Resident Evil 5 demo - the anti-fun.

[Stark]

From what I understand Penumbra: The Black Plague actually might be close to survival horror in that you have no weapons, no real chance to fight and the only way to beat the game is to, well, survive the horror.

The Penumbra games are fantastic. They're packedvwith tension, use mood effectively, tell a wierd story without being terrible and use physics properly (the puzzles being described a 'HL2 style physics puzzles' makes me want to stab people). Even the tech demo that spawned the games us more interesting than RE or FEAR or whatever.

[Ghost Rider]

Played the demo and reminded me of every other RE.

Start: Shit weapons, low ammo, hundreds of zombies, bosses are annoying because limited ammo and shitty weapon.

Somewhere mid game: Shit weapons but massive ammo for crap weapons, you found shotgun/magnum/laserplasmadeathcharger but low ammo for big weapons, thousands of zombies, bosses are obnoxious because of shitty weapon.

Mid-late game: Hundreds of thousands of rounds for your best weapons, who cares how many zombies because they die in a shot sometimes multiple in a single blast of your mini nuke plasma deathcharger, bosses die in five hits once you recognize stupid pattern.

Since the demo is early game it is both annoying and demonstrates the glaringly poor control scheme. I pity though the co-op over X-Box live given how bad that can get if hiccups occur on some early boss and your buddy dies because of said bit.

[TheFeniX]

After locking out Fallout 3 and Operation Anchorage last night, I got bored and started watching some of the streaming videos on Live. I usually avoid them because it's nothing but fellatio for crappy games, but I saw the one for RE:5 and figured I'd see what MS is saying about it.

Some guy on there was claiming you can change the control scheme so that you can walk backwards while shooting. As insane as this concept sounds, can anyone verify it? I've already deleted the demo off my 360 and really don't feel like re-downloading it.

[born in shadow]

Has anyone managed to kill the chainsaw or hammer/axe guy? I swear, I seems like I put their weight in ammunition/explosives/fist in their brains and still nothin'

Not to mention my stupid helper decided "Gee, I wonder what chainsaws taste like! "

-Aaron, hates when your success is tied to retarded AI helpers

[Stark]

Oh god he's back!

- Stark, blogging about why people even bother playing RE games in 2009

[Rye]

On the plus side, his commissar looks like it has a nice rack because of the gas mask or whatever it is. I played this the other day, it seemed exactly the same as RE4 but with updated graphics. The level design alone turned me off right away. It wasn't remotely intuitive and the game itself wasn't any fun. It felt like I was playing House of the Dead 3 at Hollywood Bowl or something, but it wasn't, you know, good.

[weemadando]

Oh god he's back!

- Stark, blogging about why people even bother playing RE games in 2009

I was listening to some podcasts in the past week which featured a lot of defence of RE5 with people going: "The demo is in no way representative of the full game - don't let that experience put you off."

I'm sorry, but my problem with the demo was the fucking controls, not the content (though that was stupid too). So no, I'm still not sold.

What I am sold on though is Penumbra. I just started "The Black Plague" and though I'm yet to even clear the first level it has more dread, foreboding, atmosphere and tension packed into that first segment than into all of the RE games which I've played before.

[General Zod]

I was listening to some podcasts in the past week which featured a lot of defence of RE5 with people going: "The demo is in no way representative of the full game - don't let that experience put you off."

Comments like this are hilarious. The demo's supposed to be a representative of the full game. If it's not enough to sell us then what makes them think we want to play it more for several hours to see if it magically gets better? If it really is radically different then why is this demo even being put out at all?

[chitoryu12]

Has anyone managed to kill the chainsaw or hammer/axe guy? I swear, I seems like I put their weight in ammunition/explosives/fist in their brains and still nothin'

Not to mention my stupid helper decided "Gee, I wonder what chainsaws taste like! "

-Aaron, hates when your success is tied to retarded AI helpers

As far as I know, the axe dude can't be killed. You just need to survive long enough for your helicopter to show up.

For the chainsaw-wielding sackhead, my friend claimed to have beat him by just shooting him in the head to stun him, then going up and hitting X to melee him until he was killed. I wouldn't know, because when we played co-op, I was stuck with a sniper rifle because my pistol conveniently ran out of bullets, and as he jogged up to me I discovered another flaw: You need to wait after exiting scope view to move. My view was completely away from the scope and Leon had put the rifle down, but he wasn't moving. Of course, by the time he would have taken to turn and "run" away, he would have been slowly decapitated anyway.

My friend and I have decided to make a real-life gunfight game (Nerf guns, laser tag, whatever) out of this game. The rules are:

-No moving while aiming or reloading.
-When aiming, you must stiffly swing your gun around and past your target several times because you can't see where the gun is pointing.
-When turning around, you must take at least half a second to make a 180 degree turn.
-No moving past powerwalking speed.
-All players get five shots before they run out of ammo and must search for individual darts hidden in cardboard boxes. They must either shoot the boxes or hit them with their knife (cardboard tube, or the like) before taking the ammo.
-Half of the boxes will be filled with something other than ammo.
-During melee combat, both players must stand completely still and take single swings, bringing their weapon back to the original position before they can swing again. They must swing without extending their arm at all.
-Upon firing on your opponent's head, your aim must be just slightly off, so you miss by a millimeter and hit their shoulder.

[weemadando]

Dipswitch Comics have done up a lovely little comic on the topic of movement in RE5.

[Stark]

I was listening to some podcasts in the past week which featured a lot of defence of RE5 with people going: "The demo is in no way representative of the full game - don't let that experience put you off."

It's sad because of the cognitive disconnect; a demo is an advertisement. If I play a demo and it's shit, I'm not going to buy the game, and that's the developer's fault. The example of Bioshock is instructive; a demo can inadvertently reveal how much hot air the developers have been spewing and that the game is bog-standard or has serious flaws. That's BAD ADVERTISING.

What I am sold on though is Penumbra. I just started "The Black Plague" and though I'm yet to even clear the first level it has more dread, foreboding, atmosphere and tension packed into that first segment than into all of the RE games which I've played before.

I've only played the first one, but the tension when you have to solve an a problem (get past some dangerous psychowolves or open a door) where the solutions are rational and reasonable and fucking tense to carry out. Even though the mechanics are simple, sneaking past shit is always tense because you die so fast and combat is so difficult. I'd encourage you to track down the original Penumbra 'demo' as well; it's separate from the story of the later games but has a lot of exciting shit going on.

Just the motion-based controls add to the tension I think; there's something visceral and 'real' in using your mouse to drag a drawer open and wincing at the unexpectedly loud noise.

[JointStrikeFighter]

You can pull down the original tech demo here: http://www.frictionalgames.com/site/penumbradownload/

[weemadando]

You can pull down the original tech demo here: http://www.frictionalgames.com/site/penumbradownload/

I *STILL* can't figure out the very first goddamn level of Black Plague - I've lowered the bridge and gotten the orb thing, but I have no idea what the fuck to do now. How stupid am I?

[chitoryu12]

According to Fade2Black on YouTube, the reason for the crappy controls is "realism", such as how nobody would ever fire while moving or run backwards. Because, of course, realism is the prime objective when making ANY game, even at the risk of fun.

[Drooling Iguana]

I *STILL* can't figure out the very first goddamn level of Black Plague - I've lowered the bridge and gotten the orb thing, but I have no idea what the fuck to do now. How stupid am I?

I just played through the opening sections of Black Plague to see if I could help you (the game isn't broken into levels) but I didn't encounter any bridge or "orb thing". Either you're farther along than anything that could be considered the first level, or you're not playing Black Plage. Are you sure it's not Requiem? That one, AFAIK, is broken into levels (as it's pretty much just an expansion pack to Black Plague that contains a bunch of puzzle-rooms with little to no plot connecting them.)

[weemadando]

I *STILL* can't figure out the very first goddamn level of Black Plague - I've lowered the bridge and gotten the orb thing, but I have no idea what the fuck to do now. How stupid am I?

I just played through the opening sections of Black Plague to see if I could help you (the game isn't broken into levels) but I didn't encounter any bridge or "orb thing". Either you're farther along than anything that could be considered the first level, or you're not playing Black Plage. Are you sure it's not Requiem? That one, AFAIK, is broken into levels (as it's pretty much just an expansion pack to Black Plague that contains a bunch of puzzle-rooms with little to no plot connecting them.)

Yeah, I'm a moron and started with Requiem.

Is there a chronology I should be aware of?

[Drooling Iguana]

Overture - Black Plague - Requiem.

[chitoryu12]

According to Fade2Black on YouTube, the reason for the crappy controls is "realism", such as how nobody would ever fire while moving or run backwards. Because, of course, realism is the prime objective when making ANY game, even at the risk of fun.

Dammit, that's "Fade2Dark".

[General Zod]

According to Fade2Black on YouTube, the reason for the crappy controls is "realism", such as how nobody would ever fire while moving or run backwards. Because, of course, realism is the prime objective when making ANY game, even at the risk of fun.

I hear soldiers and police officers never ever fire their gun while moving or going backwards.

[chitoryu12]

He specifically said that you would need homing bullets to fire accurately. Never mind that I've done it myself with real handguns, Nerf guns, water guns, BB guns, airsoft guns, AND laser tag-style guns and managed fair accuracy. I don't even have military or police training, and I don't need to stand still just to put a laser over a target and fire.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

He specifically said that you would need homing bullets to fire accurately. Never mind that I've done it myself with real handguns, Nerf guns, water guns, BB guns, airsoft guns, AND laser tag-style guns and managed fair accuracy. I don't even have military or police training, and I don't need to stand still just to put a laser over a target and fire.

Most folks opinions of accurately are terribly biased by video games... in which machine pistols are weaker than similar caliber pistols, and shotguns almost do negative damage at anything longer than fifteen feet.

Still, not too surprising... Someone's bound to find a defendable quality in anything... Though, it's pretty much a known quantity. Even at announcement, if you thought they were going to abandon the control scheme, which has remained the same since pretty much the first one (Outside of the ability to actually -aim-) then you were bordering on barking mad.

[Though, that's not to say I didn't have fun with the REmake and RE4 on my cube...]

[Stark]

Gamer nerds are conservative because often they -don't- have a strong ability to learn. They have a skill and don't want to have to re-skill, ever.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Oh I know... I know... Admittedly, I've only ever reached mediocre to above par at most games I play online. mostly because I don't want to take a game that seriously... though I do rage, hard, at times about incompetent teammates...



Though it's funny... Over on the Dystopia boards one skilltard flat out said that the game would be ruined if they took out bunny hopping. At the time, it had been going around that the devs had taken it out. Turned out to only be a specific type they killed. (Apparently allowed for basically unlimited velocity, but was relatively hard to pull off.)

[Edward Yee]

Here was my problem with the RE5 demo (in Public Assembly)... Pushing the shelves? Not so bad. Taking shots? Ehhh... the red-dot laser difficulty was kind of annoying, but if it's realistic (particularly in daylight) then that's fine. But wait, I decide that my "M9 clone" is a peashooter! And I have a machete! Left Bumper, show your stuff!...

... waitwaitwait, WHAT? The machete does a single swing that doesn't one-hit kill, seems to only hit one enemy (instead of as many as the blade's tip will reach) and whose animation has to reset before you can swing again? There's no machete COMBO? This isn't a viable zombie-massacring method?!...

[weemadando]

Here was my problem with the RE5 demo (in Public Assembly)... Pushing the shelves? Not so bad. Taking shots? Ehhh... the red-dot laser difficulty was kind of annoying, but if it's realistic (particularly in daylight) then that's fine. But wait, I decide that my "M9 clone" is a peashooter! And I have a machete! Left Bumper, show your stuff!...

... waitwaitwait, WHAT? The machete does a single swing that doesn't one-hit kill, seems to only hit one enemy (instead of as many as the blade's tip will reach) and whose animation has to reset before you can swing again? There's no machete COMBO? This isn't a viable zombie-massacring method?!...

You're forgetting, by having a viable zombie-massacring method you wouldn't be fighting the controls anymore. You'd be fighting zombies. And according to Capcom and their fans, that would make for a SHIT GAME. Completely unlike what they've done now.