Even if I wasn’t currently living through a profoundly strange time for myself and basically everyone in the world, I think this would be a weird time for me and video games. Other than the sudden overabundance of time to play them these last few weeks have seen the release of no less than three sequels to previous “ArbitraryWater Official High-Quality Game of the Year” winners. Nioh 2 (sequel to 2017’s GOTY), Doom Eternal (sequel to 2016’s GOTY) and Resident Evil 3 (sequel to 2019’s GOTY) all together in short sequence. While I’m stuck at home desperately looking for distractions to maintain my sanity. So… I’ve played them.
Nioh 2
On one hard end of the sequel spectrum, Nioh 2 is entirely confident in doing the same thing again, but more. Fair enough. I didn’t give Nioh my GOTY (during a very competitive year) for its incoherent nonsense story of “English Samurai dude very loosely based on an actual historical person” fighting his way through Spooky Sengoku Japan and murdering various demons and historical figures along the way. I played Nioh for its strong melding of character action game combat with a Soulsian template and also loot, for some reason, and in that sense Nioh 2 is entirely successful because it doesn’t mess anything up. Sure, they added two new weapons in the Hatchets and Switchglaive alongside an entire new subsystem with the Yokai Shift stuff (an entire new button to hold while you press other buttons!) but it’s mostly quality of life and lateral improvements across the board. You now have a player-created avatar instead of William, with a pretty impressive suite of customization options, but for the most part it’s, uh, kind of the same game?
But really, it’s kind of the same game. My skills and muscle memory more or less returned intact from 100-ish hours (and a platinum trophy) spent with Nioh 1, so I’m probably the exact worst person to tell you if the difficulty ramp or learning curve is more or less gentle in this one. They certainly are more generous with the enemy variety, if only because they bring in a lot of the foes from the first game’s DLC chapters. The Yokai mechanics certainly give you more options, but this was already a game with an overabundance of options, so one more thing to keep track of isn’t actually all that much in the grand scheme of all the character building and stance switching nonsense already present. Is it a better game? Probably? Yes? Yes. They haven’t fixed any of the first game’s outstanding issues (storytelling, level design, loot management, the NG+ grind) but hey I made a pretty lady character (not as pretty as my Code Vein lady TBH) and it’s never not satisfying to break an enemy’s block by slamming them with a giant sword. I haven’t finished it yet, mainly because it’s just as long as the first one and I got distracted with the other games on this list, but given its absolute lack of surprises thus far I’m going to say my opinion of it isn’t going to drastically change once I do get around to the last few chapters.
Doom Eternal
If Nioh 2 commits the sin of omission by not changing anything, then I’d argue Doom Eternal commits the sin of commission with its newly found laser focus on a resource management loop that was only implicitly present in Doom (Game of the Year) 2016. When everything flows together it’s some brilliantly tense, best-in-class shooting. There’s definitely some hints of a character action game present in the sheer number of options and demanding execution present pretty much any time you’re in a big arena full of demons, and as someone who normally likes a good character action game I have zero problems with that comparison. I should love Doom Eternal. And for 80% of the game I think I do(?) which is less than the 100% of the time I loved its predecessor.
It’s only in 20% of the game where that flow doesn’t exist that it started to be a problem for me. I hate Marauders, and I feel like their specific brand of bullshit is endemic of larger design decisions towards an idea of prescriptive “hard counters” in a first-person twitch shooter that didn’t exist previously. Even when it works, it just feels philosophically at odds with part of the ridiculous power fantasy the game seems to be presenting. When the glory kill = armor, flame belch = armor, chainsaw = ammo flow is broken for even a second, it can spell quick death (at least on Ultraviolence, which I played through entirely in spite of my better judgement,) which can be annoying when the encounters go on as long as they do. It’s the kind of shift that likely ensures I’m not going for the platinum trophy this time around, mostly because of how exhausting I find any given individual encounter (eh, maybe I’ll turn on cheats and grind it out. I have time, after all.) even if I can’t help but respect their willingness to go for it and double down on the gameplay instead of merely opting for more of what worked almost four years ago.
This is just a side thing, hardly as major as my gameplay quibbles, but Doom Eternal’s tone and storytelling is something that I still found irritating even when the shooting was exceptional. There was a droll “corporate” quality to Doom 2016’s storytelling and sense of humor that trod the line between “This is so cool” and “This is so dumb” in a way that was kind of perfect for the kind of game it was. I don’t think it would’ve worked a second time, to be fair, but Doom Eternal’s mistaken pivot towards deep lore and characterizing the Doomguy feels like it misses the mark. There’s some real “90s comic book” energy coming from the whole thing in a way I found genuinely distracting, even as someone who is absolutely a “gameplay first” advocate a lot of the time. Does it kill my enjoyment of the game? Nah, not really. But, like the rest of the game, it’s just sort of disappointing that they didn’t quite manage to recapture the raw “lightning in a bottle” quality that made the last one so good.
Resident Evil 3
It’s fitting that the remake of Resident Evil 3 evokes its original by being a lesser, far more linear and action-oriented follow up to the remake of Resident Evil 2, my 2019 Game of the Year and one I have described as “Being made for me, specifically.” Everything you’ve heard is true! The game took me a little over 5 hours on my initial playthrough, Nemesis only appears in preset scripted events (something that the original game was much better about disguising), and there are certain areas and sequences from the original that aren’t in this one. Despite that, I think REmake 3 manages to differentiate itself in a really strong way, and by the end it had somehow managed to crawl (ooze?) into the upper half of my imaginary series ranking. I might like it the most of the three games discussed here, even if I also acknowledge its shortcomings.
When it comes to the question “How faithful should a remake be to its original source material?” I tend to lean towards a more permissive answer, assuming that I think something should be remade in the first place. The original still exists and is likely still easily accessible, so I tend to want more of a “rebuild” or “reinterpretation” rather than a 1:1 conversion that just looks or plays better. Even by that standard, it’s kind of fascinating how little this modern remake of Resident Evil 3 actually resembles the 1999 Playstation original in anything other than broad strokes. This, I might argue, comes from the fact that the streets of Raccoon City were never as iconic or persistent a location as the Spencer Mansion or RPD were. There are certainly references and callbacks to stuff, but having replayed the original RE3 earlier this year, I can count the number of direct 1:1 areas on one hand. I don’t think this is a bad thing, given that I don’t find the original game is all that iconic and exciting outside of the titular monster man who chases you, but some omissions are more glaring in the face of the game’s resoundingly brisk pace.
You know how most Resident Evil games start in a bigger, more open environment before eventually transitioning into smaller, more linear areas, right around the time you start having enough ammo to murder most things in your path? Well, Resident Evil 3 is basically a game that’s almost nothing but the latter. While I think actual speedrun times for this game are going to end up comparable to RE2’s (the associated trophy is >2 hours, which seems entirely doable,) there’s a whole lot less route optimization involved when you’re being quickly shuffled from one straight line with a handful of branching paths to another. One one hand: you don’t ever really get to immerse yourself in a single environment and learn its layout through tense, measured navigation and discovery. I think the game could’ve used at least a little more of that, either by expanding the downtown area to more closely resemble its original counterpart, or by including at least one or two more steps or sequences on the way to the final conclusion. No one should miss the stupid-ass giant worm fight, and I think NEST 2 is a more than an acceptable replacement for the Dead Factory, but the lack of Clock Tower feels like a glaring omission. Well, as glaring as any location from a game without many great locations can be.
The biggest trade-off of this linearity is Nemesis can’t really be the same kind of persistent stalker that Mr X was in the RE2 Police Station. While people are absolutely misremembering how he worked in the PS1 original (like this game, he only appeared at scripted intervals to chase Jill around for a couple of screens) that game did it smartly enough to make it feel like he was a constant threat. There’s no such camouflaging here, and if you want to pump him full of enough shotgun rounds to down him for like a minute (like the original, he drops cases with weapon parts!) you might just blink before you blow up his initial form. He’s certainly a scary bastard for those brief moments, but for the series’ most iconic enemy it feels like Nemmy gets the short end of the stick.
On the other hand: once the game gets going, the momentum never really stops. Resident Evil 3 is definitely the closest to “Action RE” that the series has been in a while, and giving Jill a Bayonetta dodge is probably as good a reminder as any that several of the leads on this game used to work at Platinum. It’s the rare game in the series that gets better as it goes along, rather than peaking during its first half. The game might be short as hell, but it’s constantly throwing new (visually striking) environments, weapons, and enemies at Jill for that entire runtime, and even the boss fights and segments where you play as Carlos are good. It even has constant music, unlike the RE2 remake’s drastically minimalist score. I’ll give it this, they clearly put some thought into replay value with some of the bonuses you can unlock and the way higher difficulties remix item and enemy placements (in the same style as RE2’s B route or RE7’s Madhouse difficulty.) It’s not enough for me to recommend you, the reader, go out and purchase this video game for $60, especially if you’re only interested in one go (Given the few matches of Resistance I’ve played, I’m going to say right now that’s probably not a great selling point either) but I think this game knows what it wants to do and manages to pull it off incredibly well.
Conclusion
So that’s me and big video games, for the moment at least. Given that I’m quarantined in my parents’ basement for the near future with very little to do other than play video games, watch anime, study a copyediting work book, and furtively polish my resume, I think it’s quite possible that you’ll see another blog or two from me yet. If you have 80 hours to spare, I highly recommend reading through Umineko: When they Cry for its batshit bonkers anime murder mystery insanity. I technically finished it right before the world decided to stay inside, but I think now is the perfect time to recommend a long visual novel. Thanks to the mediocrity of Resident Evil Resistance, I've gotten back into Dead by Daylight, and I’ve also found myself drawn to Warhammer 40K: Mechanicus, which is a smaller budget tactics game that gives an appreciatively un-XCOM approach to moving dudes around squares and shooting at things (might write something up about it.) It's not even the first 40K thing I've played this year either, as I'd just like to reiterate that Dawn of War II is a hell of a game, and playing the Retribution campaign as the Orks was 100% the correct decision.
Similarly, I, uh, spent a non-insignificant portion of my tax refund on eBay-ing some semi-obscure PS2 JRPGs, as I was threatening to do for months. So you can expect me to at least have something to say about Xenosaga Episode 1: Pretentious Nietzschean Subtitle, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, or the two Shadow Hearts games I could get for less than an arm and a leg at some point. Somehow this seemed a more attractive idea than just getting around to playing Trails in the Sky, but that'll probably end up happening too if this goes on long enough.
Oh, and one last thing
I’ve started intermittently streaming on Twitch in a desperate attempt to ease my sense of isolation/anxiety, and if you’d like to watch me play random-ass “Video Games” you can follow me here. More importantly, I’m going to use this newfound knowledge of “Oh wow OBS is actually really easy to use” for a good cause, namely the upcoming Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run next week. It’s extremely on-brand for me, and involves CRPGs, permadeath, questionable donation incentives for a good cause, and perhaps a discussion or two about RPG design philosophies. Full details coming soon. Look forward to it.
Log in to comment