Broken Consistency

You must be joking. I know opinions and all that... but RE4 is one of the best games ever made, and it's one of the best in the RE series.

 That was the latest message of the usual type that I receive, courtesy of Kyle Fedora from youtube (congratulations on being the first non-popular person I've mentioned!). Ever since the game came out I have been receiving these types of responses from people that I discuss the series, Resident Evil, with. For those that don't know, Resident Evil was a Survival Horror series that involved backtracking, puzzle-solving, and trying to decide how to use one's ammo and health items to survive and figure out the mystery of what is going on in the individual game with the stories linked by the viral agents that play pivotal roles in the incidents.

Then Resident Evil 4 came out. Once Remake and 0 were presented (or even before then), we started seeing trailers of an all new game. Resident Evil 4. Finally. Ever since Code Veronica people had been wanting a new main sequel. And what they showed us...was incredible.

It was Leon, the cop from Resident Evil 2, investigating some old mansioney looking place. It was quiet, tense, isolating, and really made one jump when they first saw the trailer when classical tricks like the knights pictured above swung their axes down in front of him. And then there was the enemy. The Hookman who's weapon became the very symbol that the number 4 in the title is based off of.

This entity would pop up every now and then to chase down Leon and try to kill him with the bladed item. But was the enemy real? It was pretty hard to tell as, while Leon does manage to "beat" him at one point, he's all warped and seems to manifest out of the walls or thin air. This element likely had to do with the fact that Leon in the beta was to become infected with The Progenitor Virus (the viral agent that all the other viruses came from) and begin hallucinating. It would've been a nice addition considering it'd probably make you question even more when you should or shouldn't use your ammo on something that might not even exist.

Sadly most fans write off the entities that Leon sees in the beta as ghosts when in fact they are hallucinations and as such fit in just fine with all the other scientific elements in the series. As for Progenitor, the game was supposed to have something to do with "The Cradle of the Progenitor Virus". Whatever that meant, it would clearly have had something to do with the origins of Umbrella and their viral research. The game was even going to be the final one in the series had it stayed this kind of Survival Horror that it was continuing on from the previous titles. My expectations were skyrocketing and I couldn't wait to see what it turned out like.

So I waited...and waited...and eventually pictures started showing up in magazines. And what I was seeing...was...weird.

Why were there all these out of place rural-looking villagers?...in Resident Evil?...in a game that was supposed to be taking place in some desolate mansion-type setting?...

But being the tolerable fan I was I waited, researching everything I could and catching back up on my lore and everything for the series. And finally it came out. And as happily as everyone else I bore witness to it.

...and right from the get-go I could tell something was wrong...

....I'm sorry...what?
Lemme read that agai-oh my god I read it right...Umbrella...the Corporation that controlled the world...the main antagonistic force behind the series...has been destroyed in the intro paragraph...from stock prices...

...

STOCK PRICES

...

...alright no. Yes, Umbrella's a Corporation, but it's also a VIDEO GAME VILLAIN. The OVERARCHING villain of the SERIES. It does not ****ing die from stocks dropping! It controlled the damn planet pretty much! It had militaries! It had hordes of experimental monsters! Facilities littering the map! Having THAT be their end is just a slap in the face. Added to that, since this was originally going to be the final game you'd expect the game to END with Umbrella's destruction, not start with it!

*huff*

...*sigh* but okay...okay...it doesn't need Umbrella to be Resident Evil. Their research and viral legacy are what make the series what it is storywise. So I kept watching, mainly intrigued to see how it could continue without the vile company.

Leon for whatever reason now is some secret agent that protects the President's daughter and has been sent to some Spanish village to find her...alone...one agent...to find the PRESIDENT'S daughter...

...the ****?

Kay, whatev. So that's why the game's full of rural Spanish villagers...but where's the connection to past games? The viral agents? Obviously something's making the villagers act up, but what is it? They don't appear to be deteriorating or anything...in fact...they don't even look messed up...just like normal people...normal angry people...not scary...just people...in a game series that's supposed to be horrific...

...it's like some kind of god damn Frankenstein mob. Not scary...just...slightly miffed.

Now THAT is how you do it! Tight corridor, decaying zombie clawing at you! Just a sudden BAM and its got you! No guy hollering a comedic line in Spanish to tell you you're gonna get ambushed. Just right then and there, the chipped away flesh dangling right in your vision. All good stuff.

But with 4? **** that! You get people!

But back to the matter at hand. What's with them exactly? Well, turns out they're infected with a parasite called the Las Plagas.

Now at this point I was thinking "oh my god finally! A connection! They're finally going to reveal more about the NE-Alpha Parasite aren't the-" No...they're not...nothing to do with Nemesis...just some random parasite...dug up by a random cult...lead by a random racist...that's easily the most disappointing main villain in the series...with no ties to anything else...

"But wait! Luis said he saw samples of T back when he was a cop! Surely that has something to do wit-" No. No it does not. That's just the game saying "Hey! Look! T-Virus! Resident Evil, am i rite? =D ".

So, story completely fails in any aspects at being a Resident Evil game. Has no relevance to anything else in the series...and for some reason it has the title "4". Now some people might think it has to do with 5's plot since Las Plagas are again used in that game, but no it does not. They're just used to make the basic human enemies is all. Just tacked on for people coming off of 4. Nothing to do with the plot or Ouroboros since all that we know Ouroboros was made of was Progenitor (FINALLY they get into that some), and Jill's T-Virus Antibodies.

But, the plot is not the main point of a game. A GAME is a main point of a game. How well it plays as the type of game that it's supposed to be. So as a game IN GENERAL, Resident Evil 4 and 5 and blah blah blah are amazing. I'll never deny that. I love playing through them. But you see, if it's part of a series, it should act like it's part of one. It should play like the previous numbered titles. If it doesn't it shouldn't be labeled as such.

When I play Sonic the Hedgehog 2 I should know that it's going to play like the previous game in its series. When they changed the gameplay they didn't call it Sonic the Hedgehog 4, they called it Sonic Adventure.

When they changed Mario's gameplay they didn't call it Super Mario World 4 or something.

They called it Super Mario 64.

And if you want an example of 3D titles changing, Sonic Adventure changed to Sonic Heroes when the gameplay changed again.

You see a title should let you know what you're getting into. The genre. For movies and books it obviously just has to do with the plot as that's the experience you can get from them. For games however the interaction is much more prominent with you actually controlling it. The type of game that it is should take priority. And for the type of game that the Resident Evil series was, Resident Evil 4-onwards do not belong. They belong in some shooter adventure genre or something.

The Resident Evil games always felt like a point and click adventure with puzzles all over the place that were the main focus.

The main difference was that Resident Evil, along with the others of its type, had weapons and combat between the puzzles. But the puzzles were still the main feature and required much exploration and backtracking to find items. While most people might write such things off as annoying, that kind of gameplay familiarized the player with the setting. Gave the location that the game took place in more meaning to their subconscious. So when someone hears the words Resident Evil 2 they automatically think "Police Station! Sewers! Labs! Oh my god, that old room with the drawings on the board and fireplace around back. The power generator that Ada falls over the rail at." or with Resident Evil 1 they might think "the tick tock of that clock...god it never stopped...and the crests! Yep, downed that plant with the chemical. Know the layout of the mansion like the back of my hand.".

With Resident Evil 4 I barely remember a thing because it's all just one straight path pretty much from start to finish. No real interlocking anywhere. Just trails. Every place was the same. Run-down houses with an exploding barrel next to it. Hardly any puzzles to speak of and those that there were could hardly be called them.

Whereas this is the map of the first game

THAT is a place to get lost in! A setting to familiarize one's self with. Just looking at it right now I can picture the Cerberuses breaking in at the lower right hallway or the Hunter the infests the upper right area with the bathroom next to it later. A maze...a joy for any adventuring nut to admire.

This kind of game isn't everyone's cup of tea though. And that's all fine and well. But a series should not bend over backwards to please people that aren't even into it to begin with. It should stick to the kind of game that it is to further please those that do enjoy it.

In spite of the vastly changed gameplay though, the main control of 4, 5, and so on are pretty much like the classics only with the camera behind the character...so...there's that I guess...as similar as Fall of Cybertron is to Silent Hill pretty much.

And I mean you can still find weapons lying aroun-

...

what...the...****...

Alright, I'm gonna say this right here and now.

*Clears throat*

The Merchant is one of the absolute worst things to ever happen to Resident Evil.

...and since I'm not dead I guess I'll continue. What I mean by that is that, while the character himself, along with things like Salazar, are fine for the series in their just bizarreness, his FUNCTION is not at all acceptable.

There should not be a SHOP in a survival horror game, especially of the type that Resident Evil was. You should not be able to buy crap. Hell, you shouldn't even be able to get money. It should serve no function what-so-ever. The weapons and ammo that you find? That should all be found in the setting itself. There should be a finite amount of it. And I know, there's ALWAYS more than enough to kill everything in the game. If there wasn't it wouldn't be fair. But the difference is that in the old games you have to actually FIND things to use. In the newer ones, this happens.

You kill an enemy and they drop an item. That should not happen unless it's something holding a key item. Enemies should not be feeding you ammo and health throughout the incident. There should be a FINITE amount of ammo and health lying around that you have to FIND. Just giving it to you takes away from the effort it takes to find it and as such decreases the very nature of the type of game that it's supposed to be. Playing detective and finding things were what the games were. Come 4 it's just a shoot em up that requires no effort what-so-ever.

And to further drive home the detective...ness of the titles, there were notes lying around everywhere! Remember these?

Yeah, I hardly do too by now. You see, from RE1-CV we had these pieces of paper that were just drizzled all over the place. It could be the diary of some cell mate or scientist or it could be something as important as how the specific virus of the game came to be and what it's purpose and effects were. They provided something called lore to the games. It was another element that gave the settings such meaning in the player's experience. You got a sense that there had been life there and that the location was something of importance with the notes building up a much larger world than if you had just played through it as a simple game. It's the same effect that you get from reading up on the history during your time in Metroid Prime and such.

Once RE4 hits the notes practically vanish with only a few left just to warn you that a boss is coming up. It's irritating as hell. Fans like reading about the mystery that makes the story. Their brain loves piecing it together so that in the end there's a real sense that you've come to an understanding. And with crap like this:

This game NEEDED notes. How the hell do you get a ****ing GIANT from the Las Plagas? How would you get the U3 or Verdugos? There's a piece missing here in how one thing leads to another. It's clear that some mutations can occur sometimes, but HOW? What makes the process of getting to a certain monster different from another? It's bad enough that the damn things don't have anything to do with any other viral agent, but they don't even try to explain! It's just "oh, boss coming up, look out". And that's pretty much three quarters of the notes in the game. Inexcusable.

But then you get to Krauser. At first I was just like...who the hell's this guy?

Cause they have this big dramatic foreboding entrance to him as if he's some character you've seen before in the series that has some relevance of some sort, but no...he's just this stereotypical G.I. Joe looking guy that faked a death in a helicopter crash and used to be Leon's partner. Now if this was actually material from a previous game I might have interest. Since it ain't though, I didn't give a crap about him. Just another new forgettable character that gets killed off with little-to-no development. Only thing of importance was that he was really working for Wesker.

But what really got me was his initial fight. It was a quicktime event...

...now I gotta ask...why the hell is this in the game?...why is this in anything calling itself a survival horror?...it's nothing but irritating. It's just "tap this button now to watch movie!". If you're gonna play a cutscene then play a cutscene! Don't kill me for not interacting with a movie! Quicktime Events are some of the most annoying things in this or ANY game I have played. Yes, you can panic and press all sorts of buttons when you get grabbed. But interrupting a cutscene and then punishing you out of nowhere cause there's no indication at all that what you're supposed to be WATCHING is what you're PLAYING is aggravating as all hell!

GAH! NO! What happened to the days when I could just run normally from a boulder?! Was THIS so wrong?!

And then you'd have a new path that you'd have to find a new item box in since the one you were going to drop your items off in is now blocked off. Yeah, in the old days you usually only had about 6-8 slots where you could store ammo and weapons and stuff. But that made you think a bit. What did you wanna take with you? What did you think you need or could afford to waste? What should you leave behind? It was all about tickling your brain.

I never had a problem with that kind of inventory, nor did much of anyone I've talked to that likes the old games. It just enough to get stuff done and not overload you to take on anything in sight. Actually get you a tiny bit worried of "hm...I only have three herbs on me...can I take this boss down? What about the Hunter on the other side of the hall?...oh crap! It saw me!".

Hesitation would ensue in the fight causing you to possibly waste more ammo than you intended or lose too much health at which point you start cursing at yourself for not bringing the right equipment with you and wonder if you should head back to the previous item box or keep continuing until you find more stuff or another.

This all goes back to a very basic concept that has been lost on the newer generation. Punishment. In old games if you lost a life you went back to the last save point or *gasp* the beginning of the level! Nowadays there's no consequence what-so-ever. You die and you just start over at the beginning of the room or right where you left off. There's no challenge at all. Hell, in some games now you can't even get killed! It'd be too hard on the gamer's inexperienced mind. With the challenge gone from gaming I pretty much have almost lost interest in the industry. 

There's a point for challenge, even if it was designed to waste your quarters in arcade machines. It makes you actually have to give some effort, work for your victory. That moment when you finally do overcome the trial, make it through without dying and say that "Yes! I did it!" is like no other. You have satisfaction and relief of having completed a goal you've been working towards. 

That's what the old inventories help amplify. With this

I don't have that sense of glory. I have a sense of "okay, what's next? I can literally take on the world." It doesn't even pretend to make you worry. You just look at that and know that you're set and nothing can really do crap against you. And if you run out of something an enemy's just going to give you more when you kill it so you're never in danger of actually wasting anything.

Now you may think I can't stand 4. That I despise it beyond belief. And from a certain light yeah...I do. But I love playing it and any Resident Evil game. They're all fun as hell, but I do consider it the absolute worst main game in the series. It killed the series for me. It changed the gameplay, turned Leon into an annoying ass (that sarcastic attitude is completely unbearable and at least the older games TRIED to take themselves seriously), and has nothing to do with anything else. Because of it the series turned into just some shooter that tries to please the general audience that couldn't give a crap about any of the games before it and praise it to no end for some bizarre reason.

When I play Resident Evil, I play it to play as someone acting as a detective in a maze that they must find interlocking areas in and backtrack through to find items that unlock newer areas with a finite amount of ammo and health lying around along with notes to add to the story. I don't play it to play "Leon's random adventure in Spain" or "Chris's African Safari" (though in that one things that actually mattered at least happened). 

And it really pisses me off seeing the beta of 4. Everyone always goes on about how 5's beta is this great masterpiece that it's a shame that they didn't do. But to me that's 4. Almost always the betas of the games look better, but 5's was pretty much the same story pretty much. With 4 though it was an entirely different thing that actually looked like it'd have been legitimately creepy and taken actual effort. Not to mention that it'd have dealt with Umbrella's origins probably with Progenitor, had better looking Plagas that clearly would have had something to do with the rest of the series, and was meant to be the final game in the series.

That, to anyone who asks, is why I can not stand Resident Evil 4 and consider it the worst main game in the series.

The Landmark in Gaming Animation

To begin allow me to explain why I made this blog. Over the years I'd always seen blogs but never really cared much for them. Just people blabbing about their personal lives most of the time. And while I likely will put up some stuff of my own, it will include quite a bit that I've come to respect in animation over the years. It was John K's blog ( http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/ ) that prompted the idea for me to do one of my own.

While John K does do lots of good in-depth animation posts on his, he doesn't ever touch on a subject that I know he never will. Video Games. We all played em growing up by this point. Fortunately for me I was born into the 16-bit era where attention to detail really started to pick up in gaming. Things looked better, you could tell what they were supposed to be, and overall more life was put into the games (something that sadly is usually missing from a majority of titles these days).

And even though the graphics were undoubtedly better the characters themselves popped with actual new things that they did. No longer were they just pixels standing there forever until you did something on the controller. They moved. They looked at the screen. They had life. They went through animations to amuse the viewer when the controller wasn't being used. Sonic would get annoyed and lay down irritatingly, Vectorman would mess around with his orbs, Yoshi would bounce up and down and scratch his nose, and that's only popular characters.

But inspite of all the advancement the games still mainly focused on being just games, which I personally don't mind. Games should be games first and foremost. The controls and gameplay should be gotten down above all else. Once those are in place any other details can be slapped on to pretty the package up. To my dismay however, they usually don't "pretty it up" as much as I'd like. Of course as a little kid I didn't realize it or the effect it'd have on my subconscious and all that crap, but looking back on it there are quite a number of 16-bit titles that could use a lot more life.

The game I played in my youth though that hit the nail on the head in animation and really pushed the envelope on what all could be done with the liveliness of a title I feel is what I consider a candidate for the best game ever created. It's what I would say is one of the most revolutionary titles ever. Earthworm Jim.

It was just jaw-dropping. It was a cartoon. It was an actual cartoon.  It was what so many games had been trying to portray themselves as but never quite reaching. With Earthworm Jim though it pulled the stunt off perfectly. The character wasn't ever still like Sonic. He was constantly moving and breathing. 

Even as a child I knew there was something special about him. It wasn't until years later when I refound my Sega Genesis and played through it again that I started doing research about him and found out just why the way that he was done was so much more refined than other video games of the time. It turned out that the people that had worked on the Sega Genesis version of Aladdin that I'd also played as a child had made him. It was clear that they knew how to get across life on the pixel screen.

But what was their secret? Well, the main thing was that they did actual animation. And I'm not talking "make things move on-screen". I'm talking actual going in and drawing frames.

They would then digitize the animation frames into sprite-format to put into the cartridge.

After having made Aladdin for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive, Dave Perry's team went on to become Shiny Entertainment and brought aboard an artist called Doug Tennapel.

With that he got to creating Earthworm Jim and his wacky cast of villains and allies.

Along with other animators like Mike Dietz, he and Shiny brought these pieces of art to life.

The ever handsome Mike Dietz btw: 

But they weren't just drawing. These people knew cartoons and they knew how they worked. The squashing and stretching that brought these kinds of characters into surreal believability was as prominent in them as in any true cartoonist's DNA. The characters held weight and had frames smeared just like the classics. Tex Avery himself is even acknowledged in the credits of the game. Some pages of concept art for the game look even more Warner Brothers-y than the game itself with Jim's expressions reminding more of something that you'd see in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".

But this only shows the still concepts that it came from. You've already seen how they turned the pictures into sprites in a gif above, but for more reference here's some more actual frames of animation Mike and the other animators did for the game.

This kind of detail and understanding in the movements and energy of the characters is what brings cartoons to life and few games ever reach that point, with Earthworm Jim being the first in my eyes to do so. That is why I hold the game with such high regard. Half the video game industry doesn't even attempt such a feat, and most of it has just shunned cartoon characters to the point of near non-existence in favor of boring dark gritty titles that every damn thing seems to be turning into these days. All the same crap. The only reason Sonic and Mario really survive is because they are legends. Relics from a past time. If they were made in today's era of gaming they simply wouldn't survive. They'd just have one or two titles and never be seen again just like Rayman almost ended up like and like so many others have unfortunately fallen to the fate of.

That's why I was so pissed at Earthworm Jim HD. About a year back a new team went in and gave Jim a graphical overhaul to be released in an "HD" version on the downloadable market. The chance to bring the classic back looking even better than ever!

There were quite a few problems with it however, namely the biggest one being that it was just crap. No one of the original team was brought on to the project or even asked for help. Doug always seems willing to take part in a new Jim title (which unfortunately always get scrapped) and I'm sure quite a few of the others from Shiny would love to get involved.

But this new team just handled it not even understanding how cartoons worked probably and...well...****ed it up. I'm not going to lie when I say entire frames of animation were TAKEN OUT of the game for the HD version. It should've looked like a hand drawn cartoon, but instead we got...this...

....I'm sorry...but...what the hell am I looking at? How does...what? 

Obviously the right side of the screen is the original game's sprite. And the left is the HD...refining job of it...

...and the rest of these faces are just ****ing offensive

THIS is what happens when you get people that don't know how to do cartoons to redo a classic. Not only that, but they OUTSOURCED their work to China when making the game...they outsourced...a downloadable title...and because of that they also ended up stealing someone's deviantart fanart for the game

as well as a certain "Finding Nemo" fish...

 Now...I have to ask...why did this turn out as such a disaster? Yes the backgrounds are nice, but everything else in the remake is just crap. The difficulty even on classic is completely gone so that the newer generation of gaming doesn't get upset, the "HD"-ifying uglifies even the most basic of characters, Tommy Tallarico's once gorgeous music is now crap, and the new content doesn't look at all like it belongs in Jim's world. I have never understood how big business heads think. Waste the little money it'll take to get people who worked on the old titles to help out and you'll make that money back WITH interest because the product will turn out so much better in the end. Basic common sense here.

*sigh*

But I just wanted to give a look back and analyze what I consider one of the best and most important games in history. A title that I'm sure many games these days could learn from.