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This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews Resident Evil Village.
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They need to just end the Chris Redfield BSAA RE5 subplot of the series already, I feel like it was a complete false start that just 'infested' the series like a communicable tumor after RE4. The concept of an anti-bioterrorism outfit is all well and good and sensible in a realistic setting, but RE has always been centered around campy Sci-fi with a side of gothic horror and corporate espionage, and placing any military components at the mercy of the horror. S.T.A.R.S. was effective because they had a 'traitor' within their unit, turning them all into unwitting stranded survivors in a gothic horror setting with sci-fi and corporate espionage–the BSAA is organized and competent and ends up turning the game into Call of Duty–as does Blue Umbrella, for that matter. Takes away from the horror mood, because you're suddenly well-equipped to deal with your problems with camaraderie and tactical missile strikes.
If you want to bring the military mood to an RE game, the textbook way to do it, is how RE1 and RE3 did it: You have broken components of an underprepared unit, you have a traitor (Wesker/Nikolai) in that unit, and you have a bunch of big scary creepy crawly experimental critters from a biology lab run loose, that makes the military unit feel like the cast of Aliens–Man vs Freak of Nature. Any tactical missile strikes, need to be saved for the end, in action-hero looking-away-from-explosions fashion, because that's the bit that drops the curtain on the horror experience and returns the cast to everyday normalcy.
And that's basically the problem with RE in a nutshell–it's not even the complexity of the lore, it's that the formula of RE is centered around super-competent protagonists, that, inevitably, will escape the abnormal campy sci-fi horror scenario, and do practical military things to deal with the horror, once order is restored. It's hard to keep re-setting the horror scenario, under those circumstances. Between RE1 to RE3 there's an excuse for sequels with reoccuring characters in that it's effectively the same viral-outbreak scenario transpiring over the course of a few months, just on a larger scale, the whole 'Raccoon City Incident', but trying to string together a series of similar horror scenarios with the same rugged veterans each time over the course of a decade, gradually wears away the newness and unpreparedness of the protagonists, throwing you out of the intended mood of the series. This is why when RE4 breathed life into the series, it had to be set in a foreign country with a set of utterly unfamiliar cultists as antagonists, and the paramilitary with bioweapons elements were tucked away toward the end–much the same in RE5's scenario.
The series, by nature, has to navigate this hurdle of the horrors being man-made, of the protagonists being trained professionals, and thus, the scenario being controlled, familiar, and thus not-scary-anymore, over and over.
You can tell he was excited for this one cause no one had to beg him for years to play it!
A bit funny how Yathzee laughed at the classic Re fans for not digging Re 4 silliness and now he sounds exactly like them when he talks about 7
Everyone I see play RE8 finds the dollhouse scary. I can understand it if they're actually afraid of/uncomfortable around dolls, but damn
If they let go of the octopus business how are they going to sell their octopus shaped merchandise?
Yahtzee once again upset that a Resident Evil game is trying to be a Resident Evil game (hence the FOUR SEPERATE TIMES he makes an analogy to it trying to be a Resident Evil game).
SPOILERS:
Or maybe he's just upset they killed Ethan in the end.
Capcom, always pushing the envelope, I mean octopus.
Okay the prophetic tendencies of these videos has officially become more poignant than funny.
0:20 THE AMAZING HUMAN DESK TIDY !!!
XD
I get the sense that Resident Evil is turning into Assassin's Creed. Trying something new did work, but now, they keep trying to re-insert big, scary corporations back into their games when everyone else just wants to move on.
5:05
A new favorite!
XD
The "Europe" comment is what struck me, because it made me realise how you can pretty much guess everytime where a game is going to be set because of how many times it has been done before.
It's like when you hear that a game is going to be set in the UK and you know for a fact that it's london again
yea i disagree 8 is more grand scale because its a victory lap for ethan and the players
I mean a mech suit does sound cool but not for a RE game.
I liked 8 way more than 7.
I feel personally attacked. But I deserve it.
I wish Yahtzee could do a retrospective like this one on the Deus Ex series, which started off gangbusters, then proceeded from that peak into shitting the bed (focusing too much on stealth play and going back in time). Keep up the good work, Yahtzee.
Heres the thing, resident evil has always been dumb and campy with over the top ridiculous moments. If anything re7 was by far the least resident evil game in the series (its really good and i love it, but my point still stands) 1 has jill sandwich, 2 has a sewer gator, i'm just going to gesture at all of 3, 4 had ashley and definitely not a ripped off napolean, 5 has boulder punching, 6 is the funniest shit i've ever played, and 8 has mommy milkers and a mech fight. Nobody should be acting like this isn't exactly what resident evil should be.
I thought it was a pretty tasty octopus once I poked its eyes out so it’d stop judging me.
I honestly can say I'm pretty sure this games trash once again resident evil had gone so far from what made resident evil games good and then there's Re3 wich was not being faithful to the source material and making a game that had little no no production value and just recycled s*** from previous remake
How the hell did you know about my French teacher fantasy?
If they wanted to surprise & shock us, what Capcom should've done for the intro was have Ethan & Chris having a beer together, then either have Ms. W or Leon Kennedy bust in & blow Redfield's head clean off his shoulders.
yahtzee must have played the game on mute with no subtitles. it's the only explanation for why he didn't comment on Ethan's insanely and hilariously bad dialogue.
The trick to selling octopus burgers is to do it in Japan. Sooooo, Resident Evil anime when?
RE can't stop trying to be a game that appeals to everyone. Capcom made this one the way it was because too many people (IE focus groups) complained that RE 7 was "too scary".
The irony of trying to appeal to everyone is that you often end up appealing to no one.
I also wondered why Ethan had an outdoor outfit while eating dinner! Anyway, I agree with Yahtzee on almost everything. Almost is because the scary moment he talks about wasn't even that scary. RE7 was scarier at the beginning and I liked that atmosphere. RE8, in general, is just "meh", I would propose it for the blandest list of this year!
Gee Resident Evil, thanks for forcing me to pick the objectively worse of the two characters I could save only to 'fridge her to motivate her blank-slate husband.
And yeah, she probably "comes back," but Jesus FUCK, this has dribbled out like a yawning wank on cough syrup.
Octopus burgers are pretty good, actually
Just like Bitcoin, RE is going back down faster than a SpaceX rocket.
Heisenberg at least had the one humorous line where he refers to Chris as a "Boulder punching asshole."
People came for mommy Milkers , I just wonder what exactly did they stay for .
I absolutely agree that the game is a mixed bag. That being said, I found the most effective sequences to be the Castle and the creepy dollhouse (The baby will haunt me possibly FOREVER), but as far as enjoyable, the Castle and the factory were really exciting and fun, especially the factory!
Yahtzee: Forget about the fucking octopus!
Capcom: I AM THE OCTOPUS
was it the part with "the baby" when the makers had a brief moment of lucidity and took your weapons away? because if it is, that is something we can agree with.
"You predictable mouth breathing Marvel movie enjoying fucks."
Yahtzee, I love you so goddamn much.
So, is this actually resident evil 8? Or did they just highlight the VIII in the middle of the name for shits and giggles?
Resident Evil 7 sucked, it's worse than 5 and perhaps even 6. Lack of weapons and monsters, weak story and first person makes it not worth to even play a second time. Resident evil 8 doesn't seem very different aside from "Hey, we brought weapons and upgrades back." , I'll wait until it's on a discount bin for 20 bucks, learned my lesson from the Resident Evil 7 hype.
As always RE4>RE2:remake>RE1:remake=RE0=RE5>RE3>RE7=RE6.
RE4 and Dead Space will always reign supreme in this survival action type of game.
So it was as expected.
Yahtzee predicted them trying to shove mangled octopus giblets back in a previous review.
Say what you will, his pattern recognition is on point.
'most genuinely terrifying horror experience I've had in a video game for a very long time'
It was the giant fetus monster wasn't it?
As I said on the Escapist site, the reason it all has to tie into the Umbrella Corporation is because it isn't Resident Evil without the Umbrella Corporation, they can't justify putting a big marketable name on the box without including the thing that big marketable name is centered around, and of course making a new IP that's merely INSPIRED by Resident Evil is apparently an executable offense for big game companies…
0 through 3 are where the series lives and dies for me. And I liked the various remakes too.
4 could/should have been the start of an entirely different franchise.
Super spoilers in this what the fuck
Chris didn't want Ethan to get involved beyond watching his wife get killed.
It's hilarious to find out the most memetic character (besides Chris Redfield) is in the game for such a short time. I am unsure if this counts as "false advertising", people just playing (with) themselves yet due to obscene thirst, or both.
The body horror baby was worse than the weak sauce doll house
I mean – yea this is honest. The game sort of peaks at the second house – the third level is a rush of…erm…honestly I blinked and it was done so I can't recall much. And the factory was…interesting? if you've never seen a Rammstein video.
On a side note, octopus is super tasty and I highly recommend it. I genuinely now want an octopus burger. Is this the beginning of a long slope towards preordering EA games?