RE Anniversary

Normally anniversary puts me in a good mood and today is RE's 20th anniversary. I dusted off my old dioramas and games for the occasion but somehow this 20th anniversary feels especially hallow for me.

That means Capcom has not made a good RE game for more than 10 years. It's been more than 10 years since RE's best creative minds left the series after RE4. All Capcom does these days is basked in the old glory days and put out remasters of the RE classics.

The last RE game, Revelations 2 looked like junk compared with today's modern games. It scored pretty decent reviews but I honestly thought maybe RE6 is actually better. Revelation 2 was good enough to be heralded as the best RE game since RE4. Problem is we are still waiting for something better than RE4 that would set a new benchmark for the series.

 

That would never happen I fear. At least not in Capcom's offices.

The Art of Remastering

Bayonetta Wii U and Resident Evil HD are two recent high-profile ports that really show you the different philosophy adopted by its publishers/developers.

Nintendo could have easily slap a Definitive Edition label to Bayonetta and charge $30 for the port but instead they decided to bundle the game free with every purchase of the sequel.

Of course, Capcom is infamous for making a quick buck off everything they can find in their vault so no one was expecting them to give RE HD away for free. 

The issue here is the level of effort put into the port and despite charging for RE HD, Capcom's effort on RE HD remains subpar as usual. Early on Capcom announced that Chris and Jill BSAA costumes will be new additions to the HD Remaster. The logical assumption would be to have the young Chris and Jill wearing the BSAA costumes of their older counterparts. That would be the ideal case except it required a lot more work than simply pulling the BSAA models from the RE5 DLC and sticking it in HD remaster. Which of course, Capcom did so in the end. 

I wasn't very surprised with Capcom's efforts on RE HD Remaster but I was surprised with what Nintendo and Platinum Games did on Bayonetta Wii U. Now when the Bayonetta port was announced, the Nintendo costume were highly publicized and were directly supervised by original director, Hideki Kamiya. Recently, the concept artist revealed sketches of the costumes on Platinum Games blog and divulged that Kamiya insisted small details like the Samus suit had to be the classic original from the NES Metroid. 

Nintendo and Platinum games did a fine job on the Nintendo themed costumes. If they had delivered just a steady port with no additional costumes, a lot of gamers would have been more than satisfied. What I didn't expect was that these concept drawings also made their way into the bonus gallery after you completed the game. Clearly one publisher went the extra mile with the small details while the other was quick to call it a day. 

Labels like Remaster really don't mean all that much anymore and in the end, you got to walk the talk or risk becoming easy target for obsessive fanboys. Sure Capcom are patting themselves on the back because RE HD broke all sorts of digital sale records while Bayonetta 2 probably sold a criminally obscene amount. But passionate gamers care and so do passionate developers, some of which used to work in Capcom and are now working in Platinum Games.

Digitally Yours

I would like to talk about a gaming trend that has became more and more prevalent over the years, digital distribution of games. Some say it will spell the end for brick and mortar game shops eventually though maybe not in Japan where they still love their game box arts and so fore.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because it's starting to affect me, several of my favorite series have recently announced digital-only distribution of their new releases. Unlike some other fanboys, I don't feel less ownership of the game if it's digital, it's just I would like to have some tangible to add in my proud collection. I do enjoy the convenience of not having to get up and swap discs when it's digital but to me, it's just a minor annoyance I would gladly put up with to own the physical copy.

Now developing games are becoming more costly and putting out a physical copy isn't as cheap as one may think, there are logistics involved and not just the mere cost of writing the actual disc. I get all that but I really wonder for the case of Yakuza 5, is Sega allowing the fate of the series to continue down this road? It's really a chicken and egg dilemma, are you going to able to foster new fanbase if you don't spend the money to put physical copies in stores and promote the game? Rebirth HD and Revelations 2 will sell on their own even if it's digital only as the Resident Evil franchise is huge so in Capcom's case, it's just a matter of Capcom trying to save some bucks by going this route (to be fair, Capcom did distribute Rebirth on disc in Asia region and also give a significant discount for the digital version of Revelations 2).

Yakuza is a series on its last legs in the West, each sequel has seen diminishing sales so it's almost like Sega is doing this just for the fans and not hoping to reach out to new fans. While I applaud Sega (and Sony) for doing this, I'm also sad that Sega is no longer interested in investing in this franchise overseas though it's probably been that way for some time now. Well I guess I will always have my Asian copies and now not have to worry about ugly box art on the western version anymore.

Days of Feeling Dumb

As a gamer these days I tend to be more nostalgic about old games than excited about forthcoming new games. Sure there are occasional upcoming games that get me interested but more often than not, those happens to be sequel to a favorite game series I can care about like Resident Evil or Yakuza. Perhaps it's a sign that I'm slowing down or maybe just a lack of fresh games in the current market I can't really say because I'm still clocking about the same amount of gaming time every month.

While reminiscing about past games with an old friend, it occurs to me that sometimes our strongest memory about a game isn't how good or bad the game was but where in the game we got stuck in. Bear in the mind, I don't mean being stuck at a difficult puzzle or a tough boss, I'm talking about the silly things like missing an important route because the background happens to be pre-rendered or over-thinking a puzzle when the solution was much more obvious and simple. I have had my fair share of those and I suspect I will have much more of them to come. 

I'm actually experiencing quite a number of them while playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the very first time. I got stuck in early dungeon and I got lost a few times because everything is so dark and dreary compared with the bright skies of Wind Waker. While it's undoubtedly a great game (some say one of the best), I reckon when I finally finish it, I will remember it more for the parts I got stuck in than how great the game actually is. 

Hello Stranger, What Are You Buying?

The Resident Evil games have been pretty predictable these days when it comes to unlockable features after completing the game -  it's the usual offering of Mercenaries mini-game and bonus costumes. These are some of the series mainstays since the beginning and the theory of why fix something that isn't broken is a logical reasoning why Capcom never bother to come up with something different for each new game.

Jill wonders where The Mercenaries have gone on Revelations?

So naturally I was very intrigued when I unlocked the Raid mode upon completing Resident Evil Revelations as this was the first bonus mini-game that isn't the Mercenaries since RE : Code Veronica. All I knew prior to playing the game is that the story mode doesn't feature co-op but Raid mode does though you still have the option of playing the game solo if you like. 

After playing Raid mode for a bit, I quickly discovered it's nothing more than the same story mode with the cutscene removed and co-op mode tacked on. As the main game is designed for portable play, each chapter were made to be very brief so these chapters are now individual missions that you can play separately on Raid mode. The objective of each mission remains largely the same but now there are no cutscenes or loading time to interupt the game-play, thereby allowing co-op play. It's almost as if the main game was meant to have co-op play as there are always a NPC character in each stage but yet it was strangely omitted.

So in the end, it turns out Raid mode wasn't a brand new mini-game as I would expect and the Mercenaries isn't featured in this game probably because Capcom expects you to buy the standalone Mercenaries 3D game also  released on the Nintendo 3DS. Nicely played Capcom, you always know what your fans want (or don't want) and give it to them. At a price, of course.

You wanna play Mercenaries on the 3DS? Be prepared to pony up the cash

Anniversary Reflections

Capcom has been guilty of their fair share of cheap port and quick remakes but Deadly Silence should not be counted as one of them. Released to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Resident Evil, Deadly Silence looks and plays like the original except now you are playing the whole thing in the palm of your hands.

The pre-rendered background could be copied over directly from the original but the 3D character and object polygons could not so Capcom had to re-draw everything from scratch. A rebirth mode was added where many of the newer RE moves were implement to the original included the all-important quick turn, knife attack and quick reload. All of these moves could now be performed without going to the item menu just like in Resident Evil 4 and 5. Some of the pre-rendered background were redrawn to accommodate the new costume and puzzles in addition to a handful of new camera views of "background" for the knifing mode.

I wasn't impressed with Deadly Silence back during the tenth anniversary but now I'm beginning to see the effort the team put into the port. It made have been all fans got ob the tenth anniversary but right now it seems a lot better than what we are getting for the 15th anniversary this year.

Vanity Affair

I was surprised to see Shinji Mikami name on the back cover of Vanquish, and it wasn't a vanity affair like how Hideo Kojima name usually appears on Metal Gear games. Mikami may have directed many great games after Resident Evil but this I believe was the first time his name appeared alongside on the box art. One of his earlier works was the brilliantly-crafted Dino Crisis on the PSOne which I'm currently playing after finishing Dino Crisis 2 recently.

It's definitely one of my favourite PSOne games which is why I felt so cold about the second game initially. The fully-rendered backgrounds are nothing short of amazing on the 32-bit hardware and suits the modern architecture of the game though it could use with a bit more colour depth. I like the decision-making aspect of the game it's not as subtly executed as Resident Evil but it helps established a bond between Regina and her teammates as you have to choose who to side with. The mixing system for the health packs and anesthetic is still confusing today and something I would rather avoid than to get into. One other thing I enjoyed is the colour-coding for the different item box in the game and how you only have a limited number of plugs to open each box. The game is packed with little clever touches to distinguish it from its more famous cousin like how Regina never leaves your sight even in a loading screen.

It's been a long time since Mikami's last game but somehow it's always worth the wait.

Can Dead Rising Really Vanquish Resident Evil?

Despite being the biggest creative force at Capcom right now I have never taken a liking to Keiji Inafune. His choice of projects and lack of involvement with the Resident Evil series made me think there's more to this man than meets the eye. Now his recent bold declaration of what he has planned for the Dead Rising series to ultimately displace Resident Evil as Capcom top IP merely confirms my suspicion that this guy is an ego maniac. You see Dead Rising is Keiji's own labour of love, a zombie game that has more to do with Romero's zombie movies than Capcom's Resident Evil.

For the longest time I have always had a sneaking suspicion that Inafune has distanced himself from the Resident Evil series because it's Shinji Mikami's legacy at Capcom not his, contributing to the series will only further Mikami's legacy. Now Keiji's influence in Capcom has grown to the point that his name pops up on every Capcom project yet Capcom's biggest creative head has little to do with Capcom's biggest IP. All he has done is serve as the promotion producer on the original Resident Evil 2, probably to work with Romero on those TV commercials and later doing the devil's work on the playstation2 port of Resident Evil 4. Now that his intentions are made clear about what he has planned for Dead Rising and Resident Evil it's plain obvious what kind of person Inafune is. I was planning to get Vanquish all along instead of Dead Rising 2 but now I detest the man to the point where I will not buy his zombie game.

Why Does It Have to Be Poodles?

I have heard that the original version of Dead Rising didn't feature zombified poodles and birds but since the Wii version is modelled using the RE4 engine, Capcom decided to jazz the game up a little by adding them. That's probably the breaking-point for the game as the developers failed to realised that this isn't Resident Evil, you don't have the luxury of standing around trying to take aim at these flying birds coming at you. When frustration sets in, I have even attempted to hurl/swing my melee weapon in that direction hoping to land a direct hit at these poodles and birds. Sometime it works but you can clearly see these poodles are not designed to take such hits.

Suddenly the most menacing thing in the game isn't the sheer number of zombies but how many of these little bastards lurking among them ever ready to make your life miserable.

Inside the Darkside

I recently put away my copy of Darkside Chronicles to make way for other games but that doesn't mean I'm done with the game. Far from it as the amount of content and unlockables packed into that game is simply staggering especially when compared with its predecessor. I have heard from my friends that there is an artbook released for the game but other that a recent sighting on Play-asia I have seen little of this to convince me its worth getting. So when the book went out of stock on Play-asia yesterday I went into my usual panic mode and started googling up on the book. Sure enough from what I can see online it does look like an artbook similar to the one released for the first Umbrella Chronicles game.

A quick search online and mad rush trip downtown was all it took before i finally added the book to my collection late last night. It cost quite a bit more than the first book but hopefully judging from the sheer amount of content in both game, this will be a much more worthwhile book too. The number of pages certainly doesn't feel like so but it's hard to resist with such a nice cover and it's Resident Evil after all.

Friday the 13th Weekend

Had some friends over for the weekend to help me dust off some RE games in preparation for Darkside Chronicles out this week. First up was Degeneration which I manage to watch for a bit on Friday evening while waiting for my dualshock 3 to charge. I enable the enhanced viewing mode to view the storyboards alongside with the movie and much to my surprise, almost every scene from the opening zombie attack on the airport was storyboarded. I really have to see if these storyboards made it onto the Degeneration book I bought a while back.

On Saturday, we played a bit of RE4 Wii edition just to check out the Wii controls and since I had a save file with everything unlocked, we could practically try everything the game had to offer. I was pretty clumsy getting a feel of the Wii controls again on mercenaries mode so needless to say, I didn't survive very far on that one. I did try the story campaign with the Chicago typewriter and the game was a lot of fun, having an automatic weapon with unlimited ammunition. I often forget how you never really get a powerful automatic weapon on RE4 to play with so much so that I'm considering to speedrun through the whole game using the typewriter.

The highlight of the evening of trying to view the Jill sandwich scene in REmake with her unlocked RE3 costume which I assume should be pretty obvious why if you are a RE fan. Since I haven't really speed-run through REmake before, it was pretty hard figuring what I essentially had to do in order to get to the closet room and later to trigger the scene. Disappointment was in the air when I realised that by meeting Barry in the hallway, he subsequently wouldn't come to your rescue later at the shotgun room. Definitely something to come back to later which shouldn't be too difficult now that I remember how.

Got some nice presents too at the end of the day so I have to think of something for Christmas now.

Day One Purchase

Over the months i have managed to amass a bit of commission from my Play-asia affiliate earnings to finally use for my Darkside Chronicles pre-order. While it isn't much, it's enough to purchase Darkside Chronicles at a budget game price, lessening the burden of having to purchase two brand new games in the short span of one month. It's unlikely to happen again anytime soon, making a day-one purchase let alone two so i figure i best use this chance to spend some of my affiliate earnings.

I would also like to take the opportunity to thank all of you who helped contributed to my affiliate earnings, though it's hard to tell if any of them even came from this blog at all. You have my heartfelt thanks, making this forthcoming Darkside Chronicles game even more special than it already is. In a shameless plug to earn some more, here's where you can continue to show your support.

Winter Comes Early

Talk about surprises, here i am not keeping myself up to date only to realise Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles is scheduled to ship later this month! Last time i check, Wii was still the top dog of the console sales every month and Darkside Chronicles won't be out until sometime during the winter holiday seasons. My, how things have changed over the course of a few months, now the game's only a week away from release so either development of the game was cut-short or the guys at Cavia/Capcom really bust their rear to get the game done earlier than scheduled. Or winter is coming earlier for this year. Best not to speculate but either way this is certainly good news for me as my Wii has been sitting idle for a good few weeks now.

I was playing a bit of Madworld but i really couldn't get into the groove of playing so it's probably a good idea to put it aside in anticipation for this. I have seen a recent trailer of Darkside Chronicles and the game is shaping up to be a lot better than i expected, in fact it looks a lot better than what i remember its predecessor to be! Of course it's been quite a while since i last boot up Umbrella Chronicles so i will probably have to dust it off this week to see before i can make a fair comparisons when my copy of Darkside Chronicles arrives.

The Ultimate Shame

A couple of stuff came in before the end of this week, the last two of my Organic zombie diorama and Ninja Gaiden Sigma. I ran into a bit of problem when placing this order last week as i didn't have any coupon codes with me anymore and had to look everywhere for one. Luckily i find a kind soul who posted some on his blog, wished i could remember his blog now so i can quote him but if you are reading this, you have my thanks.

Looking back maybe i should have ordered Dragon Sword on the DS instead as it was only USD16.90 right about that time and quickly reverted back to its original price. The Greatest Hits red casing for Sigma is a lot worse than i expected, as it wasn't the slightly transparent case shown on that page but completely shiny red which you can't see through. It looks pretty cheap to be honest, perhaps befitting for a Greatest Hits label as it's the ultimate shame for not picking up the title initially.

Red Hot and Ready to Rumble

My decision to purchase Ninja Gaiden Sigma Greatest Hits was purely an impulsive one, for the longest time i have avoided the series because of Itagaki verbal sparring with Kamiya. Of course being a kamiya fanboy, i was naturally on kamiya side but it pains me as an action junkie not having played what critics touted as one of the best action game of this generation.

The first game came out with a Gamestop-exclusive Collector's Edition and the standard version quickly went out of the print to be replaced by a Greatest Hits version. My only option was the Greatest Hits version and i wrestled with the notion of owning a GH this soon for the longest time. Since graphics are much more of a concern for me now, the fact the game runs at 60fps on 1080p certainly helped in making my decision. Also Itagaki's lack of involvement with the Sigma series and also his eventual departure from Tecmo also made the decision a lot easier. In the essence, it was the perfect fit as i was looking for something new to play on my ps3 and also to top up my order of the last remaining two Organic Biohazard diorama.

Robbed Zombie

Alas the two Organic zombie dioramas which i have yet to purchase are no longer in stock, i seriously miscalculated as they were the first two to go out of stock, not the chris and jill ones. Looks like unless i source the remaining two from somewhere other than Play-asia, i would likely end up with incomplete set of the Organic Biohazard series. Such a crying shame as these diorama are some of the best i have seen, they are certainly worth every cent of their full price and when discounted are an absolute steal.

I used to have high expectations when it comes to gashapons and models but thanks to my friend's usual skepticism i have learnt to expect a lot less when it comes to the actual finished product versus the early prototypes. This is certainly not the case here as these finished products looked even better than i would have imagined. I will admit that i'm gushing a bit more than usual perhaps it's because i haven't bought these stuffs for so long until now.

Borderline Annoying

I rushed home today to find that my Biohazard Organic Dioramas have arrived promptly from Play-asia so someone should have got their commission by now and hopefully would return the good deed soon. These diorama looked better than i expected, i can't wait to display them and would certainly consider completing the entire set of six in due time. Since Resident Evil Archives was also released yesterday, i thought it might be a good time to reflect on my current decision whether or not to re-purchase the game.

Early impressions were as expected, the game supports progressive scan of 480p but unfortunately lacks 16:9 widescreen support. The widescreen support probably won't bother me a week ago but now that i'm on widescreen display and don't intend to switch my Wii back to the 4:3 tv, it has become a bigger issue than before. I really can't stand black borders around the screen, the RE4 NGC version has tested my limits so buying a Wii edition of REmake just for the sake of collection now doesn't seems like such a good decision. Another thing worth noting was one gamer commented that the NGC version runs on "full widescreen" on the Wii without having to adjust anything while the Wii edition doesn't though bear in mind neither of these are actually true widescreen. If that is indeed the case then too bad for the latecomers and RE4 band wagoners out there, i will probably confirm with my NGC version soon and see if it's possible to continue to play that version until the price of Wii edition comes down.

The Signature Character

Looks like i have to scrap my initial plan of waiting for the first three diorama to arrived before deciding to order the other three as the Chris and Jill diorama are already sold out this morning. When i realised i couldn't order all six in one transaction to qualified for free delivery, i ordered the Chris and Jill one first and foremost not because they looked the best but because i knew they would run out first before the rest. Even upon learning this, i left things as it is and only when i noticed the Rebecca one too went out of stock in the span of the two hours later i knew i didn't have the luxury to wait anymore.

By then the zombie mauling kenneth corpse and zombie with cerebrus were also gone, leaving me with just the tyrant one left. So i ended up ordering just one more short of the two zombies to make the complete set. I guess i should feel content because these were the four i had in mind when i first saw the set but somehow having a Biohazard set of figure without the signature character just feels incomplete.

Diorama to Die For

Ask me if i have anything in mind to buy and i will usually have a endless list of games, artbooks and figures that i may never finish buying them all. It's less so with games these days as i have run out of space in my game collection but anything else which i can keep randomly somewhere in my room, i will not hesitate to pick them up. High on my list of stuff to get are the recent Biohazard Play-arts, a collection of diorama centering around key moments of the first game. I have been looking for these for quite some time now, probably because pictures of this collection were released very early on and my favourite online store didn't stock it until quite recently. In fact i have given up on the idea of Play-asia even bringing this in as they are usually quite fast going about these things. Then months after Resident Evil 5 came out, Play-asia finally starting to stock these at their store, by then the hype surrounding Resident Evil had sort of cool off and this collection slip off my radar so much that i even forgot to put a tag on it should it ever get discounted.

My last order at Play-asia was the regretfully unnecessary Resident Evil Prima Game Guide, seeing that Capcom released an official artbook recently and all i wanted in the Game Guide were those precious few pages of concept arts. Upset about my last few purchase, i sought to stay off from ordering at Play-asia for as long as i could only to get suckered back in when i found out today that the Biohazard Playarts Collection has already been discounted. All was going well until i realised that purchasing the entire set will not entitled me to the usual free delivery as these figures are shipped in rather bulky boxes so i could only order three and had to decided quickly which to get and which to drop momentarily. Right now my only concern is whether or not i should make a separate order for the remaining three figures of the set and how long they will still be around at discounted price before i decide to place my next order. I suppose the smart thing to do is the wait for the first three to arrive and see if they are really worth collecting the entire set.

That Was Then This Is Now

Capcom finally unveiled what looks to be the final box art for the release of Resident Evil Remake on the Wii. While it's mostly what i have expected with the white borders and all, i realised it could have been a lot worse. Now my decision to purchase another copy of Resident Evil hinges almost entirely on how this final box art will look as i have a history of being very picky with box arts, meaning strictly no budget reprints to ruin my collection.

Things became a little complicated when speculations came about that Capcom plans to release both REmake and RE0 together as a double pack for USD30 as i had no intentions to buying another copy of RE0, having already own two copies of that game. It did sound a little too good to be true to have both game retailing for only USD30 although Capcom did eventually published a double pack for that same price during the tail-end of the Gamcube era, that was then and this is now. These were and still are high quality Resident Evil games, able to stand with some of the best the Nintendo Wii has to offer, it would be foolish to think that Capcom would consider selling them together for that price.