Best of the Pruld

RE3 Remake

Contrary to internet speculation
Jill's face was not derived from Resident Evil movie actress Milla Jovovich
but rather Russian model Sasha Zotova

It's funny how much the Resident Evil 3 remake resembles the Resident Evil 2 remake; the same engine using some of the same locations and character models, but the resemblance goes even deeper.  Just like my criticism of the Resident Evil 2 remake, the game improves on the original PSX version in virtually every way...and yet there are missed opportunities both in terms of it being a remake of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and a sequel to the Resident Evil 2 remake.

It's a commonly held belief that the Resident Evil 3 remake was only in development for about a year.  That's not actually true, but neither is it entirely incorrect.  According to Capcom the game was under development for about three years.  However, a lot of that time was spent in pre-production since much of the work needed to wait until the tools and personnel became available after the Resident Evil 2 remake was more-or-less finished.  So, what we have is a sequel that was quickly put to market in order to capitalize on the success of its predecessor.  In other words, the 2019 - 2020 situation mirrors 1998 - 1999 release circumstances extremely closely.

Gameplay-wise the dodge mechanic is a welcome addition that enhances boss battles considerably.  I like the little callbacks and tie-ins to other entries in the Resident Evil series, as well as continued references to James Cameron's "Aliens" film with lines like "Stay frosty!" and a coffee shop named "Sigorney"...not to mention the voices of Nathaniel Bard and Mikhail Victor being performed by William Hope (A.K.A. Lieutenant Gorman).  The sound effect and music are great.  There's also a fun smattering of incidental dialogue for players who take their time examining the scenery.  Overall, the game feels like a distilled version of it's predecessor which ties back into what I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

I wonder if that mask filters out COVID-19?

A lot of the complaints leveled against the Resident Evil 3 remake don't jive with me.  I don't think the inclusion of QTEs from the original would have enhanced gameplay all that much, nor do I particularly miss the water treatment plant or clock tower areas.  Jill's outfit is a bit bland (with the new Laura Croft standard issue jeans and tank-top), but her original tube-top, skirt and sweater always came across as way too impractical.  Personally, I still prefer her S.T.A.R.S. uniform (aside from those weird little shoulder pads).  All the supporting characters are improved over the original versions, especially Carlos.  I've heard some complaints that he lacks a distinct personality, but to me he makes a good foil for Jill...maybe it's just his mop of hair, but Carlos strikes me as the kind of guy who spends all his free time surfing at the beach or lifting in the gym.  His reactive (rather than active) personality contrasts nicely with Jill's analytical/aspiring mindset (particularly when his back is to the wall, push comes to shove and the chips are down).

Having exceeded my idiomatic expression limit for the day, I will wrap this up by bringing up a few issues: the lip sinking is a bit off, the camera sometimes gets stuck in zoom mode, and the Nemesis encounters would have benefited from being less scripted in nature.  The horror elements are also downplayed here in favor of a more action-driven experience.  I expect that we will see a resurgence of horror themes in the upcoming Resident Evil 8 though.  As for more remakes, it sounds like Capcom is working on a Resident Evil 4 remake.  Personally, I think Code Veronica would benefit more from an overhaul although the game I'd like to see Capcom do most of all would be the original Dino Crisis complete with scientifically accurate dinosaurs.  Can you imagine using haptic feedback to simulate a T-Rex getting closer and closer?...yeah, and some people think Mr. X is scary.  Sadly, I doubt it will happen because there's probably less money to be made down that road.  Oh well...

Conquering the Stars Once More

Since the whole world is on lock down right now and I'm not rich, I've been going back to some older games in my library.  I've already mentioned Darkest Dungeon in a previous post...I also played some Darkwood and Mudruuner.  One other game I've gotten back into is Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars.  As far as 4X games go, I have to admit it does a admirable job of balancing complexity and accessibility.  Unlike Stellaris, which has become a gobbledygook of icons with a layer of bland presentation on top, the Master of Orion series (excluding the third entry) has done a commendable work when it comes to putting a micro-sized lens on the fun parts (like fleet combat and diplomacy), while simultaneously painting over the dull bits with a macro-sized brush.  That all said, Conquer the Stars isn't a flawless experience.

Part of the problem comes from the voice acting.  That's not to say it is bad...quite the contrary, the all-star voice cast do an excellent job in terms of quality.  The quantity (or more specifically variety) is where the trouble starts.  Hearing the same exact lines delivered the same exact way gets old pretty quick in any situation.  In the first and second Master of Orion games the lack of voice work was actually a feature, in that updates could been received at a quick glance, whereas in Conquer the Stars the player is obligated to sit and passively listen to the repetitive dialogue ad nausea.  Of course, the developers were kind enough to have options to silence advisers or disable GNN reports.  However, doing so feels like certain (rather expensive to develop) content became a liability when it should have been an asset.  Another nice part of using text is how easy it is to correct mistakes.  The "Elerian Fiefdoms" being called the "Elerian Dominion" by the gold GNN reporter robot is one such hard-to-correct error.  In other cases the onscreen text and voice don't match up or the responses used by characters is overly generic.  When choosing a leader for the galactic counsel each race only has three possible answers: abstain, vote for oneself, or a generic choose-another-response.  It's functional, but the third option could have been easily blown out into a unique line of dialogue for each of the thirteen opposing races in the game.  Obviously that would mean having to record over 150 more lines of dialogue, which is a lot of work.  In text form though, it would be pretty easy.  Heck, it wouldn't even be that hard to add variants in the form of a reluctant/coerced vote vs an enthusiastic one.

Other than that, I feel like some improvements could be made to ground combat.  In particular there needs to be more feedback in terms of the effectiveness of each fighting force.  Even if it comes down to watching sprites duke it out on either side of the screen, I'd like to see some indicators of the weapons being used and the K/D ratio.

One thing I really like from the original Master of Orion was the adviser role being split up into a soldier, spy and scientist.  Running an empire that only consists of a leader and their assistant comes across as a bit shallow.  Maybe some race appropriate splash screens showing large numbers of said species would help sell the vibe of the player being the ruler of a space-faring empire.  Overall, don't get me wrong though, I like how Master of Orion makes each race have a distinct identity.  There are the avian Alkari, the reptilian Sakkra, the aquatic Trilarian, the insect-like Klackon, the crystalline Silicoid, cybernetic Meklar, and even the arachnid Antaran.  Unfortunately, I think they go overboard when it comes to mammalian races since they make up the entire other half of the species in the game.  Still, the game does make great efforts trying distinguish each of these anthropomorphic animal species.

I could nit-pick a few other odds and ends in need of polish.  For the most part though, I have said my piece.  I can only hope that the developers come back to this game at some point to tie up the loose ends.  Alternatively, maybe some ambitious mod maker could finish applying that final layer of polish.

Dr. Moreau's Island

"Not to go on all-Fours; that is the Law.  Are we not men?"

I've never had any interest in the Animal Crossing series, but watching a few clips of the newest entry in the franchise (Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch) unearthed old memories buried deep my brain.  It took a while for me to connect the mental dots: a small lush island inhabited by a few humans and a bunch of anthropomorphic animals...building a community...house of pain...?  What is the law?

If those last two phrases don't ring a bell, it's because they're not from Animal Crossing.  They are actually quotes from H.G. Well's novella "The Island of Dr. Moreau".  If you are not familiar with the story, it's basically about an eccentric psychologist fleeing to a remote island in the South Pacific after being exposed for performing unethical vivisection and gruesome experiments.  The reader's entry point to the story comes in the form of chronicle written by an shipwreck survivor, who washes up on the shore of the titular island only to discover the doctor still up to his old habits.  In this case, he has refined his skills to such a degree that he trying to turn animals into crude approximations of people.  Given the time in which the book was written, Moreau's techniques seem rather dated; a mixture of surgery (without anesthetic!) and hypnotic suggestion.  It was state-of-the-art at the time in which the story was written but, obviously, science and technology marches ever on...because of that the three movie adaptations of the story, that came afterward, all use more contemporary concepts such as DNA manipulation.  Sadly, and partially because of that, all the adaptations stumble visually.

As previously mentioned, the doctor's experiments (or "Beast People") are described in the original text as animals made to look and act vaguely human.  However, in every film version of the story, the Beast People are portrayed by actors using a mix of costumes and prosthetics.  Hence, they are very much the opposite; humans trying to look and act like animals.  Personally, I think stop-motion animation or puppetry would have been the only way to achieve the imagery described in the novella (assuming that an animated film is off the table).  Anyway, this isn't really a blog for movies or books, so let's get to point of this post and talk about a video game adaptation of Island of Dr. Moreau.

As far as I know there has never been a video game based on the IP.  There is one FPS entitled Heathen that claims to be inspired by the story but, as far as I can tell, replaces the Beast People with supernatural monsters.  To me the interesting thing about H.G. Well's novella is the animals ultimately being just that.  Some are curious like the Monkey-Man and pink Sloth Creature.  The Dog-Man is outright friendly and an ally of the protagonist.  Meanwhile, most are indifferent to anything that isn't food or a perceived danger.  Only a small minority of the Beast People (namely the Hyena-Swine, Bear-Bull Man, and several others of lupine origin) pose a real threat to humans.  So, in that sense a pure survival horror experience wouldn't fit the material.  Rather, a combination of Stranded Deep and Miasmata with a bit of character interaction would be a much better fit.  In addition, visually rendering animals forced into humanoid forms is definitely within the realm of possibility when it comes to the medium of video games.  What's more, no need to worry about creating polygonal models that look and animate like something dwelling at the bottom of the uncanny valley.  That is pretty much what these wretched creatures are described as in the text.  Yeah...I know it's not anything like the warm and inviting atmosphere of Animal Crossing, but the Island of Dr. Moreau is great fodder for a developer looking to make a horror title in the same style as the works of Frictional Games.

About the Half-Life Series...

Back in the day, I played and enjoyed the original Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, some mods (such as They Hunger), and the Uplink demo version of the game that featured unique areas.  Later, I played Half-Life 2 and found it to be better from a technical standpoint, but not as intriguing in premise as the original.  I never played Episode One or Two, and I have little interest in the Black Mesa update of the original.  All that said, Half-Life: Alyx has sparked my interest much like the original did.

I don't own a VR headset.  I don't have the space, money, or large blocks of free time that such a device would require.  Even so, I appreciate the fact that Valve went out of their way to make a proper Half-Life game in VR.   Up till now, it has felt like pretty much every VR title has been little more than a tech demo.  Thankfully, Half-Life: Alyx actually has some meat on it's bones; both in terms of length and content.  One of the neat things about VR is its ability to turn environmental detail into gameplay.  Rummaging through drawers and dumpsters in the game is kind of like going on a fun little scavenger hunt.  This tactile quality transfers over to the shooting and puzzle solving as well.  There's also a much more vertical quality to everything, since the act of looking up and down in VR is much more instinctive/intuitive than when using a monitor (plus mouse and keyboard) setup.  In short, there are some gameplay mechanics VR adds or enhances, but there are a few things that are decidedly worse when it is employed.

For reasons I don't fully understand, movement in video games always feels more plausible to me if it's in a vehicle of some sort.  To me, first-person shooters always come across as a conceit of sorts in that the player is really more of a floating gun than an actual character in the game...sort of like a hovering drone being controlled remotely by the player via a camera and monitor...anyway...my point is it doesn't feel especially natural.  In VR though I find this problem of physical movement amplified unless there's some kind of design conceit such as the player character being in a wheelchair or a cockpit.  Oddly enough, it's not an issue for me at all in the third-person perspective because I can trick my brain into thinking I'm manipulating my on-screen character like an RC car which brings us back to the drone analogy. I'm not sure if my own personal reaction holds true for most other people though.  The fact that the gameplay in Half-Life: Alyx is smaller in scope than previous entries in the series makes me think that some design concessions had to be implemented for the sake of accessibility.  Having said that, the fundamental mechanics still retain the same spirit as earlier entries in the franchise.

I think, when it comes to Half-Life, Valve feels pressured to make each entry innovative in some way.  In the case of Alyx, I believe they succeeded.  However, it is very much the same kind of "innovation" as before in that isn't truly innovative.  Instead, it's more of a big-budget polishing and of mechanics introduced in other smaller titles years prior (oftentimes the kind of niche games that get ignored by mainstream gaming culture).  Still, if you're one of those rich people that can afford a high-end personal computer and a thousand dollar VR rig then at least now you got something that does the hardware justice.