Why the Resident Evil series is shitty now...

Well, I don't think anybody on this forum is a big fan of video games, but all the other forums I post on are either dead, or full of fanboys that defend this franchise no matter what, while saying that actual great games like The Last of Us are overrated. Pfft!

Anyway, I got into the series when I was a teenager, probably way back in 1999 or 2000. I loved the shit out of the ones on the PlayStation. When the GameCube came out, I loved the 2002 remake so much that it "replaced" the original 1996 version for me, and the Dreamcast was a pretty underrated console in its time too. The prequel ("0") was kind of boring in some parts, but it was no less scary. At least it looked and played like a real RE game with similar graphics, but the two main characters could be separated with a 'partner zapping system' if you chose to.

Then RE4 came out in 2005 after going through a lot of changes, and it more or less ruined the survival horror genre. It's practially just a shoot and loot game that has a more sci-fi plot than horror. Basically, monsters and people are infected with bizarre parasites and not created via viral exposure, like in the other games. The game has like, only a few puzzles where you align tiles or lights, and all you do is shoot up villagers for hours and hours, then later you have to kill druid monks in a castle and soldiers wearing armour on an island. It's so Hollywood. There's bearly any tension at all. You also purchase ammo and guns from a mysterious merchant, who just appears in random locations somehow. This just spoiled the franchise. It didn't even really have anything to do with what occurred in the other games at all, besides having the main character returning from RE2. Big deal, huh?

All of the games before RE4 focused on the Umbrella Corporation, who were the people that made the T and G viruses in a secret lab. This turned most of the scientists, civilians and nearby animals into monsters. So you mostly had to encounter zombies, dogs, Tyrants and God only knows what else. But RE4 disregarded all of that, and they just say at the beginning in a prologue, that Umbrella went bankrupt, or something to that effect. What the hell? Lazy story creations like that are why this franchise is so lame today.

Technically, they did make these side story games that ended the Umbrella story, but these were nothing on the level of the quality seen in the mainline games. You just shot creatures on the screen with a cursor, or indicator, and your characters couldn't really move around until you killed everything. Then you just got an on-screen prompt to carry on. It was rubbish.

RE5 is a good game if you like to do nothing but waste things with weapons, but only the DLC called Lost in Nightmares was scary. The main game was pretty much just like RE4, but with a co-op mode. It was awful, and the main villain was killed off too. Wesker was about the last thing good about the RE franchise by that point. RE6 was total BS as well. You were not scared once playing that. And how can you be? A second person is with you the entire time, unless you're playing Ada Wong. In which case, you get the useless "Agent" as your back-up partner for the co-op mode, but he won't appear in any of the movie like scenes with her. He just teleports behind Ada, and he can't open storage chests. How lame...

The Revealtions games I'll admit are very decent, but the story has hit a brick wall since Capcom never continues anything in one particular game, since the next game is very much unrelated in terms of the story, and the style of the game overall is also way, way different. RE7: Biohazard was also a crap game because you didn't even see the main character's face at all. He runs around a house like a moron in this area with a swamp, mainly avoiding an annoying old man and his wife, and he shoots these daft looking "Molded" creatures that don't look all that menacing, let alone memorable, especially when compared to the terrific past monsters we got like the Lickers, Nemesis, the Hunters, the dogs, and so on and so forth.

Plus, Chris Redfield (the star of 1, Code: Veronica, Revelations, 5 and 6) shows up at the end of 7: Biohazard, where he is first seen wearing a helmet, and in a sort of, "I smoked half of the tobacco in Cuba" accent, says to this Ethan guy, "I'm Redfield! I'm glad we found you" - and to make the plot twist more laughable, he came in an Umbrella chopper with other men, just that the logo is blue now rather than being red. But, yeah. Other than that, it's the same pattern. When you play the DLC, you learn that this is in fact actually the real Chris Redfield, and that he was convinced to join Umbrella, who are good now. He does not trust them, though. Holy mother of balls. Awesome script there, Capcom!

But... Chris looks like he is 25 again, with blonde hair. He had black hair in all of the other games, Capcom. Plus, it feels like he was recast by an actor too young for the role. In a manner of speaking, he essentially was recast, since Roger Craig Smith or whatever his name is, had portrayed him for nearly a decade before that. Then Capcom released the RE2 remake in early 2019, and it was vastly disappointing. Their new spin off "Project Resistance" looks really silly, and it also has bearly anything to do with the RE lore.

Man, this franchise was great a long ass time ago. Now it's hardly worth supporting anymore. Everything gets milked today, and I'm sick of seeing it unfold. :tear:

Too long, didn't read. To cut a long story short, the series is God awful now, and look at Chris in these games. It looks and sounds like they're not even the same person.



And this was from when the games were horrifying, but in a good way. :coffee:

 
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To me, it was just a bad rehash of the previous titles, with generic monsters. It's not the worst game out there, sure, but it shows that the series has ended up incredibly dated.

At the time, Capcom's RE Engine was totally new, and I think that's why the Molded enemies were so lazily designed. The concept art for the Hunter Alphas in the original game showcased better design skills than that. That's a game from 1996, mind you. The RE2 remake should have been like the original from 1998, like the 2002 remake was like the original 1996 game, just with new areas and a new boss enemy. But I guess that's not a gameplay style that would come across as all that marketable in a game today. We'll only get that style seen now in a select few indie games, that probably won't find much of an audience even on Steam.

I also recorded a few rants. One is about Resident Evil 4 and now the last entry. If you're wondering why the user ratings aren't showing up, it's because these arseholes purposefully subscribe to me just to vote down my videos, with hidden accounts. When you tell Google about it, they say it would violate a person's right to maintain their privacy if people could view their subscribers, blah, blah, blah. I'd have preferred to have voting enabled, but that feature tends to offer nothing of value when it is being abused.

:director:


 
I'm too young to have had experienced the first REs. 😄 When the first RE came out, I was 3 years old you see. Though the remaster versions are out, so I may give it a try now. I started playing the RE franchise since the number 4. and I though RE 4 was the best one. After RE 4 every subsequent one got worse and worse and I kept playing them all nonetheless because I loved that franchise so much. I even loved the movies so much I ended up watching each one at least 20 times ( specially the first and the second one). But I'm sure you are right about the first REs being the best ones and everything starting to fall apart since RE 4. If you love the suspense in video games, have you tried alan wake? I think this is the best horror video game out there. Though it has become a bit old by now.
 
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I don't even think it's an age thing with myself and games. I seriously doubt it is because of how old I am. I still love to play the newest games. I just think a lot of modern games are clunky though, and unfair, and have awful, forced plot aspects.

This is a rumour, but The Last of Us Part II is supposedly going to have the size of two games squeezed onto the one PS4 disc. They didn't mention anything about DLC, but I wouldn't be surprised if something was announced later on. They did state that the planned multiplayer mode was removed. Now, I know Naughty Dog have been working on it for years, but I'd rather have a long wait and receive something special after the said waiting period, than play any more of Capcom's half-assed, overrated crap.

They cannot do anything for Project Resistance. It's still gonna suck, even if they sugarcoat it and try to give it a "story" of sorts. Why the hell do they keep going back to 1998 again and again with these spin-off titles anyway? Raccoon City was destroyed in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, which was released some 20 years ago. There's no need to pad this out any further. We could have gotten a spin-off set in another place, but we know Capcom cannot be bothered making an effort.

Milk! Milk! Milk! Churn! Churn! Churn!

But this looks swell.

 
Yep, overmilking is sadly part of every entertainment industry these days. The games I am really looking forward to are kojima's death stranding, and cyberpunk 2077. Also it's a been a long since I've heard any news or games from ken levine, the mind behind the trilogy masterpieces "Bioshock". Also I really hope from software makes a sequel to bloodborne. Anything from software touches is gold honestly.
 
The Evil Within games are scary, but I think a lot of gamers tend to overlook them because they're not as super famous as the other big horror franchises. The Last of Us and Days Gone are also incredible, and the graphics are among the best I've ever seen from PS4 titles. Although I wouldn't say they're very scary, but some parts are intense. I'd say they are more so action-adventure games, with a lot of horror elements included.

Konami killed Silent Hill way back in 2015 and recently updated the license for the IP. That doesn't mean much. They'll probably not be working on another one any day soon, unlike Capcom, who will probably remake all of the old games under the RE Engine. And I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to remake Dino Crisis next, just to insult those people behind that new fan project, which you can see on YouTube. The same thing happened when a group of developers attempted to remake Resident Evil 2, which actually looked better than the official one. Capcom closed it down, and I hate that company so much after all their hype and lies, because they don't even know where to take the series next. Meh!
 
I played RE4 and honestly loved it, though I haven’t played the ones before that. I know a lot of ppl love them.
I found RE4 to be pretty terrifying though. Definitely the most scared I’ve been while playing a game; from running from chainsaws to that blind guy you have to avoid (if I recall; I haven’t played it since it first came out).

Then I played 5 and hated it; and have abandoned the franchise ever since.
 
I don't know what you are thinking, but the RE2 remake is closer to RE4 than anything... Just sounds like complaining to complain at this point. RE7 was an entirely different game because of the POV. Play it in VR, you might change your mind about it. It is certainly one of the more scary Residents in my opinion.

RE4 just feels good, because it was good. But it has aged, and there are better games out now. It did spawn games like Last of Us, and Dead Space... So nothing wrong there.
 
Eh, just looks like the same thing they did with RE5 with the coop modes. Its just an arcade cash maker. These aren't actually mainstream RE games. CAPCOM always goes this way with their franchises. They do a great game, then churn out a couple of rehashes/arcade spinoffs. It makes them money for the next big game.
 
Well, RE is Capcom's best-selling franchise. I get that. I just don't like the direction they took it in, back in 2005.

RE4 may be a great action game, but it also doesn't play like a RE game of the distant past, and to me, it felt rather strange in terms of the story. It also rendered the previous PlayStation games arguably pointless, because all the survivors like Chris and Jill were meant to team-up and battle Umbrella after their ordeals in the mansion, Raccoon City and in Antarctica. That should have made for an epic conclusion to that particular arc, but we got RE4 first which has *NOTHING* to do with Umbrella, then The Umbrella Chronicles arrived in 2007, and that was the game that did what RE4 was supposed to do. But the game was a co-op shooter, and an on-rails one to boot, so it didn't end the primary RE story about Umbrella in a way that felt very satisfying!

That's not to say RE4 is a bad game. It just could have been a game that became a part of a new IP that was unrelated to RE, but they put RE on it and then removed a lot of stuff that was in the game that us fans refer to as RE 3.5 today, since like the original RE2 prototype game called RE 1.5 - Capcom redesigned everything from the ground up.

Every new game since at least 2009 has a story that feels forced, because everything that occurs has bearly bugger all to do with the events in the last one, which can lead to a lot of frustration if you're a fan that is driven by the story. RE7 ripped off a lot of movies and games, but I wouldn't say I dislike it for what it is. I'm just not happy about Chris' current appearance, since he looks nothing like Chris from Revelations, RE5 and 6. He looks like he aged backwards by about 25 years, and in a 2017 game, that just comes across as vastly ridiculous.

Revelations 2 copied The Last of Us. If you play the DLC story with Moira Burton trying to survive and hunt rabbits in the winter with that old guy, you'll know what I mean. To blatantly copy something that is already a hit with gamers, is really shallow. I still say it's one of the better entries, that Capcom themselves developed in the 2010s. But a lot of their spin off games aren't even made by them, and I guess you're right. They're just spin off titles. They don't really matter. But they could have made a new Outbreak game, which would have made so many fans rejoice. I'm sure there have been tons of petitions about that already, which Capcom have been ignoring for the longest time now.

But, anyway: This is what the story came down to. Chris said to his sister Claire on the jet, that he'd help her to end Umbrella. But then Chris and Jill starred in a bad shooting game that was made up of original chapters, and also remade sections of the original games that messed up the timeline, like the mansion incident, the train incident, and whatnot. But there was nothing scary about any of it. All of the mainline games prior to RE4 were always scary, and they've still continued to feel scary to a degree, apart from RE5 and 6. But um, RE5 is perhaps still scary sometimes depending on your outlook, but yes: It is mostly an action game though.

By the way, RE7 was not out in 2019. It was released in 2017. My bad! :P


 
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