This video is brought to you by GameMaker, the free, fast, and easy-to-use 2D game engine that’s helped power modern classics like Deltarune, Pizza Tower, and Yahtzee’s Starstruck Vagabond - opr.as/GM-SecondWind4
Just throwing a heads-up for those curious about GameMaker: this weekend they will be doing their annual gm(48) Game Jam, so maybe that could be a dope starting point for folks(such as for example, me.)
Don’t worry, if you listen to the optional codec calls, Kojima will always go out of his way to explain every last supernatural detail with pseudo science.
@codebracker The glowing mushrooms that Snake _thinks_ refills his batteries, and placebos himself into believing it does; but that actually don't do anything as even though on screen the battery meter refills, it will actual end up draining faster, and run out at the same time as if you had never eaten the glowing mushrooms to begin with.
I suppose a thing you can praise Requiem for is that it gets you into the exact mindset of how Leon is feeling about the Umbrella zombie business. But given that he is near death’s door from dealing with a lot of zombies because of a wounding in Resident Evil 2, and above it all because he has been at it for about 20 years, that’s a very good stealth insult.
I don't understand how anyone could enjoy the Grace segments, and I'm very much a sneaky Outlast-y survival horror-y fan. The Leon parts were the only time when it felt like the level design and mechanics actually matched each other.
@HonkeyKongLive The Grace Care Center section is one of the most well designed sections of gameplay in any Resident Evil game. What is there that's so complicated about understanding why people like it?
It really does feel like they were going for a greatest hits with this one i.e. taking stuff from all the recent Resident Evil games and blending them into one game. By the end I was literally saying, "all it's missing is Nemesis," and anyone who's finished the game knows how that goes.
It's all just so cynically nostalgia-baiting when you take a moment to consider everything that happens in the game - half the game is just "WOW, 'MEMBER WHEN THIS HAPPENED TO LEON??" - the fact that you revisit the RCPD and it's surroundings due to a flimsy excuse such as "this character suddenly has PTSD that he has never shown signs of before in any previous games!" is enough to sour me on the game. Like I swear to fucking god the way it's written I genuinely think they expected me to stand up and clap when it revealed that it's Sherry Birkin behind that phone, talking to Leon. Speaking of which, was there any genuine reason for Sherry Birkin to be the one behind the phone? Did she do ANYTHING that isn't just "generic hacker gives main character information"? Because the more I really think about it, the less and less I recall what purpose she had in the game that couldn't be achieved by any other character. Seems to me like the inclusion of her was just another cynical nostalgia-bait moment lol.
@atomic747 The fact that he looks like him, sounds like him, and has his powers. And the fact that the game firmly establishes cloning as being a thing.
@atomic747 Surmised that he's a clone made by "The Connections" to try and copy the success of Wesker. They have been trying to make clones but I believe only found success recently after RE8
My friends were saying the same thing during my stream! It was all "Do you wanna know how I got these cracked skin?" And "it's simple, we kill the Leon" 😂
After seeing that final bit of the video I really want Yahtzee to make a Semi Ramblomatic comparing and contrasting Metal gear and Resident evil's storytelling and how they explain what's happening
Both share similarities in that what they try to justify in later titles with technobabble got less and less convincing (ah, yes, the werewolves and vampires were caused by... the Lousiana psychic mold girl, and parasites infecting one's respiratory system gives one the power to turn invisible and photosynthesize). However, the difference is that Resident Evil started off by having the zombies and the bioweapons be largely justified by scientific experimentation and viral research by an evil biomedical corporation (sorry, a normal biomedical corporation), while Metal Gear Solid was more anime magical realism with added geopolitical context, with superpowered characters that didn't really need an explanation for the stories to work until Kojima decided to do so anyway. One served the intrigue at the center of the franchise from Umbrella doing shady stuff and profiteers taking advantage of it, while the other served the escapist fantasy of being a secret agent on top secret missions upon which the thematic layers could be laid down.
Good analysis. It is interesting how both are essentially just wall to wall b-movie schlock, but MGS manages to transcend that and actually be about something from time to time, without the script being any less ridiculous.
@callumwoulahan7681 Resident Evil does also have themes from time to time: biomedical corporations only respect humanity insofar as they act as further flesh to be bought, sold, and manipulated as they see fit with the police rendered useless to actually help people due to being directly funded by them, RE 5 attempted commentary on neocolonialism with Wesker as a scenery-chewing eugenicist (emphasis on *attempted*), RE 4 can be read as a metaphor for the depersonalizing effects of religious fundamentalism (is Las Plagas just a very monstrous Catholicism? you be the judge!), and even RE 9 is basically the MGS 4 of the franchise, with the player exploring the old monsters and ashen ruins of a city that characters still keep coming back to for some reason, complete with a Nazi clone (the blond hair, the white suit, the decorated pistol, the sense of entitlement) that is blindsided by the MacGuffin actually being something to bring about positive change.
@thirdcoinedge For sure, I'm not trying to deny RE has all of those themes and readings, and I prefer it out of the two series if I had to choose. But it just seems true to me that MGS more meaningfully leverages its interactivity and narrative to occasionally really try and make a political, humanist statement, that it views doing that as a real priority of the work, in a way that RE just doesn't. The various silly evil doings of the umbrella corporation have never really forced me to make some kind of choice or face some realisation about how I feel about things, because I mean, they're obviously horrible and just make monsters and try to take over the world. The most duplicitous capitalist scumbag ever could look at them and still easily and honestly say hey, those guys are bad, I don't like that, so the critique is pretty bare narratively. And mechanically, you just shoot and avoid and overcome those monsters in a kind of effortlessly correct way, so there is little prompting for reflection. In MGS, the attempt to reach for anti war themes is surrounded by just as silly a cast of villains, but it attempts to at least try and treat what the player has done in the game seriously, in big climactic moments, and it feels like not giving it enough credit to act like RE is just as palpable in how it expresses its themes.
@callumwoulahan7681 Yes, MGS definitely cares about conveying themes more than Resident Evil. I think 5, 8, and 9 have what could be considered the most commentary/themes - neocolonialism, survivor's guilt - and even then, they're certainly less focused on exploring them in-depth than MGS, moreso using them as a basis for setpieces and tying the narrative together.
_"Like what Metal Gear Solid ended up doing."_ - I will never not be delighted by the fact that the series that spent hours and hour retroactively trying to make Vamp or the arm thing work through technobabble and shit at several points just throws its hands up and goes: *_"I dunno, it's magic or something."_* and the audience just shrugs and rolls with it, perhaps with a sage nod.
I mean, I feel like inscrutable supernatural stuff was established at least as early as Metal Gear Solid 1 with Vulcan Raven, so I never looked for or paid any attention to explanations for Vamp, Liquid Ocelot, The Boss's crew of weirdos, etc and my experience was probably better for it.
I mean, do they ever properly explain Psycho Mantis' powers? Or what Fortune does in her... how not to spoil... last scene? Or Vulcan Raven's, well, ravens? If they did please let me know, I haven't played all the Metal Gear Solid games... yet.
If Twin Peaks has taught me anything, it's that the hardest part of being an FBI agent is drinking all that damn fine coffee without having to keep taking toilet breaks.
And insert a "thanks I hate it" regardless. I knew they weren't going to sweep that garbage under the carpet anymore, but damnit when I read from Grace's file "the President was assassinated" with an immediate "oh for fuck's saaaake, Capcom." It was bad enough with Heisenberg confrirming the boulder-punching asshole bit, but now I can't help but only think RE10 will in fact have a Sheeva cameo at the very least. So here we go kiddies and long time veterans of the Resident Evil Franchise, Capcom is doing it's darndest to ensure RE5 and RE6 are still $#%&ing canon for all the wrong reasons. Damn I feel sorry for Claire. Code Veronica needs all the remake help it can get. Next Remake is Code Veronica with insane amounts of content rework and stripping to help RE-set up Wesker vs Chris, and with a stinger about Zeno...then RE10 is Chris as main character with what I said earlier. calling it.
I figured it was more to have her get some experience by having her look through a crime scene that’s been empty for a while and try to process what happened to her there (go to actual therapist for traumatic experience treatment). Still nonsense I know but this is what I figured.
Mild spoilers, but the late game indicates that the big evil megacorporation™ has influence over the US government (including controlling the Raccoon City lockdown) so it's pretty easy to infer that her boss was instructed to send her specifically. What Yahtzee somehow didn't mention is that she, as an analyst, was sent to a crime scene at the hotel where she was almost murdered and watched her mom killed before her eyes. Which is a level of "dude seriously wtf" that you can really only expect from secret evil puppeteers
@VeritabIlIti Is this shadowy megacorporation at all related to the secretive "Family" that was revealed to be the puppeteer behind the US Government and world events for at least the 20th century in RE6?
as far as I remember It's kinda rare that we get a horror compliment from Yahtee so hearing him compliment the starting hospital sequence for Grace's gameplay means it must've really pulled him in
Requiem is like a reunion tour of a classic band, they pull out some great new renditions but then go through their old hits (which people either eat it up or just go meh)
Resident Evil's need to have one of the best first acts in gaming and one of the most final acts in gaming is crossing into some kind of reflexive pathology. And I say that as someone who actually liked the second half of this game, the victory lap boss fights of Bigger Spider, Plant 42+1, Mr. XX, and Umbrella Chronicles PC actually worked for me in that "greatest hits album" kind of way.
It wasn't the worst thing in the franchise and is saved by the fact that the games core mechanics work well. But the design overall was so broing. The lack of new actually original BOWs that aren't another generic flesh monster was disappointing. The lack of reused old monsters (only lickers again?? No hunters? The frog things from 2? Ect), and how empty and boring the semi openworld city section were really hold it back. Oh and I love the gun upgrades from 4/village but this was painfully limited and most of the later guns aren't even clear upgrades over the existing ones. Even that menu was ugly and boring.
Didn't you called this in an EP/SR? That Resident Evil would speed run the whole cycle in one game? The only think you missed is that Chris Redfield would show up and the final boss would be multi-player only.
This run might be two games long, with the Chris Redfield and multiplayer parts coming soon, the full cycle in one game singularity might not be too far away!
I can tell you, I was super annoyed about that as somebody not intimately familiar with the FBI. I spent nearly my whole time as Grace thinking about other characters who have more combat proficiency than a literal FBI agent because I assumed an FBI agent out in the field would have, y'know, training and competence.
@s@sleeplessindefatigable6385hey do have competence, at their job, which is a typically not fighting, because the federal bureau of investigation, investigation, not fighting.
I did quite enjoy RE9... but my biggest issue is that there wasn't more of it. Grace's section could have been longer or even a second location to explore after you got done with the hospital.
But that's kinda precisely what I hated about the game, actually - the joy of RE7 was essentially exploring the same location with more and more keys. You can feel how the design is purposeful and competent, as it genuinely feels like you are constantly experiencing something new, despite it being in pretty much the exact same location. Both RE8 and RE9 fail at this, however. RE8 is literally a linear game that doesn't allow you to explore anything - the entirety of Castle Dimistrecu is literally just "go through the only door you can go" because the game doesn't allow for any exploration. And RE9 does it well for the first few hours, but... then it arbitrarily just shoves you into new locations before that feeling of "in-depth exploration of one location" sets in. It feels so linear to me, which is something I kinda hate.
This, the only true survival horror part of this game is the beginning in the hospital and that's it. The other Grace's sections are very basic, almost hallways compared to the hospital.
@Mackievellian Or super-duper parasites that can do anything and everything, from letting people photosynthesis to mimicking parts of the human body until specific languages are spoken.
Regarding that one character whose name starts with a Z, who looks suspiciously like a certain character whose name starts with an A, IIRC the two are actually related. Also, while Doctor Gideon does look like an assimilated Heath Ledger, I still kinda like him as a character. He's a fun guy, and refreshingly campy despite looking greyer than a photocopy of John Major.
Everything he said, plus the lab is always a sleek white tile chic collection of offices and cafeterias. Why can't we have lived-in laboratories with rooms of pretend-science equipment anymore?
After about 7 years of watching reviews I can proudly say that I can sometimes predict what yathzee is going to like and disslike about a game I actually know.
I noticed someone recently point out that Dubai being abandoned by all the influencers and wealthy expats feels like it might be leading into Spec Ops: The Line (one of Yahtzee's favourite games).
0:34 Dammit, I never thought about a "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"-themed action game and it now feels like the gaming industry's poorer for a lack of it.
I was in the opposite boat. The grace sections were fun the first time but Leon's combat really hooked me once insanity unlocked. The dread that came from the Grace sections wasnt because of the horror but the dread of having to go through them again for 15 minutes of leon combat.
I recall that during the more stressful moments of grace's campaign I would regularly think "save us Leon!" Which might be proof they nailed the contrast.
@sheridanmovieguy Pretty much, I played RE5 twice with different friends and had a blast. RE6 I played solo and could barely stomach a single playthrough.
@JStar977and i played resi 5 solo and it was genuinely the worst mainline resi that i ever play. Like, even worse than 6, and 6 was....well, you know; but at least the IA partner there actually work
Kudos to Yahtzee for representing quite possibly the worst experience anyone with arachnophobia could have in a modern game with the cutest possible plush toy you can find online.
It's always kind of nice to see another video in a series that he has been reviewing from the early days: I remember the short on the Resident Evil 5 trailer and how people thought it was racist.
heaven forbid a game set in africa with a parasite that regresses minds have enemies of african ethnicity and mindless behavior. i dunno what exactly were they expecting to find in an re game set in africa
None of the characters in the game have MET Wesker. That's why Leon is so non-plussed about it. Same thing with Old HUNK being called Commander. Leon has no clue who it is.
More likely one of Wesker's siblings considering he had Racoon City Syndrome too. So not a clone *of* Wesker, but cloned from the same genetic material as him.
Not sure I agree. Once you see him... slightly differently at the end... he looks more like American army guy thats pissy his hair gel ran out. Its funny, but did destroy his mystique somewhat.
From what I gathered as someone who's way too autistic about the stupid overly-convoluted Resi lore, Zeno is all but explicitly said to be another child from project W. Which was Ozwell Spencer's eugenics program where he and Umbrella made test tube babies hopped up on the Progenitor virus, resulting in Albert and Alex Wesker, and now presumably Zeno Wesker as well.
I keep trying to get through this one because on paper it's fantastic but the Grace sections are so agonizing it's just not fun. That first section with the giant monster is incredible but everything past that felt like they forgot that Grace isn't in an action game and they want us to sneak and be careful with ammo except they put in far too many enemies for that to work. I'd get stuck trying to find a damn path to sneak around enemies and get spotted over and over and I only have one bullet left so time to restart from my last save.
I feared this would happen... it came about in 7, 8, and now 9. Scary and heart-pounding in the beginning, then middle, then... fades slowly into well... *locks shotgun*
everyone rags on Grace as if she wasn't just a data analyst that got kidnapped, she was sent to check out the scene of a person who died of Raccoon city syndrome and got k i d n a p p e d she isn't some super spy, she writes reports all day
It honestly makes sense that she, as the bookworm and otherwise normal office worker, wouldn't be able to handle more than one ankle biter at a time. But I will forever and a half despise doing her initial sections in third person because the game has to balance you being able to peek around corners with Grace having the dexterity of the playable avatar of QWOP. I KNOW WHY she is like this, but that doesn't mean I have to LIKE it. It makes for decent atmosphere building up until she stumbles and I have to reload a checkpoint on a chase I otherwise can do with certain confidence.
And yet she's inexplicably sent to the field. :P Seriously though...her boss seemed understanding and sensitive to her history with the hotel. What happens if she tells him "I don't think I can do it. I still have very traumatic memories of that place that would impact my ability to do my work." It's not like her boss gave her a "go there or you're fired" ultimatum.
Yet I still think its completely ridiculous. They wanted to give her government background and or reason to know how to handle a gun but also wanted to do the lost child in scary world thing, it's one or the other.
Finally an explanation why I can only seem to find comments, reactions, even live gameplays of the first are (the mansion). I legit thought that was all there was!
I think a lot of my issues with the second half initially and the first half retrospectively stem from a lack of challenge in the game. From Leon being able to parry asteroid-level strikes from giant blob-monster hands to the underwhelming boss battles to the puzzles that can at points feel so perfunctory that I barely clocked their importance, it just sort of felt like it was designed to be rushed through. Even the chase segments with the girl lose a lot of their impact once you realize the predetermined events that trigger it and it ends up just being an obnoxious forced break in gameplay as you wait to be able to come out of hiding.
designed to be rushed through 100% after seeing that post by Gene Park getting a 2hr 40min-ish record time like the day the game came out (apparently he had already played through 8-9 times)
Looking forward to Yathzee rolling his eyes at the whole Memory Transfer stuff in RE9 in a potential Semi-Ramblomatic, seeing it as a very flimsy way to bring back dead villains and even playable characters =P
@kayleblang5081 No, it hasn't - the red herring was that Grace was a clone (she wasn't, and honestly this twist sucked ass), not that the memory transfer was imposdible or whatever. If anything, the game revealed that Zeno is a clone of Wesker, so memory transfer may yet be possible in that context.
When Requiem was first announced, I couldn't help but think about that one Extra Punctuation video Yahtzee made on the cycles of the RE franchise; specifically his joke that RE9 would complete the cycle of enshittification in one complete game. It might have been hyperbole at the time (especially with the multiplayer bit), but it feels like he predicted it cold.
Unironically, a weird hybrid of what sounds like Fallout 3, Elden Ring, and Resident Evil, seems like it'd be awesome. Give it combat on-par with KF2, and it'd be golden.
@Umbra_Ursus Only issue is the RE Engine has proven to be notoriously bad at producing open world games. Both Monster Hunter Wilds and Dragon's Dogma 2 run like absolute garbage.
@lazilypunctual2863 Dialectical hegemony and the enactment of contradictory definitions in a rural community planning process. I mean, check the time stamp! It's OBVIOUS 🤣
wouldnt get my hopes up given past reviews. At most well see the review at the end of the month with maaaybe one (1) week of play and a cumulative 5-10 hours of play
I feel like Grace was supposed to be the main focus of this game, but they weren't confident people would take to her, so they added Leon in to bring the classic fans back. As a result, it feels like she's barely playable, as Leon's sections greatly overshadow Grace's.
Apparently it was the exact opposite: the early drafts of the game featured Leon in tense survival horror situations, but then part of the team (probably the sensible female part) went "this is not what people want to see from Leon anymore" and now we have the best of both worlds
Resident Evil can never help itself. The first 5 hours are possibly the best a survival horror game could ever be. It's utter perfection. And then they feel the need to be cool and pander to the hype crowd and throw Leon fighting Mr.X, exploring Racoon City (despite the fact that there's nothing there now) and half-adding Wesker. Like....you had a perfect game! Why not just...make that the game. So what could have been a game for the ages, will now be seen as another sidestep with some hope for the next one. Again.
One cool detail is that at the beginning of the game, Grace's melee attack is a slow shove, whereas in the second half she starts using a quicker kick to knock zombies down. It is never stated, but the implication seems clear that she picked it up from Leon.
Isn't this how 28 Days Later goes? At the start of the movie it's a survival horror, and by the end of the movie he's the Zombie Whisperer taking out military agents and shit. And that's a cult classic.
Seems like a reformulation of re8's problem: wanting to have spooky atmospheric re7 vibes AND fun asskicking campy re4 vibes, wanting to introduce new characters and stories AND not move away from established lore and continuity. i guess they thought having the dual protag gameplay would mean they could have their cake and eat it too, and i'm not just talking about leon's
The second half DRAGS. I felt the same on my second playthrough, knowing it lead to that awful second half that was littered with references to previous games and devoid of any original ideas made me quit the game, not to mention and incredibly shit ending that tries to retcon Resi5 and fails miserably. I honestly felt like reviewers played a completely different second half of the game when I looked at the reviews, but to each his own I guess.
Definitely got the vibe of "a solid short survival horror game, followed by a Resi greatest hits album". To the point, the second half of the game barely registers as canon to my brain, and not just an indulgent set of fun bonus missions. Optimistically this means they're closing out and moving on a bit story wise.
The first half is one of the best RE games ever, the Leon sections are such great ways to release the tension from the Grace sections. If they had stuck with that formula through the whole game it would be easily been top 3, but I feel like they were scared to have a game with Leon in it where he didn't get equal time in the spotlight.
This video is brought to you by GameMaker, the free, fast, and easy-to-use 2D game engine that’s helped power modern classics like Deltarune, Pizza Tower, and Yahtzee’s Starstruck Vagabond - opr.as/GM-SecondWind4
Requiem is a damn good game as is Split Fiction.
Imagine if you couldn't fight the final boss unless you got into multiplayer your prediction would have come true
Just throwing a heads-up for those curious about GameMaker: this weekend they will be doing their annual gm(48) Game Jam, so maybe that could be a dope starting point for folks(such as for example, me.)
❤
Don’t worry, if you listen to the optional codec calls, Kojima will always go out of his way to explain every last supernatural detail with pseudo science.
ah yes the glowing mushrooms that refill your battery if you eat them
and Nano machines son!
@codebracker The glowing mushrooms that Snake _thinks_ refills his batteries, and placebos himself into believing it does; but that actually don't do anything as even though on screen the battery meter refills, it will actual end up draining faster, and run out at the same time as if you had never eaten the glowing mushrooms to begin with.
@TheMultiTasker3Snake ate mushrooms and got high, is technically pseudo science that explains everything still! Nice lol
Yeah, there's a line in there where a character says there's nothing supernatural, it's all advanced tech or something like that;
At this point, Leon IS just doing his daily commute, hes been doing this for 30 years!
I suppose a thing you can praise Requiem for is that it gets you into the exact mindset of how Leon is feeling about the Umbrella zombie business. But given that he is near death’s door from dealing with a lot of zombies because of a wounding in Resident Evil 2, and above it all because he has been at it for about 20 years, that’s a very good stealth insult.
It’d be a waste not to since he has that nice Porsche.
They should try this formula in horror movies, the first half is all terror then some Arnold Schwarzenegger-type shows up and just shoots everything.
The beginning of T2
Mandy kinda fits this
Plus it's Nick Cage
Aliens
The end of Hereditary
Primitive War stars as Jurassic Park meets Platoon and ends as Turok with best final set piece of 2025
I feel bad for anyone who didn't enjoy the Leon segments, since we got a Leon-focused DLC coming and Mercenaries or something very similar on the way.
@ClaytorYurnero 2nd part of the game with leon sucked but his gameplay is super nice, just his whole part doesnt work
I don't understand how anyone could enjoy the Grace segments, and I'm very much a sneaky Outlast-y survival horror-y fan. The Leon parts were the only time when it felt like the level design and mechanics actually matched each other.
Yeah, I too feel bad for people that hate fun.
@HonkeyKongLive The Grace Care Center section is one of the most well designed sections of gameplay in any Resident Evil game. What is there that's so complicated about understanding why people like it?
Resident Evil Mercenaries shortens to R.E.M., so presumably it's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
It really does feel like they were going for a greatest hits with this one i.e. taking stuff from all the recent Resident Evil games and blending them into one game. By the end I was literally saying, "all it's missing is Nemesis," and anyone who's finished the game knows how that goes.
Yeah. It really felt like a love letter to the pre-RE7 games, and a goodbye as well... I wonder what you'd call that.
One might call it a gumbo stew.
That was my problem with village. Like "Ok this is just 7 but they also wanted to be four annnd that doesn't really fit"
It's all just so cynically nostalgia-baiting when you take a moment to consider everything that happens in the game - half the game is just "WOW, 'MEMBER WHEN THIS HAPPENED TO LEON??" - the fact that you revisit the RCPD and it's surroundings due to a flimsy excuse such as "this character suddenly has PTSD that he has never shown signs of before in any previous games!" is enough to sour me on the game. Like I swear to fucking god the way it's written I genuinely think they expected me to stand up and clap when it revealed that it's Sherry Birkin behind that phone, talking to Leon.
Speaking of which, was there any genuine reason for Sherry Birkin to be the one behind the phone? Did she do ANYTHING that isn't just "generic hacker gives main character information"? Because the more I really think about it, the less and less I recall what purpose she had in the game that couldn't be achieved by any other character. Seems to me like the inclusion of her was just another cynical nostalgia-bait moment lol.
@arlom5132 A reqiuem? lol
Well, Zeno is not ENTIRELY unrelated from Wesker...
I kinda love how the game sort of calls out that Zeno was a Wesker impersonator
@MatthewCSnow Not exactly an impersonator. He's a clone.
@NineyWho how is he a clone?
@atomic747 The fact that he looks like him, sounds like him, and has his powers. And the fact that the game firmly establishes cloning as being a thing.
@atomic747 Surmised that he's a clone made by "The Connections" to try and copy the success of Wesker. They have been trying to make clones but I believe only found success recently after RE8
Oh my gosh... he IS Ledger's Joker if he got assimilated by the Borg! Can't believe I missed that!
My friends were saying the same thing during my stream! It was all "Do you wanna know how I got these cracked skin?" And "it's simple, we kill the Leon" 😂
I saw him as more of a crustpunk Dr. Octopus, personally.
Kept hearing Ethan Hawk black phone voice.
He's giving more that incel riddler from the 2022 movie
He looked more like Resident Evil’s version of Mad-Eye Moody.
After seeing that final bit of the video I really want Yahtzee to make a Semi Ramblomatic comparing and contrasting Metal gear and Resident evil's storytelling and how they explain what's happening
Both share similarities in that what they try to justify in later titles with technobabble got less and less convincing (ah, yes, the werewolves and vampires were caused by... the Lousiana psychic mold girl, and parasites infecting one's respiratory system gives one the power to turn invisible and photosynthesize). However, the difference is that Resident Evil started off by having the zombies and the bioweapons be largely justified by scientific experimentation and viral research by an evil biomedical corporation (sorry, a normal biomedical corporation), while Metal Gear Solid was more anime magical realism with added geopolitical context, with superpowered characters that didn't really need an explanation for the stories to work until Kojima decided to do so anyway. One served the intrigue at the center of the franchise from Umbrella doing shady stuff and profiteers taking advantage of it, while the other served the escapist fantasy of being a secret agent on top secret missions upon which the thematic layers could be laid down.
Good analysis. It is interesting how both are essentially just wall to wall b-movie schlock, but MGS manages to transcend that and actually be about something from time to time, without the script being any less ridiculous.
@callumwoulahan7681 Resident Evil does also have themes from time to time: biomedical corporations only respect humanity insofar as they act as further flesh to be bought, sold, and manipulated as they see fit with the police rendered useless to actually help people due to being directly funded by them, RE 5 attempted commentary on neocolonialism with Wesker as a scenery-chewing eugenicist (emphasis on *attempted*), RE 4 can be read as a metaphor for the depersonalizing effects of religious fundamentalism (is Las Plagas just a very monstrous Catholicism? you be the judge!), and even RE 9 is basically the MGS 4 of the franchise, with the player exploring the old monsters and ashen ruins of a city that characters still keep coming back to for some reason, complete with a Nazi clone (the blond hair, the white suit, the decorated pistol, the sense of entitlement) that is blindsided by the MacGuffin actually being something to bring about positive change.
@thirdcoinedge For sure, I'm not trying to deny RE has all of those themes and readings, and I prefer it out of the two series if I had to choose. But it just seems true to me that MGS more meaningfully leverages its interactivity and narrative to occasionally really try and make a political, humanist statement, that it views doing that as a real priority of the work, in a way that RE just doesn't.
The various silly evil doings of the umbrella corporation have never really forced me to make some kind of choice or face some realisation about how I feel about things, because I mean, they're obviously horrible and just make monsters and try to take over the world. The most duplicitous capitalist scumbag ever could look at them and still easily and honestly say hey, those guys are bad, I don't like that, so the critique is pretty bare narratively. And mechanically, you just shoot and avoid and overcome those monsters in a kind of effortlessly correct way, so there is little prompting for reflection.
In MGS, the attempt to reach for anti war themes is surrounded by just as silly a cast of villains, but it attempts to at least try and treat what the player has done in the game seriously, in big climactic moments, and it feels like not giving it enough credit to act like RE is just as palpable in how it expresses its themes.
@callumwoulahan7681 Yes, MGS definitely cares about conveying themes more than Resident Evil.
I think 5, 8, and 9 have what could be considered the most commentary/themes - neocolonialism, survivor's guilt - and even then, they're certainly less focused on exploring them in-depth than MGS, moreso using them as a basis for setpieces and tying the narrative together.
_"Like what Metal Gear Solid ended up doing."_ - I will never not be delighted by the fact that the series that spent hours and hour retroactively trying to make Vamp or the arm thing work through technobabble and shit at several points just throws its hands up and goes: *_"I dunno, it's magic or something."_* and the audience just shrugs and rolls with it, perhaps with a sage nod.
I like that even the magic stuff was then retroactively made nanomachines for the case of The End. You couldn’t let us have that, couldn’t you?
I mean, I feel like inscrutable supernatural stuff was established at least as early as Metal Gear Solid 1 with Vulcan Raven, so I never looked for or paid any attention to explanations for Vamp, Liquid Ocelot, The Boss's crew of weirdos, etc and my experience was probably better for it.
@onewinged20also the sorrow who literally has ghost powers
@LaLloronaVT I did say "The Boss's crew of weirdos."
I mean, do they ever properly explain Psycho Mantis' powers? Or what Fortune does in her... how not to spoil... last scene? Or Vulcan Raven's, well, ravens?
If they did please let me know, I haven't played all the Metal Gear Solid games... yet.
You're wrong. The chainsaw karate _is_ the atmosphere.
Karate atmosphere 😂
It’s the Resident Evil Yin and Yang.
"I *am* the atmosphere!"
@KeithFraser82 I may have read that as Lani vageta
@egontokessy1610 Karatmosphere
The hardest part of being an FBI Agent is the damn paperwork
Graces boss sending her to the hotel her mom got killed and shes is kidnapped only for her to return and probably have no PTO left😭
Grace had to be absolutely buried in that after she survived all this BS
If Twin Peaks has taught me anything, it's that the hardest part of being an FBI agent is drinking all that damn fine coffee without having to keep taking toilet breaks.
01:35 - given that's how the head of the real life F.B.I. was chosen, seem legit!
Grace, at least, is an analyst, not a field agent.
Unclear how good of a children's author she may be, but I gotta imagine she's a step up from Patel.
ZING! Got 'em!
Boom roasted
Not to mention the brand new job that Erika Kirk just landed
She must have a mildly popular podcast. That's automatic top marks!
Fun fact but Yahtzee is right. RE 6 is canon again after years of Capcom sidestepping whether or not it was. What we're seeing is post RE 6 Leon
I could have sworn there was a newspaper referencing it towards the beginning of RE7. Like when you're sneaking around after the dinner scene.
@BRAINFOXINFINITEThere is, I believe there’s a clipping about Edonia and there’s also the book that Clive wrote at the end of Revelations
And insert a "thanks I hate it" regardless. I knew they weren't going to sweep that garbage under the carpet anymore, but damnit when I read from Grace's file "the President was assassinated" with an immediate "oh for fuck's saaaake, Capcom." It was bad enough with Heisenberg confrirming the boulder-punching asshole bit, but now I can't help but only think RE10 will in fact have a Sheeva cameo at the very least. So here we go kiddies and long time veterans of the Resident Evil Franchise, Capcom is doing it's darndest to ensure RE5 and RE6 are still $#%&ing canon for all the wrong reasons.
Damn I feel sorry for Claire. Code Veronica needs all the remake help it can get.
Next Remake is Code Veronica with insane amounts of content rework and stripping to help RE-set up Wesker vs Chris, and with a stinger about Zeno...then RE10 is Chris as main character with what I said earlier. calling it.
I played through RE 6 at least twice and remember literally nothing about the plot, so whether it's canon or not is a moot point to me.
I hope he married that Helena chick from that game, just to piss off everyone
Grace is a desk agent, who does data work. Why the F they sent her into the field alone only her boss knows.
I figured it was more to have her get some experience by having her look through a crime scene that’s been empty for a while and try to process what happened to her there (go to actual therapist for traumatic experience treatment).
Still nonsense I know but this is what I figured.
Mild spoilers, but the late game indicates that the big evil megacorporation™ has influence over the US government (including controlling the Raccoon City lockdown) so it's pretty easy to infer that her boss was instructed to send her specifically. What Yahtzee somehow didn't mention is that she, as an analyst, was sent to a crime scene at the hotel where she was almost murdered and watched her mom killed before her eyes. Which is a level of "dude seriously wtf" that you can really only expect from secret evil puppeteers
@VeritabIlIti Is this shadowy megacorporation at all related to the secretive "Family" that was revealed to be the puppeteer behind the US Government and world events for at least the 20th century in RE6?
@spas9001 can't say for sure, but probably. I kind of pretend RE6 doesn't exist lol
Because her boss is Kash Patel
as far as I remember It's kinda rare that we get a horror compliment from Yahtee so hearing him compliment the starting hospital sequence for Grace's gameplay means it must've really pulled him in
I mean, he also gave a similar compliment to House Beneviento in RE 8, and as everyone else has said, that was was some scary fucking shit.
Amnesia The Bunker was so scary he put it on his "Best of 2023" list
Requiem is like a reunion tour of a classic band, they pull out some great new renditions but then go through their old hits (which people either eat it up or just go meh)
Resident Evil's need to have one of the best first acts in gaming and one of the most final acts in gaming is crossing into some kind of reflexive pathology.
And I say that as someone who actually liked the second half of this game, the victory lap boss fights of Bigger Spider, Plant 42+1, Mr. XX, and Umbrella Chronicles PC actually worked for me in that "greatest hits album" kind of way.
if they're XX, wouldn't that be Ms. XX?
It wasn't the worst thing in the franchise and is saved by the fact that the games core mechanics work well. But the design overall was so broing. The lack of new actually original BOWs that aren't another generic flesh monster was disappointing. The lack of reused old monsters (only lickers again?? No hunters? The frog things from 2? Ect), and how empty and boring the semi openworld city section were really hold it back. Oh and I love the gun upgrades from 4/village but this was painfully limited and most of the later guns aren't even clear upgrades over the existing ones. Even that menu was ugly and boring.
Didn't you called this in an EP/SR? That Resident Evil would speed run the whole cycle in one game? The only think you missed is that Chris Redfield would show up and the final boss would be multi-player only.
What is EP/SR? I might deduce that EP is Extra Punctuation, but the second pair of letters remains a mystery.
@garr_inc I believe it's "Semi-Ramblomatic", aka Extra Punctuation 2: Electric Boogaloo
@tubbobubbo881 Duh, of course. I should have realised that. Thank you.
This run might be two games long, with the Chris Redfield and multiplayer parts coming soon, the full cycle in one game singularity might not be too far away!
1:40 despite what the television tries to tell us, the FBI has analysts and other pencil pushers
And the problem is do they send a pencil pusher out to a random crime scene without anybody
I can tell you, I was super annoyed about that as somebody not intimately familiar with the FBI. I spent nearly my whole time as Grace thinking about other characters who have more combat proficiency than a literal FBI agent because I assumed an FBI agent out in the field would have, y'know, training and competence.
@killerbee2562 If I remember right, it's' seemingly implied that Grace's boss had secret orders to do so, from The Connections.
@killerbee2562 eh not without anybody, the police had supposedly secured the crime scene so it should've been save for her
@s@sleeplessindefatigable6385hey do have competence, at their job, which is a typically not fighting, because the federal bureau of investigation, investigation, not fighting.
3:52 - WAIT! That's Dino Crisis 2! Holy shit, I need this damn game now!
I did quite enjoy RE9... but my biggest issue is that there wasn't more of it. Grace's section could have been longer or even a second location to explore after you got done with the hospital.
But that's kinda precisely what I hated about the game, actually - the joy of RE7 was essentially exploring the same location with more and more keys. You can feel how the design is purposeful and competent, as it genuinely feels like you are constantly experiencing something new, despite it being in pretty much the exact same location.
Both RE8 and RE9 fail at this, however. RE8 is literally a linear game that doesn't allow you to explore anything - the entirety of Castle Dimistrecu is literally just "go through the only door you can go" because the game doesn't allow for any exploration. And RE9 does it well for the first few hours, but... then it arbitrarily just shoves you into new locations before that feeling of "in-depth exploration of one location" sets in. It feels so linear to me, which is something I kinda hate.
@reaperz5677 I agree. Survival horror games are best when you're stuck to one location and see how it develops over time.
This, the only true survival horror part of this game is the beginning in the hospital and that's it. The other Grace's sections are very basic, almost hallways compared to the hospital.
@jonissues1914 Yeah, her lab section is more like a section from 8 but without the cool setpieces 8 uses to make up for its linearity.
I've gotta agree. I kept expecting the next zone with her, but the lab wasn't it, and then the game ended.
"but no he's entirely unrelated"
no, there's a very good chance he is *a* wesker
just zeno wesker
4:34
To be fair, the villains would have been much more memorable if they suddenly broke out into a rendition of 'Soda Pop'
"... an FBI agent... Somehow..."
Hah, in fairness as I recall she's an _analyst._ I don't really think she's the one they send in for dangerous shit.
Akshually Metal Gear explained with nanomachines and hypnosis, not magic! It's totally different!
"There's no such thing as miracles, or the supernatural! Only cutting-edge technology."
@Mackievellian"I can't believe it... She IS Lady Luck."
@Mackievellian Or super-duper parasites that can do anything and everything, from letting people photosynthesis to mimicking parts of the human body until specific languages are spoken.
Metal Gear ain't magic, It's nanomachines son.
5:30 Did someone say David Cage?!
Of all the games he's made, I've only completed Fahrenheit, but I'm still mad at how flubbed the second half of that game felt.
Wallace and Gromit shorts vibes that matches Resident Evil games:
*A Grand Day Out - Resident Evil (1996/2002)
*The Wrong Trousers - Resident Evil 5 (2009)
*A Close Shave - Resident Evil Requiem (2026)
I get more Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs vibes from Victor Gideon
The devs did say they took inspiration from that and Se7en for the game. At least, the first half, anyways.
'Im a numbered sequel, I'm still canon!' lmao
Regarding that one character whose name starts with a Z, who looks suspiciously like a certain character whose name starts with an A, IIRC the two are actually related.
Also, while Doctor Gideon does look like an assimilated Heath Ledger, I still kinda like him as a character. He's a fun guy, and refreshingly campy despite looking greyer than a photocopy of John Major.
Everything he said, plus the lab is always a sleek white tile chic collection of offices and cafeterias. Why can't we have lived-in laboratories with rooms of pretend-science equipment anymore?
No. It must be sterile AND white!
"what matters is that the first section in the hospital *is some damned effective shit*" made me laugh, great delivery
After about 7 years of watching reviews I can proudly say that I can sometimes predict what yathzee is going to like and disslike about a game I actually know.
Rookie numbers. 18 years of Yahtzee for me. Starting with Fallout 3. Man... Time flies.
"Mr President, the RE9 review has hit Second Wind."
On the plus side, at least Mr X didn't try to bore you with his Blu-ray set of One Punch Man
The anime seasons must've been quite droughtful if he didn't force fed an anime series on us this time.
nice callback 🤣
You found it, the resident evil game that rose and fell flat in a single game.
always love the patreon plug in the credits, as someone being subscribed to the patreon since basically week 2 of second wind existing
This review is EXACTLY how I felt. Two steps forward, two steps back.
The entire global economy might be collapsing right now, but at least we still have Yahtzee to provide us with his lovely opinion on the video games.
At least there will be one constant thing.
I noticed someone recently point out that Dubai being abandoned by all the influencers and wealthy expats feels like it might be leading into Spec Ops: The Line (one of Yahtzee's favourite games).
No, it's just the US economy. And russian.
@MogwaiX Everyone needs oil, son.
When the stockpiles run dry and this thing is still going on....shit is going to get ugly.
@Etrius0023 I'm not your son, boy. And you overestimate the need for oil outside the US, russia and the like.
Calling the monsters in the first section "Bloodborne rejects" is spot on
The skyscraper part was really fun as Leon
"Borg Joker"
somebody at DC Comics: write that down, write that down!
0:34 Dammit, I never thought about a "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"-themed action game and it now feels like the gaming industry's poorer for a lack of it.
OMG, Heath Ledger's Joker assimilated by the Borg. That's the most accurate description I've heard.
It's a shame Yahtzee had already taken all the piss out of the generic "re-" title in his Dead to Rights Retribution review
Dead to rights regrettable, really
I mean it's not really applicable here. Requiem is just a Latin word, quite fittingly used here tbh. "Quiem" wouldnt mean shit
I was in the opposite boat. The grace sections were fun the first time but Leon's combat really hooked me once insanity unlocked. The dread that came from the Grace sections wasnt because of the horror but the dread of having to go through them again for 15 minutes of leon combat.
I HEARD SOMEONE WAS TRYING TO BUILD ATMOSPHERE
WHO WANTS TO PLAY A FUCKING ACTION GAAAAME
"ATMOSPHERE COMING THROOOOOOOOUGH!"
I recall that during the more stressful moments of grace's campaign I would regularly think "save us Leon!" Which might be proof they nailed the contrast.
The review sounds like Resident Evil Village all over again. They really want to mix RE4 and RE7
Sneaky little hotdog was my nickname in college!
Hey, there are _dozens_ of us who like RE5, no reason to desperately hope it was no longer canon.
People who actually played RE5 and RE6 co-op tended to have had way better experiences with it.
If the Chris Versus Boulder scene isn't canon, what's even the point
@sheridanmovieguy Pretty much, I played RE5 twice with different friends and had a blast. RE6 I played solo and could barely stomach a single playthrough.
@JStar977and i played resi 5 solo and it was genuinely the worst mainline resi that i ever play. Like, even worse than 6, and 6 was....well, you know; but at least the IA partner there actually work
I don’t know why but the witty writing here made me chuckle even more than usual, just lovely
Fully Ramblomatic prog rock track of the week:
*Retroactive Intrigue Ruination* by *Subtitle Requiem* (from their album *Cathartic Monster Beating* )
Kudos to Yahtzee for representing quite possibly the worst experience anyone with arachnophobia could have in a modern game with the cutest possible plush toy you can find online.
It's always kind of nice to see another video in a series that he has been reviewing from the early days: I remember the short on the Resident Evil 5 trailer and how people thought it was racist.
heaven forbid a game set in africa with a parasite that regresses minds have enemies of african ethnicity and mindless behavior. i dunno what exactly were they expecting to find in an re game set in africa
Everyone slagging off Grace should realise that it is a personification of them, but just more competent and intelligent.
Zeno is so obviously supposed to be (clone?) Wesker but somehow none of the characters make that connection.
None of the characters in the game have MET Wesker. That's why Leon is so non-plussed about it. Same thing with Old HUNK being called Commander. Leon has no clue who it is.
More likely one of Wesker's siblings considering he had Racoon City Syndrome too. So not a clone *of* Wesker, but cloned from the same genetic material as him.
Not sure I agree. Once you see him... slightly differently at the end... he looks more like American army guy thats pissy his hair gel ran out. Its funny, but did destroy his mystique somewhat.
@naisimrim that's not what they said, you should reread it
From what I gathered as someone who's way too autistic about the stupid overly-convoluted Resi lore, Zeno is all but explicitly said to be another child from project W. Which was Ozwell Spencer's eugenics program where he and Umbrella made test tube babies hopped up on the Progenitor virus, resulting in Albert and Alex Wesker, and now presumably Zeno Wesker as well.
6:55 d’oh Yahtzee, you wily sod you 😂😂
2:55 It's not even a real gun, Yahtz, how are you pulling your shots?
I think it's part of modern British DNA to be bad with guns.
Hm. The analogy this calls to mind is "Silent Hill but the only ending is the dog ending"
I keep trying to get through this one because on paper it's fantastic but the Grace sections are so agonizing it's just not fun. That first section with the giant monster is incredible but everything past that felt like they forgot that Grace isn't in an action game and they want us to sneak and be careful with ammo except they put in far too many enemies for that to work. I'd get stuck trying to find a damn path to sneak around enemies and get spotted over and over and I only have one bullet left so time to restart from my last save.
I feared this would happen... it came about in 7, 8, and now 9.
Scary and heart-pounding in the beginning, then middle, then... fades slowly into well...
*locks shotgun*
everyone rags on Grace as if she wasn't just a data analyst that got kidnapped, she was sent to check out the scene of a person who died of Raccoon city syndrome and got k i d n a p p e d she isn't some super spy, she writes reports all day
It honestly makes sense that she, as the bookworm and otherwise normal office worker, wouldn't be able to handle more than one ankle biter at a time. But I will forever and a half despise doing her initial sections in third person because the game has to balance you being able to peek around corners with Grace having the dexterity of the playable avatar of QWOP. I KNOW WHY she is like this, but that doesn't mean I have to LIKE it. It makes for decent atmosphere building up until she stumbles and I have to reload a checkpoint on a chase I otherwise can do with certain confidence.
Been waiting for this as the extremely rare occasion that Yahtzee might not have complete disdain for a triple A game 😂
"An FBI agent...somehow" Yahtzee...look at who's currently heading it
1:39 tbf she's an analyst not a field agent
I keep having to tell people this
And yet she's inexplicably sent to the field. :P
Seriously though...her boss seemed understanding and sensitive to her history with the hotel. What happens if she tells him "I don't think I can do it. I still have very traumatic memories of that place that would impact my ability to do my work." It's not like her boss gave her a "go there or you're fired" ultimatum.
Yet I still think its completely ridiculous. They wanted to give her government background and or reason to know how to handle a gun but also wanted to do the lost child in scary world thing, it's one or the other.
@ruggedlemmings9163yeahhhh its a bit contrived lol.
@ruggedlemmings9163 how she could trust her boss after that i could never understand
Finally an explanation why I can only seem to find comments, reactions, even live gameplays of the first are (the mansion). I legit thought that was all there was!
I think a lot of my issues with the second half initially and the first half retrospectively stem from a lack of challenge in the game. From Leon being able to parry asteroid-level strikes from giant blob-monster hands to the underwhelming boss battles to the puzzles that can at points feel so perfunctory that I barely clocked their importance, it just sort of felt like it was designed to be rushed through. Even the chase segments with the girl lose a lot of their impact once you realize the predetermined events that trigger it and it ends up just being an obnoxious forced break in gameplay as you wait to be able to come out of hiding.
Oh and this extends to giving you the giant “fuck you” revolver off the bat and not enough giant monsters to use it on
designed to be rushed through 100% after seeing that post by Gene Park getting a 2hr 40min-ish record time like the day the game came out (apparently he had already played through 8-9 times)
Finally someone compares him to the Joker, I literally thought it the second I heard the way he looks and talks
Looking forward to Yathzee rolling his eyes at the whole Memory Transfer stuff in RE9 in a potential Semi-Ramblomatic, seeing it as a very flimsy way to bring back dead villains and even playable characters =P
The whole thing is kinda stated through the dialogue near the end to have been a red herring from not understanding unfinished research notes.
@kayleblang5081 No, it hasn't - the red herring was that Grace was a clone (she wasn't, and honestly this twist sucked ass), not that the memory transfer was imposdible or whatever.
If anything, the game revealed that Zeno is a clone of Wesker, so memory transfer may yet be possible in that context.
When Requiem was first announced, I couldn't help but think about that one Extra Punctuation video Yahtzee made on the cycles of the RE franchise; specifically his joke that RE9 would complete the cycle of enshittification in one complete game. It might have been hyperbole at the time (especially with the multiplayer bit), but it feels like he predicted it cold.
I believe the multiple boss fights with Leons is remnent from when the game was supposed to be a sort of Open world a la Elden Ring.
Unironically, a weird hybrid of what sounds like Fallout 3, Elden Ring, and Resident Evil, seems like it'd be awesome. Give it combat on-par with KF2, and it'd be golden.
@Umbra_Ursus Only issue is the RE Engine has proven to be notoriously bad at producing open world games. Both Monster Hunter Wilds and Dragon's Dogma 2 run like absolute garbage.
I haven't played the game yet and you go right into spoilers immediately. Ill watch when I'm done.
7:22 Hey guys, I think I MIGHT be able to guess what the next Semi-Ramblomatic might be about :P
I need that SR now!!
What's your guess?
@lazilypunctual2863 Dialectical hegemony and the enactment of contradictory definitions in a rural community planning process. I mean, check the time stamp! It's OBVIOUS 🤣
@KingOfDomaOk I didn't read that I was just watching the skit and although I didn't play/watch the ending to this I guess that he hated it
PFF! And of course I was wrong! (I'm sure it's in the pipe for later)
Next Semi-Ramblomatic is going to be about that ending
You know things are bad when Piglet is giving you shit 1:14
I liked it and i think it was great how they mixed both gameplays from past Resident Evil's together into one game
TWO MINUTE GANG, LETS GO!
Been waiting for this.
Now to hope Yahtzee started Pokopia early enough he can get past enough time gates before writing his review.
he probably plays 5 minutes and then the review notes are done
wouldnt get my hopes up given past reviews. At most well see the review at the end of the month with maaaybe one (1) week of play and a cumulative 5-10 hours of play
"Recombinant DNA, son!"
I feel like Grace was supposed to be the main focus of this game, but they weren't confident people would take to her, so they added Leon in to bring the classic fans back.
As a result, it feels like she's barely playable, as Leon's sections greatly overshadow Grace's.
Apparently it was the exact opposite: the early drafts of the game featured Leon in tense survival horror situations, but then part of the team (probably the sensible female part) went "this is not what people want to see from Leon anymore" and now we have the best of both worlds
@VeritabIlIti And apparently, Jill Valentine was being considered as a playable character for a while.
Resident Evil can never help itself. The first 5 hours are possibly the best a survival horror game could ever be. It's utter perfection. And then they feel the need to be cool and pander to the hype crowd and throw Leon fighting Mr.X, exploring Racoon City (despite the fact that there's nothing there now) and half-adding Wesker. Like....you had a perfect game! Why not just...make that the game.
So what could have been a game for the ages, will now be seen as another sidestep with some hope for the next one. Again.
One cool detail is that at the beginning of the game, Grace's melee attack is a slow shove, whereas in the second half she starts using a quicker kick to knock zombies down. It is never stated, but the implication seems clear that she picked it up from Leon.
Second antagonist seemed to me like Wesker's last second Snoke
I hope Yahtzee makes that Semi Ramblomatic on the ending, I am looking forward to it!
3:31 fucking felt that. Bless you Yahtz, amazing writing
"Like eating a movie theater hot-dog in the dark"
What? Is AI writing your ads?
Isn't this how 28 Days Later goes? At the start of the movie it's a survival horror, and by the end of the movie he's the Zombie Whisperer taking out military agents and shit. And that's a cult classic.
yeah but that was good tho
1:37 That happens more these days than you might think
Seems like a reformulation of re8's problem: wanting to have spooky atmospheric re7 vibes AND fun asskicking campy re4 vibes, wanting to introduce new characters and stories AND not move away from established lore and continuity.
i guess they thought having the dual protag gameplay would mean they could have their cake and eat it too, and i'm not just talking about leon's
I feel like Grace was hired for the FBI under the "Forensic Accountancy" division
The second half DRAGS. I felt the same on my second playthrough, knowing it lead to that awful second half that was littered with references to previous games and devoid of any original ideas made me quit the game, not to mention and incredibly shit ending that tries to retcon Resi5 and fails miserably.
I honestly felt like reviewers played a completely different second half of the game when I looked at the reviews, but to each his own I guess.
Definitely got the vibe of "a solid short survival horror game, followed by a Resi greatest hits album". To the point, the second half of the game barely registers as canon to my brain, and not just an indulgent set of fun bonus missions.
Optimistically this means they're closing out and moving on a bit story wise.
4:40 as if to rub salt in the proverbial wound, Zeno is also voiced by the same VA that did Wesker in RE4make
Borg-Joker is my new favorite meme in the RE series. That and "WHAT THE-"
The first half is one of the best RE games ever, the Leon sections are such great ways to release the tension from the Grace sections. If they had stuck with that formula through the whole game it would be easily been top 3, but I feel like they were scared to have a game with Leon in it where he didn't get equal time in the spotlight.
I have been checking for this all week.
They always post on Wednesdays bro