ShreddieMercury

Did anybody start NG+? I'm debating whether to do that, or to just play it again fresh. I'm always sort of opposed to NG+ since I find the fun in a lot of these games to be the gradual progression of upgrading and buying new items. I started a fresh save but am having second thoughts about how to play through it again.

Beat Hardcore mode finally after 22.5 hours. This is easily my favorite game from this "gen", or whatever you can call it at this point. Just phenomenal in every respect and I don't have any real criticism to offer. It took an all-time great game, made sensible and fun changes, and somehow made it even more replayable and dynamic.

These REmakes are one of my sole bright spots in modern gaming, and from my perspective RE4 is maybe the pinnacle. The original RE4 was an unrepentant video game, made in the era just before the industry was dominated by western developers that sadly (to me) steered hard into a cinematic style that minimized the excess, breathless variety, and focus on gameplay that categorized the sixth generation. I'm having an amazing time playing this, and it's so fun to discover how much is different or reinterpreted. People here are really blitzing through it; I just got to chapter 7 after about nine or so hours, though a lot of that was spent dying in the past couple of chapters on Hardcore, which really ramped up around the: The difficulty feels well tuned so far, but that fight was brutal. It really did help the systems click for me though, and once I was fully in the zone with parrying, crowd control, and position management, the gameplay kicked into high gear. This is different enough from the original that it feels distinctly its own thing, but I do feel that it retains that game's best aspects and refines them in clever ways. RE4 is lightning in a bottle and, like a handful of the most monumental games, it may never be replicated. But the respect for its legacy is evident here, and I'm so thankful that we get to experience it again with fresh eyes.

Playing on XSX, the game looks fantastic and I didn't touch anything in the display options. It defaulted to the non-RT performance mode and I haven't had a single noticeable hitch. I also don't think I would have noticed any sort of deadzone issue unless I read about it. That's the kind of thing I always assume just differs between games, and it only take a short time to get used to how aiming in feels in different games. I increased the acceleration slightly but haven't thought about it since. I appreciate DF's work but looking at games with that sort of microscope, especially ones that already look and perform exceptionally well to my eye, seems like such a joyless exercise. It's like watching a movie and only focusing on the continuity errors.

Agreed, I hadn't assumed that this game would be too spoilable, but even a short way into the game there are all sorts of fantastic left turns. We'll see how the rest of the game is, but this is maybe the quintessential example so far of how to remake a classic game. Where I found the Dead Space remake pretty safe and dull, this is quite the opposite.

Yes there is, I believe the developers confirmed it.

Everything about this game rules. The knife durability is awesome because it forces you to be strategic about positioning and how to fight groups of enemies, which are so far more frequent and more aggressive. It just adds another strategic layer on what is already a very dynamic gameplay system. Playing through the first Village square section multiple times because I kept dying, I was pretty amazed at how different it was each time. I saw all sorts of things I didn't notice in the demo. The game really pushes you in these fights and it makes for such awesome, variable encounters. This in no way invalidates the original game, which has a brilliant and unique control scheme and will always remain an all-time great. This remake is surprisingly different and feels like playing an all new game in many respects. It's the best recent RE game, and one of the best overall of the past several years, and I'm only a few chapters in. Also the typewriter save music remix...

Played this for a couple hours this morning on Xbox since you can swap timezones to New Zealand easily. It is staggeringly good. Anybody with any sort of affinity for the original game is going to be blown away I think. Playing on Hardcore (which is recommended if you've beaten the first game), I was absolutely stunned by the village section and what comes shortly after. Very excited to hear everyone's impressions, but so far this is even more of a dagger-to-the-heart nostalgia bomb than RE2, with some of, if not the best feeling gameplay in the series.

Never done the trick of switching your time zone to NZ but I'm excited enough for this that it's worth a try. Anybody know how consistently that works, or if they've announced time-zone specific unlocks for this?

Xbox Series X for me.

Well, you got me there because I didn't realize what the definition of "macabre" was. But I still think that works; if something is overwhelmingly macabre, no matter the tone I would still at least consider it "horror" of some sort. Shaun of the Dead isn't scary at all, but I would still call it a horror-comedy, rather than a comedy, for example. But then you have the case of things that are scary that don't have what I would consider horror elements. Watching Mulholland Drive for the first time is legitimately the most unnerved I've ever been watching a movie because the tone is so masterful, but it's definitely not horror. For games, I had to put down Alien Isolation because it was so effectively terrifying and stressful. Not that it really relates here, but just to recognize how intense I found that game. I understand your point about categories, but not calling RE4 at the very least action-horror wouldn't make sense to me regardless of scares.

I bought this and pre-loaded it on Xbox. Don't think I've ever done that. Barring Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, which I have serious doubts about, this is the most exciting release of the year for me.

Playing RE4 on PS2 for the first time, I was so impressively immersed in the first village encounter that being killed by the chainsaw suddenly from behind startled me to the point that I had to put the game down for a few days. So I would say, at least early on, that it's effective as a horror game. As it wears on I think you get used to the tone and it gets to be pretty over the top so it definitely veers into camp, which is really fun. I don't think horror is defined by whether somebody finds something scary, which is extremely inconsistent and subjective; to me it's about the macabre subject matter and deriving tension from a fear of death, so all RE games are horror. For remakes, I hope they just do RE1 again in the new engine and call it a day. That original mansion has always been the strongest setting, so seeing it recreated with the care and attention to detail of something like the RE2 remake would be amazing.

Yep.

I like the optimism of some posters in giving examples of how developers might utilize this tech to create interesting gameplay, but I'm much too cynical to think that all of the sudden we're going to see creative applications of lighting once the hardware is powerful enough. Maybe if we get to the point that Nintendo cares about RTX then we'd see something genuinely interesting from a gameplay perspective, but my guess is that this will be mere window dressing for the same slate of games that we see endlessly in the AAA space. To be clear, I have seen cool examples of this tech and I don't disagree that it can make a difference. And plenty of people have money to burn on new consoles that offer only marginal differences, so have at it. But comparing RTX to other similar graphical advances in prior console generations, I can't see this having anything but a minimal visual effect for the foreseeable future.

Ray-tracing is probably the least impressive graphical upgrade that I've seen in all my years of gaming. Like lots of buzzy GFX terms through the ages, its impact on enhancing/innovating/improving gameplay is extremely minimal so far. It can be impressive if somebody points it out and shows the difference between a RT and non-RT image, but once a game is in motion, I don't understand why we should give a shit. In terms of actually affecting the image, to my eyes HDR makes more of a difference, but it also does not enhance the gameplay to any degree. This gen is a bust.

On Xbox, make sure that you have Dolby Vision enabled. I didn't realize that I had it turned off, and I had issues with HDR in games (particularly RE2). For whatever reason it's superior on Xbox to HDR10 or whatever the other option is from my experience. You can also calibrate HDR from within the Xbox settings. On top of that, my TV has independent HDR settings and calibration as well. Played through the demo last night and loved it. Can't wait for the full game!

You've never played any version of RE4?

Definitely want to play this at some point, but it seems a bit off putting how close it looks to the original. The gameplay was already very tight, and I'm not sure if a visual facelift alone is worth it for me.

Personally, I really don't care about Dark Souls, and the addition of difficulty options would not make a difference to me. And while some of the discussions about accessibility become a bit irrational and veer toward outright entitlement, I think difficulty scaling is one of the absolute no-brainers that adds flexibility and opens games up to a wider audience. My main issue is that I don't like to see the influence of Souls games in anything that isn't directly inspired by them. Despite the art and settings, I don't think they have that many compelling gameplay elements aside from the difficulty and pointlessly punishing save systems, so when games en masse decide to implement these specific mechanics, or to up their difficulty in crude and cheap ways, it's baffling to me. This is a trend that I don't like and one that I think runs counter to the direction that the industry has been moving regarding accessibility in general.

Nice post and I appreciate the point that you're making about all of the haranguing about accessibility while still abiding by the "creator's intent" regarding difficulty. One thing that I do think that gets missed in any of these discussions is that the difficulty in Dark Souls (and many of its spinoffs) is the game. When people say it would cheapen the experience to add options, I don't necessarily agree, but it would fundamentally alter the main point of playing these games, which seems to be (based on the effusive discourse) memorizing and repeating the same actions ad nauseam until you beat a boss upon which you have undergone intense self improvement and become a better person (?). While I'm all for accessibility options, I don't think there is enough inside the Souls games to make them worthwhile absent their main mechanic (making you die). There are lots of ways to make video games challenging, and I just don't respond to the DS approach. I'm glad people love these games, but the same needlessly punishing mechanics have seeped into so many games that it's just baffling to me at this point. The reviews of Wo Long I find genuinely funny, because it's as if game critics have some sort of Stockholm syndrome about this type of absurd difficulty.

Man, Dark Souls really ruined action games huh. The blurbs from those reviews are genuinely hilarious.

Thanks to @Spork3245 I have a month of Ultimate! I'll download FH5 this afternoon and let you know what I think. I think there is a general misconception in gaming circles about what arcade racing really is, because in revisiting older games in that genre, I've realized that lots of them have unique and challenging handling models with incredibly deep gameplay. Daytona USA has three tracks and one car, and I've played it for dozens of hours because the races are always unique and you are on a knife's edge at every corner. Arcade racing does not mean that the game is shallow; from my perspective it just means that the focus is entirely on the actual racing, and making sure that central element is as fun and perfectly challenging as possible for the player. I'm not sure if it's specifically to blame, but when Gran Turismo came along, it seemingly widened the genre in shallow ways by focusing on every detail aside from the actual racing itself. You no longer were focused on learning the exceptionally designed tracks and fighting interesting AI, you were instead grinding ovals in order to unlock more generic cars with slightly better stats. I've thought about creating a master thread for arcade racing recommendations but didn't know if there was enough interest at this point.

That's so kind of you! I actually have subbed before so I don't think that will work, but I really appreciate the offer. I was trying to figure out if there was some other deal I could find but I can't really identify anything at this point. I've gone back and forth and have subscribed for a couple months here and there in the past, but I prefer to just buy games I'm interested in on sale if possible.

I don't sub to game pass at the moment but thought about signing up to play this. I probably will since it would be a low cost way to at least see what it's like, and then find some other stuff to try (Windjammers 2).