Resident Evil 4

> MGR:R
I own both version yeah, the Japanese release is very different in tone. My Japanese was a lot better then than it is now. The script is mostly the same in between versions, but the voice-actor handled Jack very differently in Japanese.

> Mercs in RE4
I think RE5 and its expansions kind of overshadowed it for a lot of people, but RE4 still has quite a couple of cool runners that are going at it. I think it also says something about the balance of a quality campaign, since RE4's campaign is really good, so a lot of people play just that. Kind of how a lot more people play NG3:RE's trials than NGB or NGII, since NG3:RE's trials aren't necessarily better...but the campaign is just so ass haha. Dunno, just my 5 cents.

That said, at the time, it was huge as noted. Do you remember the name of that site I mentioned? I've been trying to find it...

Royta/Raeng wrote:
Do you remember the name of that site I mentioned? I've been trying to find it...

No, sorry. I only got into Mercs starting with the Wii edition, and I never really got involved with any official scoring website at the time. Most of my bookmarks went down over the years, too.

Yeah it was probably long gone by that time. Shame, it was a pretty cool site. Also had these annotated guides for all the RE games with pictures and text.

> RE5/6

Do you think the popularity of Mercs in those games is down to the expanded melee/movement mechanics? Not that they're necessarily better, but I could see why people might find it more engaging. If RE6 came out as a Mercs-only spin off and featured more Mercs content in place of a story mode (kind of like that 3DS game) it probably would have been better received.

I think the expanded moveset, larger cast of characters, extra maps etc all helped. Mercs on RE5 Remastered has like 18~ characters which is absolutely crazy. Think the co-op also added a lot to it. Never played RE6 mercs but heard a ton of good stuff about it.

EDIT: one thing I do feel, is that they are better received since they are also a tad easier. RE5 and RE6 have a very clear 'best way' to play (just use melee, and if not go for combo kills), and RE6 has things like built in QTE-counters. While RE4 is more 'pure' in that it's fully on you the player to get that highscore. Not to mention RE4 mercs only has Leon unlocked at the start.

Gregorinho wrote:> RE5/6

Do you think the popularity of Mercs in those games is down to the expanded melee/movement mechanics?

I think there are probably different factors.

First of all, I think Roy is right and that the insane quality of RE4's main game sort of overshadows all the other modes, for better or for worse. Tone is also a factor, a lot of players are drawn to RE4 due to the slow-paced and oppressive atmosphere of the Village and consider it to be a horror game first and foremost (I disagree with that assessment, but that's how a lot perceive it). But then they often end up disappointed as the action ramps up on the Island and won't be giving much thought to playing an even more action-focused mode afterwards.

Second, RE5/6 Mercs are undeniably more complex with an even higher skill ceiling. I think they lose out on a lot of the fine-tuning, polish, organic play and balance that make RE4 Mercs so remarkable, but there is definitely an even higher incentive to get better at it for the super serious score chasers. Plus the expanded melee system, all the different stages and playable characters... RE5/6 Mercs WR strats are really complex, even more so than RE4's. A bit like the distinction between NGB and NG2/3RE.

Third, RE5 came out at a time when internet gaming culture was significantly more active than in 2005 when RE4 came out. That plus the coop nature of RE5 in general means that it automatically generated a lot more enthusiasm and activity by default. So the wider Mercs community basically started with RE5. And people generally don't tend to replay older games, so...

To give you an idea, biohazardmercenaries (the main Mercs forum) was always completely centered around RE5, and they even removed their RE4 section entirely during their last layout update.

Been watching Matthewmathosis's old RE4 stream, and he goes a bit in depth regarding the NTSC/PAL differences. One part he notes got me thinking though, namely the value of weapons and preferences and how the versions play into that. How one version has less ammo, but less enemy HP and how that could make some rely on one weapon more than the other. Can image the TMP has less value in the PAL release for example since you're not as swarmed with ammo and it isn't a murder weapon anyway.

Thought that was pretty fun. His playthrough is pretty low quality in terms of gameplay skill but it's still a fun watch.

Watching it does remind me of just how much I knife the game when I play it. I see him using the shotgun regularly and I just raise an eyebrow there haha. Then again, my save-games always ended with me being absolutely swarmed with nearly two full Striker clips and godknows how many handgun and magnum rounds. Maybe a no-knife run would actually be fun...

Another thing I didn't know, but apparently the voice-lines of enemies are also tied to situations like in Vanquish. "¡Detrás de tí, imbécil!" is only said when they are behind you, nice touch. Anyone here knew this? I always thought all the lines were just filler, but apparently some do mean something. Wonder if other lines are tells as well.

Royta/Raeng wrote:Another thing I didn't know, but apparently the voice-lines of enemies are also tied to situations like in Vanquish. "¡Detrás de tí, imbécil!" is only said when they are behind you, nice touch. Anyone here knew this?

Yep, that one literally means "Behind you, imbecile!", so that's a good one to memorize. It's super reliable, too. Whenever you hear it you (almost?) always have enough time to either relocate or turn around and deal with the enemy before they attack you.

I don't know of any other specific voice lines off the top of my head, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were more!

Pretty cool, loved how vocal lines always meant something in Vanquish as well, cool stuff.

There's several lines that mean "Get him/grab him" and you can usually expect an enemy to attempt to grab you (or Ashley) after that, there's also lines for pursuing/cutting you off if you run away.

Pretty fun, a good friend of mine is playing this game for the first time now. He's generally a purely modern guy (old = bad), but he's really taken in by the game. Just goes to show how solid the game is that even people that tend to gravitate towards trends can't drop this game.

He's up in 4-4 now already on Normal and usually out of ammo, but once again the game is just designed tight enough that he can get through.

He did run into a quite annoying PC glitch though that ended up being gamebreaking until he lowered the FPS to 30 (a QTE was unbeatable).

Anyone who doesn’t love RE4 isn’t worth speaking to.

Beat Professional with Punisher, Bolt-Action, Striker, Mine Thrower. The game's fucking masterful, what else is there to say?

The only part I'm meh on is the bosses, but it's a shooter so maybe it's best to view it as an averted crisis rather than a disappointment.

Mikami is a legend.

>what else is there to say?
Just that everyone should play the game and shut up.

>meh on bosses
I love the bosses because I find them all to be very fair, while also being just different enough to not make you think “oh great, another skillcheck where most of my toolkit doesn’t work” like most action games.

>Mikami is a legend
Directing 5 of the best games ever is quite a career.

Oh man. What have you been doing with the minethrower and punisher? I just thought up a scenario of how you could minedart a guy in the middle of a group and shoot through an enemy with the punisher pistol to blast everyone surrounding em, which would shield you from the blast. Could possibly be done from a starting overhead sniping shot or, even better, the minethrower's unlockable (no spoilers - did you get that?).

Yeah that's one good application, shoot a guy in a group with the mine and blast away with the Punisher to keep the whole group in hitstun until it explodes.

The heat-seeking upgrade is insane, it basically completely overrides your manual aiming. You actually can't do certain setups that involve shooting walls with it, I was trying to take out the turrets in 5-4 that way but had to use a different method. On the other hand, you will basically never miss against normal enemies.

>Anyone who doesn’t love RE4 isn’t worth speaking to.
>Just that everyone should play the game and shut up.
FACTS.

>I just thought up a scenario of how you could minedart a guy in the middle of a group and shoot through an enemy with the punisher pistol to blast everyone surrounding em
That's genius.

>homing mines override manual aim
>ruin setups
That's a pretty big downside.

>On the other hand, you will basically never miss against normal enemies.
I've barely touched this weapon. Is missing actually an issue?

Been replaying this for a few days now on and off, focusing on using my lesser used weapons while also disallowing the usage of the knife (outside of barrels and shit). So far it's excellent, as always, and getting a ton of new appreciation for just so many of the game's little details.

I love how the entire game is focused on a single element: shooting. And it does so many with it.

You aim at an enemy, that's neat, but this already triggers an interaction. Either they walk, or they cover their eyes (neat detail) or they dodge suddenly since they can see your laser. When you shoot, there's the infamous reactions but I just want to overstate the obvious again, you can do so much here. Headshots lead to a long stagger and kick-action, but arm-shots ironically lead to a long stagger too. Shoot them in the legs while walking triggers a fall, while standing triggers a knee-pose. If they are in the knee pose, you can shoot them again for a knockdown (looks cool as hell). You can also shoot weapons out of their arms, changing their moveset, and can even shoot the explosives in their hands (even before they ignite them). You can shoot items out of the air. I mean the shit is endless. There's so many tiny little interactions where you change the state of the enemy, it's just divine.

It's even better in groups, where you're constantly juggling states and using the enviroment (ringouts) and themselves (tnt) to your advantage.

Shooting is also used in other things. Hunting for treasure? You shoot things off walls to get them.
Puzzle? Shoot the thing.
Fishing for healing items? shoot some fish

It doesn't use other elements, it just uses what it has in fun ways to mix things up.

The movement is great, lots of control but still tight and claustrophobic. Reloading a shotgun while surrounded by 10+ Ganados is super, super tense. The game smartly uses text-lines to warn you of enemies off-screen.

Hell you can even use things against enemies. For example if they grab you, you can quickly turn around. The back-grab does 0 damage, but you can kill them with the free-animation.

It's also got so many double-edged options. Flashbangs are a group-stun, but they OHKO plagas and birds, giving them a twist. The game even acknowledges this by having a group of birds at one point, where one drops a Flashbang to reward your experimentation. Of course this shit is wildly known now, but little Raeng back in the day felt like he found the holy-arc when he figured this shit out for himself.

The game even gets other little things right, like OHKO's being impossible (you always have 1HP left after any attack outside of specific cinematic OHKOs like the chainsaw) and you can mix&combine items that don't fit in your inventory easily. And there's so many little details like shooting the bell near the church for extra enemies, detailed little animations for Leon and Ashley that are very rare, few optional (funny) cutscenes, fantastic death-animations, amazing soundtrack, great enemy variety - the list just goes on, and on, and on. Fuck me. The definition of a classic. This game could come out TODAY and we'd all just be blown away.

I also want to give a small credit to the graphics, on a CRT it straight up looks like a PS3 title at times. Extremely detailed, great models, animations, shadows, atmopshere, textures, the works. Game runs like a dream too.

Game has got great pacing too, at least until the Island.

There's also something about the game's performances, especially Paul Mercier as Leon. Sure the lines are corny, but he's legit one of the few video-game protagonists that...feels real somehow. Like it IS Leon's voice. Not sure how to put it to words.

Solid fucking gold.

Excellent description.

It's one of those games I never get tired of starting a new file in.

>shooting explosives
Know if the minethrower can do this and create a double explosion?

Also wonder if it can hit thrown weapons.
There's a lot of little things I realize I've never tried.

I haven't really delved into the minethrower yet (something I wish to change this playthrough). I don't think the game allows for double-explosions, but not sure.

Great game, until the island.

I wish the knife was better integated into the combat. It feels clunky to use & lacks the fantastic feedback of other weapons.

Leon's one liners are great. Some people don't like the cheesiness for reasons that elude me.

I think the Island isn't TOO bad, just that 5-1 is way too lengthy. 5-2 is boring, but 5-3 and 5-4 are just fucking bangers imo. But ti's a slow burn for sure and the art-style just isn't there.

> Knife
I think the intergration is good (quick to grab), never really thought of the feedback/sound etc. I agree it's not too strong. It feels more like hitting someone with a fan or a stick now that you mention it.

>It feels clunky to use & lacks the fantastic feedback of other weapons.
Whips out pretty fast for me. I actually like the sound it makes. A bit like tearing newspaper.

Charlie posted his video on this, it's surprisingly(or unsurprisingly) not very mechanic-focused and instead he talks at length about how the design is different from the original games(no shit).

He even says at one point something like "maybe enemies don't always drop items because of some behind the scenes thing going on". He's spent all this time with the series and doesn't know about the dynamic difficulty scaling?

Why do I watch these videos? I can't wait for Under the Mayo to have his galaxy brain take on the game too.

I skimmed it and heard that EXACT part and thought "you do all this work, and can't even be bothered to look shit like that up". Shameful.

Who is Charlie?

>can't even be bothered to look shit like that up
That's one of my problems with most reviewers. They never bother to verify anything they say.

The case here where the reviewer actually asks the question IN the review is bizarre. Like when editing why would you do this instead of just looking it up and adding the facts?

Sometimes I think this shit is intentional.

Charlie, aka TheCasualBrit.

Can't find it. Got a link?

I remember this guy. Watch a lot of his videos. Not the worst I've come across, but still doesn't understand the mechanics of some of the stuff he talks about.

Speaking of these youtubers I just saw Cvit's Shinobi video. Description has a link to Backlogged with a list of PS2 games he plans to review. Chaos Legion is on the list. I have no doubt it will be bad.

I saw his Shinobi video, it honestly wasn't the worst thing I'd seen in my life like most of his content.

I was expecting his Shinobi video to give me a disease but it was actually decent.

I didn't find the final boss to be as bad as he said. You need to attack a little before those enemies or you can dash through them for some reason.

I will say that I absolutely *hated* the final boss, and still do. The waiting segment is annoying enough, but he's got so little openings and so many random i.frames, paired with a really annoying enemy - even on challenge runs where I was more confident in my skill I still dreaded him.

I hate that waiting segment too.

The only real issue I had was that he tends to do his combo when you have max sword.

TGBS vid on RE4 wasn't that bad, about what I expect from him at this point. He doesn't go in depth but doesn't really get anything wrong either. The game is linear but has some self contained non linear segments, has a lot of variety in its scenarios and the mechanics work for the linearity and the increased enemy numbers. Not exactly a stellar analysis but again, not too bad. He's done much worse (reviewing NG2 without even mentioning OTs...).

This part just sticks out so much since his entire series is based on the series Boss Keys from GamemakerToolkit, a guy whose one of most famous vids is about RE4's difficulty-system. Just feels weird that he doesn't know it.

> NGII review
I still kinda like that one for just admitting it's a game made by insane people. His NG:B review makes me want to commit a bombingrun tho.

>he's done much worse
Sure, but considering this is a series that he's devoted so much time to, and this game in particular he has mentioned in countless videos, you would think he would go beyond "this game is linear unlike the last games and enemies drop stuff".

@Raeng
>for just admitting it's a game made by insane people
Yeah I kinda like it too for that reason, but as a gameplay analysis is one of the worst he's done.

@Infinity
>go beyond "this game is linear unlike the last games and enemies drop stuff"
He doesn't know how to do that and he never did a decent gameplay analysis in the first place. It's inoffensive and that's the most I expect of him these days (since he also decided to completely drop the humor from his reviews).
This is problem with YT reviewers in general. Their idea of analysis is simply to list stuff you can do and to describe things in the most surface way imaginable. "The game is fun", "The animations are fantastic", "There is a lot of variety" and so on. It's always the same. The only one who could review a game decently from the gameplay side was Matt and he doesn't review stuff anymore. I tried also giving a shot to other reviewers which are considered good but I wasn't impressed.

I was talking about it today with a mate (regarding Dunkey becoming a publisher) and for the Brit it always was too bad that he dropped his humor, his videos were a nice mixture of 'informative and funny'. It wasn't an analysis, but it was a good video to show to someone saying "hey this game is awesome" and it'd get them hype; them being short also helped. Now he's just "one of a billion" internet reviewers with the typical "this is what the game has, that's good because that's good" shtick.

There's not a good reviewer that I've seen on YT. I love Matt but I always felt his reviews were very mediocre, with a big emphasis on story and narrative - only his Death Stranding review really clicked with me. His more general videos and 'complete playthroughs' were an absolute highlight to me.

Speaking as a 'internet reviewer' myself (blogger), I find Youtube to just be too much of a hassle and way too volatile to edit later-on. With articles I can sometimes get back to them after they're done, fix some edges and make it better. It's also such a ton of work haha.

> NGII review
Yeah in terms of actual analysis, it's barebones. I'd say it's one of his last 'traditional' reviews. Just fun to watch with a beer. His NG:B "flying swallow" review was painful. Probably even worse than Cvit's.

>Dunkey becoming a publisher
I admire him but it's going to be rough. Being a publisher isn't easy and I disliked the "I'm the indie ambassador" attitude he had in the video, but we'll see.

>"hey this game is awesome"
Yeah it was nice all things considered. Like the DMC5 review, which isn't anything special, but you get secondary hype just by hearing him. Nowadays he's so monotone.

>his reviews were very mediocre
Maybe is very early stuff (Zelda and MGS reviews), but anything after his Tetris videos is pretty solid, especially when compared to the total landscape of YT reviews. He's probably a bit too abstract and get fixated on particular things, but he gets what a specific game is about and can explain well what makes a game bad or good relatively quickly (looking at Anderson's 5 hours videos...).

>Matt's commentaries
Fantastic videos, strange that that format never got popular, it would fit the 7 hours long videos mold that the algorithm prefers.

>way too volatile to edit later-on
This might be a problem if you are a perfectionist or want to add stuff after the fact. Most reviewers don't care.

>"flying swallow" review
Too hard for him to use Wind Path before a FS.

>anything dunkey
That guy shouldn't be allowed near games.

> his playthrough commentaries
AFAIK Matt noted that these were insanely hard to edit and took an absolutelly monsterous amount of work, which I can understand. I once thought about doing one on NGII since I love that game so much but it's seriously hard to edit and record, so I gave up. I think if it was his job he'd probably be up for it, but it's pretty clear (also from his patreon) that he doesn't consider this his job or his future

> "I played cuphead so i'm in the know of indiegames"
Got a real laugh out of me

>

>commentaries
I believe he said the VJ one took over two years. So I can’t blame him for not doing more.

>dunkey
It was a bit odd hearing him claim to be some ambassador of the medium when most of his videos are just memes.

>hard to edit and record
Not only that but the hardest thing imo is to find interesting topics to discuss for the whole lenght of the game, and since NG2 is quite a meaty game it will be quite difficult, plus you run into the risk of becoming repetitve, since the game is 90% exhausting combat encounters.

>VJ one took over two years
In one of his lives he said that he'd like to do a Bayo commentary since he'd get to play one of his favourite games and consider it as work. But yeah, they are too time consuming, especially since he's now developing his game (wonder how it will turn out in the end).

>dunkey
His videos are funny (to me at least), I'll give him that, but even when he wants to become serious he can't go beyond the surface of most games. It's also funny to see him trying to paint games as Celeste, HK and Rocket League as "niche" indie games.
A YTer which also makes comedy reviews but also talks about actual niche indie games is Sseth, but he doesn't nearly smell his own farts as much as dunkey.

> Dunkey
Yeah I find his videos very funny too, and I like how he intersplices commentary with them too. His Elden Ring videos were both "man this shit is funny" and "man this shit is kinda true actually".