Shortly after trespassing into the abandoned Baker estate, you wake to find yourself sitting at the dining table surrounded by the family of psychotic redneck owners, the left hand that you’d just had chopped off stapled back on. It’s a surprising setting for a Resident Evil game, not only because you’re watching it all from protagonist Ethan Winter’s eyes, but because it fundamentally flips the series’ central ideas on their heads while being loyal to the core design. Rather than taking inspiration from schlocky western zombie flicks, Resident Evil 7 viewed its haunted house item progression and Condemned-esque first-person investigation gameplay to solve a country horror mystery inspired by Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Ethan escapes after dinner and kills Jack Baker when his car explodes, only to be grabbed again by fast healing Jack who blows his brains out for you in a show of his power. It’s here that the player realizes that Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, with its willingness to rethink the series on a cellular level, represents a different kind of coming back from the dead.
Continue reading “Biohazard Coming Home: When Survival Horror Returned for Resident Evil 7’s Family Reunion”Category: Brawler
Devil May Cry And How Character Action Burst Onto The Gaming Scene In Style
The character action genre is hard to fully define considering how wildly different one title can be from the next, but it largely comes from the stylish combat defined by Capcom’s 2001 milestone, Devil May Cry. DMC’s action design was so strong that it could seamlessly transition between melee and ranged combat, where you can launch an enemy into the air with your sword and juggle them with gunfire. These fast fights are made from a simple yet complete moveset that works well at different distances. Director Hideki Kamiya translated hack ‘n slash games and brawlers into three dimensions, emphasizing twitch action and fair but challenging difficulty by imbuing it with fighting game mechanics and systems that grade your performance in real time. It offers players the means to create spectacular combat sequences where the goal isn’t just to defeat your enemy but to stylishly wreck them.
To understand how it all came together, we have to look at DMC’s family tree.
Continue reading “Devil May Cry And How Character Action Burst Onto The Gaming Scene In Style”Surviving Deadline: An Exposé on Dead Rising’s Absurd Zombie Apocalypse
Survival depends on your ability to properly manage your supplies in a complex world where dangers lurk around every corner. With Dead Rising, Capcom reworked the survival horror concepts of its more famous zombie-fighting series to challenge players to survive three days against an endless mob of monsters and their own hunger. By fighting his way through the Rogue-like structured brawler, photojournalist Frank West will document an absurd horror-comedy about dying and coming back again.
Continue reading “Surviving Deadline: An Exposé on Dead Rising’s Absurd Zombie Apocalypse”Scoring Devil May Cry 4’s Smokin’ Sick Style
Devil May Cry may be revered for merging fighting game’s pugilist science with brawler’s crowd management, but it was driven by its arcade-inspired scoring system. Dedicated fans can easily spend dozens of hours honing their skills against the game’s difficult enemies and massive bosses, all to improve their final scores. With DMC3, Hideaki Itsuno expanded the single player fighting game’s combat and worked in replayable missions. When that amazing foundation jumped to the PS3 and Xbox360 for the fourth release, Itsuno could further distill the series down into an arcade experience and offer new characters for those chasing that high score high. Let’s look at how it succeeds.
Continue reading “Scoring Devil May Cry 4’s Smokin’ Sick Style”
Devil May Cry 3: Bearing Witness To Dante’s Awakening
On Characterizing Potential
Devil May Cry 3’s first fight between the twins Dante and Vergil is set at the highest point of a large tower jabbing from the Earth, lit by the full moon. The differences between the brothers’ fighting styles are as striking as their fashion senses, the hot-headed Dante in his red trench coat unleashing his Rebellion sword and dual pistols a contrast to the cool-as-ice Vergil in his blue jacket and air slicing katana, Yamato. The two rivals clash swords and exchange gunfire, taking advantage of any opening in the other’s defense to chop ‘em down. And then they flaunt their success with a cool taunt, unconcerned by the time it takes to mock their opponent. Every second of this brawl is intense and fast, and, by product of the game’s design, requires the player to fully realize the personalities of the sons of the legendary demon warrior Sparda.
Continue reading “Devil May Cry 3: Bearing Witness To Dante’s Awakening”
With the Awesome Might of God Hand, I Smite Thee
God Hand’s penultimate fight pits Gene against his rival Azel in a knuckle-breaking slug-fest that demands that the player understands every pillar of the games mechanics. To stop him from resurrecting the ancient devil Angra, you need to pick and choose your moves to beat his, to reposition to gain a tactical advantage, and to bob and weave around counter attacks that can lead into a button mashing power struggle you’ll feel all the way down your arm. And just like main character Gene, Azel can activate the supreme powers in his arm and execute a fast-action barrage thanks to his God Hand. To beat him, you need the full cooperation of a focused mind and tuned body.
Continue reading “With the Awesome Might of God Hand, I Smite Thee”
Asura’s Wrath: The New Anime
Asura’s Wrath contains one of the most brilliant player-directed narrative sequences in videogames; a fist fight. The two brawlers dance about the screen, one trying desperately to explain his actions to the other among a flurry of attacks. To evade them, the player must nail the timing for the increasingly frequent on-screen button prompts as any mistake is punished with a fist to the face, interrupting the dialogue and completely ending the conversation.
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