Joker Reviews: Resident Evil 2: 1 Shot D...

Joker

Joker Reviews: Resident Evil 2: 1 Shot Demo

Joker Reviews: Resident Evil 2: The 1-Shot Demo. So, I sat down, turned the lights off, put some headphones on, and I clicked this sucker on. I wanted to *feel* what everyone keeps chiming about. From what I've gathered, the opinions on this game are split right down the middle. You will love, or hate this game. Admitedly, I'm on the latter of this, as everything I've seen has done nothing to impress me and only has me thinking Capcom has lost touch on reality, but eh. This is my step by step experience of the demo I'm trying to let impress me: Maxed the brightness as soon as I could. I saw some original footage, and screw that noise. I'm not playing Doom 3, I should havn't to live in perpetual dark. So, in the game, I popped open the menu, and immediatly noticed that little timer. Neat. Nothing says "Feel immersed" like being on the dev's time. Regardless, popped open the menu, and low and behold: This is clearly the intern's first time developing a game. Run is set to L3. Why? Why L3? Control B wasn't any better, so I settled on Type C: R1 is run, L3 changes ammo. "Changes Ammo". This immediatly gave me Re7 flashbacks. This is not exactly a good thing for me, by the by. So, I started running and noticed immediatly that the running is sluggish. You get winded VERY easily, and it's no more responsible then when you walk. Timer, and you feel like you're running through tar. Fantastic. Walking throught he main hall, I walk up to a computer, scan some stuff, pick up some extra items, and BAM. Another eye jerker: Still using RE7's HUD. Seems they couldn't bother to hide this little fact that this game is retooled from another cheaply made game, huh? Well, maybe I'm being overtly critical? Running up the stairs while exploring, I noticed another annoyance: The gun holster belt behind his right leg clips through his leg. The eyetwich began, and not because of fear. Taking this moment, I glanced around and a different fear settled in: Much like all the demo videos, all the textures look like plastic, and Leon's face looks like it's perpetually wet. Clothes don't move and are set like a statue as if material wrinkle was intentional fashion. I really can not stand the RE Engine. Between this, and the dumpster fire design they did for Trish, it makes me fear for DMC5. Regardless: I head through the next spot, where I slide underneath the shuttter, and the first thing that jumps at me is the fact the blood splatters on the wall are all super wet looking, and appear to be defying gravity. Walking up to the wall to look closer, the non-wet parts just look like faded red texture, and do not feel natural at all to me. Turning the corner, pulling my eyes off the walls, I noticed how dark the place is, even at max settings. I can kinda see the not lit up areas, but that part was less annoying to me, so much as the flashlight you have on you. The damn thing sucks. This is a police grade lighting device (which I actually own one of these mag lights in real life, by the way) and it's only able to light up a circle that it's pointing at? For a game so focused on realistic gore, they sure as hell failed miserably at making anything else realistic. A flashlight like this would light up a dark corridor like that very well, and make it fairly simple to work your way around.

Joker

Already annoyed, I made my way down the hall, found a locked door, and I could hear the background ambience. Everything in the hall is designed to give you a sense of not being alone in a deserted room, in an attempt to make you think something is going to jump out and grab you at any moment. with my history of horror games, and being a conasour of being scared, this is actually very annoying to me. The techniques they put into the sound track here are very powerful, and very easily could scare the shit out of me if it wasn't for one factor: The game has yet to impress me on any other factor yet. Walkikng into a bathroom, I noticed that the sound of a overflowing toilet jumps at me, making me wonder why this was next to non-existant until I opened a door 3 feet away from it. Was this a super sound proof door that I opened? Or was this their attempted to try and over use the scare tactics to keep you unnerved with the effect of "What's that noise?!" every 3 feet? I was also greeted by RE7 mirrors: There is no such thing as a reflective surface in this game. Unless it's Leon's skin, it's pitch black. So the mirrors felt very unprofessional. Leaving the bathroom, I accidently found myself back at the entrence. Apperently, my brain said "Okay, you went straight, turned right, went straight, turned left, and entered the bathroom". When I left, my brain went "That doesn't look familiar. I think you went left, then forward, so let's hang a right." Case in point: It's so goddamn dark, it's hard to get your barings on your direction. Not because it's hard, but because the flashlight is so junk, and the walls of the hallway are so massively cluttered with random desks and lockers, that every room looks the same. Later still, I walked into a room, and hear a guy screaming his head off. Neat. Lets go see what's up. Cracking the shutter open, I am treated to a guy freaking out, cleary becomign a McZombieMac, so Leon leans down to pull him out, only to be greeted by surprisingly cartoony blood spary. It was like half a frame of red just slushed out, and suddenly there is blood textures populated. It was suprisingly bad, even for the low bar I gave myself. With Ronald McZombie torn in half like a chicken tender, and the game's extreme need to focus on the details of his exposed guts, the game's background music starts to quicken, and the sound of zombies start pounding harder, filling the room with a sense of dread. For a moment, I honestly thought it was going to get good. It gave me a minor rush: Something I have not experienced in a game in nearly 15 years. I looked at the door being banged on. Gun at the ready. I want blood. More blood than what's lazily seen as jelly on the walls. I'm ready for a fight. It breaks down the door

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Heck yeah! Lets ignore the slow aim for a moment to pull that trigger! One shot to the face, and flesh is torn. Second shot to the face, and it's... still moving. Backing up slightly, I pop it a third time and it falls over. Taking a moment to check behind me, I see if the shutter that's being ravaged like a teenager on prom night, like the jock, I needed to make sure that flimsy protection didn't break. Lucky, I didn't have any undesirable minions crawling at me, until I turned around and saw the zombie I shot get up. Immediatly, I fired again. Taking 3 shots, it falls down. Curiously enough, I decided to take the preemptive, and mustering all the rules of zombie films everywhere: Double tap. Shot 7 pops in the back of it's head. And it starts sturring. Shot 8, it gets up. Shot 9, it lurches back. Shot 10, 11, 12, and it drops to the floor. I've already wasted this much ammo, no point in stopping: Shots 13, 14, and finally, FUCKING 15. It took FIFTEEN SHOTS to drop this asshole. So, obviously, any sense of dread I had vanished after shot 5. Now the game has taught me this: Killing zombies is dumb, not fun, and not smart. Better to run. Kay, no biggy, lets push on. Entering the hallway, more zombies come by. I decide to take the initiative, and I pop the female zombie on the right once, and she staggers. I turn my gun to the dude on the left, and fire. And he dodged. The zombie dodged my fire. He Neo'd my goddamn bullet. Then grabbed me. And his female friend, not appreciating the hole I put in her temple, comes to join the fun. Zombie double team is nothing I ever want to wring again. But that's what happened. So, next rule the game taught me: Don't get close. Ever. Also: Leon's aim is shit if you don't stop moving for 1 second and allow the reticle to shrink. Heading back, luckily my annoyance had me retrace the area so I wouldn't get lost again, I made it back, to be saved by Marvin. The significantly more compitent cop, and whom actually has the ability to pull a person out from under a shutter. He introduces himself, and suddently it hit me: Leon sounds like Spider Man. PS4's Souske himself. Neat. Not sure if it's the same voice actor, probably not, didn't care to look. Marvin is bleeding everywhere, and his voice actor is decent. I don't really have a complaint with him. yet. So he gives me the first toy that I'll need to progress: The Combat knife. I get a list of instructions, including "Your knife breaks" (This is important) so I pick it up, equip it, and leave the bleeding man to his hemoraging. Annoyingly, I get an objective marker on my screen, telling me what to do. if any of you are a RE purist that likes to explore, don't be. This game will keep remidning you of your next goal. RE7's box sits accross the room, metaphorically calling out to me, so I sander over there in my mollassass speed that is not at all appropriate for a trained boy in blue, and use the knife to open up a switch, that lets me open the shutter. This is very important, as I'm now putting two and two together: Your knife, which is used to defend yourself, is also used to open crtiical doors to progress, but it also breaks. Yeah, I see nothing wrong here. Moving on.

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Leon goes into the next room, an decides to check out a corpse. This game really plays too much attention to gore, less substance as to why the gore is there in the first place. Getting more and more RE7 vibes from this, as they seem to forget that gross does not mean scary. It's just gross. Also fun fact that deviates from the original game: Police zombies have no ammo. Working my way through this, I find a plank, and try it out. Somehow, you can slap planks onto windows, and keep zombies from breaking throug it. I suppose I should be happy that this is a thing, instead of having to get nails, a hammer, and tape to go with it, but meh. seems more of an annoyance then anything benificial, as the window just 3 feet down still breaks. Which means another fight. Time to test out my nifty tape's bane, and gash a bitch: I get attacked, and thus far, Leon has learned: Headshots are most effective, and he's burn through a few zombies, so he does what every intelligent soon to be political figure does: Knife to chest. Now, I flash back to the instructions saying "You can retrive the knife when you defeat your foe". I pop her in the head 3 times, she dropps, and I get my knife. And it's 25% broken already. And the zombie gets up. *sigh* 15 rounds to kill zombie 2. Again. I really hope I don't need to cut open another box with a knife I lost to this crap. Walking into the next room, indicators light up, killing any urge to exploration as the game will just tell me if there's something within 5 feet of me anyway. I get more ammo, climb up a box, head out, and see a fat zombie banging on a vending machine. I walk up, check him out, and sure enough, dude's got more of a sugar craving then blood craving. Letting fatty be fat, I took off, and ended up in a locker room. Gunpowder is a thing. Mix two, get more bullets. Mix other stuff, get other amo. I'm neutral on this. It' annoys me I can't stack them, and you get limited slots, but I'll live. I get the shotgun here, only to be greeted by fatty, whom I'm assuming got his snickers, slamming on my door behind me. This being the only exit in the room, and this being a demo, I loaded up the shotgun, and the magical 4 rounds it provides me here. To my surprise, they seemed to fix one thing from the tech demo: Shotguns now instead blow up heads, instead of taking 4 rounds like in previous stream footage.

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I head out, ready to provide the shotgun rampage on the next 3 flesh imparied critters that want to turn me into bubble gum. Head into another room, and sure enough, the game uses steam as a jump scare. You can't hear the damn steam going until you see it. I'm starting to get use to this game having some sort of scare tactic PER ROOM at this point, so I think "That all? Probably. Ooh, lockers." Corpse in the locker jump scare. Annoyed, I stopped looking, and didn't bother to see if the corpse was a zombie or decoration. Licker throwback shows up shortly after that. Neat. I did find a hip pouch after that, so that's 2 more inventory slots. Also got annoyed that you have to flip through every page of the document you're reading in order to back away from it. Nearing the end, I decided it's time to experiment. I see a corpse on the ground. He seems human enough, no tears, no blood, so I decided to humor myself and pop him in the back of the head. Now, this is the one corpse I found that didn't want revenge for me popping it, but interestingly, the back of it's head smeared, its eyes bulged, and the skin around it's mouth torn and vanished, making it look like an anatomy dummy or a very pissed off zombie. One pullet really made it look pretty. Not sure why I found that funny, but it felt like overkill to me. Leon talks at odd times as well. He'll drop random F bombs, or after like the 5th zombie, he freaks out like it's a new thing. Anyway, last library room. From 60 ammo to 30 in 4 zombies, fith one took my last shotgun round, I noticed nearly everythign is a puzzle now. You can't even move a book shelf without a lever for the jack that's on it. Not sure how I feel about the overkill in puzzles. Heading back to the beginning, cuz Marvin decided he needs to radio you and tells you to return, I head back and find him on the ground floor. I decided he needed to die, as that'll be his fate anyway, and the game stops you from doing so. Aiming at him at all makes Leon lower his weapon. Determed to not be denied my blood lust, I managed to trick the game into putting a bullet in our friend here, only to find that it doesn't do anything. Just to see if Capcom lied about anything else, I did find one thing: "1-shot" loads the game up anyway afte ryou beat it. It's actually a 30m demo period. Not a one attempted, or 30 minutes. Overall, not happy. This could have been a grand master of a game, but this demo gives me the impression that Capcom has lost touch with it's fans, and what really made Resident Evil great. The older classic styles we wanted, which I thought Capcom got the hint for when the RE1 remaster sold so well, is all but dead with this release. Their obsession with the extremely bad RE Engine, and the constant denial of giving fans what they want tells me that I should probably just move on from expecting anything decent from them anymore.

elmco

whoa where did this come from and can you review the crazy frog racing game for the PS2 next https://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Frog-Arcade-Racer-PlayStation-2/dp/B000T5MS9W

Tot_Pop

Joker used to do these a while back, its pretty thorough and kinda impressive. Since its a demo I think you can cut a little slack on the visuals front, after all its not complete so odds are they just haven't gotten around to more minor details like reflections in the mirror and all that. More notable is putting a ridiculous health total on the zombies, though I get these sorts of games you're supposed to run quite a bit, at least in the early game, it seems to be a bit overkill, just give the player less ammo and lower the time wasted. Problem solved.

Joker

whoa where did this come from and can you review the crazy frog racing game for the PS2 next https://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Frog-Arcade-Racer-PlayStation-2/dp/B000T5MS9W if I can emulate it, we'll see. I have a list of previous games people wanted me to do, but I havn't had time for random one offs

elmco

YESSSS PLEASE