Resident Evil 4: Ultimate HD Edition (PC) - Part 2

Good news, this week's Super Adventures has been extended with bonus content, as my quick look at Resident Evil 4 has turned out to be a little less quick than I expected. This is definitely the final part now though, and you can click this link to check out PART ONE.

Despite the title, Resident Evil 4 is actually the sixth mainline Resident Evil game... I think. The first three RE games started off on the PlayStation, then there was Code: Veronica, which launched on the Dreamcast first, and Resident Evil 0, which was a GameCube exclusive. So if you were an impatient RE fan who wanted to follow the story you needed a Sony console, a Sega console and a Nintendo console. Resident Evil 4 was announced as GameCube exclusive too but fortunately it went multiplatform with a PS2 release later that year, and I'm sure all the fans who bought a GameCube because of it eventually got over it. Especially as the GameCube original is apparently the better version.

The game did something else to annoy fans: switching genre to a third-person shooter. RE4 has a much more modern gameplay style and made a lot of people feel like the series would never return to the awkward survival horror gameplay they loved it for. Fortunately Capcom did eventually return to Resident Evil 2 and 3 and gave them big-budget remakes... to make them more like Resident Evil 4. Someone must have liked them though as they sold enough for Capcom to start working on Resident Evil 4's remake! Wait, hang on, what happened to the Code: Veronica remake?

Resident Evil 4: Ultimate HD Edition (PC) - Part 1

Developer:	Capcom Production Studio 4	|	Release Date:	2005	|	Systems:	GC, PS2, Wii, Win, iOS, Android, Zeebo
	HD Edition -		Release Date:	2011 (2014 PC)	|	Systems:	Win, X360, PS3, XBOne, PS4, Switch

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm going to be hating on another beloved Resident Evil game! Perhaps.

I mean there's no doubt that it's beloved, you can find the game on all kinds of top ten lists (often just behind Ocarina of Time), I just don't remember liking it much myself. Other people considered the innovative over-the-shoulder aiming to be a big step forward in third person shooters, but I was left wondering why I couldn't move and shoot at the same time like I could in Max Payne 2. I also remember finding the aiming to really awkward for some reason, maybe because I had to use a controller to do it. You've got to be accurate in a hurry and that's not an analogue stick's strength.

But I'm willing to give games a second chance... that's why I went back to it again right after beating Resident Evil 5. I played it up to the lake and got sick of it; it just seemed really awkward by comparison. But I'm willing to give games a third chance, especially if I haven't written about them yet.

Anyway I've already said too many words, but I have to mention that I'm playing the Ultimate HD Edition with the higher resolution visuals, on PC. I wish I could do my thing where I compare all the different versions, but have a glance up at the list of systems on the top right, there's about 10,000 of them! Windows actually got two ports and I don't even know what a Zeebo is! All I know is that the first PC port had... issues.

Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut (PC)

Developer:

Access Games

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Release Date:

2013  (original 2010)

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Systems:

Windows, PS3, Xbox 360

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Good news! Super Adventures has finally returned to give you a new game post every week for the next two months. Unless you're reading this two months after it was posted, in which case I'm sorry but you just missed it. Go read Sci-Fi Adventures for a bit instead.

This week I'm playing Deadly Premonition, which is a game I bought for money just so I could write about it for you! Then I forgot all about it and left it sitting there in my Steam library unplayed for four years, but that just means it's even more retro now. It's also fairly notorious and I've heard a lot about it. Well, I've seen it mentioned a lot anyway; I've tried to avoid exposure to any actual info on the story or how it plays.

Though I did read on Wikipedia that it currently holds the Guinness World Record for the most critically polarising survival horror game, which is a really specific world record. Plus it also spoils that the game's a survival horror! I'd gotten the impression it was some kind of adventure game, a bit like Shenmue maybe. I checked Metacritic and the review scores do go all the way from 20 to 100, so now I'm curious what I'm going to think of it. I don't typically enjoy survival horror much, partly because I don't give a damn about horror or survival mechanics, but if survival horror fans dislike the game then maybe it's more my kind of thing? I am the world's biggest and only Resident Evil 5 fan after all.

I already like the rainy title screen, despite the annoyingly short guitar loop. I'm less keen on crashes though, so I've installed the DPFix patch by game fixing legend Durante in the hopes that it solves more problems than it causes. It does at least give me some graphics options to play with, but I've decided not to push the visuals too far above vanilla.

The game is pretty story driven and features a mystery, so I should warn you there'll be SPOILERS below as I go through the first few hours of the gameplay writing text under screenshots. Though I won't give away anything major, because explaining a detective's deductions in my own words seems like effort.

Resident Evil 5 (PC) - Part 2

Welcome to the epic finale of my two part Resident Evil 5 article. Usually I'll play a game for an hour or so before I turn it off; long enough to start forming an opinion without going crazy on spoilers. But this time I'll be jumping through all 10 hours of gameplay because there's no way I'm leaving out the boulder punch scene. It's truly a defining moment in video game history, as it's the moment Capcom defined Chris Redfield as being the Incredible Hulk.

Click this link if you want to return to where this all began: Part 1.

Resident Evil 5 (PC) - Part 1

Developer:

Capcom

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Release Date:

2009

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Systems:

Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

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The PC version of Resident Evil 5 doesn't use the hated Games for Windows Live any more! Well okay it does if you want it to, but a few months ago it also made the transition to Steamworks. So to celebrate, today on Super Adventures I'm going to give the game a few hours and write down some of the things that come into my head while I'm playing.

I might have mentioned once or twice in my Resident Evil 2 article last week that I'm not a huge fan of classic survival horror games, and I may have mentioned a few reasons for it too. I think the core of it though is that I've got no interest in being scared, and when you strip out the tension there's little left to enjoy in the mediocre combat, awkward camera angles, and endless backtracking.

Resident Evil 5 on the other hand has very little to do with survival horror, so we've always gotten on pretty well... I think. It's been half a decade since I played the game though so it could be that my memory lying to me again. I can't even remember if the sinister announcer is going to say "Resident Evil... 5" when I press start. Though he better had.

(Click screenshots for a significantly higher resolution image, though still nothing to brag about.)

Tomb Raider (PC)

Today on Super Adventures, I'm putting a few hours into the original Tomb Raider! Uh, I mean I'm playing the original version of the 2013 reboot/prequel instead of the 2014 'Definitive Edition' of the 2013 game, I'm not playing the original ORIGINAL Tomb Raider. Oh fuck it, I'm calling this Lara Croft's Tropical Torture Island Vacation.

I suppose I could also call it Tomb Raider 9, though they got bored of numbering the games somewhere back around 3, and that doesn't include things like the Game Boy games and the isometric Lara Croft series. Or the remake of Tomb Raider 1 that came out a few years back called Tomb Raider Anniversary. Man there's a lot of Tomb Raider games in the world right now, and I've barely played any of them. I was scared off years ago when the reviews for each new game reported that it was more of the same, except worse.

Tomb Raider 2013 isn't more of the same though, and while that may have worried the faithful (especially after the early trailers), it caught my interest. I'm the asshole who liked Resident Evil 5 more than Resident Evil 2, and Fallout 3 more than Fallout 2 you see, so there's reason for me to approach this with a bit of optimism... though to be honest I actually kind of played and finished the entire game a year ago, so I won't be coming in blind and utterly clueless like I usually do. Sorry.

(Click the screenshots to open them up into a slightly less pathetic 1280x720 resolution. You should be grateful for that much, seeing as the game was far more interested in giving me a completely unacceptable 1272x720!)

Shenmue (Dreamcast) - Guest Post

Super Adventures at Christmas 2012 - Game 6:

Ray wants to see 'the most well known and highly rated video games ever made, games that people may actually give a shit about.'

It's time to dust off the Dreamcast and hit the 'mue.

This is quite a long post with lots of pictures. It's Shenmue, for heaven's sake!