Does Mr X follow you through rooms?
Does Mr X carry a weapon?
Does Mr X drop new weapons (weapon's parts) after you defeat it?
Is Mr X intelligent enough to dodge your attacks?
Is Mr X fast, agile and deadly?
No? Then Mr X is nothing like Nemesis
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What makes Resident Evil 2 so good, anyways?
- Thread starter Haeralis The BRave
- Start date
Does Mr X follow you through rooms?
Does Mr X carry a weapon?
Does Mr X drop new weapons (weapon's parts) after you defeat it?
Is Mr X intelligent enough to dodge your attacks?
Is Mr X fast, agile and deadly?
No? Then Mr X is nothing like Nemesis
You can't "interpret" someone else's intentions and then say they had completely different intentions. It's fine if you personally think they're cheesy or whatever. That's not the point. The point is that you imply that's how they were intentionally created... when we know for a fact that it simply wasn't.
Mikami directed that opening movie (to the chagrin of Kamiya and Iwao, who made something much better) and did so on a very small budget with a bunch of people plucked off the street. Still doesn't make the cheesiness intentional. The language barrier and budget constraints hurt them, but it's not as if they specifically went for those. Mikami was pretty embarrassed after the game's release. He initially said "scenario writer's fault" even though there was nothing wrong with the writing, then he apologized to the writer for being wrong and admitted that it was down to their poor performance in localization and voice acting and that things would get better (which they did.... slowly).
The games aren't a parody. There's a massive abyss of difference between intentionally making something goofy to mock something else, and simply taking inspiration from goofy things and reworking them into something serious. Even Leon's bad jokes later in the series are not done for the purpose of making the game itself be goofy, they're done to show that particular character's confidence.
That Tyrant couldn't run, kill enemies in the way to get to you, or have a rocket launcher. That's part of why he was effective--- he was an improved T-103. You'd already gone against a regular one, now here's one that completely goes against the gameplay conventions set by the original. In the RPD you enter a room filled with zombeis while running from him and think "a-ha! game logic dictates that he cannot reach me through these other enemies!" then he just starts punching them into pieces in order to get to you.
Soodanim
Member
I never play on Easy mode any more, so I half forgot about that. I remember the day it was released my friend somehow played it before school (which started at 830am, perhaps a shop broke release date) and told me you start with a machine gun. I called him a liar and we argued all day about it, then the next morning I had to admit I was wrong.
Seeing what Nemmy does to zombies that get in his way is a beautiful thing. Especially in mercenaries, where it's free time if he decides to punch or blow up undead obstacles. I've always wished there was a mode where you could stick Nemesis in a room with other enemies, maybe even Tyrants, and watch what happens.
Neff
Member
If I don't know what their intention is as stated by them, then sure I can. The line is blurred here though, because almost all videogames function as parody one way or another, and Japan is generally a very high-camp culture. If you have absolute evidence that Mikami intended the series to be Schindler's List serious despite flashy rock music roll calls, colourful action figure people running away from monsters, and teenagers having extensive military training and being able to fly planes/drive snowmobiles/operate industrial equipment, then please share your findings.
No... you can't. That just means you don't know their intentions. Doesn't mean you can make one up for them as a substitute.
I also can't post personal conversations with developers, I'm afraid. There are many interviews available where they state their intentions, however. You should look into researching those before deciding you're an expert. We've made it easy and compiled an on-going list of them for you.
P.S. People being able to do rather incredible things at a young age is not a principal component of parody or cheesiness. It's fairly common in most fiction. False equivalence and exaggeration do not help your argument either.
badcrumble
Member
People not understanding the difference between parody and homage ITT.
badcrumble
Member
RE3's item/enemy placement actually isn't randomized, but just like the story, it DOES change (sometimes drastically) per play through depending on:
-the order in which you tackle certain goals
-the choices you make during the slowed-down Live Selection stuff
-whether you run from Nemesis or fight him off in any given encounter
-whether you go out of your way to find certain optional cutscenes (going back to find Dario's body, the part you can find where Mikhail rolls an explosive barrel at a crowd of zombies)
This stuff affects all sorts of story material, it affects when Nemesis chooses to attack, and it affects enemy placement a lot (it's entirely possible to have playthroughs where you never ever fight a Hunter Gamma, for example - sometimes the ones in the hospital don't even break out of their tanks).
But it isn't technically randomized. Just highly varied. Make the exact same choices in a given playthrough, though, and you'll get the same results every time.
badcrumble
Member
Interesting. That idea eventually made it into Dino Crisis.
Man, between Dino Crisis, Onimusha, and Devil May Cry, it's pretty nuts how many franchises Capcom basically spun out of the success of Resident Evil (directly so in DMC's case). Are there any that I'm missing?
MikeBreezy92
Member
I simply prefer RE2 to RE3 simply because of Nemesis. Nemesis ruins the flow of the game to me. While I know that's the point its just an annoyance after his first few appearances.
badcrumble
Member
IMO the game is *most* fun if you treat every Nemesis encounter as a boss fight you actually need to tackle. But you don't get all the possible in-game variations that way.
The fight in front of the police station when all you've got is a handgun and shotgun is damn hard, and it's important to realize that you don't need to actually fight that one to get all seven prizes from Nemesis (it's functionally treated as the same encounter as when he crashes through the police station window *after* you have obtained either the magnum or grenade launcher, depending on which one the game put in the locker).
The rest are fairly doable if you stand your ground, though. The smart strategy if you're fighting Nemesis every time is to convert basically *all* of your gunpowder into grenades, IMO - the special weapon parts he drops make great weapons that can't use special handgun or shotgun ammo, so there's little point in trying to build your way toward either of those (IMO).
Ok, so it seems to be randomized.
And I love how many different "hidden" cut-scenes there are in the game. IIRC there are three different dialouge variations when you meet Brad in the bar (it depends on whether you wait for Brad to kill the zombie, kill it yourself or try to leave the room while Brad is struggling with the enemy).
There are also three different versions of the cut-scene when Jill is waking up in the chapel depending on whether you fight with Nemesis as Carlos, outrun it or let the Nemesis reach the chapel.
It's amazing that even after finishing the game several times there were still things that I haven't seen.
Inspector Jones
Member
The thing is the original Resident Evil was in desperate need of a remake. That's evident by the fact that many fans collectively agree the REmake is far superior to the original. Some fans can't even go back to playing the Director's Cut.
RE2 still holds up very well. Don't get me wrong, if it were remake like the first game, I would literally throw my wallet at my screen, but I could see how Capcom thought it wasn't necessary.
Muffdraul
Member
I couldn't take Nemesis seriously at all. It was like they hired a 15 year old Marilyn Manson fanboy to design him. I appreciated that he was a bad ass game play evolution from the T-00/Mr. X, but he was so corny and lame in comparison.
I generally didn't care for RE3, it just seemed so slap dash and thrown together. Some great new game play ideas, but used in game that was a bit of a mess IMO. Was not into the story back-pedaling from RE2. CV was the true sequel.
badcrumble
Member
Yup. RE3 is designed to have a *lot* of variation in how it plays out to make up for the lack of the zapping system.Ok, so it seems to be randomized.
And I love how many different "hidden" cut-scenes there are in the game. IIRC there are three different dialouge variations when you meet Brad in the bar (it depends on whether you wait for Brad to kill the zombie, kill it yourself or try to leave the room while Brad is struggling with the enemy).
There are also three different versions of the cut-scene when Jill is waking up in the chapel depending on whether you fight with Nemesis as Carlos, outrun it or let the Nemesis reach the chapel.
It's amazing that even after finishing the game several times there were still things that I haven't seen.
I think the sole mistake with all that was that it didn't give a definitive answer regarding whether Nicholai survives (files in later games confirm that he's still around, though, I think). You can shoot his helicopter down, he can escape in his helicopter, or the Nemesis can kill him offscreen, depending on what you do.
badcrumble
Member
Nemesis is an okay design, but RE2's art design with regard to enemies specifically is generally way better than RE3's, yeah. And just as the Licker blows the Hunter Beta/Gamma out of the water from a visual perspective (though the hunters are likely better for gameplay purposes), Birkin's stages of transformation and Mr. X are way better looking than the Nemesis while not necessarily being as good from a gameplay perspective. Birkin's transformations are especially amazing (the way his face slowly disappears into its shoulder and a whole new head grows out of his shoulder is so brilliantly disturbing).
Muffdraul
Member
badcrumble
Member
I like his design way more once he loses the trenchcoat and starts fighting with his tentacles, though.
BIO3 is easier to appreciate when you understand that it was never intended as a sequel. It's only numbered for marketing purposes. It was originally "BIO1.9" and was a small scale spin-off from BIO2. They slightly upped the scale with more developers and such, but its still BIO1.9 at its core.
That said, BIO3 is fantastic. Nemesis has one of my favorite enemy designs in the industry, even though BIO2's designs for "G" trump it overall.
I wouldn't say that's the mistake. It's the same as RE1 never giving you a definitive answer on whether Wesker survives or not, or RE2 never giving you an answer whether Sherry ended up being infected with G-virus or not. Both of those things were answered in later games, when given character or plot point was used again.
News Bot mentioned earlier that stories in early RE games were purposefully design so to not limit further writers.
Neff
Member
Interpretation is neither fact nor fallacy until it's conclusively shown to be either. But my view is the one I've been led to believe by playing the dozens of RE titles in my collection extensively during the last 17 years and following countless making ofs, articles and interviews. I'll generously take your word for it because this isn't really going anywhere.
It's often the thinnest of thin lines. In fact, as I said, you can often have both.
Muffdraul
Member
I intuitively understood that as soon as I finished CV. "Ah, I get it. Obviously Capcom had some kind of deal with Sony whereby the PSX REs get the sequel numbers, which is why it was called RE3 even though it's a gaiden, and the true sequel to RE2 was given a goofy sub-title instead of a proper number." That was more or less officially confirmed later, but it didn't make me appreciate RE3 any more so. It doesn't change it from being rough and slap dash to me.
badcrumble
Member
Code: Veronica is bigger than RE3, but it's a drastically worse game and FAR sloppier (or rough/slapdash if you prefer that terminology). Look at all of the poorly designed boss battles and choke points. Look at the worst fetch-quests this side of RE0's item-juggling. No thanks.
RE3 was clearly made by skilled, smart game designers. CV feels like it has stuff thrown into it on the basis that someone thought it would be cool.
Muffdraul
Member
Opinions of quality aside, CV picked up the RE2 story line and went forward with it. That's sort of its main pillar when I look back on the games. RE1/REmake, RE2, CV, RE0... when I think "RE series," it's those games. RE3, RE4, and everything since, to me they're all extraneous and I don't think about them much. Even if I don't think they're necessarily "bad".
badcrumble
Member
You can get really good at it but it's basically a hidden QTE. You need to learn the timing for each attack, too. Easy mode kinda auto-dodges for you a lot so you never learn how to do it (and you honestly don't even need it on Hard, though I'd argue that it's pretty essential for Nikolai in The Mercenaries). But just about everything in the game is dodgeable, I think.
RE2 N64 has a mode that sort of does away with tank controls, and while it's awful for consistency of control, it DOES basically afford you the equivalent of RE3's quick turn, which practically feels like a cheat code in RE2 it's so useful. The game's not really designed for it so it really lowers the risk in boss fights.
encephalon
Member
For some reason I'm able to do it with Nemesis for the most part, but not slow moving zombies.
I don't think it's fair to put RE3 in the same category as RE4 and further games. RE3 didn't move the story forward, sure, but it expanded the universe and the story of Raccoon City's decline.
encephalon
Member
The problem is that the mercenaries were a terrible addition to the series.
Correct. Beating RE1 Jill isn't necessary. Especially if you're playing the godawful dual shock version. You need to get off that as quickly as possible.
How will you be playing RE2? Vita?
You don't need to play Jill's scenario to enjoy RE2, but I think it's better to do it now. Going back from RE2 to RE1 can be pretty rough. And Jill's scenario is a lot easier than Chris'.
And yes, Claire A/Leon B scenarios are considered to be better than Leon A/Claire B. So you first have to beat the game as Claire (scenario A) to gain access to Leon's B scenario.
Haha... I had to suffer through the music of the Director's Cut Dual Shock Ver. since I am indeed playing on Vita. I'll be playing RE2 on Vita as well. Same with RE3 when I finish RE2.
For RE1 Jill, I think I might just skim through the important bits with Barry. The key differences with her is that she has a lock pick, larger inventory (8 slots?), and the bazooka/grenade launcher (w/ different round types), right? Are the story beats and path through the environments largely the same?
As far as the RE2 character and scenario order, thanks for the detailed info! I'll do this.
Muffdraul
Member
Yeah, but I didn't see the point. RE2 had firmly established that Raccoon City was dead as a door nail, from the beginning of the game. And it was already dead at the beginning of RE3 too. The only thing it really added was
that it was eventually nuked.
badcrumble
Member
I really cannot imagine caring about the Resident Evil story at this point.
In the BIO2 drama albums, Raccoon City was actually secretly incinerated by the U.S. Army in cooperation with the U.S.S. (Umbrella Security Service). Men in hazmat suits and flamethrowers setting every creature and building alight.
The pre-BIO4 days are still fantastic. Much of what we continue to learn about the story these days actually comes from then, not the post-BIO4 games. Says a lot.
badcrumble
Member
CV and RE0 were where the story jumped the shark and started introducing ridiculous JRPG villains. RE4 just acknowledged that the time for taking the story seriously was over and that it was time to just have fun with it instead.
RE5/Revelations/RE6 are just tragic.
RE5/Revelations/RE6 are just tragic.
badcrumble
Member
I'm sure that the Alexia/Alfred Ashford stuff was originally supposed to be really grim and Hitchcockian instead of extremely silly, yeah. Stuff like the dual-wielding submachine guns, the John Woo stuff in the opening cutscene, and everything involving Wesker makes me think that someone at Capcom was like "oh my god you guys I just saw the Matrix and we need to make our game into that instead of a horror game."
And Marcus could've been handled a lot better, yeah, with a different character design and personality. I think RE0 and RECV were both harmed a lot by someone's poor decision to give the franchise a specific human villain in the form of Albert Wesker, which resulted in a need to suddenly to tons and tons of storytelling about him instead of Umbrella.
Wesker isn't even an issue honestly. The story behind him justified everything, in my opinion. CV suffered from censorship and outsourcing, while 0 suffered from outsourcing, rewrites (the writers forgot what they had initially written due to how long the game's development took). The directors also had a bit of a hand in camping it up to their own personal tastes, something Kamiya did to some extent in BIO2 (Ada/Leon's rather exaggerated love for example).
I think RE3 covers the tragedy of Raccoon City a lot better than RE2. While RE2 focuses mainly on RPD and the Birkin family with Raccoon City being there somewhere in the background, RE3 puts more focus on the city itself; on the events leading up to the Raccoon City's fate (Umbrella's influences in RC, the Dead Factory overflowing with dead bodies due to unstable machinery, various reports of zombies and monsters being seen in the city way before the whole Birkin incident etc.); on the slow destruction of the city; and, eventually, on the city's ultimate end. You see or meet people fighting for their lives or dealing with the loss of their loved ones, you see the whole city in ruins (not just few streets and the police city).
And then you have the ending, where you actually see various key locations you've visited during the game being destroyed by the blast, and hear the final report on the death toll. RE3 made me appreciate the whole setting of Raccoon City and its tragedy a lot more than RE2 did.
I think that while RE5's story is so-so (maybe even bad), the world-building in this game is great. The game adds a lot to Umbrella's and its viruses' history; it tries to explain Wesker's "super virus"; it establishes the world that happened after the Raccoon City incident (the fate of Umbrella Corporation and how it affected the Global Pharmaceutical Consortium; the formation of BSAA; the expansion of B.O.W. black market all around the world); it introduces new corporations (Tricell) and tries to expand on the idea of parasites used as bioweapons. Reading the Library and files from that game was really satisfying.
Do you know whether or there were any changes to the RE0 story after it moved from N64 to GameCube?
Two changes off the top of my head were the BIO2 laboratory that makes no geographic sense and the dashing young opera-singing Marcus.
BIO5 also does have excellent world building and files. There are some plot elements that are really great too (Wesker children = Hitler youth/Clockwork Orange). It doesn't really "try" to explain Wesker's virus though... its nature was decided back in CV. It just took a long while to reveal due to BIO4's development troubles.
Can you link some of these details? I'm totally intrigued.
A lot more info on both will be coming soon, along with unreleased concept art and such.
Can't wait!A lot more info on both will be coming soon, along with unreleased concept art and such.
Also News Bot, seeing as you're expert on the subject anything RE, someone mentioned in another thread that the Euro PSN of RE1 has the original music and I'm wondering if you know if that's true?
I believe so, PAL regions didn't get the "Directors Cut Dual Shock" version, it was just "Directors Cut"... though I can't recall if it came with dual shock out of the box (due to the PAL release being post-DS)
How About No
Member
I just played some Extreme Battle mode last night, best fun I've had with the game in a long while.
I actually attempted stealth in the lab power room with the super lickers and the SMG. Just skating on past them, grabbing the gun and BOLTING THE FUCK OUT with them all in leap mode after you :O
I think this is my favorite minigame in the series, even if it's just a super-tough backwards version of the main game. I like that you aren't timed and can actually save your progress, letting you go at your own pace.
I actually attempted stealth in the lab power room with the super lickers and the SMG. Just skating on past them, grabbing the gun and BOLTING THE FUCK OUT with them all in leap mode after you :O
I think this is my favorite minigame in the series, even if it's just a super-tough backwards version of the main game. I like that you aren't timed and can actually save your progress, letting you go at your own pace.
A lot more info on both will be coming soon, along with unreleased concept art and such.
If I could subscribe to you as a user, I would.
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