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The Resident Evil mansion
Hotlead Junkie
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I routinley play various ports and remakes of the orignal Resident Evil game as it's a game that I simply really enjoy going through for no other reason than to just take in the atmosphere and enjoy the game again. I started another playthrough of REMake as I love just looking at that game and it has enough variation in it's characters, extra game modes has enugh random occurances to keep new playthroughs fresh. I have a few questions about the game though
Firstly, I'm pretty sure I'm correct about this but was the mansion simply a huge 'lock/puzzle' just to keep people out of the resarch facilities? I assume no-one actually lived in that mansion and the zombies that wander around it when the STARS members got there were just people coming up from and trying to escape the various labs and resarch facilites, but they got trapped/exasusted/killed before they could go through the motions of emblem swapping and key hunting to escape. The layout of the mansion has always been confusing for me but it does kind of make sense if that was the case. The shotgun and magnum in the mansion (I'm basing this on REMake) were always out of the way of the 'main' route through it and it is entirley possible that a person could go through the mansion without picking these up, so I'm not entirley sure of their purpose, most likley just weapon caches to use to fight off any nasties that the labs that were working on.
Secondly, what are the best Resident Evil novels/the ones worth reading?
Thirdly, does Umberella Chronicles provide good backstory and information about the games or is it just 'new' story elements they made up for that game? I'm more interested to hear what actually happened behind the scenes of the incident in the first game rather than be told a brand new story.
Firstly, I'm pretty sure I'm correct about this but was the mansion simply a huge 'lock/puzzle' just to keep people out of the resarch facilities? I assume no-one actually lived in that mansion and the zombies that wander around it when the STARS members got there were just people coming up from and trying to escape the various labs and resarch facilites, but they got trapped/exasusted/killed before they could go through the motions of emblem swapping and key hunting to escape. The layout of the mansion has always been confusing for me but it does kind of make sense if that was the case. The shotgun and magnum in the mansion (I'm basing this on REMake) were always out of the way of the 'main' route through it and it is entirley possible that a person could go through the mansion without picking these up, so I'm not entirley sure of their purpose, most likley just weapon caches to use to fight off any nasties that the labs that were working on.
Secondly, what are the best Resident Evil novels/the ones worth reading?
Thirdly, does Umberella Chronicles provide good backstory and information about the games or is it just 'new' story elements they made up for that game? I'm more interested to hear what actually happened behind the scenes of the incident in the first game rather than be told a brand new story.
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I guess you could rationalize it that way. Although, I really don't think the game designers were thinking that. Hell, look at the RCPD station in 2. Why the hell was that a giant maze?
None. Seriously.
It's basically "Wesker's Report III". Wesker narrates and you discover what he was up to in RE0, 1, 3 and the Fall of Umbrella. The only new element, really, is the Fall of Umbrella scenario. Everything else is either a recap or behind the scenes stuff (Rebecca and Richard in RE1, Ada and Hunk in RE2/3, Wesker in 0 and 1).
it does provide back story to town characters that the game doesn't include but once you read the book and play the game the characters are completely forgettable.
I personally had the RE:CV comics. good buffer to a crappy story, i wouldnt recommend it to you though since you already didnt like the game.
the Spencer mansion did have researchers living in it but parts were kept confusing on purpose. supposedly george trevor escapes capture, got lost trying to find a way out and starved to death.
so yeah, like 20 researchers lived there according to the memos and notes you pick up. not including test subjects. RE0 tells how not all the staff lived there though and some people used the private express train to get from the marcus' training facility to the arkalay facility. i could swear there were bedrooms in that game, the setup dining table, and a dirty kitchen and bathroom. The place also had a groundskeeper that leaves a memo for you (and a key i think). im pretty sure that some people kicked it there before someone took a dump on the fan.
RE4 was more of an action game.
Umbrella Chronicles is a RAIL SHOOTER (That really, really pisses me off).
RE5 looks to be like RE4.
So yeah, I miss the lack of ammo and rape-tastic monsters that you'll probably never be able to kill. It's just not what made the old RE games good.
Also, I liked all of the RE novels. But then again, I'm crazy.
That was the first ever Crimson Head.
I don't know too much about the whole RE story and I'm not that far yet, so I'm not really the person to comment on the quality of its storytelling, but I've heard several accounts that it does a pretty good job and introduces quite a bit of new info.
Actually, I thought the gameplay in RE: Umbrella Chronicles was very reminiscent of the old games in that you had to conserve ammo and make every little bit count. And it's not like RE + rail shooter is that new a concept; the only difference being that RE:UC is an excellent game (one of the funnest Wii games I've played yet) whereas the Dead Aim line of games ranged in quality from awful to average.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
No. Not at all. Never.
Survival Horror requires you to think that you could die at any moment. You have to think that you're the weakest thing around. You have to think that, right around that corner, something could be waiting to kill you. And you have to be afraid to go around that corner. You have to steel yourself for the possiblity that you could very well get killed at any moment, and that the unknown factor of what is around that corner could quite easily be the thing to kill you.
Ultimately though, you have to think that any of your choices could get you killed. And a game with almost no choices (Rail Shooter), won't let you do that. Sure, it might have a bit of scary atmosphere with the monsters. But it doesn't have that "Should I use my ammo now, just to make sure the zombies don't grab me as I go through, or save it in case there's a Hunter behind that door?"
I'm not sure if I played a different game than you, but I very much had that attitude going through Umbrella Chronicles. Should you save your shotgun and grenade launcher ammo and try to slog through with the weak handgun or use it and hope to god a Hunter, or heaven forbid, a boss isn't just around the corner.
That's a really good way of explaining 'survival horror'. I'v beaten various variations of RE plenty of times but playing my Hard/Chris runthrough today I'm constantly worrying what weapons to bring along or if the next fight will kill me, plus if I should risk running through a zombie infested coridoor with low health to get to a save room or truck on through to the boss and hope I can grab health along the way.
I love the fact that zombies come through doors in REMake, hearing that thudding noise from a door always freaks me out since I always assume it's a super zombie. Either way my route is always planned out and I take the items what I need for that route (a couple of quest items and maybe a few more handgun rounds or a herb) so I hate to come across enemies I didn't expect to find, or unexpectedley get bitten or something.
No, because that was "Should I use grenade launcher?" not "Should I shoot at all?"
And anyway, my point is that a rail shooter creates a lack of choices. So instead of "Should I go through that door?" and "Should I be doing this?" it becomes "Well, heading to the next place. Good thing I still have shotgun ammo."
so the rail shooter is less survival horror because you can't just put the controller down and stop playing forever and have the character just stand there?
ultimately it's just advancing in the game, which you don't have a choice but to do.
No, no, no. That's bad horror.
If this is what horror games were about, then Doom 3 would have been amazing. But Doom 3, aside from the shiny graphics, was a pretty mediocre game. Why? Because you thought there was something around every corner. And often, there was. Doom 3 got to the point where whenever you saw a dark corner, you could just huck a grenade or blast your shotgun, and something would die. Once you came to expect a beastie at every turn and every dark room, the game lost what made it scary.
Horror is about playing on human curiosity. The key to horror is that you have to want to move around that corner, you have to want to see that monster. The horror element comes when the game denies you this satisfaction; you hear a moan, you turn the corner, but no zombie is there. Where is he? Is he in another room? What about that window? Are you really safe?
If the game kills the anticipation, then there's no horror. When it's like Doom3 and you expect monsters everywhere, there's no horror. On the opposite side of the spectrum, when it comes to the point where you're afraid to move around the corner, you're not horrified, you're just frozen. And "wanting to get to the next save point" doesn't count for motivation.
Horror games are not about being the "weakest thing around." I'd argue that in pretty much every zombie movie/game, the humans are the strongest things around. That's not the point. The point is that you have to be VULNERABLE - use too much ammo, make too much sound, etc, and those weak zombies will swarm you and you're done for.
What I'm saying is that survival horror isn't just about the denial of resources, because that just makes you scared of a game over. It's mainly about the suspense, the mystery that you can't solve, being attacked by the unknowable. The village in the beginning - the one you really didn't want to enter, but felt compelled to anyway - was terrifying on the first run through. Why? Because you didn't know what the hell was going on. You're just being attacked left and right by guys who don't seem to be zombies but still act kind of like them and WTF THERE'S A DUDE WITH A CHAINSAW RUN and *ring, ring*...huh?
If you look back at RE4, especially on your first run-through, you'll find that there were a lot of very good horror elements in there. The entire game was a mystery which you were compelled to solve, and every time the game tossed something at you that you didn't understand and which threatened your survival, it scared the piss out of you. Think of the Regenerator: it wasn't scary because of its pretty looks, it was scary because when you shot it in the head, that heads grew right back (AHHH!)! But once you figured out how to kill it, it probably became much less scary for you.
The only reason the game devolved into more of an actiony thing is because occasionally it went too long without challenging your expectations. As soon as the game became predictable, the horror was lost, and it became a (still rather fun) action game. And of course, on subsequent playthroughs, you weren't scared at all because you already knew the answers to all the game's mysteries.
But RE1 scary because you control like a tank and because you can be killed by anything due to your lack of resources? No. That was just frustrating, and caused you to take longer to kill things (or avoid killing them altogether) that you knew you could kill easily. The horror of the game simply comes from its reversals on expectation/anticipation, whether it be "the window" or Lisa Trevor (both excellent examples in my mind of horror). That isn't, or doesn't necessarily have to be lost in the translation to games like RE4 and Umbrella Chronicles.
A "lack of choices" makes it less of a puzzle game, not less of a survival horror game.
However, I have to say that the differences between Doom and Resident Evil are pretty gigantic. In RE, that corner didn't ALWAYS have an enemy behind it, but you expected it to. And you couldn't lob a grenade over, because you usually didn't have them.
Doom wasn't scary because you had ample resources and good weapons. RE is scary because the few weapons you get that can actually kill something properly have three bullets, and when the Big Bad Scary jumps out at you you're thinking "OH HOLY SHIT I DON'T HAVE ANY AMMO I'M GONNA DIEEEE!!!"
But then, when you actually do manage to kill the thing with your handgun and have run over to the side, found a save point, a sense of relief washes over you. That's how you know if it's a survival horror. Are you actually trying to SURVIVE? Is your sole objective "Get by without dying"? Because if not, it isn't a survival horror.
I got the first few editions of those comics. I laughed myself silly when they went to the zoo and T virus infected gophers attacked.
My sole objective when playing Super Mario Bros. is "get by without dying," and when I finally see that flagpole, or finally manage to squeak between Bowser's fireballs and hammers, relief washes over me that I managed to survive.
Is Super Mario Bros. survival horror?
http://www.audioentropy.com/
That's a load of bull.
If you expect a baddie to be around a corner, you expect a baddie to be around a corner, no matter whether you have the weapons to take it or not. If there's always a baddie around the corner, or enough that you always expect there to be one, then there's no horror.
It doesn't MATTER if you can kill them or not. That's not the point. Imagine a scenario where you are surrounded by a bunch of invincible Lisa Trevors. You turn the corner, there's Lisa. There's Lisa behind you, Lisa in front of you, Lisa everywhere. Just a bunch of Lisas who you can't kill chasing you around a mansion while you try to do stuff. And beyond that first moment where you're like "Shit, I can't kill this thing!", nothing about that scenario is scary. You're just surrounded by a bunch of invincible dudes.
No one plays a horror game and is scared when their expectations are validated. You're scared when you're
Dave I think you hit submit too earl-
Oh I see what you did there.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
only if you're playing lost levels
No one plays a horror game and is scared when their expectations are validated. You're scared when you're SURPRISED - whether that means you're ambushed, or a dog leaps through a window you weren't expecting it to leap through, or a Regenerator's blown off head regrows, or whatever. Horror is about creating a mood, an expectation - giving the player a false sense of security - and then snatching that away from him. That can happen whether the player is armed to the teeth or given nothing but a camera and a flashlight.
See Alien v Predator's Marine levels for an idea of what Doom 3 tried and failed to do. AvP had survival horror at its finest, and never did it really matter that you were fully capable of killing an alien with your weaponry.
So?
Playing a game a certain number of times means that your opinions on the genre are gospel?
Oh. I thought you were just invalidating our expectation that you had written a complete post.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
See: Silent Hill.
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I heartily agree with this.
Most recent example I have was when I was in the sewers in RE4
The 1st bug attacked me and I was so friggin scared I unloaded 100 tmp rounds into him before I realized you only needed like 6 to kill it
CAPCOM has a remake of REmake on mobile that's coming out called Resident Evil: Genesis. It's like The Immortal combined with Shadowrun, and it's another way to check out the Mansion.
When you think "Oh crap, something's going to attack me, and I have NO AMMO to kill it with" (Actually being able to kill it isn't important, the fact that you THINK you can't kill it is.), you're more scared than when a dog jumps at you. The dog is just setting you up for the tension. The dog is showing you what to expect. The dog is telling you "Hey, this is going to happen again a few rooms from here. Watch out for it. 'Cause it's going to happen again." And you're scared, because you expect that to happen, and you're afraid that you won't be able to do anything about it when it does. Doom might have had monsters jumping at you, but in Doom, you KNEW that you could kill them. You knew that your chainsaw and Laser Cannon of Ultimate Death would take it out. In a survival horror game, you think "Oh shit, this handgun won't be enough to take out all of those zombies."
And like I've said, whether you actually CAN kill the enemies or not is unimportant. The point is to think that you can't. And thus, you are afraid of them.
Oh, and the guy who said something about Mario? Dude, Mario isn't, and never will be, scary. And the objective in Mario isn't "Survive", it's "Jump on the turtle and get points". Mario doesn't have the atmosphere of a survival horror.
:winky:
This is a lot of what I've been trying to say, even if I haven't been doing it well. And lack of ammo helps to add to that, as does thinking that your character is weaker than everything else. When you think "I can't kill anything, but everything can kill me", then you're afraid. But in the more recent RE games, the point has been KILLING, and not SURVIVAL. And when it's easy to kill things, you're not afraid of them. No matter how monstrous they are. Hell, the Flood would probably be scary if Master Chief weren't such a badass.
Regardless of whether or not the game scared you personally, it's obvious that trying to scare the player was a big goal of RE4 throughout and so I'd say it definitely falls under the horror gaming category. Conversely, Half-Life 2 and Ep1&2 all have some fantastic horror oriented set pieces and moments, but horror isn't really one of the major goals of those games so I wouldn't classify them as horror games (although I think most horror game fans would enjoy them).
As for RE:UC, I would classify it as a horror game since it's obviously trying to scare the player at times with its pace that is slower than usual for a light gun game and various surprise enemy attacks. It's not as scary as the best in horror due to the aforementioned Doom 3 "Expect an enemy surprise attack at all times" syndrome, but it is trying and I did jump a few times.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Am I the only person who thought RE4 was very intense? Villagers were freaking creepy.
I think his point was to show the holes in your reasoning.
Fear of death, or in other words the fear of the game over =/ horror, or survival horror.
Also, MY point is that expectation =/ tension. When you expect something, the tension dissolves. When you expect something and then expectation is shown to be invalid (i.e. you round the corner, and no zombie is there where you thought it would be, but you still hear the moaning), THAT is horror.
Your frequent examples that low ammo = TEH SCARIES is a fallacy. In RE4's opening village sequence, I was never at a loss for ammo. I mean, sure, I only had a few shots for my shotgun, which was MUCH better for killing stuff, but I always had a grenade or two, plenty of pistol shots, and my knife/kicks.
What made the sequences scary was how often my expectations were turned on my head. Headshot to a not-zombie? Flinch, shit, need more than 1 to kill. Run away from them? They run right after you. Go into that near cabin, expecting them to shamble through the door? No dice, turns out they'll hack it down with axes, THEN run in and surround you. Oh right, that window's just been broken in and they're pouring in through there as well. Climb up on top of a building? They'll put up ladders and follow you!
The ENTIRE sequence you're fighting for your survival (aka, survival horror), and the entire sequence - on your first run through, that is - you're scared out of your wits. You're fully capable, but you're completely out of your element, you're confused, and nothing you're doing seems to work the way you think it will.
The scarcity of ammo in RE1 doesn't create the sense of dread, and it certainly isn't pivotal to it. Would the game be scarier if you had no weapons at all? I certainly don't think so. Less ammo just means you can't kill stuff as easily, which can be scary - but you can be absolutely armed to the teeth and still not be able to kill stuff easily (once again, AvP).
Also: Guy who said villagers are creepy:
Yah, maybe. But they turned Chris into a badass, so you thought he could take them out easily. It's highly possible that they were a bit harder to kill than the zeds from the earlier games. But really, the point is that they SEEMED easier to kill. Lot's of games have scary enemies. God of War had some freaky-ass things in it. But Kratos was freakishly awesome, so you never really had any doubt that you could take them.
Then again, I'm one of .5% that prefers the original's live action opening to the remake's CG one, so what do I know.
I mean heck, the first time I put in RE4 Wii Edition, I was in the village showing off to my friends, kicking ass even though I had just gotten used to the controls, and I go into the shotgun house, and I go upstairs, but there's a couple Ganados outside the window I usually take, so I figure "okay, I'll just kill them then hop out..." when I hear the VWWHHHHHHRRRRRRRR and I go "HOLY SHIT", and I literally take a few steps back just in time to avoid Salvador's attack from off-screen to my left.
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you can keep using this to make your point but I assure you there are people there who were scared from resi4. the fact that you felt badass and thus weren't scared doesn't change that.