Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

The Legacy of Kain series may possibly fall on deaf ears for those of you who’ve only come into gaming within the last decade. The Legacy of Kain franchise contained five vastly different games. It consisted of two main characters and a whole TV series’ worth of supporting characters across different ages in the fictional realm of Nosgoth.

The plot of Soul Reaver takes place a few millennia after the original game of the series, entitled Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. The eponymous Kain has become the leader of all vampires, with his children serving as his vampiric lieutenants. Raziel, his second in command enters a stage of evolution before Kain does–he grows a pair of wings, which Kain does not approve of. Kain destroys Raziel’s wings and tosses him off of a cliff to his doom.

After a long time of suffering, Raziel is revived by a mysterious voice known only as the Watcher, who guides souls of the dead along their correct path. The Watcher reveals that Kain has corrupted his ability to do this and tasks Raziel with the job of saving the world by destroying Kain and his own brothers, who have grown further corrupted. In doing this, Raziel would also avenge himself.

For the most part, each game in the Legacy of Kain series has a widely different style of gameplay. One exception to this is Soul Reaver 2, which retained many of the key elements of the first Soul Reaver sans the open world elements, forcing it to be more linear.

Soul Reaver’s gameplay could almost be compared to that of 3D Legend of Zelda titles; it has a similar combat system to the famous Z-Targeting, as well as open world exploration elements.

While I like to remain positive about every game I cover there are a few negatives to Soul Reaver. For one, it hasn’t aged well. The sound effects and in-game cutscene animations look and sound quite bad. Despite this, the voice acting will be forever be remembered as some of the best from any video game series—a trait that continued throughout the Legacy of Kain series. The game was also unfinished when it debuted, which meant a number of things were removed from the game. For example, one of the brothers was never included in the game and was left out completely (though thankfully this was dealt with in future re-releases). Perhaps the biggest example of this is the ending. Soul Reaver just ends with a rather quick and boring boss fight. It’s a major shame, especially when compared to the rest of the main game. The sequel picks right up from there, but at the time that was another console generation away.

A lot of the open world elements are sometimes unclear, and many extras you find along the way feel like they should have had more explanation of gameplay use. Cheat codes also reveal variations of the Soul Reaver that can’t be found in the main game, as well as a bigger use of your other spirit guide, Ariel, who you meet through the game.

The story is a big theme of the series as a whole, and in the efforts to make a good game a lot of narrative sometimes takes a backseat so the gameplay can shine. The balance of the two would become better in future games of the Legacy of Kain series, but it leaves Soul Reaver with a skeleton of a main story and it writes Kain in as a full villain. In all other games, conversely, he’s more of an antihero and/or outright protagonist. However, this fits newcomers to the Legacy of Kain series well as they’ll identify with Raziel more while players of the original game will be interested in Kain’s fall from grace as the Scion of Balance and saviour.

With its preconceived story over and complete, the Legacy of Kain series is a collection of games that are unlikely to get a sequel; and since the possibility of an HD update seems unlikely at this time, it’s worth getting the games as they are to try. The Soul Reaver games play out more like standard action/adventure games while the Blood Omen games are more experimental in gameplay; the final game in that miniseries plays out more like Devil May Cry. You might want to stick to Raziel’s story and just play his games to get the gist of Legacy of Kain’s central narrative. Regardless, it’s a series that shouldn’t be missed and I hope you feel a need to give it a try. You can pick them up very cheaply these days.

That’s ‘Why You Should Play’ Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver!

Words & Video by

David ‘Ryatta’ Wyatt

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Video: Metroid Prime

So let’s talk about Metroid Prime; first released in 2002 and being a Nintendo franchise it was only available on the Gamecube, although it has since been released as part of the Prime trilogy on the Wii. You will also see it looks pretty amazing in full HD, which is due to it being run on an emulator with a powerful PC.

Metroid Prime was the first entry in the series to be in 3D. The series had skipped the N64 completely so the very thought of a First Person based Metroid game seemed to un-nerve most, especially when compared to Castlevania; (a similar game play and exploration style to the 2D Metroid titles). The Castlevania 3D games had been complete failures in terms of gameplay, and critical reception had forced the games to re adopt 2D style gameplay. Fans were quite rightly worried about the same fate befalling the Metroid series, though spirits were raised after the Game Boy Advance game Metroid Fusion had been well received.

Although the term wasn’t really popularised at the time and you could argue that Prime gave true birth to it, the game is more a first person adventure and role playing game than a traditional FPS, in that it’s just about the opposite of what was expected of an FPS, and now a days with Call of Duty reigning supreme, its true even more so.

Exploration was first and foremost the priority, with combat taking a steady second; you weren’t led by the hand through scripted events, but were given the chance to explore at your own pace and were encouraged to do so. The most significant achievement of Prime was that it successfully made a 2D Metroid game in 3D. Even Mario 64 had changes to how the format of the game worked, but Metroid was just as before, so much so that you could have just made the game in the 2D engine and it would have worked.

One of the reasons the game works so well as a first person game is because traversal in the game is handled so well; as any avid FPS player will have experienced the failure of FPS games when it comes to plat forming at some point, yet Prime succeeded when all others had failed. Prime did not give you pin point places that you’d need to jump to, but gave you wide open areas with wide ledges that you could easily get to, making it more fun than taxing, though with save points being plentiful around the game you were never punished too badly. If you die falling from a ledge, you would just incur a small health decrease.

The one other major factor Prime had that other games did not was a targeting lock on system similar to that of the Legend of Zelda games; once locked on you could dash around enemies and fire from your gun would automatically be on target allowing you to deal with avoiding enemy fire, weak points could also be locked onto for bosses meaning aiming for the head was a non-issue.

At its core, Prime is a fun adventure game that just happens to be played from a first person perspective and if you keep that in mind going in, you’ll find something that rises above today’s expectations and offers something more than the average military shooter that’s the unfortunate norm these days.

That’s ‘Why You Should Play’ Metroid Prime!

Words & Video by

David ‘Ryatta’ Wyatt

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Review of the Japanese Version of PSO2

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PSO2 Review Summary

First off, it’s probably worth mentioning that my PSO2 account has been locked since the video was recorded, due to me not living in Japan. However from as far as I could get before the lockout, I enjoyed what I was playing!

Originally being set for release as a commercial title and not a free 2 play game has meant that you get a full game with the option to buy extras, and not another game following the pay to win model that I hate with a passion.

Also bear in mind that my computer couldn’t keep a steady frame rate and record footage at the same time, so the video is taken with the graphics set to 2/5 on the graphics scale, but I’ve given you a few screen grabs of the game at its best to show off just how pretty the game is. In particular the lighting effects look amazing.

Phantasy Star Online 2 will be free to download as well as purchasable in the form of a disk that will retail for about £5, and with that you’ll get access to a few extra items. Given the game is free to play it’s nice to actually have a box option.

On the whole, I’m very impressed with the new game and can’t wait to play it in full English early next year. It makes up for the not so impressive Phantasy Star Universe, and PSO2 looks like it will hit the ground with a bang. Judging by the amount of oversees players who jumped onto the Japanese version, I’d say there’s quite an audience waiting for the game next year… and you should be one of them!

Video Review by

David Wyatt

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But what really goes into making a cutscene? How much time does it take to develop the cutscenes in a game? How are they integrated? How has their use evolved over the years? Let’s take a closer look at the world of cinematic animation in video games.

Cutscenes: Behind the Frame

The evolution of video games is quite amazing in itself when compared to the evolution of other industries, if you consider that we’ve gone from text adventures, all the way up to the HD systems we use today. Sounds impressive right? While all this has taken place in the short time frame of just a few decades, with each generation taking a giant leap in one form or another, cut scenes have perhaps taken the biggest leap in an even shorter period of time.

The Evolution

Cutscenes in their most basic form since the mid 70s were nothing more than a little character being moved across the screen and some text displaying the story. But this was fine, because it’s not like we expected much from shooting anything that wasn’t you, or rescuing the kidnapped Princesses from monkeys, right?

Example scene from Final Fantasy VII.

Disk based media obviously had the biggest impact on cutscenes; with some games going the live action route–often with poor production values, but sometimes becoming popular for that very reason alone. Other games took the route of pre-rendered or real time cutscenes. Final Fantasy VII onwards show great examples of pre rendered cutscenes, while the Uncharted games demonstrate real time cutscenes used effectively. Real time cutscenes have, however, evolved more from the evolving technology of games consoles, not the storage based media of the game itself; since they are shown in real time and are sometimes interactive.

You can group cutscenes into three categories; Live Action, Pre-Rendered and Real Time. We’ll look at the pros and cons of each, and I’ll also discuss how they can best be used–or not, in some cases. It’s worth nothing that cutscenes aren’t important to narritive, being more of a cinematic tool. You can provide a perfectly good narritive without resorting to cutscenes as all pre CD based games often did. Dark Souls is a recent example of a modern game that does this.

Live Action Cutscenes

I’ll discuss Live Action first, since with the continuing growth of graphics, cutscenes being filmed with a physical cast is becoming a rarity. Unlike the other types of

A screenshot from the FMV game Night Trap.

cutscenes, the live action ones are just recorded film. In that sense, they are not that much different from any film or TV show you watch. On the production side, it has little to do with the development of the game on the actual ‘game’ part of the production. During the early days of using disk technology (CD-ROM for example) in the 16bit consoles like the Mega Drive/Genesis Sega CD, there was a boom in this type of cutscene. Sometimes full games were made from these cutscenes, like the infamous Night Trap.

Live action cutscenes are generally known for being filmed on a low budget, with the dialogue and quality of acting often being rather poor. However some games have become well known for this B-movie like quality. The original Resident Evil for example, used live action film in its opening. The B-movie quality of the game has gone on to become a well regarded aspect within the Resident Evil fan base. Also given that Resident Evil is supposed to be a horror series (or was depending on your opinion) these scenes were a perfect fit for the game.

The ending of the original Resident Evil on the PSX.

Naturally there are examples of live action cutscenes used very well within games as well, with perhaps the Wing Commander and Command and Conquer series being the most well known examples. While the production values of these games were no different, their overall quality was better due to better direction and acting. Command and Conquer capitalised on them over time, taking a more comedic approach as the series continued.

Tim Curry in C&C Red Alert 3, where overacting is part of the fun.

Pre Rendered Cutscenes

A Pre-Rendered cutscene is a video that plays between bouts of game play that’s on the game disk in video format. It’s not interactive, as the game’s console/PC doesn’t actually generate anything, they just play the file. Rendering is the process of making videos from a PC, frame by frame, hence the name pre-rendered. I generally group pre-rendered cutscenes into two subtypes; the ones that are designed to look amazing, with graphical quality that is leaps and bounds ahead of the game’s in-game graphics, and the cutscenes made to mimic the look of the game in every way, so that it’s not apparent that the game is playing a cutscene, hopefully going unnoticed by the gamer.

A high quality cutscene from Final Fantasy X.

It’s actually easy to recognise most types of cutscenes if you know what you’re looking for. High quality ones like you might see in a Final Fantasy game are obvious. These generally look a lot more advanced in graphical quality, again due to the scene being a video and not actually being created by the games console. The use of videos started when games switched to using CD ROMs. Having a much higher storage capacity than cartridge based consoles (a cartridge normally being less than 20mb compared to a CD ROM’s 700mb), and looking at the amount of videos on the Playstation Final Fantasy games, you can see why they hit up to 4 disks in size.

There are more benefits to using videos for the scenes. One regularly used tactic is getting a different team to make them. They can be developed by a different department or even a different company that use an array of software tools, which won’t work in a game. This allows the use of the most modern computer animation technique and software to make an as technically impressive video as required. For many games, these videos might be used for an opening and closing cutscene, with everything else happening real time (Kingdom Hearts is a good example of this). In Mass Effect 2, the original CGI trailer was made by a different company, as well as the operation montage of Shepard’s body being rebuilt on the surgery table. In my Top 10 Video Game Cutscenes list I mentioned Onimusha 3; it’s opening cutscene is one of the most advanced and costly cutscenes ever made, and is a mini movie in itself.

Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories gameplay

Now on the other side of the equation, let’s compare this to cutscenes created with the real time engine. Which straight away brings up the question, why not just let them play out in game? Well there are a number of reasons which I’ll expand on a little bit, but generally when this method is used properly, you should never actually notice that you are viewing a video rather than the scene taking place in real time. One of bigger games to use these types of cutscenes would be Resident Evil 4, and in the case of this game, leads to some quite awful continuity moments–not in a plot sense, but more in an aesthetic point of view.

From the opening cinematic in Kingdom Hearts 3D.

Now a pre-rendered cutscene can be very obvious, or cleverly hidden, depending on how the game was developed. For example a video will load almost instantly, whereas a real time scene will have to load first (though this is not always the case, as data can be loaded ahead of time; heavily scripted games tend to do this). There can be downsides to using them, especially when characters have extra costumes. The costume might revert back to the default during a particular scene (like the PS2 Resident Evil 4 port). Perhaps the biggest use of these can be found in ports to other consoles. When a game is ported to another system after its original release, and the console is technically inferior to the one the game was developed on, cuts and changes might have to be made to make some scenes work. Making it as a video is a less memory intensive way of accomplishing the scene.

Resident Evil 4, with Leon in his default clothing.

This is why I used Resident Evil 4 as an example before. Originally being developed on the Gamecube, it was eventually ported to the PS2. However the PS2 was technically inferior compared to the newer Gamecube. So cut scenes were rendered out as videos where they were actually real time on the Gamecube version. This lead to odd changes when you’d be wearing a secret costume for example, and you jump out a window and see Leon in his default costume until he hits the floor and you start playing again.  Other examples would be multi-platform games on the Xbox 360 and PS3. Due to the space limitations of DVDs vs Blu-Ray disks, videos might be a lesser resolution to save space on the Xbox 360 (Blu-Ray disks have many more times the capacity of DVD’s).

Resident Evil 4, with Leon in the Secret RPD costume.

I’ll explain what I mean when I say rendering on the console. Firstly you’re not limited by the processing power of a game’s console. Developers are free to use as many effects or have as many characters on screen as required by the scene. Also, changes are a lot easier to make. For example, making a change to the model’s texture to shoot a cut on them, the game would need to have that extra texture included on the disk, and be programmed to swap that texture when required, which might not be worth the trouble for a few seconds of the game. Another example would be if a model in-game looks odd when moving, you can’t just change the model in game (there would again have to be two models instead, which adds more data to the disk). For a video however, like in any animated film, you can change a scene as much as you need to, to get the shot you need. This leads us into the final area of cutscenes.

Real-Time Cutscenes

Like any other cutscene, there’s no limit on its length. However if a scene was to be about five seconds long, you’d probably find that it would be done in-game, like someone walking through a door. Whether to do a cutscene in-game will depend on a number of factors, such as what is supposed to happen in the scene; combined with what the console is able to do. Every company that creates games will have a list of rules they have to work to when creating a game; consoles the game will be on, development tools, model limitations etc. There’s an allotted amount of memory which counts for disk space, console memory, and bone and polygon counts on models, and development has to keep on budget. There will always be something the game engine can’t support or that simply won’t work on a console (naturally as technology improves, the amount that a console can’t do decreases). These all have to be accounted for and worked around, which can lead to some scenes being pre-rendered instead.

An example of a QTE from Shenmue

Real-time cutscenes have become more popular over the last generation because they allow for interactivity. Games like Uncharted have done incredible real time cutscenes that transition beautifully. Also Quick Time Events (QTE) have become very popular since cutscenes became real time. Originally débuted in the Dreamcast game Shenmue, QTE’s work like family trees in how they function, with two potential scenes playing out based on whether a button is pressed in a certain time limit or not. This system is how the whole experience during Heavy Rain plays. The complexity of what can be done has evolved greatly over the last two console generations. This current generation has allowed us to create games that look more realistic than ever. There are now fewer reasons to cut into pre-rendered scenes to show a big event, as developers have graphics that are able to create more lifelike games. It is slowly becoming a case of real time cutscenes being used because they provide interactivity, and pre-rendered scenes being used for special scenes, or when something still can’t be achieved technically in the game engine.

Heavy Rain gameplay.

In Jak 2: Renegade‘s ending cutscene, the PS2 had to be carefully managed due to the high number of characters present in the scene. All the game’s major characters were present in one place, and the amount the PS2 system had to render was causing performance issues, since the hardware could not sustain having so many characters on screen at once. The scenes had to set up so that they would show a certain number of people on screen at a time to stop the frame rate from dropping. This would have been a good case for making the scene pre-rendered, however creating a long scene as a video uses up a lot more disk space. (Today Microsoft adds a charge to developers for having games span multiple disks). Often it’s easier to work around the problem in a real time cutscene when all the texture, model and game data for that cutscene already exists on the disk. All that’s added is animation, voice and programming data to play the scene out, as opposed to a data heavy video.

An example of a cutscene from Jak 2: Renegade

Let’s come back to Mass Effect 2 for a bit, as this helps illustrate my point. The opening surgery cutscene had a lot of parts that would never be seen in-game. So having it pre rendered made sense, and allows the quality to be very high, making it stand out.

From Mass Effect 2's haunting opening cinematic.

(Also the promotional video the company had previously done, had been very well received, so Bioware had them do something else for the game)

The previous Mass Effect had also used pre-rendered shots for the Prothean visions to show off the eerie details of flesh mixed with circuitry, while providing something of an out of body experience. This holds true for the surgery cinematic in Mass Effect 2–it’s the only time you’re not technically playing Shepard, providing another form of out of body experience.

Video: Examples of Great Cutscenes

As an example of good cutscenes, here is a collection of my favourite video game cutscenes. In the video, I also explain what I think makes each cutscene so great. Click here to see the video if you are reading this in an email or RSS feed.

Rounding It All Up

That’s it for my little (or maybe not so little) look into the world of cutscenes. I hope it helps you understand how different cutscenes work, and why certain design choices are made. Of course, every company works differently. They all develop their own custom tools and techniques, so what might be an issue for one company’s game, might not be for another. So if you want to learn more about a specific game, then look up the developers for media on their development process. EPIC’s and Naughty Dog’s (Gears of War and Uncharted) developers have all sorts of videos around the net on how they produced each of their games. Lots of games also now include special features that show off the development process, so look those up too and see how your favourite scene of a game might have been created!

Uncharted 2

If you have any questions about video game cutscenes, or you would like to share your own viewpoints on cutscenes in the gaming industry, please post them in the comments below. We’d also love to hear what your favourite video game cutscenes are.

Written by

David ‘Ryatta’ Wyatt

David is a Technical Animator, and has worked on creating Xbox 360 and IPad games. He also writes reviews and articles for inMotion Gaming and on his blog.

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Rules for this Top List

1. The scene must be part of the game’s narrative (e.g. not a trailer)
2. They must be actual cutscenes, not partly playable (e.g. quick time events of interactive scenes.)

Top 10 Cutscenes Video

Spoiler Alert!

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Top 10 Cutscenes Summary

10. Shadow of the Colossus

Shadow of the Colossus may be the very definition for ‘Games as Art’; however what earned it the spot on my list is the hero’s horse and faithful companion Argo. After many hours playing the game and traversing the giant world, I’d been taking him for granted and was really hit emotionally when he throws you to safety at the cost of his own life when the bridge collapses.

It’s a truly memorable moment and leads you into the final Colossi on a low point as opposed to the excitement I had been feeling prior to this.

9. .Hack GU

I never was one for watching the .Hack animé series but I’d always played the .Hack games. After waiting for .Hack GU, I was immediately impressed at the quality of game play and visuals over the original quadrilogy, but the series really hits you with its best moment at the start of the first game of the GU series. Watching Haseo get destroyed and reset to ground zero was necessary for the narrative, but the scene played out in such a way that you really feel his pain. Not just at the inability to get his revenge, but the physical pain he feels when he’s hit by the beam.

To this day the games still have a visual style that I’ve not seen replicated, falling somewhere between cel shading and standard CG, but with crazy light effects making it a visual treat to watch in style and not just content.

Show more...

So how about you? What are your favourite cutscenes of all time? Share them with us in the comments below, and let’s make this an extensive resource of the best game cutscenes to date!

Video & Article by

David ‘Ryatta’ Wyatt

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Resident… Action?

Now I’m not looking at the story of the games, describe that as you like; be it concise, complex or convoluted, I’m looking at game play, set pieces and atmosphere across the numbered games in the franchise. Looking back at the original, was it really a horror game? It certainly starts off that way, relying on traditional horror film stereotypes, a big mansion, zombies and jump scares. But aside from a little jump here and there did the zombies scare you that much? As you progressed it became much less like a horror film; you found powerful weapons, fought against experiments in an underground lab but your typical zombie by that point was little threat, as a shotgun round would send its head flying across a room in many directions, though with survival the running theme, it was recommended you saved ammo. But again, is survival fear? For me at least the greatest fear is in the loss of control, and in the early Resident evil games you had little control over your character; tank controls and the ability to shoot up, down or ahead, combined with the restricted camera angles exploring new areas could be a very tense thing in itself, again being more survival and less actual horror and for me at least that’s where the heart or the fear came from.

It could be argued that this is where things started going in the wrong direction for the scare aspect of the series, though Resident Evil 2 has no part to play in that, given that it just kept the controls the same and made everything else that came before, bigger and better. While it did introduce the Mercenaries mode (on the Dreamcast version), which I guess is the first truly action orientated game play in the series but it’s not in the main game so it’s not important enough to dwell on.

Resident Evil 3 is where it changed; giving the ability to turn around quickly and dodge it you had the timing to pull it off. However it did also add Nemesis which hunted you across the game and random enemies to keep you in suspense, as you would never know who would pop up next. It truly created a new type of fear in the player outside of the control and setting of the game.

The Resident Evil 4 Development Process

This is where the real discussion begins; Resident Evil 4 was in development for a number of years and went through various concepts, one of which became Devil May Cry (and even in that you can see how it worked in the style of RE games, fighting bosses multiple times for example). But while that was deemed too extreme to be a RE game there was another that received a public showing, the afore mentioned hook hand game. Set to feature Leon infected by a virus it seemed to make a move into silent hill territory with more occult enemies and hallucinations. Ultimately however it was decided this was again straying too far from what the Resident Evil series was.

Now cutting into the argument I think it’s worth mentioning Shinji Mikami; the Resident Evil series was his brainchild and he had input in every game, creating the many incarnations of Resident Evil 4 as well as essentially creating the over the shoulder 3rd person shooter genre. I mention him now as this is where he parted ways from the series, moving to Clover studios from then on and eventually his own studio, but he set the foundations for the future of the series. RE4; known for transforming the series from ‘survival horror’ to’ survival action’, did so well that the future of Resident Evil games seemed assured in this new format. However fans of the originals, even when they accepted that it was still a great game, were critical of it not being a true ‘Resident Evil’ game. But again this is where I ask you to look at the series as a fight for survival series and not a horror one, because as a horror RE4 fails, but as pure survival (which it truly becomes once Leon becomes injected with the parasite and get s a personal stake in the story aside from it being a rescue mission) it’s just like the other, it just goes about it differently.

The big difference between everything that came before was the control system, switching from the tank control and restricted camera, it became third person. The zombies were replaced with new enemies as well which drew criticism, but again they serve an important purpose in the gameplay experience. Since now you had the ability to always see in front of your character and target anywhere you wanted to shoot on the body of enemies, a slow moving zombie that a shot in the head would kill, would never be a threat; so the las plagas were introduced. These would throw things at you, move quickly, travel in big groups and most importantly of all, shrug off bullets. This meant even with a new set of controls, the fear from surviving was still just as high as it always had been; you were always outnumbered, but had nowhere to go but push forward. The plagas were intelligent and would wield weapons and pile on series dread in the player. When the chainsaw man came along you knew you were in trouble and one hit from him and you were gone. Every time a one hit kill plaga was around there was a complete tonal shift, as you never felt like you had the upper hand and would spend more time running to find a way to fight them off. You were given select melee attacks as well to help fight back but only when you achieved a successful hit to the head or leg of an enemy, stunning them, thus rewarding those who took their time to cautiously fight and take their time, even in tense circumstances. It was a new evolution for the series after it was beginning to stagnate and represented a new way to be scared; not in an all-out horror film way, but in a tense stomach turning dread induced by placing you in extreme situations… just remember the first time you played RE4 and had to survive the village onslaught at the start of the game.

Resident Evil 5: The Game Changer

Now Resident Evil 5 is really the game changer, while what I’m about to accuse RE5 of is likely going to be argued that RE4 is also guilty of, however stick with me and I’ll explain my reasoning. I’ve probably played RE4 and 5 the most out of all games in the series, and they are both fantastic games in their own right, but Resident Evil 5 is most guilty of not being Resident Evil 5. While all the changes in RE4 were series changes, at heart it adapted itself to match what you could do; the fear came in what you were up against, be it hordes of people or one lone enemy that would have you on your toes at all time. It wasn’t the traditional fear the series was known for but it had evolved. RE5 however seems to betray that foundation The game itself doesn’t bring out the fear like its predecessor did; where you’d have a true feeling of dread before nothing that came your way in this game really felt like a threat to you. It’s unfortunate that RE4 defined 3rd person shooters, because everything really then tried to better it and in terms of control, a lot did. Resident Evil 5 then added ideas from other games. The most common complaint I hear is enemies wielding guns against you, which lead to people moaning about a lack of a cover system. A perfectly reasonable thing to ask for in a shooter, but that argument really just reinforces that the game is nothing but a shooter with elements from the other RE games. Even the lickers that were brought back for the game seem much less threating now when you can poke a shotgun in their face, pull the trigger a few times and move on. This game didn’t adapt anything from the old games to make it worth fearing in a new way, despite what they added that was new. I don’t think a giant hammer wielding hulk matches the tense fear that a guy with a bag on his head wielding a chainsaw. It seems that in terms of what the Resident Evil games are known best for providing, the game was less of a sequel and more of a side step. A good game but perhaps not the Resident Evil experience… and we’ll just forget the turret sections in the back of trucks!

Shinji Mikami: Shadows of the Damned

Now returning back to Shinji Mikami, who I mentioned departed from the studio after the conclusion of RE4; I’m going to go on a bit of a tangent for a bit and turn the subject to ‘Shadows of the Damned’; Mikami’s most recently released game. After the completion of RE4 he continued to work on games that evolved the control system created for other game types, and this, and to a certain extent ‘God Hand’ (a PS2 3rd person brawler), represented how he might have evolved the RE series had he continued his involvement with it. To compare it to RE5, it controls exactly the same, with the addition of melee attacks, strafing and a dodge roll, while scaling back the amount of weapons. So surely that’s got even more in common with a mainstream 3rd person shooter (save for weapons available to you), well yes and no. First off we’ll address the argument of setting to get it out the way; Shadows of the Damned is actually set in Hell, while Resident Evil 5 is just a monster story still grounded in reality. While this gives Shadows of the Damned more creative freedom to create even more scary locations and monsters, looking at the differences between Resident Evil 4 and 5 proves that what you have access to in development is nothing if you don’t know how to use it effectively. For example, Mikami knows how to bring out emotion in the player and does so not through what you face but what you have to achieve to succeed. Every chapter in Shadows follows a different theme, while sometimes it resorts to generic fighting of enemies to progress, a lot of time there will be more than that; shooting demons with light to make them killable, removing the dark from the area before you can hurt demons, and that drains the life of the player, sometimes it’s just running for your life. In fact every chapter tries something different so you’re never truly ready for what comes next. The running sections in particular fill you with dread, because if you get caught you’re dead! I recommend Shadows of the Damned over Resident Evil 5, as it’s just in a different league. It also has Suda 51 going for it who worked on the game, so you have shocking imagery and the composer who worked on the Silent Hill games… and the music in Silent Hill drowns you in atmosphere, something RE rarely achieved.

Resident Evil 4 vs. Resident Evil 5

So my point I’ve worked my way up to after all this is that the fear in the original games came from placing you in survival situations where the controls you had were limited and what you could see was restricted, giving more control meant changing what the game throws at you, as RE3 did with a dodge system added to counteract Nemesis and randomly set enemies as well as the 180 spin. RE4 changed the game, brand new controls where you could fight a room full of zombies off, so the new plagas were made as something that would not stop, was intelligent and would come in hordes that you could not just stand and fight off, especially when I hit kill plagas were around. Resident Evil 5 never managed to copy Resident Evil 4 in the horror aspect of the gameplay, instead opting to be a more traditional 3rd person shooter with a few monster story elements (though still excellent when compared with other shooters).

Resident Evil 6

So maybe I’ll close with my thoughts on Resident Evil 6, well what can you tell from the first trailer? It looks surprisingly well done actually and well balanced in atmosphere. Since after RE5 there are now fans who expect the action side of the game more than the horror, Capcom seem to be looking to deliver on both ends. I’m hoping from what I’ve seen that they are planning on a RE2 style of picking a character and keeping with them through the game, but with different characters having a different gameplay style. Chris seems to have more action and cover based shooting, being dropped into a city with a team, while I hope Leon will have a more isolated experience with classic zombies being more restricted than the open action areas of Chris.

The other guy seen who might be playable could provide an interesting new way to look at the game, my theory is that he’s Hunk but there’s some other good guesses too, Wesker’s brother being a cool one. If he’s immune to the virus then I expect the big enemies of the game to be tracking him. You may spend a lot of your time running rather than fighting, or he may not be playable at all. Either way so far the game looks promising and I look forward to seeing if this, like RE4, will be a game I just want to keep playing over and over.

Oh and about the logo looking life a giraffe… see for yourself, but remember you can’t UN see it afterwards!

Written by

David Wyatt

About the Author: David is a Technical Animator, and has worked on creating Xbox 360 and IPad games. In his spare time he writes reviews and articles about Films, TV, Games and Tokusatsu Shows. For more from David, visit his website or follow him on Twitter.

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