Alphachris said:
Scoobes said:
As you played them 2 years ago the effect wouldn't have been the same. You need to put certain games into the context of the time they came out. When the original Resident Evil came out it was one of the few genuinely scary games and came out at a time when cinematic games were just taking off (lets face it, that voice acting wouldn't wash now, I assume that's why your wife was laughing, lol). The sequels didn't capture the magic in the same way as the original, but they kept much of the atmosphere and I remember getting freaked by Nemesis constantly chasing me with that blasted rocket launcher.
Anyway, my point is that much of what made the games great has to be placed into the context of their time. The new games are failing replicate that effect when put into the context of the modern age and genre.
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I know what you mean. Resident Evil was one of my first games on the PS1. Before the PS1 arrived I played on the SNES. And the only "scary" game I can remember was maybe Super Castlevania. And thats why we remember Resident Evil. It was somemthing completely new back then and the first time we played it was a thrilling experience. I mean, when was that? 1996? I was 15 back then and maybe I was scared more easily back then than today.
The problem with horror games is that it is really hard to get scared when they are simply not real. Ok, the enemies might killl you, but you can simply reload. It is hard to incite fear when there is no real danger... And after you played through the game and you know where the shocking sequences are, the game is no longer horrifying. So the Horror effects are simply not a lasting effect of the game. I can understand why Capcom tries to go into a new direction because back then it was easy to scare the people because most of the games back then simply where not scary at all. You had a unique position on the market.
What I simply do not get is why people have such a big problem with changing/evolving franchises? Maybe Square just should make a Final Fantasy VI remake with new graphics and Capcom should remake RE1 with shiny new graphics. Try to imagine how strong the rage on the internet will become when they destroy the picture of the old classics. People tend to idealize old classics and if you remake the game people would be confronted with the reality. Are FF6 or Chrono Trigger really the "best games of all time"? I would rather take Final Fantasy X, XIII, Crisis Core, Kingdom Hearts or Assassin's Creed because the SNES simply can't deliver what modern consoles can deliver. For their time, the tried to get the most out of the limited capabilities of the SNES. But it took the PS2 Era to bring the story telling to such high standards. Animation, Voice Acting, Facial Expressions... on the Snes you had just Sprites and text boxes and you had to use your imagination to get the best out of the story.
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If you want to experience a scary game then I suggest giving the Indie title Amnesia: The Dark Descent a go. That's one of the few titles that does a decent job of it. Selnor made a good call with Alan Wake too, but for me I felt the story was what made me keep playing. The atmosphere is very old school Resident Evil-esque though. Siren: Blood Curse and Dead Space are both games/franchises that are meant to be modern horror greats too.
Anyway, I think the problem is two-fold. Firstly, past games are a part of marketing new ones. Resident Evil 6 (and 5 actually) by its/their very nature is/are marketed as horror game(s) but have evolved to be very different. Secondly is competition; both Resident Evil and Final Fantasy are expected to be the best of their respective genres but when rival product manage to modernise jRPG/Horror elements better then these top franchises then they're perceived as inadequate.
There is one aspect I disagree with though. FFVI, Chrono Trigger and a small selection of old school games like Planescape Torment, Zelda or Baldurs gate will always stand the test of time. Why? Because they didn't take on the cinematic route at such an early stage. Many of these old school titles allowed the player a lot of room for imagination rather then feeding them audio-visual stimuli. For instance, I played Chrono Trigger for the first time during the PS2 gen, yet I found I wanted to play it far more then most other game of the generation. The ability to impose your own imagination gives the games of that era an extra level of personal immersion absent from most modern games. It's comparable to reading an entertaining book.
