dezm0nd wrote: ↑January 12th, 2019, 7:17 am
That's not like you, Ksub! Looking forward to your analysis
Okay, my impressions from playing the demo:
Good:
- Item management appears solid. Plenty of different types of items to combine and use. Some old, but also some new with interesting potential, like the consumable wooden boards to barricade certain windows with. Inventory space is restricted. Not as restricted as I'd like mind you, but still somewhat restricted. Let's hope the final game doesn't go overboard with the inventory expansions and that backtracking and strategic item usage will still be a thing.
- Lighting effects are very impressive.
- Skippable cutscenes and short contextual animations are a good sign for future speedruns.
Neutral:
- The RE engine is obviously built towards photo-realism. I personally prefer somewhat stylised graphics and character designs over photo-realistic ones, but I also can't deny the effect of some of the ultra-crisp textures and models. Really impressive looking locations and characters in the final game could win me over. Skeptical until then.
- Jury's still out on the save system. Typewriters are a plus. It remains to be seen if the ink ribbons are limited consumables and if so, to what extent.
- The cookie cutter third-person camera is obviously a far cry from the delightfully composed fixed angles I love so much, but it's a hell of a lot better than the first-person camera in terms of readability, especially during cutscenes. Organic body language damage feedback instead of strawberry jam screen-splotching is also a plus.
- Combat system isn't
bad per se, but seems rather flat from what little time I had to experiment with it. I'm not seeing any of the super-tight hitboxes of the classic games nor the impeccable possibility spaces with constant room for optimization of RE4. I appreciate the fact that knifing downed enemies is a thing again, but overall it strikes me as the typical modern combat system that is more concerned with aesthetics and elaborate animations than actual mechanical purity. I think this will live and die by the rest of the game's enemies/bosses and if the player has any interesting ways to interact with their AI.
Bad:
- Games like these are at their best when they make the players think about what they're doing a little. Telling them where to go takes away a lot more than it adds, in my opinion.
- Controls are overloaded, poorly conceptualized, and imprecise. The 180-degrees quick turn is as useless and awkward to use as in most dual analogue games (see also: GoW 2018). The combat even more or less forces you to stand still with its super-strict reticle spread, so it's obvious that tank controls would have been a cleaner and tighter solution, especially considering the level layout. Restrictions are not a bad thing.
- This is only a very minor point, but it's obvious that they had to reuse certain assets and animations from RE7. To be fair, the classic games do this as well, but it is noticeable nonetheless.
- Music is the biggest sticking point here. There is almost none of it and what little there is (I had to wait well over a minute in the Save Room before the first notes started to appear) is limp and completely devoid of personality. Hard-locking 20-year old audio files behind a paywall is a total scumbag move, and if the demo is in any way representative of the final version's default audio setting, then this will end up being one of this game's biggest missed opportunities. You can smell the anti-artistic "realz over feelz" RE7 influence from a mile away and it fucking reeks.
In short, I think it's shaping up to become one of the best survival horror games in recent years, and a much better overall game than both Revelations games, both Evil Within games, and all of the first-person jumpscare horror one-trick-ponies everyone is obsessed with nowadays, including RE7. But that says more about the state of industry than about this game's quality, really.
But is it going to be a timeless masterpiece and live up to its own legacy? I just don't see that happening at this stage and it makes me really sad. I find it absolutely heartbreaking to see one of the quintessential industry trendsetters reduced to playing catch-up and that there is a lot being lost from transposing such a unique and influential title into a lowest-common-denominator template.
Like I said, mixed feelings... I want to like it so badly, but I can't shake the feeling that Capcom are happily sacrificing replayability and mechanical fine-tuning in order to make everyone's initial casual playthrough as accessible and "horrifying" as possible. I don't want a RE game that is just "ok", or "better than X,Y & Z, at least". I want a RE game that is
great and worth mastering and analyzing for years. Something to revisit in 2036. I'm not sure this is it.