If you run out of bullets you run out of bullets and may even have to restart the whole game, so although the game’s locations generally lack the claustrophobic terror of the first couple of games there’s still an all-pervading sense of danger and the constant threat of almost instant death. As the last of the original line of games there’s still much to enjoy in the old-fashioned approach. No wonder Capcom realised the whole franchise needed a complete rethink for Resident Evil 4.Īnd yet despite all these things being true we, as affirmed Resi fans, still enjoy the game. What other changes to the formula there are, are limited to such trivialities as dual-wielding, and targeting, pistols and continues for when you die.
Although two of the weapons do have a first person view (and there’s a simplistic first person precursor to The Mercenaries to unlock) the fact that the game world is now being rendered in fully interactive form goes almost entirely unexploited by anything other than the camera/cut scenes. Now the game seems more like an object lesson in why new visuals are meaningless unless they bring with them new forms of gameplay. At the time that was a price worth paying though, especially given the way the game maintains fixed camera angles but then allows them to pan out as you move – as if the camera itself is watching you. Everything in the game was rendered in real-time, which allows for much more flexibility but also ensures a decrease in the level of visual detail. This was the first of the mainline games not to feature pre-rendered backdrops. (The reasons for explaining why there’s an exact replica of the Spencer Mansion in the game are too stupid to bear repeating.) There are reasons for this though and the game features the return of one of the series’ most enduring bad guys as well as Leonardo DiCaprio lookalike Steve Burnside and⦠well, we better not spoil any more of the plot but it’s a curious mix of the brand new and unnecessarily backwards-looking. She doesn’t make it though and the game proper begins on a prison island which, wouldn’t you know, suffers an outbreak of the zombie-creating T-virus. The CGI might be looking a bit primitive nowadays, and it hasn’t been upscaled very well into HD, but Claire Redfield’s chase and attempted escape from an Umbrella facility in Paris still looks impressively cinematic. The game starts with what remains one of our favourite intros of all time. (The ‘X’ at the end of the games name refers to this being based on the later PlayStation 2 vesion, which added several minutes of new cut scenes.)
0 kommentar(er)
