Let's face it, who didn't love Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry 3, Okami, Viewtiful Joe, God Hand... and if the last few titles on this list have you saying, "hey wait" then I think you've grasp where I'm taking this. With some of the big movers and shakers of Capcom lost to Platinum games (the artistic successor to Capcom's sub-studio Clover), does Capcom really have what it takes to make the same games they once did last generation?
Devil May Cry 3, the inarguable best in the Devil May Cry series lost its director to Platinum Games who is now working on the upcomming game Bayonneta. Devil May Cry 4, the much anticipated successor, showed us a return to mediocrity and a lack of direction in the series after it had struggled so hard to overcome the salvage job of a RE4 prototype that was the first game and the tragedy of a rush job that was the second. DMC4 is a bitter dissapointment, a game that doesn't even trust you to play most of the first couple hours, argued by some to be a ploy to make the game look good to developers playing it for just a few hours before writing a review. And the game's asinine dice rolling system coupled with a complete recycling of the first half of the game to make the second half just leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. And this is after the game had already been pushed back nearly a year.
Resident Evil 4 was no doubt the opus of the Resident Evil series, a complete detour in direction and style but a much needed breath of fresh air. However its director has left Capcom as well for Platinum Games in much the same respect that DMC's director left. Now with the highly anticipated RE5 looming over the horizon, what can we expect from it? With promises of a return to the style of the earlier RE games, will this too turn out to be a dissapointment or lack luster successor?
The creative talent behind games like Viewtiful Joe, Godhand and Okami is obviously lost now too. And even with liscence to these franchises still intact Capcom doesn't even have the free resources to make ports of games like Okami for the Wii because of all the effort being put into their massive HD gaming projects and have to outsource such side projects to smaller studios like Ready at Dawn.
What has Capcom done since the dissapearance of Clover to warrant our former respect for them? Zack & Wiki, a fun game but nothing to the calibur that was once Clover. Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles, a fun rail shooter painfully symptomatic of being a rush job. Lost Planet was mediocre, and I appreciate some of you love the game, but let's be serious its not game of the year material. Dead Rising was a fun concept, but it's not AAA material. The evidence stands that they can make good games, just not great games like they used to.
I suppose you can always say hooray for Monster Hunter, but it'll take more than that for them to earn my respect as one of the best developers.
Am I just being overly synical, or do some of you have the where with all to see what I'm seeing here? Is the one-two-punch of losing Clover coupled with the higher investment required for HD gaming wearing down the Capcom we once knew?
