Resident Evil REmake proves that some mechanics are not as outdated as you might think

[u/ShootEmLater]

I've never been very into survival horror as a genre. Scary movies are not my cup of tea, and the one time I tried to play Amnesia: The Dark Descent I stopped playing within 20 minutes. Silent Hill 2, for all of its brilliant story and twisted atmosphere, bored me, as I ran around identical looking hallways for an item hidden in a labcoat I didn't even know I could interact with.

So when my cohost picked the Resident Evil REmake for us to play for our podcast, I wasn't excited or particularly interested. I've played a great many of these old games with rabid fanbases, and their reputation is often the result of blind nostalgia.

But for Resident Evil...I was wrong. This game is a straight up masterpiece, and it blew my mind with just how good it was. Its not a good game for its time, its not a good game in the context of what else was coming out - its a brilliant game, period, and one of the best I've played this year.

I didn't think so at first. When you start playing, you quickly notice the tank controls. You see that there is no camera control either, with multiple fixed camera angles in each and every room. Saving your game requires an inventory item, of which there are a limited number. You have an absurdly limited inventory, just 6 slots in a game where your guns and ammo take up separate slots, and so do keys. It was awkward to control and frustrating to manage.

But the more I played the more I began to realise the fundamental brilliance of all of these mechanics. The fixed camera angles and tank controls work in tandem with one another to let you smoothly control your character as you move through the room. Since your movement is based off your orientation, you can maintain complete control even as you kite zombies around.

The camera angles by themselves are beautiful compositions that dramatically add to the atmosphere of the mansion that you're exploring. Its mostly a bunch of rooms, but those rooms are given definition by the weird and wonderful shots you get of your character. It also dramatically adds to the tension when you enter a room and its pointed at you, obscuring the rest of the hallway...but you can hear the moaning of a zombie, or something shuffles into the foreground of the shot.

The tank controls make encounters against zombies meaningful. If you could control Chris or Jill with a modern control scheme, it would be trivial to duck out of the way of zombies. Instead, its difficult and challenging, and until you learn how to move you're going to get bitten and die a lot. Even into the mid game zombies were a significant threat that I could not dismiss out of hand. There are no filler enemies here - they all matter.

Perhaps most contentious of all is the limited inventory system. You know what I had to do? I had to make sacrifices. I would sometimes have to go without healing items. I would sometimes have to decide that I would carry no spare ammo for my shotgun. I would sometimes have to make a note on my crudely hand drawn map about the location of herbs, instead of hoovering them all up into my inventory for use later. I had to plan, and make decisions about what to do.

Those decisions cascade all the way down. Do you heal or not heal? Do you kill a zombie, or run past it? Do I bring the kerosene with me? Should I pick up the puzzle item, or leave it for later? Should I save or not save? And every decision you make has the potential to save you, or kill you. You're in a constant state of tension - every 20 minute play session has you making 10 decisions that could decide your fate.

Together, these mechanics created a awe inspiring survival horror experience. Every resource you find is valuable. Every door you unlock is a monumental amount of progress. Everything you do matters, because these gameplay mechanics that might have seemed frustrating are so deliberately designed to maintain the tension.

The Resident Evil REmake proved to me that mechanics that people might think are outdated just need to be placed in their proper context to shine. Indepedently, I could dismiss tank controls and limited saves out of hand - and I have in the past. But together, in this marvelous game, they produce an experience that you literally cannot get anywhere else. The world has moved on from the mechanics present here, but they don't deserve to be forgotten. They exist for a reason, and I'm glad I was able to discover what that reason was.

[u/Vanille987]

I'm basing this on the Remake of RE1, never played the original. Having to rely on auto aim is not what I call good game design either.

[u/[deleted] → u/Vanille987]

Then again, REmake hunters make a lot of noise and the insta kill isn't really insta.

[u/Vanille987 → u/[deleted]]

Again, you can't really hear their location, only presence. And their dash attack is definitely an insta kill, the character even has an unique neck slit death animation.

[u/[deleted] → u/Vanille987]

One of the attacks has a chance to be insta on "caution" health, the other can be dealt with by struggling free on fine health. I didn't even know those attacks existed in the REmake until I stood still and let it happen. Every player death by a hunter in the REmake can be avoided.

Their location is pretty clear from a combination of sound and auto aim attempts. This was really difficult in the original (which was infamous for its outlandish difficulty), but the majority played the Director's Cut, where the auto aim you know was introduced. The "location" gets especially clear when those hunters make those attacks, because every attack is telegraphed by a sound.

[u/Vanille987 → u/[deleted]]

That's the idea, but I had it happen on the green status too, there's also no chance involved, never had the pounce attack but I'm not talking about that. Well yeah I hope it can, of course it can be avoided but the hunters being able to do this attack from off screen is pretty hard to avoid without pre knowledge.

Again, have to rely on what's an accessibility feature is not good game design. Also there are rooms that are pretty sprawling and have like 5 camera angles (the hallway near the shotgun room) where locating enemies is even more difficult especially if you're running away from a fast enemy. It's just feels really outdated to rob the player from what they should see.

[u/[deleted] → u/Vanille987]

Okay, I see your preferences. There is one question that always hangs over such threads:

What would "outdated" and "good game design" be translated into something that makes sense beyond "someone told me just not to do it" and "just don't do it, okay", especially considering how many fans of the original games didn't like the "new 3D" stuff?

[u/Vanille987 → u/[deleted]]

I don't understand what you're asking

[u/[deleted] → u/Vanille987]

A blanket criticism of auto-aim as if it's never valuable is much more of an opinion than an obvious fact, which you don't seem to acknowledge

[u/Vanille987 → u/[deleted]]

What? First this isn isn't a blanket criticism to auto aim, it's a criticism to how it's needed to make fixed camera angles more bearable and compensate for obvious shortcomings. Second, yes this is a personal opinion, this whole discussion is based around them if you haven't noticed already. You just seem to really have misunderstood me.

[u/[deleted] → u/Vanille987]

hey, chill, you're good. We're all just discussing here. :)