CamHostage
Member
I don't mean 1:1 boxing, that's a simple and straightforward job to make and not one I'm willing to play. I'm a gamer, not a fitness nut. I don't want to sweat in droves to enjoy a game. what I'm saying is that close quarters combat in VR definitely should be roomscale rather moving back and forth with analog stick. But they're still to find a proper mechanic for that: one that empowers the player in a whimsical way rather than requiring them to get in shape or whatever.
Well, heh, even if it were roomscale, you of course wouldn't be performing belly-to-belly suplexes or bicycle-kicking virtual characters in your living room... even spinning-heel kicks are questionable. (Unless, as you mentioned, it was specifically a fitness game or something where advanced aerial moves were part of the course.) And if they adapted melee from button presses to motion gestures, it still wouldn't work great because your first-person view would be of you like spinning in the air while sitting on your couch, or grabbing some Ganados and all you see is zombie belly followed by you looking straight up in the air while lying on your 'virtual' back...
If they did transpose melee into the RE4 VR combat system (would they really not have melee??), it would probably instead be something more reasonably physical, like a punch or a knife strike, or maybe a crane kick ala Karate Kid (that would let your "virtual legs" do an action and your view wouldn't spin or twist oddly, just a bit of extra head bobble; also a kick would keep your arms free so they wouldn't need to match the canned punch/knife animation and disrupt the VR immersion.) There is still the question, like you said earlier, of how you get into and out of close range of melee (melee was simply context-sensitive with a generous range in the old game that clicked into canned action; VR would have a tougher time "cheating" your body around the game geometry) and how well your VR sensors match to the combat of the character on-screen versus how physical you expect your hero to be, but some of that can be overcome.
I still don't understand though how the balance of the game is maintained, though. If there is no melee, that's a huge element lost from RE4. Combat is about stick-and-move, and about taking advantage of context actions to deal damage you've earned. Carefully shoot them in the knees and you have a few seconds to run over, hit the melee, trigger the attack, and see if you've gotten a kill and/or knocked back some surrounding enemies (or if a tentacle spawns from the crushed head and you need to bolt for your life!) Melee and knifing-while-down is part of the ammo conservation strategy. It's your only choice when resources start to dry up. It's how RE4 is made to play. You learn to be methodical in how you attack and when to headshot versus kneecap versus some boomstick room-clearance, and then your plan goes to shit and you panic, and that's fun. This, without melee, it would be... well, different, at the very least.
...Ultimately, the traditional Resident Evil 4 still exists, so if this plays differently (and IMO is going too far away from the original to be an authentic way to play,) so be it. Make it a VR blast-a-thon, give Leon as much ammo as the player wants, turn some QTEs into physical cranks and doors and whatever to make it feel more like you're there, frickin' let players move while aiming even... either play this or don't, it is what it is, whether or not it is "real" RE4
But that goes to my original point then: why remake RE4 in VR?
Why keep so slavishly to the original graphics and animation and level layout, why struggle to adapt everything that was third-person and cutscenes to somehow work in first-person, why throw out the carefully honed and award-winning play balance and combat tactics which end up being difficult/incompatible with the new format, why put up with all the limitations of a 15-year-old TV game, why spend several years on a port when you could have built a new game (using a lot of what people loved about RE4 even) created around VR play?
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