Confused? Read my initial blog

I played Resident Evil: Director's Cut before these two games, you can read my thoughts here

I thought it would be fun to approach these games in chronological order as I work my way through the main series franchise. As mentioned in the initial blog about this endeavor, I am a sucker for stupid timelines that exist in media so when I got the urge to finally play these games again, rather than go in release date order (which is almost chronological order to be honest) I opted for the very specific timeline of when things occur. This meant playing 2/3^rds of RE3, then proceed to complete RE2 (not once but twice), then wrapping up RE3. I am aware that there are several games that also deal with the fall of Raccoon City, and maybe someday I will play those games to get a larger picture of what happened to the city over the course of September 1998, but for the moment I am just focusing on the main characters and entries to the franchise. This experience was very exciting and I enjoyed the process a ton, swapping between the games wasn’t as big of a deal as I would’ve thought and it led to swings in my enjoyment of the games themselves, both good and bad.

I didn’t really know what to expect with Resident Evil 3 as I load the game to start playing it. My perception of the game is that the community is kind of ho hum towards the game, not necessarily labelling it a pariah i.e. RE0, more labelling it is a downgrade following the wonderful game that is RE2. As I began the game I was expecting to experience a slog and to more or less fall in the middle of the road, not hating the game but not enjoying it much either. That was not the case in that I absolutely loved playing the game.

I found that they were able to mix the atmosphere of 1 (and what I eventually found 2 to be) but also adjusted the combat to make it more fast paced and exciting. This led to the game feeling less scary but as what I found with the game itself, they seemed to balance changes correctly. Yes the game felt less scary overall, but the Nemesis encounters were absolutely terrifying. Every time (especially early on) Nemesis would rear his ugly face, I physically tensed up in hoping to survive another day. Having not entirely adjusted to the controls and the dodge ability (again, another balance to the game) I found myself fleeing in terror at the majority of the encounters. This meant that the first time I went through a door, thinking I escaped the tentacles of my…. nemesis ONLY for his music to kick back in realizing that he can move through doors and chase you further than any enemy has at that point, absolutely terrifying.

Probably my biggest complaint about RE3 early on was I wasn’t really sure what the hell I was doing story wise. As the intro cutscene and numerous loading messages state, I’m escaping, but that more or less describes all the (early) RE games. Protagonist ends up in a shitty setting, B.O.W.s, need to escape, expose/destroy Umbrella in the process. It’s a pretty minor complaint as I also find most of these games so far keep the story bits to the back 1/3^rd of the game. But by the time Jill had been injured and Carlos was being controlled, I had to move onto RE2.

If I could boil my thoughts and feelings about Resident Evil 2 into one sentence, it would be I really wished I played this game back in the day, when I first considered myself a fan of the series and was young and impressionable. Resident Evil 2 is a damn good game and still holds up very well. And it is necessary to beat the game twice, otherwise you are missing out on so much that is truly amazing and impressive about the game (and most importantly it actually finishes the game). What I immediately noticed first was the differences between 3 and 2. While I did really enjoy the larger amount of enemies and action going on in 3, the slowness and isolation that exists in 2 was fantastic. 2 took what is un-ironically great about 1 and built upon that and while the game isn’t as charming, it moved beyond the B movie vibe of the first and came into an actual survival horror setting. The VA was a lot better(worse?) than 1 excluding the gun shop owner guy, the story was very engaging and interesting with a larger cast of characters that you interact with, disturbing and terrifying enemy encounters, slow build and release of tension, all these build to a perfect combination of elements into an incredibly joyful experience.

I really can’t say enough positive things about this game, but to be critical or critics sake, and mode or option to play the game where it automatically splits you between Claire and Leon’s story. That way you see the immediate ramifications of what your characters actions on how the effect the surrounds. The idea of being able to fight Berkin first in Leon’s campaign, then bouncing to Claire and eventually fight him there, so on and so on. This wouldn’t be possible as you do the same exact puzzles for the most part and thus it wouldn’t make sense that both Claire and Leon have to find Virgin Hearts to find their respective puzzle pieces from the same exact spot. Regardless, I loved my time with the game and I could see RE2 becoming a game that every few years or so I pop back in to experience and enjoy.

Riding high off of RE2… I kind of didn’t want to return to RE3. I didn’t really expect my opinion to change on 3 over the course of playing 2 but it certainly did. Not that I now hated the game or even thought to want to finish the game, more that 3 is an experiment, a way for the developers to try new things or new ideas to play with. 2 is a purer experience of what they originally wanted to do in 1, 3 is a “OK, we perfected that, let’s experiment,” and because of that I am able to nitpick at the game. I really enjoy the idea of Nemesis, but the one other boss sucks and I didn’t find very interesting. I really like the fast pace action, but very little slowness or tension building takes away from the series in some very specific ways that I absolutely realized I missed after the RE2 playthrough. I really loved RE3 when I first started up until the break, from that point I don’t know how much of it is to blame on RE2 or enough time to figure out things that bug me about the game, but I think it is a fine game… I don’t know if I will ever play it again. That saddens me as there is some cool ideas and things going on in the game, but…. Yeah.

Kind of got all bummed at the end, overall I absolutely loved the process. One of my favorite things with the combination is that RE3 felt like the beginning of the incident with dozens/hundreds more zombies and enemies and by the time I get to RE2, everything has calmed down as it becomes a more atmospheric and empty. In some fun ways the games play off each other very well and you wouldn’t get that experience anyway other than splitting them between each other.

Some interesting tidbits I’ve picked up on now that I’ve played a handful of Resident Evil games:

• First off, there is going to be a puzzle involving wood boxes and water, funny how I praised RE0 for such a fun, engaging, challenging puzzle (and it was), but other RE games also contain them.
• Second, you WILL play as another character, sooner or later.
• Third, expect all the games to end on a setting you were just in exploding, Capcom loves their countdown sequences and self-destruct systems.
• Four, all hail the Rocket Launcher, except Nemesis, dude can take some rockets.

Now that I’ve gone through 4 games at this point, I’m still really enjoy it. To be honest I’m surprised how quickly I’m moving through them, I expected I would want a little downtime in-between them but I’ve beat them all with the month of May. The next game is Code Veronica X, which I will be playing on the PS3.I know very little about the game except that it’s both(?) Chris and Claire and it takes place on Antarctica. That is pretty much all I know and I might take a little break now (maybe try and beat Peace Walker and Ground Zeroes in time for MGS5) but I could easily see me this weekend starting up CVX. Until next time.

On to…or you can read my thoughts on CVX here