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| Biohazard 4: Was *this* it? by Schadenfreude 02/21/2007, 9:04pm PST | ||||
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| I've been reading about the fourth Biohazard/Resident Evil and what a gigantic departure it is from pretty much everything that the series used to be, and how every single change that's been made is for the absolute best and what an incredibly amazing game it is on its own for a number of reasons --the most interesting of them all -to me- being the outstandingly smooth new control interface.
So, recently I got the chance to pick up a copy of the PC version when... ehmmmm... I... was in... Taiwan... yeah, that's it. Well, anyway, the important thing is: I got to try out the PC version, and after an hour or so I gotta ask: Capcom: Are you serious? First of all, if these guys are planning on selling this at anything above 10 US dollars, good luck with that. I hope they throw in a free ticket for the third movie or something, because the game sure isn't worth even that much. This has to be the ugliest port I've seen in a good while. Let's not even get into the horrible, washed out, unfiltered textures and the absolute lack of any form of shader at work in friggin' 2007, and just concentrate on the main problem: A game where you have to aim and shoot, on the PC, AND YOU CAN'T USE THE MOUSE? What the fuck were they thinking? I don't know squat about programming, but I don't think coming up with a mouse driver is THAT difficult, certainly not for kids as smart as these. God damnit, even Pencil Whipped had a half-decent mouse controller. Last night I was at some gaming forums and this guy was saying he actually prefers playing with the gamepad and not being able to use the mouse, as "the thumbstick doesn't let you aim properly, and that enhances the horror a lot." I don't know about you, but I find that to be the stupidest fanboyish statement I've read in my life. But I got an even more serious complaint: All ugliness and non-mouse whining aside, what is it that was so great about this game? The control interface sure can use a lot of tweaking. Some 20 minutes into the game I couldn't for the life of me understand how is it that no one during playtesting figured we would really appreciate it if our guy had the ability to sidestep. Bursting into a room and starting blasting stuff away becomes really uncomfortable when my character can only run in circles (not to mention, it looks fucking stupid). I mean, sidestep, man, it's not that odd an invention, it's something shooters have been doing for over 10 years now!!! RE4's controls are better than the controls of the previous iterations of the series in much the same way as puking your shirt is better than crapping your pants ( (c) 2005 Something Awful's Zack Parsons :P ) --they're still awkward and uncomfortable, they hardly help you out when you need to react quickly, and they could sure use a lot of polishing. But the worst thing is, a few months after the GC version of RE4 came out, Ubisoft released Cold Fear, some -admittedly, forgettable- survival/horror game with a control interface that holds a suspicious number of similarities with RE4's, only Cold Fear makes every single thing better; it feels way more solid in every aspect and it's much more responsive. And in the PC port you can use the mouse. Oh, and RE4 couldn't scare even my 4-year old daughter. "Horror" my f'ing ass. |
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