Icemael

This is a fantastic post! This is the kind of deep analysis and understanding of game mechanics I wish professional game criticism had more of. It's pretty much everything I could want in a critical evaluation of mechanical changes in a remake of RE4. Thanks for sharing!

I haven't played the remake yet, but the original truly is one of the finest games ever made and I expect I'll end up feeling similarly to you.

Sure. I really enjoyed it back in 2008. Don't expect amazing platforming or combat, it's a very simple and unremarkable game in terms of mechanics, but the art style is fantastic and the game still looks great 15 years later. What's stuck with me the most though is the soundtrack, which still pops up in my head sometimes even though I haven't touched the game in over a decade. Just listen to this shit.

Not surprising. Given the departure of almost all of the core outward-facing staff within a span of a couple of years (2020-2022), the changes in the structure and character of the content, the difficulty the site has had in finding a coherent and focused new direction, various new "shows" going on long hiatuses or just fizzling out etc. I assume they has been constantly hemorrhaging subscribers and losing non-subscribed viewers for the past few years, which means investments in new staff and freelancers have not paid off financially.

No corporation wants to bleed money and none of Giant Bomb's owners have been charities. At some point it's better to cut your losses rather than continue to sink money into a project whose revenue is shrinking over time in spite of costly attempts to change that trend. I wouldn't be surprised if the site doesn't exist within a few years, or even at the end of this one.

Regardless of anyone's personal opinion on the talent of the new staff and the quality of the content they've been putting out, it's pretty clear that the site has been slowly dying for years now.

Using Brave V1.36.116 on Windows 10 with no extensions. Since several days ago I can't play any videos, doesn't matter if I pick "HTML5" or "Progressive." I tried it on Chrome and Microsoft Edge and it works fine in those browsers.

I saw people in one recent video comment section (https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/young-souls/2970-21498) talking about new playback issues related to adblockers. Brave has built-in adblocking so maybe it's that? Either way, I hope this will be fixed.

@beard_of_zeus: Yeah, it's a difficult game. It's been a while since I played it but I don't think I ever got further than the stage 4 boss. But I had an absolute blast every time!

Cave's shmups are generally great, with some exceptions. My favorite is Espgaluda II, which has great bullet patterns and pacing, cool mechanics (a bullet-slowing system that can be used to get out of tight spots but makes the bullets faster if you overdo it, and that can be used to spawn even more bullets if you want to go for a high score -- the scoring system is a bit complicated but there's a good explanation in the strategy subforum on the Shmups Forum) and fantastic aesthetics (gorgeous medieval/fantasy-themed sci-fi world where you fight superpowered people, tanks, mechanical dragons, ships propelled by energy wings and more while flying across war-torn towns, massive battleships, castles that reach into the sky etc., all accompanied by an energetic psytrance soundtrack).

I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's bad, but it's definitely not great and parts of it are certainly bad. Aesthetically it's nice, brilliant in parts, but aside from the Beneviento house and a couple of other minor segments, it's not even close to RE7 in terms of building atmosphere and tension. The story is inane but some parts are funny in a dumb B-movie kind of way.

The big problem is the combat, which is straight-up trash. RE4 (which people like to compare the game to, and which it does draw on in some areas, unfortunately not including combat) had brilliant combat, level and encounter design based around tactical movement and crowd control, having to avoid getting cornered or surrounded while manipulating enemies into forming clusters that can be roundhouse kicked to the ground after a carefully placed shot. It also had great enemy variation (shield guys, enemies with dynamite, chainsaw men, enemies randomly spawning Plagas upon death etc.) and combined those enemies in ways that made for interesting, dynamic and tense encounters.

Then you have RE8 where you fight what are functionally the same enemies for pretty much the whole game (the vampires/ghouls behave identically to lycans except being slower...), and that almost never require any other tactic than "keep slowly backing away while dumping shots into their heads". Timing blocks is never even remotely challenging because enemy attacks are slow and extremely generously telegraphed. There's no real crowd control element or any need for tactical movement. Almost every encounter is the same and they are all boring, especially given that the enemies are all extreme bullet sponges (at least on Hardcore, which is the setting I played on). Barricading could have been an interesting mechanic given competent enemy and level design, but instead makes combat even more boring — enemies always stagger when shot in the head through a barricade, so you can literally just stand there and shoot them in the head over and over each time they step to the barricade to attack it, interrupting their attack every time until they die. Also, there were numerous occasions in the game where I found that while backing away from enemies, they would reach an invisible wall where they just wouldn't pursue you anymore and instead start slowly walking away, at which point I could just keep shooting them in the back of the head. And that wasn't the result of me actively looking for exploits, I came across this spontaneously each time. One time it even happened with a midboss!

Everything about the combat mechanics, enemy behavior and level design (as far as it relates to combat) is just incredibly sloppy and thoughtlessly designed. Now, RE7 also had shit combat, but that game managed to be awesome by having very little of it (until the last parts of the game, which are also its weakest) and emphasizing other things that were wonderfully executed. RE8, on the other hand, wants to be this action-packed combat rollercoaster where you kill endless hordes of monsters, and when that's what you're going for you really need to have your shit together when it comes to combat design. This game, unfortunately, absolutely doesn't.

When it comes down to it, licensed team sports games like FIFA etc. are just (at best) mediocre real-time tactics games with the most dull settings, scenarios and aesthetics imaginable, and they sell only because of the licensing.

I've been here since 2008. The site has changed a lot over the years, and the time that I've spent on it has varied significantly due to a number of factors. But in terms of total accumulated time I'm not sure there's any other single website I've browsed more. For years it's been my main source of keeping up on what's going on with video games, it's given me countless laughs and smiles, and even when my time here has been limited (as in recent years) it has always been nice to know that Giant Bomb is there when I want it.

There have been site redesigns, the community has migrated away from the forums, and appreciated staff members have come and gone before, but aside from Ryan's passing, the "core" has always remained. Now most of that core is leaving and it's just Gerstmann left. Whatever the site becomes in the future might be good, who knows, but it will be fundamentally different from the wonderful thing that Giant Bomb has been for the past 13 years.

To Vinny, Brad and Alex: you guys are awesome, what you built over the years was something truly unique and amazing, and you will be sorely missed.

I'll say that I liked a few pieces of character art (specifically Carmelina, One Last Kiss and Judge) but generally I found the artwork pretty repulsive. To compare it to another game that came out this year and uses similar artwork of sexualized fantasy characters during dialogue, Hades has way better art. As for the world itself, it might have looked better if it was more animated and stylized with some nice shaders or something. In many respects the game looks like something from 15-20 years ago (although you can tell from things like resolution and draw distance that it's much newer) and lacks the style that makes certain games from that era hold up well to this day, e.g. Wind Waker, Okami etc.