I'm on the record as having said that I think From Software would've been a good candidate to develop a Silent Hill game (or a pure horror game in general). But I also said that I would not want such a game to be a "Souls-like". Instead, I think FromSoft is well suited to the Silent Hill IP because they make games that are rich in oppressive atmosphere, are good at developing rich mythologies, and which share many common themes with Silent Hill (such as corrupt religious authorities). Also, FromSoft makes games other than Souls-likes. They made Déraciné, which I loved! And which might actually be there 3rd or 4th best game.

Well, I didn't get a FromSoft Silent Hill game, but I did apparently get the "Silent Hill Souls-like" that I very explicitly did not want. Thankfully, it did not turn out as bad as I feared it would be.

Poorly-labeled difficulty options

Do yourself a favor, and do not try starting this game on the "Hard" difficulty! It's a shame that the developers chose to label the difficulty levels like they did: "Story" and "Hard". There's no "Normal" or "Medium" difficulty option. Typically, when I see a "Story" difficulty option, I assume that it's a mode that is stripped of all challenge and friction such as to allow the player to basically just walk through the game un-molested.

Don't get me wrong! I approve of games having accessible difficulty settings, even if I choose not to use them. Such stripped-down "Story Modes" are perfectly fine to include in an action or adventure game -- especially one that is narrative driven, like Silent Hill f is.

I gave up on the Hard mode after the first major boss.

This "Story" difficulty doesn't quite go to that extreme, but it is pretty easy (outside of a handful of tougher setpieces), and it renders many of the game's advanced mechanics moot. For example, you don't really have to manage Sanity or Focus at all in this difficulty level, as Sanity is automatically refilled at every save point. Stamina is still meaningful, but one-on-one encounters can almost always be defeated without depleting the sanity bar.

Almost all the consumable pick-ups, thus, can be safely ignored or sold at save points in exchange for permanent buffs (which just make the combat even easier!), since you'll rarely (if ever) need to use consumables on the Story difficulty. This has many knock-on effects for the rest of the game, such as making exploration largely pointless. Going out of your way to explore, only to find a reward of an extra item or 2 that recovers or buffs your Sanity simply has little-to-no value. Truly valuable rewards, such as inventory upgrades or a useful omamori, are few and far between. In fact, I often had to run back to a nearby save point to sell consumeables because my inventory would be too full to pick up any new ones.

The video games industry's obsession with remakes and remasters is pretty obnoxious. I feel like I'm stuck either playing no new games at all, or playing nothing but games that I played 20 years ago. Of all the remakes that have been made, Resident Evil 4 might be the most unnecessary. Resident Evil 4 is basically the game on which every modern over-the-shoulder shooter is based. The original Resident Evil 4 still plays like a modern game. On top of that, it's been remastered and ported to newer consoles, including having VR versions.

But I never played the VR version. In fact, I haven't played any of the VR versions for the new line of Resident Evil games. I keep hearing that they're some of the best VR experiences on the market today, but I didn't have a VR headset when 7 or Village released, and I just haven't gotten around to going back and replaying those games now that I have a headset. So I decided to give the VR version of RE4's remake a try, after a friend of mine was done with his disc.

So this review is going to be almost entirely a review of the VR version of the remake, since that's how I played the game.

Slower, and more methodical than I remember

I never liked Resident Evil 4. It's frantic, explicitly challenging gameplay full of "gotcha!" encounters, and its parodic tone never really gelled with me. Moreover, I've always blamed Resident Evil 4 for single-handedly killing the classic survival horror genre, which happens to be one of my favorite game genres. It took well over a decade for proper survival horror games to start coming back, but even so, they still aren't quite the same. The slow, methodical pace, and emphasis on resource-management and logistics has been minimized in favor of fast-paced shooter action and frequent checkpointing.

I went in expecting to be overwhelmed and frustrated, which was largely my experience in the original game. I expected that the frantic nature of the game, and all the running around would quickly make me dizzy or nauseous in VR. I honestly did not expect that I would get through the first few chapters before giving up due to the game being annoyingly difficult to the point that it would make me literally sick.

Areas that gave me a lot of trouble in the original game were much easier this time around.

Much to my surprise, that was not the case! I was really enjoying the opening hours of the game. I even starting to wonder why I ever hated Resident Evil 4 to begin with. The VR visuals look good. It was controlling well. I felt in control of the character, and perfectly able to handle the threats the game was throwing at me. It initially felt much easier than I remembered the original being. I breezed through parts of the early game that I remembered struggling with for hours in the original.

Village seems to be positioning itself as a sort of "greatest hits" of earlier Resident Evil games. I'm not sure it all comes together as well as Capcom must have hoped it would. Resident Evil VII Biohazard did an excellent job of modernizing the design philosophies of the original Resident Evil game. Map design, inventory and resource constraints, and the "fight or flight" nature of enemy encounters all perfectly re-captured the feel of the original PS1 classics, without all of the clunkiness.

Village maintains the exploratory map design of the original Resident Evil and of Resident Evil VII, but it also tries to port concepts and aesthetics from the Resident Evil 2 remake and from Resident Evil 4. The RE2 stuff fits well enough, but the RE4 influences just don't feel compatible with classic design philosophy.

The setting instantly reminded me of Resident Evil 4.

Clash of philosophies

Right off the bat, the general aesthetic screams "Resident Evil 4". The game begins in a small, rustic, eastern European village at the foot of a gothic castle. Just like in RE4, you're quickly ambushed by the monstrous villagers and have to desperately fight your way out. Resident Evil 4 replaced the traditional zombies of the series with semi-aware "ganados"; Village similarly breaks away from the traditional zombies, but this time, the monsters are werewolves.

Not long into the game, you'll start smashing crates to reveal hidden loot, and pixel-hunting along the walls and ceilings for obnoxious sparkling gems to shoot down and collect. Also just like in Resident Evil 4, you'll routinely get rewards of items and money from defeated enemies. That money and loot is used to buy items or upgrade your equipment at a shop, just like in Resident Evil 4. This is where the game started to break down for me.

Loot, ammo, and cash can be recovered from smashed crates or defeated enemies.

Giving the player rewards of in-game cash for defeating foes (and for wasting bullets to shoot glowing gems off of walls) completely changes the motivations of the player in how we deal with enemies. I'm no longer carefully considering whether to try to sneak past an enemy or run away, nor am I ever firing off a single round at an enemy's knee to stun or cripple it so I can get away without consuming more resources, the way I might in REmake2. Since every defeated foe returns some of the resources that I invest into killing it, there is no "fight or flight"; only "fight". The enemies stop being threatening or frightening, especially on the standard difficulty setting, in which ammunition is readily available and the monsters patiently await their turns to charge and attack.

Even inventory management is mostly thoughtless. The more linear, more action-oriented, and less puzzle-oriented design of the game means that key items and treasures are not put in your limited inventory, and there isn't even a storage box to keep excess weapons or supplies. Only weapons, ammo, and healing items go into your briefcase. Everything else has unlimited storage. Even crafting components have separate, unlimited storage (the only exception being the animals meats needed for the Duke to cook meals -- more on this later).

I played the demo of Nemesis that came packaged
with Dino Crisis, but never played the full game.

Right off the bat, I have to say that Resident Evil 3: Nemesis was never my favorite Resident Evil game. In fact, I never even played the whole thing. I played the demo that was included with Dino Crisis (back in the day when game publishers released playable demos before a game even came out). The original Nemesis erred more on the side of fast-paced action, which just doesn't appeal to me as much as the slower, more thoughtful design philosophy of the original Resident Evil, along with Silent Hill and Dino Crisis. This is why I love the original RE and its GameCube remake, why Resident Evil 4 rubbed me the wrong way, and why I never really got into the rest of the Resident Evil franchise beyond the first game. I tried playing all of the Resident Evil games up through 5, but the only one that came close to holding a candle to the masterful original was 2.

So even though I was excited to play Capcom's remake of the PS1 classic, I went in with tempered expectations. If they stayed true to the original, then RE3make (or whatever we're calling it) would be far more high-octane and action-heavy than the Resident Evil 2 remake that was released a mere year ago. As such, I expected that I just wouldn't be quite as into RE3make as I was into Resident Evil 7 or RE2make. I could only hope that it hit some happy medium between RE2make and Resident Evil 4. But that's really just personal preference on my part. Your tastes may vary.

So now that you hopefully understand where I'm coming from, what do I actually think of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis in 2020? Did Capcom learn any lessons from the few mistakes that were made with RE2make?

Resident Evil 3 is more reliant on spectacle action set pieces than on slowly building atmospheric tension.

The different nature of "Hardcore" mode

If you remember my review of Resident Evil 2 remake (and my lengthy YouTube critique), then you know that one of my core issues with that game was the fact that Capcom locked the Ink Ribbon save system behind that game's hard difficulty. Resident Evil 7 actually had the same problem, but it didn't bother me in that game because RE7 wasn't a remake of a game that included Ink Ribbon saves as a core component of its design.

In summary, the hard mode made death come much swifter in RE2make. Resource-management wasn't as important as skillful aiming and shooting. Instead of taking a bite or two here and there and having to decide when to fill your scant inventory with a healing item just in case (in the original Resident Evil games), RE2make's hardcore mode made you have to heal pretty much every time you took damage because you couldn't survive a second hit. This low tolerance for mistakes and strict punishment for death felt considerably less fair for someone in a first-time playthrough.

The fact that your knife could break and you could literally be stuck with a save file in which you have zero damage-dealing potential certainly didn't help the feeling of fairness in my book.

My recommendation was for Capcom to separate the hard difficulty setting and the hardcore save system into two options. You should be able to chose whether you want to use Ink Ribbons, and then you should also be able to chose whether you want to play the game on easy, normal, or hard difficulties.

Typewriters are still here, but Ink Ribbons are completely absent.

Instead, Capcom opted to just remove Ink Ribbons for its Nemesis remake. Entirely. They are not locked behind hardcore mode. They are not locked behind New Game Plus. Typewriters are still here, but Ink Ribbons are not in the game at all.

...

I never played the original Doom. I didn't get into PC gaming until the mid twenty-aughts, and even then didn't play much in the way of first person shooters that weren't the first two Call of Duty games. I was always more into SimCity and Civilization. So I was in no rush to play 2016's reboot of Doom, nor can I really look at it from the perspective of how it holds up against the original's legacy. I heard a lot of good things about it, and picked it up on this year's Steam summer sale.

Bethesda recently announced a sequel, so I thought I'd check this one out to find out if I should be excited.

I miss the good ol' days of game demos being available before a game releases.

I actually did play the free demo on the PSN months ago, which was an option for me because the game's been out for two years already (does this count as a retro review?). I miss the days when free demos were available before a game's release, so we could try it before we buy it. Sigh. Anyway, I had a lot of trouble with hitting enemies with a PS4 controller considering how fast and movement-oriented the combat is, but I definitely saw the potential enjoyment that I could have with the finer control of a mouse. So I went ahead with the Steam purchase.

Punch a demon in the face

Doom breaks from the cover-based mold set by most recent big budget first-person shooters by encouraging very fast, very frenetic, very aggressive, and very in-your-face action in a fashion similar to Bloodborne. Staggering an enemy allows you to perform a melee "Glory Kill" that provides you with a shower of health pick-ups and ammo. When your health is critical, the best course of action usually isn't to run away and take cover (like in so many modern cover-based shooters); rather, the ideal strategy is often to find the biggest, meanest demon, shotgun it in the face, and then rip its head off with your own bare hands. This keeps the player in the action, and mostly removes the need to backtrack through a level to find health kits and powerups. It's not quite as tactical or thoughtful as the dismemberment system from Dead Space, and some might argue that it's derivative of the chainsaw from Gears of War, but it does help to create a definite flow to the combat that helps it to stand out from other shooters of the era.

Charging an enemy is often the best way to restore your health.

The default move speed is faster than the sprint of most other modern shooter games. You can press 'Shift' to toggle a "walk" mode, but I honestly don't know why you would ever want to, and I never once used it after experimenting with the controls at the start of the game. Most enemies also charge at you with melee attacks or have actual projectile attacks (as opposed to hit-scan weapons). You don't avoid damage by ducking behind cover; instead, you can usually just side-step an incoming projectile or attack. Again, because of the fast speed of the character, the term "side-step" isn't really apt; it's more like a "side-sprint".

This all creates a very retro feel that [I assume] faithfully captures the spirit and fluidity of the original game's combat. It's an experience more akin to a first-person bullet hell game rather than the cover-based, whack-a-mole shooting galleries that define most modern shooters.