True posted January 19, 2012:

I'm reserving judgment until I actually play it but must say I'm utterly disappointed that, once again, Claire and Carlos are missing. Nor does there seem to be any option for playing Jill or Sheva. Don't get me wrong--Leon is a worthwhile character and without question my favorite. But one thing I always enjoyed about the series was their varying protagonists with sequels.

bloomer posted January 19, 2012:

Jill's in that 3DS Revelations one.

bloomer posted January 20, 2012:

It looks a tad unrestrained.

Soon we'll be gazing back at RE4 and saying 'Ah, gosh, for the days when they showed restraint, and the plot only involved the President's daughter.'

I remember when Shinji M was saying he envisioned Resident Evil becoming like the James Bond series - and that was pre RE4, I think, when people were gossiping that RE4 was going to be about Chris and Jill taking on Umbrella in Europe. I had a couple of thoughts in response to his Bond idea. One was 'I hate this idea,' and the other was, 'It's never gonna get that big.'

Looks like he showed me up on both counts. It has got that big. And the quality hasn't gone down, though obviously they've become very different games.

I'd still rather they went small scale again. I think the best horror-horror is small scale.

zippdementia posted January 20, 2012:

Amnesia gets my vote for favourite horror game. The amount of times that game has made me come close to pissing myself, yet it still retains a mysterious enough atmosphere that I want to keep playing it. Have not beaten it yet, so maybe it's a bit of a premature vote, but I do think it's hard to top Lovecraft-done-right (rare as it is).

Resident Evil 2 was a personal favourite from back in the day, though maybe it's because it was my first Survival Horror game. Still, it seemed to strike a good balance between all the Survival Horror elements. The controls weren't very good, but they were simple enough to work with and the tension was definitely present, though not so overbearing that I ever stopped playing. The dual storylines were executed really well and Leon and Claire were both good characters. Ada made a great addition to the cast, before she started becoming a super ninja.

Perhaps most of all, it was a great way to take what had started in Resident Evil 1 and push it into the next level. Going from a mansion to an entire city, from an isolated break out to a mass-mess... I'm not sure, honestly, that they've ever stepped up the game so well since. Well, I suppose Resident Evil 4 and 5 did, but they had to completely change genres to the action genre to do it.

One of the reasons this trailer interests me is because it looks like there is some attempt to return to the classic zombies-took-over-the-town scenario, which doesn't seem to ever get old and which I've missed.

Resident Evil 2 was the last time that Resident Evil felt serious to me and not like a cheesy sci-fi or action film. There was a sense of dread there that wasn't outdone by over-ridiculous scenarios. Definitely William Birkin was a little bit on the ridiculous side, but he was shown in such small portions and made such a great reoccuring villain that I was able to overlook that. Nemesis was similar in that aspect, but by then was recycling content from past Resident Evil games while adding in some silly additions, like zombie frogs.

Then came Code Veronica. A tense game, but !@#$! Wesker. Wesker all the time. Wesker made things truly stupid. My suspension of disbelief snapped in two the minute they brought him back as a virus-vampire and started throwing in matrix fights all over the place.

SPOILER FOR RESIDENT EVIL 5

His death BY FUCKING VOLCANO in the Fifth game drew one of those exhausted sighs from me. Like, at last we don't have to see this douchebag any more. I hope to god he's not back in Resident Evil 6. Please just let him and his cheesy non-accent be dead.

END SPOILER, END RANT

Masters posted January 20, 2012:

Haha! I bet they find a way to bring him back. Logic doesn't play into things where Wesker is concerned. =T

I think my three favourites are Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil 4. I've replayed them all recently, and I still like them. Silent Hill 2, I'm going to replay when I get the HD collection; it still has a chance to finish as my number one if it's as unsettling as I remember (despite all the damn running).

overdrive posted January 20, 2012:

RE4 was a great mix of action and action-horror. You didn't have too much dread, but you had grotesque stuff, gory kills and the occasional jump-scare.

The first two Silent Hills were my favorites for pure horror though. In different ways. The first was that "OMG! What's making that noise...it's getting closer! PANIC ATTACK!!!!" way. And the second took a bit of that, but added this really depressive "YOU ARE DOOMED" vibe to it.

Suskie posted January 20, 2012:

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Any explanation I could offer here would just be a rehash of my review, so read that if you want to know why I think Eternal Darkness is basically the most perfect horror game I've ever played.

Still have virtually no experience with the Silent Hills, so I'm very much looking forward to playing the remastered editions.

zippdementia posted January 20, 2012:

Bloomer luv for Resident Evil 2 = teh win

I'll give an honorary mention to Eternal Darkness, now that Suskie's brought it up. I wasn't as much of a fan of it as he is, mostly for two reasons, which you can read below if you really care, but it was a very involving game and I did play it all three times. The best parts for me were the scenes in the mansion and the church. They were truly frightening and had some of my favourite scares of the genre. Especially when you are in the house in the past as the big ol' fat guy. Damn that scenario is scary.

Totally forgot about Dead Space, by the way. I think that deserves a mention, too. I haven't played the second one yet but the first one made me incredibly tense (up until the terrible last chapter). I've played the game three or four times all the way through and I still don't like the Medical Bay.

Back to Eternal Darkness. The two reasons I couldn't fully get behind it are because I thought the best gimmick in the game, the sanity bar, shouldn't have been as easy to get around. You have a spell that recovers your sanity. I used it all the time and got through the game seeing the effect maybe three times. I know the argument is that you don't have to do this, but that's like saying you don't have to use the shotgun in Resident Evil 4. It's there; people are going to use it.

The other reason was that the repetition of stages got old. This isn't because you are in the same stage multiple times. The game actually proves it can do this great, with multiple mansion scenes and church scenes that are all unique and creepy (church in particular was well done, with one repetition being set during a World War I bombing run... totally changes the mood from the original medieval use of the setting). But the other two levels (the jungle temple and the roman catacomb) change barely at all and weren't fun for me past the first time. Especially when you play as the Marine with the automatic rifle and the fireaxe. The enemies just don't stand a chance and the whole atmosphere was ruined for me by the ease of that stage.

overdrive posted January 20, 2012:

I think if you took me and my best friend, we'd have a virtual war on our hands arguing between RE2 and SH2 for most impactful in the Survival Horror genre. I think SH1 is an overall better game than 2 (entering "Hellraiser World" was more terrifying in 1, for one thing...along with the fact that you just seemed more overwhelmed by monsters outdoors, so it felt like "survival" just getting from place to place), but 2 was so much more hard-hitting on an emotional level.

There are just so many memorable moments in that game. Angela climbing the Stairway to Hea..Hell; dropping through hole after hole after hole to get to the final part of the game (IMO, an analogy for James' mental/emotional status by this point); the pure freak-you-out nature of that old jail level (tons of crazy sounds to make you think pure hell is coming your way). It's like from beginning to the end, you just have this sense that something horrible is around the next corner and when it isn't...well, it's the next corner. Which leads to this sense of impending doom at all times, which the atmosphere just adds to. And which made the fact that when I played through it, I got the suicide ending, all the more appropriate. With the way that game took James, in a twisted way, him cashing out at the end was the perfect finale. There's no way a happy ending is even remotely appropriate for this game. It's about human weaknesses, guilt and self-destruction due to that guilt.

Suskie posted January 20, 2012:

The two reasons I couldn't fully get behind it are because I thought the best gimmick in the game, the sanity bar, shouldn't have been as easy to get around.

I'll never understand this argument. Why would you want to get around it? Sanity doesn't affect your ability to complete the game; it's just there to supplement the horrific nature of the plot and its imagery. When you cast a spell to restore your sanity, you're not making the game any easier; you're just cheating yourself out of the atmosphere.

Suskie posted January 21, 2012:

It would be like if in Uncharted 2 you could either choose to climb your way up the cliff to the temple of Shangri-la or you could take the empty dirt road right next to it, which was both easier and faster but lacked all the planned scenarios.

Right. And I would still take the former option, because that's more fun. I mean, to each his own, I guess, but if I'm playing a horror game, it's because I want to play a horror game.

zippdementia posted January 23, 2012:

They can't just recreate Resident Evil 4. Where would they find another evil midget?

This is my opinion, but I don't want to play Resident Evil 4-2... again. I already did and it was called Resident Evil 5. I'd like to play something with a little more scare and a little more seriousness. Not that I expect Resident Evil to ever be dead serious in its approach, but as I was saying above, the early Resident Evils (piquing for me in either Resident Evil 2 or Nemesis) had a darkness and despair to them that I don't really think has really carried over into the more recent games, which almost feel more like Devil May Cry 4 to me.