Biohazard Deadly Silence - Nintendo DS

[Dogg Thang]

Well this arrived today (US version) and I've been playing it a while. Anything negative I could say has already been said - the atefacting on the video is nasty (though understandable), the backgrounds are quite heavily compressed so don't look great (again, understandable but not ideal) and I truly believe that every handheld game, regardless of sleep mode, should have a quick save function.

All that aside, however, this is good old Resident Evil just as it was back in the day! Although how we ever survived without that auto aim is beyond me - I'm very glad they didn't decide to go so authentic as to drop that. And, for anyone who played the original to death, being able to skip the door sequences is a dream.

I went straight into Rebirth mode and had a nasty shock being eaten while fumbling for my stylus. I then promptly died a few corridors later having been chewed on by a zombie in that little dead end room and then mauled by the dogs. I seem to have lost the knack of how to run past things, which is pretty much how I always got through it back in the day. So I'll go back to Classic mode and probably start from Jill again to relearn the game.

[sj33]

Seems that if you hold Right on the screen where you select a mode, it reverts to 'Training Difficulty' mode. Not tried this myself, but it seems like a good mode to get used to the Rebirth features with.

Also, it seems it has a quick reload, by holding R and pressing Dash. I never knew this.

[Dogg Thang]

I love the character portraits in the manual. They are all beefy looking polygon guys except Joseph (who is a real guy from the opening) and, slightly more bizarrely, Brad who is the helicopter.

If this sells well, what do people reckon our chances are of seeing a RE2 DS?

[sj33]

Bizzare, the game has an M for Mature rating, yet defaults to green blood (changable in the Options menu).
It doesn't really work though because all the blood in the cutscenes is red (and it includes the uncut movie with the Zombie eating Kenneth - you actually see the half-eaten head, a first outside Japan)... plus the blood in the dinning room on the floor is green too and just looks like paint.

"I hope this is not Chris' paint"

...sorry.

As for RE2S... PLEASE!

[NeRoZoMbIe]

I love the character portraits in the manual. They are all beefy looking polygon guys except Joseph (who is a real guy from the opening) and, slightly more bizarrely, Brad who is the helicopter.

Haha yeah, that made laugh. It`s like the art people couldn`t be arsed drawing him. "I know, lets just stick a picture of a helicopter in there, that`ll do!"

I finished Jill`s classic game for the 3rd time today, still really enjoying it. I`ll have a couple of bashes at getting Chris` game down and then I`ll start rebirth, I`m really looking forward to it.

RE2DS, that`d be great but it might suffer more in the port over than REDS. Would be nice though.

[Dogg Thang]

Well the main problem again with RE2 would be compression due to size problems but, if the DS goes like other cart systems, cart sizes will go up over time. Who knows...

[sj33]

Well the main problem again with RE2 would be compression due to size problems but, if the DS goes like other cart systems, cart sizes will go up over time. Who knows...

That said, N64 RE2 was 512Mbit, RES is 1024MBit.

[Dogg Thang]

I never played the N64 version of RE2 - did it lose much in the translation? I don't seem to remember hearing anything bad about it at the time.

[sj33]

I never played the N64 version of RE2 - did it lose much in the translation? I don't seem to remember hearing anything bad about it at the time.

Many regard it as the best port, though I have little experience with it myself.

It has many extras which were never in any port too, though the cutscenes are as expected.

[Mayhem]

As my Japanese limited copy arrived today... anyone care to give me a quick rundown of all the new stuff you can do, or is present in Rebirth mode?

[Dogg Thang]

Well this is excellent. I wouldn't have expected it but after playing the original to death, playing the GC remake, playing every RE except 4 several times (many of which just repeated all the same stuff over and over) - Resident Evil is even better than I remember it. I have to say, I'm enjoying the knife bits too. They are forgiving enough not to cause a problem and add a nice touch extra without really getting in the way.

Being primarily a handheld gamer these days (save the odd special game), having something like RE on a handheld is wonderful. It's like a dream come true. Like I had said with PSP GTA - having a situation where home console games can be played on handhelds to the same standard is amazing. This is a good thing, not a bad thing by any means.

Edit: On Rebirth, well you have the knife bits - you just use the stylus to swipe or stab. You can also use the stylus (or finger) to shake an attacker off if he grabs you - this is quite effective. The only other thing I've encountered so far are chests that require a little colour coded puzzle to open. I've only found two so far and they were easy enough - you'll get the hang of it through trial and error.

[sj33]

As my Japanese limited copy arrived today... anyone care to give me a quick rundown of all the new stuff you can do, or is present in Rebirth mode?

The new stuff is basically in Rebirth mode, although Classic mode does have some tweaks from later games, such as assisted aim, 180 turn, the knife mapped to L, and the difficulty of the enemies tweaked to be a bit closer to RE2 level.

[Dogg Thang]

I finished Jill on Rebirth mode yesterday and enjoyed in immensely. Just starting Chris on Classic mode. Is it my imagination or is there some different music in Classic mode? A few tracks I noticed missing in Rebirth (particularly save room music) seem to be back in Classic mode. I could be completely wrong though. All of the music from RE, Remake and the others has sort of melded together in my memory.

[Kotatsu Neko]

Just got my US copy today. It's nice to see the old thing on a tiny screen, helps mask how dated it all is. Capcom really did improve the character models a heck of a lot though, and have you noticed Jill's chest..! Some artist got a little carried away there!

Only little problem I have with it is that the sound is too quiet. Makes it hard to hear in anything but perfectly silent conditions. (or with headphones obviously) Even sitting next to my PC the music barely makes it above the whine of the fans.

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, you really do need to be listening to headphones. I think that's more the sound range having to compete with the DS speakers - when there is a high range, to get the louds to seem loud the quiets have to be pushed right down. But the DS speakers actually seem to have a really tight range and the top volume isn't loud enough.

But, yes, Jill grew up a bit. She's also got a rather large rear.