Shooter

Reimagining Racoon City: A Tour of Resident Evil 2 Remake’s Brilliant Survival Horror

The Racoon City Police Station is perhaps the most iconic location in Resident Evil, whose large marble entrance and tight hallways made 1998’s RE2 simultaneously beautiful and haunting, personal and claustrophobic. This created an oppressive tone that multiplied as supplies dwindled and made fighting the undead horde and mutated freaks inside that much more terrifying. But after that, Resident Evil’s survival horror gradually broke from the slow burn atmospheric terror into the tense action era, which reworked the resource management into revolutionary fast-paced third person shoot outs. But the genes that made Capcom’s viral horror design continued to mutate over the next two decades, until it was time to return to Racoon City and merge the eras, bringing atmosphere, consequence, and vulnerability to the tuned gameplay. The 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake is both the reimagining of an amazing genre classic and the sequel to a legendary remake.

Biohazard Coming Home: When Survival Horror Returned for Resident Evil 7’s Family Reunion

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.

Toy Commercial Meets Cartoon Maker, Transformers: Devastation Brilliantly Combines Genres into a G1 Powerhouse

The first chapter in Transformers: Devastation showcases the game’s strong design, pitting the Autobots led by Optimus Prime against the Constructicons. Transforming between their bot and alt forms, the Decepticon construction crew is deadly individually and tricky when grouped, and both sides unleash melee weapons and guns before transforming again and hitting turbo. These cool-looking cel-shaded animations allow Devastation to provide the tools to create awesome, exhilarating battles. And as the last Constructicon is defeated, they all combine into the mighty Devastator, helping Megatron cyberform Earth into their home planet, Cybertron. With Transformers: Devastation, Platinum Games provides virtual action figures so players can direct a never-aired episode of the legendary brand’s iconic G1 cartoon with heavy metal soundtrack.

Atmospheric Pressure: Navigating Metroid Dread’s Oppressive Depths

If Metroid has a central emotion, it’s a claustrophobic anxiety created by its desolate, foreboding atmosphere. The original game used ambient music and otherworldly imagery to choke the player as they descended into the planet Zebes and subsequent titles further explored the sense of anxiety, but it wasn’t until Metroid Fusion that the series characterized the threat, creating a strong foe that stalked Samus Aran and actively pushed the bounty hunter back on her heels. While this SA-X was a great way to mirror Samus’ abilities and turn the classic weapons back at you, its scripted appearance and limited scope left a lot of room for improvement. But with Metroid Dread, the series was finally able to make a fully reactive A.I. that nimbly navigates the environment to stalk Samus, instilling a gripping paranoia into the gameplay unlike it had seen before.

Metroid’s Genealogy: What Samus Returns Reveals About a Series’ Evolving Design

Just as genes create an infinite number of organisms with only a few components, game series continually adjust their mechanics and structure to keep their designs fresh. Since its first release, the Alien-inspired Metroid series has dealt in biological themes including consumption, growth, and fusion, even when transitioning from 2D sprites to 3D polygons. But evolution is tricky as it risks sabotaging the design’s strengths, and after almost a dozen entries Metroid was in danger of bursting apart. Samus Returns is a remake that attempts to return to the series’ design on a cellular level by synthesizing its side-scrolling gameplay with polygons, reclaiming the genetic heritage that built the series and its heroine.

Integrating With Zone of the Enders’ Man-Machine Interface

The five destroyers in BAHRAM’s air armada equipped with particle cannons and support turrets are perfect for wiping out any who oppose the political faction, and only a high-performance super machine that combines an artificial intelligence with human ingenuity can overcome it. In Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner, you systematically breach this fleet by unleashing locked-on lasers and homing missiles, and melt the ships’ cores with point blank fire from your high-output Vulcan Cannon. The battle above Vascillia is an epic mission that requires man and machine to harmonize into one being, and represents the important relationship that has built between the two.

The Soul in Nier: Automata’s Machine

Human consciousness required tools that let it produce abundant resources so people could transition from simple survival to prosperity, which allowed humanity to further discover the world and find a place in it. Tools advanced into machines given more sophisticated logic, motor, and communication systems through developments in electronics, networking, and artificial intelligence. But a world is like a person- the more it becomes one thing, the less it’s like something else. Nier: Automata examines how machines are becoming the new owners of our world but will continue a tragic human legacy, by using videogames to give us a glimpse at how machine logic is coding its own soul.

Running Perfect Dark’s Training Program

Early first person shooters created virtual proving grounds for an emerging digital warrior class to test their combat skills, but as games became more intricate, new player archetypes branched out. By the end of the Nintendo 64’s life, Rare had learned to construct complex environments built with infrastructure stalked by reactive guards, while providing players with a large toolset to deal with them. The product turned them into versatile special agents rather than warriors, culminating in 2000’s brilliant Perfect Dark.

Perfect Dark’s intricacies are apparent as early as the first level. Your mission to smuggle the defecting Dr. Carroll from dataDyne is easy on the lowest difficulty, only asking you to reach the bottom of its tower, but adds more objectives that explain the whistleblower’s actions from there. The opening helipad leads down to the executive floors and this large office with two women. If you quickly knock out the tall blonde calling for security you’ll get Cassandra De Vries necklace, smartly introducing dataDyne’s CEO.

Shoulder to Shoulder We Find Our Way Through Lost Planet 2

Even after the snow had melted on the harsh planet E.D.N. III, Thermal Energy is such a scarce commodity that the scattered human factions are still locked in a brutal war for its reserves, a conflict that further leaves them vulnerable to attacks from the insectroid race of Akrids native to the land. Of course, when a load of T-Eng is being transported by train, a worm-like beast attacks that is so massive, it dwarfs the four people that are forced to fight it back, even with the racks of weapons littered about. As it takes out the rear cars and any player left behind, the only thing that can counter its immense size is the cumulative strength of those standing against it, all focusing their fire into its mouth and tender insides. And when the worm finally falls, the group makes off with the spoils. With its in-mission economy, Lost Planet 2 portrays an ecological system reminiscent of Frank Herbert’s Dune, showing that, on E.D.N., every second is a fight to survive. It’s a metaphor ripped from the history books of every life form that’s ever lived.

Continue reading “Shoulder to Shoulder We Find Our Way Through Lost Planet 2”

Halo 3 And Completing The Modern Shooter Combat Model

Guarding the outskirts of the anti-air gun early in Halo 3’s campaign is a quadrupedal Covenant tank called a Scarab. Stepping its spidery legs around a circular complex lined with missile pods, a large crane, and enough foot space to let half a dozen vehicles unload their artillery, the scarab is the largest working unit in the series. A far cry from Master Chief’s scripted encounter with it in Halo 2, this AI controlled enemy has a giant laser cannon and its own hit points, and is transporting a squad of Covenant sentries laying heavy fire. As you stare at it in awe, a question forms: how am I supposed to take that thing down? A couple ways. Focus all your fire on the hull and blow it away, or shoot its legs until they lower, fight your way to the power core, and set off a chain reaction. Both answers are possible in the arena littered with tools of mass destruction.

Continue reading “Halo 3 And Completing The Modern Shooter Combat Model”