Am I the only one who thinks Biohazard sounds better than Resident Evil? Anyways...
Pictorial proof is posted in the 'show us your game related purchases thread'.
Picked up the PS3 version of this on holiday last week (my God, the queues
Always wanted to be part of a big AAA day one Tokyo release so that's something else to tick of the list. As many of you know I work in games retail but I have never seen anything like what I saw in a couple of the Akihabara game stores last Thursday!!).
So then, the actual finished, boxed product. In a word: brilliant!! When it went up for download I had to play the demo a few times to get used to the control system and where I haven't played many 3rd person games in the last couple of weeks it has made getting into this with it's 'antiquated' control scheme a lot easier. There will still be some who will hate the game because of it's control system but it still adds a shed load to the sheer panic and I am yet to get annoyed due to Chris' slow turning circle. One thing that I did find interesting was the Jap PS3 demo was set to control type 4 (based on Resi 4) whereas the UK 360 one defaulted to the new, revised scheme. I defo prefer the old scheme.
Graphically the game is astonishing. So many little details that sometimes it's hard to concentrate on surviving as you're cooing at the pretty. Some of the lighting and particle effects in particular are stunning. Slime is particularly well realised. The overall atmosphere of the game is exceptional with a really creepy feeling and some nasty dark undertones lurking beneath.
The sound is good. I'm only running my PS3 through two speakers so the weapons sound a little feeble but the music is great. a good mix of scary orchestral and faster drummy stuff to build the tension.
The cutscenes are good too. Never too long and featuring some cool angles that up the tension and feature some nasty moments.
The game is broken into chapters with each chapter seeming broken into 2 parts. The game saves fairly regularly too so having to replay large sections after dying shouldn't prove too much of an issue - it certainly hasn't so far.
I don't really want to go into the story too much as already there has been a lot of 'hmm, I wonder if...' and 'whoah, that's twisted' moments and I really can't wait to progress further to see if some of my early hunches are correct. Even this early something doesn't sit quite right with what you're being told though that might just be my conspiracy theory brain running away with itself.
What I am happy with is the variety in scenery even though I am only halfway through the second level. Certainly what Capcom have shown in terms of levels is only the tip of the iceberg.
The partner system works well. Sheva is fairly intelligent in terms of picking up items and passing them to you if needed - certainly with ammo where she gives me all the shotgun rounds as that's my weapon of choice but keeps all the machine-gun stuff for herself as she has that. She heals at the best times too. I have had one instance though where she blindly ran into a wire-mine and wiped out half her health bar. Silly girl!!
The weapon upgrade system works in the same way that it did in Resi 4 but you can sort out your items before each stage and even when you reload to continue a session, pretty cool.
A nice feature on the Jap version is in the XMB if you scroll across from game to movie there're behind the scenes documentaries and a trailer for Degeneration all in 1080i. I thought that was pretty cool! The other bonus features are cool too.
I'm not sure that this version is censored either. If you down an enemy you get the option to stamp on them. In the demo this meant properly smacking them on the chest but in this I've crushed a few skulls and it's all there in it's gory glory.
I haven't done any co-op either on or offline yet. I did see from the display copies running in one game store that the same screen co-op looks a little ropey as you don't get half the screen each. There are black borders either side of the screen to keep the aspect ratio correct. Also, you can set the game to have drop-in co-op online and turn friendly fire on and off.
So far I am enjoying this immensely. Any doubt I had about this living up to expectation has been totally snuffed out during the first couple of hours play this afternoon. Luckily I have the next 2 days off work to get through as much of this as possible - with the jetlag I'm hoping it could be a fair bit!
Pictorial proof is posted in the 'show us your game related purchases thread'.
Picked up the PS3 version of this on holiday last week (my God, the queues
Always wanted to be part of a big AAA day one Tokyo release so that's something else to tick of the list. As many of you know I work in games retail but I have never seen anything like what I saw in a couple of the Akihabara game stores last Thursday!!).So then, the actual finished, boxed product. In a word: brilliant!! When it went up for download I had to play the demo a few times to get used to the control system and where I haven't played many 3rd person games in the last couple of weeks it has made getting into this with it's 'antiquated' control scheme a lot easier. There will still be some who will hate the game because of it's control system but it still adds a shed load to the sheer panic and I am yet to get annoyed due to Chris' slow turning circle. One thing that I did find interesting was the Jap PS3 demo was set to control type 4 (based on Resi 4) whereas the UK 360 one defaulted to the new, revised scheme. I defo prefer the old scheme.
Graphically the game is astonishing. So many little details that sometimes it's hard to concentrate on surviving as you're cooing at the pretty. Some of the lighting and particle effects in particular are stunning. Slime is particularly well realised. The overall atmosphere of the game is exceptional with a really creepy feeling and some nasty dark undertones lurking beneath.
The sound is good. I'm only running my PS3 through two speakers so the weapons sound a little feeble but the music is great. a good mix of scary orchestral and faster drummy stuff to build the tension.
The cutscenes are good too. Never too long and featuring some cool angles that up the tension and feature some nasty moments.
The game is broken into chapters with each chapter seeming broken into 2 parts. The game saves fairly regularly too so having to replay large sections after dying shouldn't prove too much of an issue - it certainly hasn't so far.
I don't really want to go into the story too much as already there has been a lot of 'hmm, I wonder if...' and 'whoah, that's twisted' moments and I really can't wait to progress further to see if some of my early hunches are correct. Even this early something doesn't sit quite right with what you're being told though that might just be my conspiracy theory brain running away with itself.
What I am happy with is the variety in scenery even though I am only halfway through the second level. Certainly what Capcom have shown in terms of levels is only the tip of the iceberg.
The partner system works well. Sheva is fairly intelligent in terms of picking up items and passing them to you if needed - certainly with ammo where she gives me all the shotgun rounds as that's my weapon of choice but keeps all the machine-gun stuff for herself as she has that. She heals at the best times too. I have had one instance though where she blindly ran into a wire-mine and wiped out half her health bar. Silly girl!!
The weapon upgrade system works in the same way that it did in Resi 4 but you can sort out your items before each stage and even when you reload to continue a session, pretty cool.
A nice feature on the Jap version is in the XMB if you scroll across from game to movie there're behind the scenes documentaries and a trailer for Degeneration all in 1080i. I thought that was pretty cool! The other bonus features are cool too.
I'm not sure that this version is censored either. If you down an enemy you get the option to stamp on them. In the demo this meant properly smacking them on the chest but in this I've crushed a few skulls and it's all there in it's gory glory.
I haven't done any co-op either on or offline yet. I did see from the display copies running in one game store that the same screen co-op looks a little ropey as you don't get half the screen each. There are black borders either side of the screen to keep the aspect ratio correct. Also, you can set the game to have drop-in co-op online and turn friendly fire on and off.
So far I am enjoying this immensely. Any doubt I had about this living up to expectation has been totally snuffed out during the first couple of hours play this afternoon. Luckily I have the next 2 days off work to get through as much of this as possible - with the jetlag I'm hoping it could be a fair bit!
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