October Together Retro: Golden Age of Survival Horror

[noiseredux]

You should collect all your write-ups into a blog dude.

[Ack]

I fly back tomorrow to the states, but it's nice to see y'all kept playing.

It's also nice to see someone has actually played Jack in the Dark. Exhum wins for most obscure. Well done, sir.

I used to own a shirt very much like the main character in SH4. In fact, I went to a convention with it on and a golf club. A lady dressed as a zombie nurse got it and loved it.

More horror! More bones breaking, teeth tearing, and souls shredding! I need more, MORE, MORE! Blood for the blood Ack!

[pierrot]

Finally, this game is really great. I’m kind of shocked I couldn’t get into it before. Maybe it’s because Resident Evil 2 was my ntroduction to the series.

I like the original Resident Evil (not REmake) better than 2 or 3, personally. *Shrug* Nice to hear you're enjoying the first game!


I've been playing D2 over the last few days, and If I'm being totally honest

I like it.

I'm on disc 3 now, and it's been a much better experience than either Enemy Zero or D. Still basically no relationship between these three games, though. They decided to use a bunch of the "same" characters from Enemy Zero, by bringing back a Kimberly, Parker, and David for D2. One thing I had not realized is that Laura's last name is different in each of these games, and I'd guess that's also true for the other three "returning" characters. The big improvements in D2 are really just how much the pace of play has been addressed. A lot of the basic gameplay ideas are still really similar to Enemy Zero: Laura runs around between indoor areas, with a chance to encounter enemies (played out in third person this time, and with Cabella's gameplay mixed in), then enters the cabins and such where the gameplay shifts to a first person adventure style similar to D. The switch away from FMV is definitely a welcome one, though. The first person adventure sequences end up playing out in a much snappier way, although Laura does still take her sweet time while examining, or interacting with something. Overall the presentation is quite good here, and I enjoy the atmosphere, and general vibe. It's grotesque, but interesting.

I have been a bit annoyed by how long and drawn out a lot of the monologueing has been in the cutscenes, though. Laura is once again a mute, so it's left to other characters (mostly Kimberly) to carry the conversation, and narrative. The problem for me is just how much they (again, mostly Kimberly) end up repeating the same couple lines, as if to fill up time, or space. It's kind of like reading a fourth grader's book report, that had a minimum 2 page requirement, or something, and the report was obviously written to stretch half a page worth of ideas into two pages. Seriously, if I hear Kimberly say, 'I hope you're able to find David,' just one more time, I might scream. I'm not sure if it's done purposely to create a sense of unease about the mental stability of most of the characters, though. Some of the really minor characters are just plainly off their rockers, so maybe Kimberly's propensity to repeat herself, and basically say the same thing three or four times, in slightly different ways, all in rapid succession, is meant to make the player feel uneasy about her mental state, but it doesn't always feel like that's the goal. The Kimberly in Enemy Zero was somewhat similar (same voice actress, anyway) with her lines, too, as I recall. She just had a lot less screen time in Enemy Zero. I'm also playing the Japanese version, so I really don't know if the localization changed this at all. The other minor difficulty I have (again, mostly with regard to Kimberly) is hearing the lines. Kimberly tends to talk softly/mumble, and it seems like the audio engineers tried to use perspective volume for the voice audio, as well. It's not just with Kimberly, though. I generally have to turn the volume up during cutscenes whenever people start talking, and to make matters worse, I have to contend with all the accessing of the GD-ROM that the game does during cutscenes. A few times I've been kind of afraid that my Dreamcast was preparing to launch itself into orbit, during some of the longer cutscenes. It's kind of unnerving; Maybe even more so than the game itself.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure the game is setting up for some bonkers nuttery, right now. I'm curious to see how it plays out. There's at least more to it than Enemy Zero's story, even if I'm not expecting a whole lot from D2's story, in the end.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Alright...I think I’m getting to the end. I revisited the Spencer Mansion, killed a bunch of the incredibly annoying frog people, got everything I could, and made it through the caves under the courtyard. Am I getting close? The game is still a lot of fun, but the limited inventory is killing me (so much backtracking...).

Also, I killed most of the zombies in the mansion when I was first there. If you don’t do that, are they still in the hallways when the frog-people and spiders spawn there? Just curious.

Finally, I’ve made up my mind. When I play through again as Chris, I will play the “rebirth” mode to check out the NDS-exclusive feature. I think I have a good taste for the original now, and I am curious to see what Capcom added to it. Plus, I don’t think many people have experienced that version of the game.

Edit: One more thing...for my knowledge...how many scenarios are there in Resident Evil 3? Do you only play as Jill in that one?

[Xeogred]

Alright...I think I’m getting to the end. I revisited the Spencer Mansion, killed a bunch of the incredibly annoying frog people, got everything I could, and made it through the caves under the courtyard. Am I getting close? The game is still a lot of fun, but the limited inventory is killing me (so much backtracking...).

Also, I killed most of the zombies in the mansion when I was first there. If you don’t do that, are they still in the hallways when the frog-people and spiders spawn there? Just curious.

Finally, I’ve made up my mind. When I play through again as Chris, I will play the “rebirth” mode to check out the NDS-exclusive feature. I think I have a good taste for the original now, and I am curious to see what Capcom added to it. Plus, I don’t think many people have experienced that version of the game.

Edit: One more thing...for my knowledge...how many scenarios are there in Resident Evil 3? Do you only play as Jill in that one?

1. Yeah, you're pretty far if the "Hunters", frog people have showed up. This is when I bust out the shotgun. They have a rare one shot beheading attack that can get you...

2. A lot of the zombies get wiped when the Hunters start spawning. So this is why just avoiding zombies is pretty worthwhile. REmake introduced some new gimmicks to this though, among other nice changes.

3. Only one scenario for RE3, but it's kind of weird how there's a lot of varied triggers and some choices throughout the game that change things a little. Nothing making it worthwhile to replay back to back, but yeah. The most interesting thing about RE3 is the difficulty levels, there's only Easy and Hard, but Hard is just technically Normal. Easy is so overpowered it's not even fun, Jill starts with tons of weapons, items in the chest, even a stack of 3-1 First Aid Sprays (one slot), huge inventory, etc. lol, so definitely play Hard if you're comfortable with the normal difficulty of these games and the more limited items. RE3's got its BS moments though. Not one I revisit as much as the other games but it's still solid.

@pierrot: Have you played Phase Paradox (2001) for the PS2? Japanese only release. Seems like a very obscure deep cut but I've randomly stumbled upon it from time to time over the years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA5iMqnRMM8

[pierrot]

Edit: One more thing...for my knowledge...how many scenarios are there in Resident Evil 3? Do you only play as Jill in that one?

Pretty much just Jill, yeah, which seems like it would make the game great, but, nah. There's a couple sections in the game where you have to control one of the mercenaries, also, though.

@pierrot: Have you played Phase Paradox (2001) for the PS2? Japanese only release. Seems like a very obscure deep cut but I've randomly stumbled upon it from time to time over the years.

Can't say as I have. I've seen the box a number of times before, but I guess I never realized it was supposed to be a sort of horror game? I dig that player character, though. She's got some cool pants. (I really have no idea why I like that style. It's objectively pretty silly.)



I finished D2 tonight. I'm struggling a little bit to put my thoughts together after that cluster of an ending, but overall I quite enjoyed the experience. In terms of its competition on the console, I'd say it's about as good as RE2 or RE3, for me, but Illbleed, and Code Veronica Kanzenban are still my favorites. The nice thing about D2 is that it feels like Eno was finally able to finish one of his games. D, and Enemy Zero feel like they're almost the CliffsNotes to Eno's vision for those games. I don't feel that D2 has that problem. The only area where I feel like he regresses a little bit is with the third disc, where the gameplay is stretched out a bit by setting apart the three areas one has to repeatedly revisit, and not allowing the use of the snowmobile, for some undisclosed reason, for most of it. It's a pretty easy game, though. There's really not much for puzzles here, and while some of the enemies can strike, almost without notice, just doing a bit of hunting, and playing it a little safe by resting when needed makes for a pretty smooth ride all the way through. The bosses are an interesting touch, but even those are not particularly difficult to deal with. They usually have some sort of weak point, but generally I didn't even know where that weak point was. I would just end up hitting it enough times to kill the bosses, before they killed Laura.

The graphics, atmosphere, and setting are all pretty top notch. It probably helps that I'm a bit of a snow dweller, and enjoy frozen landscapes, but I feel like the frosty mood of snowdrifts, and blizzards really were an untapped goldmine for adding to horror atmosphere in video games. Anyway, Warp seemed to get a lot of help from Sega and CRI with the programming, so maybe it's not too surprising that it's a pretty nice looking game on the Deamcast. It's no Shenmue, but it's pretty good. There are some fairly obvious areas for improvement though, like the dips in frames of the character models during a lot of cutscenes, and some of the animations in general (Laura getting into the bed with Jennie (not in a sexual way) in Disc 3 is a pretty horrendous sight to behold). A lot of the character models, overall, don't look too impressive these days, but they get the job done, and still look a damn sight better than anything on the Saturn/PS1/N64/etc. I had my issues with the audio, but it was still fairly well done, overall. The main thing was that the audio range for the voices was a bit out of whack: Sometimes characters are screaming, and other times they're muttering things into their sleeves. Also, Eno, dude-- a discordant run of five notes, or a mildly abrasive chord every now and again doesn't really constitute as "music."

Then there's the story, which for most of the game is fine. It's whatever. Not a bad horror plot, and some relatively complex characters (initially Kimberly seems like she's really overacted, and just a melodramatic bore, but she actually has a couple interesting moments in the third disc), but then all of these different threads sprawl out everywhere in the end of the game, with nothing to really tie them together; Just a bunch of divergent lines, with no apparent genesis.

Especially weird was the part in the LPL lab, where Laura "kills" her mother by firing a semi-automatic rifle into her mechanical crotch. It was not subtle with the imagery, at all, and it was pretty disturbing, because the whole time Lucy is just screaming at Laura to kill her. This was after Laura actually SPOKE! WTF! Then the ending is apparently about love, and time, until at the very end, the game just flashes a bunch of statistics about world population, HIV, famine, deforestation, endangered species, etc.

I have no idea what Eno was going for thematically. The story ends up feeling really schizophrenic, but the last thing the game shows is the date set on the console, and the current time (according to the console), which was kind of interesting, since it read today's (technically yesterday's, but just barely) date, and I had just been fed a bunch of stats from the nineties. I don't know if Eno had actually thought anyone would be playing his game in 2018, but that part actually kind of worked. It would just be better if it worked with something a little more comprehensible.

D2 gets a B, from me. Definitely worth playing. Very competent game, but not really earth shattering.

Edit: Also, I forgot to mention that I got the "King of Hunting" rank at the end of the game, after I'd had "Hare Killer" for a while. I got the badges for Hares, and Grouses, with 30 Hares, 11 Grouses, 3 Caribou, and 2 Moosen.

[Exhuminator]

Exhum wins for most obscure. Well done, sir.

What's silly is I'd literally been meaning to play Jack in the Dark for twenty five years now. I don't know why I waited so long. I also need to play through Alone in the Dark 3. (Already beat the first two AitDs back in the early '90s.)

I need more, MORE, MORE! Blood for the blood Ack!

Now that I'm back from vacation, tonight I plan to resurrect my play of Silent Hill 2. I'd like to do an arcade run of Splatterhouse Halloween night as well.

[alienjesus]

I guess I'll just drop in with an update to let you know that I've finished Koudelka. It's a pretty flawed game in many ways, but it's also an interesting one that doesn't outstay it's welcome. I had a good time with it overall.

I actually picked up from my first play session about 2 hours in and marathoned through the game in 2 sittings - 2 discs per day. I'll eventually get around to writing up a review in the games beaten thread I'm sure, but as usual I have a huge review backlog to get to first...

In the meantime, I decided to start up a game that would fit loosely into this month or next months themes if it wasn't for the fact it's way too new - Virtue's Last Reward.

[Key-Glyph]

I have been VERY behind on this Together Retro, but my bud Jeremy is coming over tomorrow and I'm 90% sure we're going to bake cupcakes and play Clock Tower. Aw yiss!

In the meantime, I'mma read about all y'alls' adventures now.

EDIT: That was an awesome read. Good job, everybody.

Regarding RE3: I loved this game for a bunch of reasons. I don't want to spoil anything, but I found there were a lot of little touches that I appreciated so, so much. And two, it was ridiculously fun to play with a friend. Nicole and I co-oped this one, and when we had to make quick decisions, we would get all amped up and then shout our answers to make sure we had consensus. It was something like 2 AM, she lived in a condo complex, and we positively screamed "INCREASE THE VOLTAGE!!!!" and laughed maniacally before we remembered she had neighbors who were, you know, definitely sleeping at that point. Whoops.

It was great. I highly recommend having someone share the couch with you and weigh in on the shenanigans, if you're into that kind of thing.

[Xeogred]

It helps that I know exactly which scene/decision you're talking about and the resulting scene is amazing to watch.

Easy Allies actually did a group stream of RE3 earlier this summer during one long weekend event and they all had a blast during that part, it was pretty funny to watch.