Topic: Resident Evil 5 announced for PC

[idolminds]

Gamers Hell

Its odd, though. Dude from CD Projekt said it in this TV clip. Perhaps they are doing the port?

"We know for sure that PC version RE5 will be released. We don't know when exactly but we expect that it will arrive to shops in second half 2009."

[MysterD]

Maybe CDP is also publishing?
Keep in mind, CDP will be publishing Metropolis' upcoming shooter THEY.

EDIT:
Also, it has been stated RE5 PC will be the "primary" version of the game sometime ago, anyways.

[Cobra951]

The demo is now on XBL.  Need Gold to get it.  Silvers wait a week now.  (MS trying to make a bigger distinction, but by souring rather than sweetening.)  In fact, if your 360 is on, you can get the download going from wherever you are at that link.

[W7RE]

Well, I just tried it out and it's got the exact same game-breaking problem that RE4 had: you can move and aim/shoot at the same time. The movement controls are exactly like Gears of War 2 or Dead Space, or any FPS on consoles in the past 10 years or so. That is, until you want to shoot. I wouldn't mind it so much if you could at least aim while moving, then stop just before you fire. The way it is though, you have to waste precious time aiming when you should have been able to do it while walking around.

What really bugs me about this is that the game looks so good, and this one little thing ruins it for me. I would have reserved it and paid full price on release day for it if it just let you move and shoot, now I'll probably never touch it. It would be like playing an FPS with one hand tied behind your back.

[Quemaqua]

As I see it, it really isn't a big deal.  I mean, they designed the game around that mechanic, so it isn't like you're somehow crippled.  You just have to get used to it.  It suits the game just fine.

[Cobra951]

Did you get it earlier?  Because it's going at a ridiculously slow pace for me.  It's up to 42% now, and I started it when I made the other post.  It's not big either, as big-game demos go.  Only 400 MB and change.

[W7RE]

Well, the way I see it, it's a backwards mechanic that should have been left to die years ago. I just played the demo before posting my post above, and ended up surrounded by enemies in a little ass hut. I had to run to one side, stop, turn around, aim, fire, and by then the "zombies" were on me and I had to run again. If Capcom wants RE to be an action series, they need to get with the times and impliment some more action oriented controls, instead of artificially making the game harder via cumbersome control schemes.

Cobra, my download finished about the time you posted that it was up. I saw Wizall or someone online playing it and logged on to get it.

[Quemaqua]

I wouldn't be so heavy handed as that.  It's no different from any other arbitrary conceit that any other game forces you to accept for the simple fact that they designed it that way.  The game got ridiculously high scores and tons of people loved it.  Why should I have to always be in cover in Gears of War?  Because they designed it that way.  Why are there other action games where cover isn't an issue?  Design.  I mean, you say you got surrounded in a house and then you had to turn and fire and didn't like that.  How's that any different from playing any game, getting surrounded, and being pissed you don't have a god-mode button to get out?  Sure it's an arbitrary choice... but so are all design choices.

I'm not really trying to defend the game so much, as I wasn't even it's biggest fan (though I did enjoy it, and did finish it), I just don't know that calling Capcom's methods archaic and outdated is really accurate.  Consider how much of a leap it was from previous RE games and suddenly it seems like a gigantic evolution.

[W7RE]

Well, the last RE game I played for any substantial amount of time was RE2, which I beat 10 times or so. The big difference in controls? Autoaim. In RE2 I could hit the aim buttona nd immediately begin firing because it would snap to the nearest target. I didn't think of it as easy mode, but a required gimmick that was a result of the generally poor controls. It wasn't an action game though (in my mind), it was survival horror. Funny though, Silent Hill came out after RE2 and I stopped buying RE games.

The biggest differences I saw in RE4 were graphics, an a pseudo-FPS control style. If you remember, that game frustrated the hell out of me too, and I never bothered playing past the first 10 minutes. I paid $20 for RE4 and felt ripped off.

The same thing killed Metroid Prime for me. I bought, played, beat, and thoughroughly enjoyed every Metroid game up until Prime. I don't think I even got halfway through Prime before I got sick of it. I never even considered buying Prime 2. Prime had the exact same control problem as RE4 and now RE5. They're extremely close to what any standard FPS would have, but for some reason your character is unable to take even one step forward or backward while aiming.





I don't think comparing it to GoW's cover system is fair. A fair comparison would be suggest that GoW made you walk up to a wall, hold a button to go into aiming mode, then aim accurately at the cover you wish to use, then press the Hide button. That's closer to what the RE games ask you to do. They add an extra, unneeded step in the aiming process, which makes the game cumbersome.

[Quemaqua]

Well, I disagree.  I didn't find RE4 particularly cumbersome, and the Prime games are some of my all-time favorites.  So you aren't going to be convincing me of it any time soon, obviously.  For whatever reason I just don't find it to be an issue.

[W7RE]

Well, I gave it a second try, and I'm actually having fun with it. I'm still annoyed at the controls, but it seems a bit more forgiving than the beginning of RE4 was (or maybe I just couldn't find where to go there). What I mean is, you can escape instead of fighting (at parts), and it doesn't throw nearly as many enemies at you unless you can just run from them.

The guy at the end of the second level seriously fucked me up though. I'd turn to run and get room to line up a shot, and more guys would attack me. By the time I got ready to pop a few off at him, he was on top of me again. I ended up dying because I gave up running back and forth and just shot him in the face until he fucked me up.

[Quemaqua]

I will say that the beginning of RE4 was weird.  It was too hard and I think everybody who plays it wonders if they're doing something wrong at that point.

Oddly, I really don't have any interest in RE5.  I'm not sure why.

[Cobra951]

The Prime games on the GC made a choice to do away with 2-stick move and aim.  You either move or aim with the left stick.  The right stick is used for other functions.  That was a consistent choice, whether you liked it or not.  The GC controller only has two easily accessible shoulder buttons, while the Xbox controller has 4, so perhaps it was a practical matter.  RE5 made the choice of giving you independent look and aim, each function on its own stick, as expected by players used to FPS games.  Then they arbitrarily choose to cripple the movement control while aiming the weapon.  This is the big difference between Prime and RE5.  There is no controller limitation or scheme limitation, only someone's unfortunate and capricious decision to take away something we could have easily had, and which we expect since the advent of mouselook.  That's what makes it so hard to swallow.

But that's not the end of the problems.  Even after you get tired of cursing the entire family of the designers, and you resign yourself to your needless hobbled fate, then you have to deal with the sudden and constant jerks in perspective while transitioning from look to aim and back to look.  It seems your target is right there in front of you as you're walking toward it, but when you press LT to aim, suddenly you're looking somewhere else.  If you release LT to adjust your position, again the center shifts significantly.  Difficulty increase by virtue of shit controls is the pits.

The demo has a very scripted feel (not that there seems to be any way to escape that lately in big commercial games of this kind).  The world may be fully 3D, but I had this feeling of stepping through the frames of a comic book, going from canned event to canned event.

But it looks so damned good, with a perfectly good frame rate too.  If only they'd fix at least the jarring disconnect between the aim and look perspectives, I might be able to forgive the rest.

[W7RE]

I guess it's really the difference between aim and look that you're talking about that bothers me most. I've got no probolem with needing to stop to shoot, but if I could at least get a shot close to being lined up while I'm walking, it would help a lot.

[W7RE]

A new video "The OXM Report" was just put up on Live tonight talking about new features in RE5. So they're interviewing Mike Webster, Capcom's head of marketing. He says this:

for gears of war style players, we have the action controls which basically the function of that is to allow you to move while shooting. So you don't have to be stationary while firing.

I triple checked the demo, and none of the available control schemes allow you to move while shooting, which is specifically what the guy in this video says. So is it an old build in the demo? Is this guy talking out of his ass?



He also talks about how you can play coop on the same system, which is something the Xbox 360 made possible (lolwtf? PS3 can't do split screen?). He talks about how it's not split screen, but 2 seperate screens on the same display. (OMG!... what?) I booted up the demo and started a coop game to see. You get 2 screens stacked on top of eachother, each one half the height of the display. BUT, they're both using the aspect ration of the display, so you've got black areas around the game screens, and they're staggered. Player 1 (Chris) has his screen shifted to the left, and the character stands off center to  the left side, with the onscreen display on the right. Player 2 (Anya) is has his/her screen shifted to the right, with the character on the right side and the on screen display to the left. I have no idea why they would give staggered screens like this instead of just giving the full width of the TV.

[Cobra951]

Interesting story/editorial about the controls, on Joystiq.

[W7RE]

Cliff Notes version: The RE series is defined by shitty controls, and wouldn't be the same without them. The designers are too arrogant to admit they cheesed their way through several games by making challenging controls instead of challenging gameplay, and the long time RE fans will defend the controls to the death just because the series is well established. I just wish the rest of the game wasn't so fucking cool, because then I could forget about playing it and not care.

I had a long post typed out, but I deleted it in favor of comparing the RE series to Two Girls One Cup. The video is porn, it's got lesbians, it's got music to set the mood. But no matter how good any of that is, the whole thing is based on shit. That's what defines it. Yea you can watch it for the tits and ass, the lesbians, the sex, but you have to deal with shit or you don't get to experience the rest.

Of course, the difference here is that there's tons of porn out there that has all the same stuff, but without the shit. However, the selection of games that offer everything RE does, but without the shit, is extremely limited. Yea Dead Space is cool, Silent Hill is amazing, but there are major differences (aside from the lack of shit). You just can't get the RE experience without the shit, and I wish you could.

[Xessive]

As I've said several times before, controls are a major factor for me and if they get in the way of me enjoying a game then I won't play it. Do they care if I play it? No. They only care if I buy it.

I just tried the RE5 demo on PS3 and I'm definitely not buying it. It's a gorgeous looking game, it's definitely more action-oriented but the controls, while a tad bit better than RE4 (you can actually strafe now but not while you're aiming), are still infuriating. Y'know, turret controls. Such controls were only ever fun in Incoming, and only when you control the turret. RE5 looks more like a game I'd like to watch than play.

Anyway, I'm saving my cash for Street Fighter IV + a pair of MadCatz pads.

[W7RE]

Well I love having something to bitch about, so I'll probably pick it up eventually, probably after it hits the bargain bin. Or if I find someone dedicated enough to play through the whole game with me on coop, I might get it sooner. Aside from that, I'll hold off until I can get myself to finish RE4. If I can do that, I can handle RE5.

[iPPi]

I tried it out and it was definitely fun... but I was disappointed at how little the gameplay has evolved.  Aside looking good, it's essentially playing the exact same way as RE4 did.  The AI is kind of retarded, and the only challenge is limited ammo and a guy wielding a chainsaw at you.

I mean it's still fun, but I was surprised at how little the game has changed or improved, beyond graphics and sound.