As any reader of this blog can probably tell, I consider myself a fan of old-school survival horror. There haven't been too many big-name survival horror releases lately, and the few I've played haven't been particularly good. Indie developers have done a decent job of scratching the survival horror itch, but there's only so far that indie games can go. It would be nice to see AAA developers and publishers regain some faith in more traditional survival horror gameplay and experiment with the genre on the newer generations of consoles and PCs. It looks like that might finally be happening, as there are several survival horror titles that I am eagerly anticipating!
Among the Sleep, The Forest, and Dreadout have already been released on Steam, but I have not played them yet. But these are relatively minor titles. The two big-name games that I'm looking forward to are The Evil Within and Alien: Isolation.
This game is under the creative leadership of Shinji Mikami, the original creator of the Resident Evil series. Despite my well-established passion for the Silent Hill series, I'm also a strong fan and defender of the classic Resident Evil games. Resident Evil 4, however, was not my cup of tea. Despite being a well-designed action game, I harbor a deep resentment towards it for single-handedly killing the survival horror genre and shifting all action games towards third-person shooter gameplay. But that's a discussion for another time...
The Evil Within looks to be a return to more traditional survival horror styles...
Click here to read more of my impressions about The Evil Within.
I am cautiously optimistic. This game looks much more promising than Colonial Marines in both concept and execution. As far as I can recall, this is the first time that any game has been based on the first movie in this franchise...
Click here to read more of my impressions about Alien: Isolation. [More]
Is Frictional Games working on a new IP? I'm a bit curious as to why they outsourced development of the aptly-named A Machine for Pigs to the third-party developer The Chinese Room. Frictional's staff did stay on as "producers" for this game, so I'm sure that the final product is still consistent with what Frictional would have wanted if they had developed it themselves, and I think the overall story was still written by people at Frictional (but I could be wrong on that account). In any case, the change in development team has certainly had a dramatic effect on the way that the new game plays. The very core gameplay of exploring a linear dungeon with a flashlight is retained, but all the mechanics and the underlying feel of the game are completely different than its predecessor. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as Amnesia: the Dark Descent wasn't perfect.
Once again, the underlying premise that sets up Amnesia: a Machine for Pigs is that your character wakes up in a mansion with no memory of who he is or why he is there. Your early exploration of the mansion reveals some vague threat, and you are forced to descend into a deep dungeon in order to discover who you are and resolve the threat. Along the way, you'll encounter deformed creatures and collect notes and documents from your former self explaining the situation, as well as have the occasional hallucinatory flashback as your memory slowly returns. But if you're worried that this sounds too much like the previous game, then fear not: A Machine for Pigs takes an entirely different approach to the gameplay and has a totally different feel to the entire experience. [More]
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Tags:Amnesia: a Machine for Pigs, Amnesia: the Dark Descent, review, the Chinese Room, Frictional Games, Steam, Victorian, England, industrial, survival, horror, survival horror, mansion, amnesia, Battle of the Somme, Silent Hill, Silent Hill Shattered Memories, Resident Evil, checkpoint, indie gaming
I've heard that a lot of players are complaining about the save system of Capcom's new Resident Evil 6. I haven't played the game yet because RE5 sucked, and the demo for RE6 sucked, so I can't comment on that game. What I can do, though, is take a moment to reflect on the genius of the classic Resident Evil save system.
Most of my readers know me as a Silent Hill fan [boy], so it's uncommon for me to heap praise upon Resident Evil. But I actually am a big fan of the original game (it was one of my favorite PlayStation games). Maybe some day, I'll get around to writing about how Resident Evil 4 killed my interest in the franchise...
Would you like to save your progress? [YES] NO
Resident Evil took a unique path in terms of it's save-game system. I'm not sure if it was the first to use this particular style of system, but it was definitely one of the best implementations that I played!
During the PSX era of the late 90's, game saves generally took one of 3 forms:
Resident Evil falls firmly in that last category, but with one significant (and game-changing) caveat: in addition to only being able to save at pre-defined locations, the ability to save was also tied to a consumable inventory item! [More]
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Tags:Resident Evil, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6, Shinji Mikami, save, save system, autosave, checkpoint, survival horror, resource management, typewriter, ink ribbon, Silent Hill, Amnesia: the Dark Descent
This April has been a busy week for video games, and a very weird one, too. And the news has varied from good, to bad, to ugly, and everything in between. Here's some of the stuff that caught my attention:
Table of Contents
[More]
98ade30d-bc7b-4fb2-884a-f428b2de8f96|1|5.0
Tags:E3, Sony, PSN, PlayStation, PS3, Nintendo, Wii, Microsoft, Valve, Portal, Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima, Resident Evil, Grand Theft Auto, Facebook, Netflix, EA Sports, NCAA Football, Madden NFL, Backbreaker, Civilization, Sid Meier's Civilization, Civilization V, multiplayer, sports, puzzle, physics, patch, XBox 360, Civilization V
New photos from set of Silent Hill Revelation 3D movie
Hot off the release of the first official filming photos from the Silent Hill movie sequel yesterday, some new photos from the set of that movie have been made public (don't think these ones are official though). You can see all the pics at Century 21's website (don't know why a real-estate company is posting photos from a movie set...). These photos mostly show some painting and remodeling work being done by the movie's production staff to make Cambridge, Ontario look like Silent Hill, but there is one photo that stood out to me: [More]
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