcom-brings-resident-evil-4
RE4 yay, CVX... whatever. Was just considering getting RE4 for Wii but decided not, even though it is $8 at some places like Amazon. I'd definitely go for the PS3 version to avoid the 360 screen tearing issues. But will I plop down for this? Highly unlikely.
And again as I said elsewhere, I don't think we're ever going to see a port of the Remake because of the MPEG backgrounds: I'm sure they'll look terrible on an HD console at higher resolutions. -
If they use the same assets on the disc, then probably. But even RE4 and CV won't hold up to well unless they have the original assets (the CG movies in CV in particular looked fairly bad on the GC port alone, I can't imagine what they'll look like at a 720 or 1080p res). Code Veronica's going to be a control issue nightmare too.
Back when the Remake was coming out they showed some test versions (of what was to be RE4 enviroments in an earlier build) in a higher resolution than the final Remake release so I know the original files were rendered out at a higher res and scaled and compressed for the GameCube.
The models running at a higher res in the Remake seem to hold up well in the sub-HD emulators you can get, better than I expect the CV ones will. If RE4 can look like the PC edition with all of the fan-filtering and texture mods on (instead of the crap standard textures it comes with) then it will be fine. Guess we'll see when the scans from the actual issue hit.
Edit - Looks like CVXFreak got them up for Biohaze:
http://biohaze.imgur.com/
CV looks unchanged, RE4 has a slightly more detailed texture look but it's not much. Feels more like Capcom keeping fans at bay while they still decide what to do with Bio6 to me. -
@Rombie What is a "sub-HD emulator?" I'd be curious to check that out. Null on the Google search.
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I used to like the first and third. But then RE4 was a favourite (I still love the reloading on the first sniper rifle you get). RE5 is good, but it's gone further from the atmosphere and story than RE4 did. And RE4 was pretty distant from the real RE games. Hell, if it wasn't for Leon you couldn't really say it was a RE game.
But the game I would happily go back to would have to be the REmake. That was fantastic. I unlocked absolutely everything for that (yes, including the invisible mode, one dangerous zombie and the director's note). I've never done that for a proper RE game before, although I did try that with RE2 and just couldn't get the S rankings I needed.
I do still go back to RE5 now and then, but it's just not a proper RE game to me. If I had to list them in order:
1. REmake
2. RE3
3. RE2
4. RE0
5. RE:DC
6. RE4 (Wii preferrably)
7: RE5
8. RE:UC (yes, it's on rails but it is pretty good)
9: RE:CV
Outbreak just won't get a mention as I really can't be be bothered to play a game where the loading screens are so long and so often. And I've got it installed on a hard drive in the PS2 and it's still too long. -
@DanBirlew Sorry, I should have said more. It's the Dolphin Gamecube / Wii Emulator. It intended to run games at HD resolutions up to 1080p, but most of the time performance requirements need them to run in just sub-HD editions (like 640p modes) in order for games to work on the majority of computers. It's usually only the Nintendo titles that they seem to get running in 720 or 1080 modes with little issues.
Because of it's open source, there are a few user guides and modification you can use to tweak settings. Here is a shot someone else took of the Remake running on it just to show it's not as bad as you'd think upscaled.
http://h-4.abload.de/img/re4e08-3tsgc.jpg
The website for it is http://www.dolphin-emulator.com/ - files are there for download and there is other screens and video showing off what it can do. -
Wow, that's pretty awesome. The character model really upholds. I do see that the prerendered background becomes a little pixelated and a little blurry though, and perhaps that's the reason why Capcom isn't porting these up. That and the 4:3 resolution. I remember playing with the REZero's debug functions, making the 3d wireframe visible and moving the prerendered background around, and noticed most were cropped to 4:3. Unless they still have all those environment models and can recapture the backgrounds in 16:9, I doubt it would be a cost effective port. Then again I haven't played the Wii ports. Were they resized to 16:9, or instead zoomed or stretched?
I have tried Dolphin recently and no luck. But I do have upscaling equipment and use that to record Wii games in HD resolutions. -
It reminds me of the PC editions of the original 2 games mostly, which had clean and sharp character and enviroment models and slightly soft/pixely backgrounds. The Wii "ports" of the two were provided into 16:9 from original source files and supported 480p unlike the GC editions, and were also less compressed due to the extra space provided.
The CG enviroments created for the Remake and Zero are clearly still in Capcom's accessable library because they were used as real time enviroment models for the Wii's Umbrella Chronicles in a few of the various scenarios covering Zero and Remake areas, so I'm quite surprised that they couldn't do an HD edition of the two games at all. Current rumor has to do with some sort of control/agreement with Nintendo over those two titles stopping them. To this day they're still the only games not to be ported to any rival companies consoles which is surpsing given the number of ports other games in the series have gotten, especially the bigger hits that 2 and 4 both got. -
Oh yeah, I have the first one of those, Umbrella Chronicles or whatever. I completely forgot about the RE 3D backgrounds in them. But I suppose we have to question whether those were the same environs or recreated. I would assume they were the same, unless some online source tells us so. So in that case maybe they're waiting to do REGC and REZero ports until the gaming sector is absolutely clamoring for them? Or maybe the Wii ports of these games didn't sell as well as they hoped?
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They're definitely using the 3D models the pre-renders were made from, paintings and objects match in the environments, and they used the same character and enemy models from the Remake/Zero as well. That said UC was mostly done by an outside company hired by Capcom.
As for the ports who knows in the end except Capcom I guess. I just expect them to port most games to as many possible platforms in the end, they've done it with others in the series even when they knew they wouldn't sell (like when they ported RE3 to Dreamcast in 2002 when the console had already stopped production).
Going back to the actual ports themselves being released - when I was looking at the scans, Code Veronica seems to have benefited from lighting differences over the original but there no change in textures. RE4's texture detail is up, looking more like the Fan modified PC editions. Capcom has since put up some images online which seem to support what I assumed about both from just the scans.
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In this Discussion
- DanBirlew March 2011
- Plopper March 2011
- Rombie March 2011
- vincent March 2011
- zombiewhacker March 2011
