Resident Evil is one of my gaming blind spots. Prior to this I had never played one, largely due to a disinterest in horror. After seeing everyone play the remake in the past few weeks I finally decided to take the plunge into the original, and I'm glad to report that this game is excellent, even for a newcomer playing 18 years after its release.

All of RE4s parts are individually great, but what allows it to transcend is how they all complement one-another: Crowd control, resource management, and encounter design feed into and heighten each-other. Controlling a crowd in RE4 is an art, one with strict rules and procedures. Leon's tank movement means running away from enemies is a matter of turning and then running, highly incentivizing the player to stand their ground, and the crowd control mechanics are designed around this. Shoot enemies that get close in the head and they'll stumble back and allow you to kick them back into the enemies behind them, shoot enemies running at you in the leg and they'll eat shit and have to go through a very lengthy standing-up animation, coordinate it all to line up viscerally satisfying rifle collaterals on a line or shotgun shots and grenades on big clumps of enemies for maximum resource efficiency, a conveyor belt of micro decision-making that's prompted and heightened by the limited resources. Using the knife on downed enemies would be rote and boring in any other game but it's deeply satisfying here because it flows perfectly and you know it's saving you ammo. The classic gameplay dilemma of using your green plants now or waiting to combine them with a red one later, buying a first aid in the shop or saving up for upgrades, selling the treasures now for short-term funds or waiting to combine them for bigger gains later, all of it compounds with your performance in the combat. Take a lot of damage in one section and you might be on the back foot in healing items for a long time, your actions have consequences stretching far beyond immediate combat which lends each encounter real tension - encounters that feature such incredible creativity and variety. One room might have cultists firing flaming catapults at you in a long-range setting, the next might require you to send Ashley to open the way forward as you're tasked with simultaneously defending her and yourself at different vertical levels, the next might have you navigating a maze as dogs with a bullshit grab attack hunt you down, the bag of tricks seems to never ends and it rarely repeats an idea verbatim. In its best moments, every new room seems to ask you to approach things in a radically different way, despite Leon's relatively limited set of actions and tools. Remove the horror strings and the dark gothic setting and you would still have an incredibly tense game, all baked into the mechanics. The final ingredient elevating it to all-time great status is the camp, which is consistently hilarious. Leon saying "no thanks, bro" will repeat in my head forever, probably.

I didn't expect this game to be so hard! It's probably something experienced players gloss over, since the game becomes much easier once you know what you're doing, but this game kicked my ass, sometimes in ways that I felt crossed the line. The section where you get locked in a cage with the claw guy killed me about 20 times, and while I didn't mind the QTEs that much, the ones that instantly kill you for failing them just feel mean-spirited.

Three critiques I didn't have a good place for: Ashley was a massive disappointment, she says remarkably little throughout the game and I was expecting a lot more interaction between her and Leon. Also, these puzzles suck! You know it's bad when there's a slide puzzle - the bottom of the barrel of puzzles. Finally, the island section is a bit mixed, and veers too close to generic action in places, the worst offender being the helicopter section.

Resident Evil 4 has become a touchstone. Its years of enduring relevance and constant ports have obscured what it actually is; A 2005 GameCube game.

I recently did something I'd meant to do for years. I invested in my GameCube. For far too long, it's been ignored. A novelty device that had been made redundant by the Wii and Dolphin. The only reason to keep it was the far-off potential of maybe buying a Game Boy Player for the thing someday. I finally did it. And I got one of those expensive, aficionado-grade CSYNC RGB SCART cables after using washed-out third-party composite shite for years. It's all come flooding back.

In its day, I would have happily declared the GameCube to be my all-time favourite console. There were better games available for other systems, but after their first couple years, there was little sense of direction to the PS2 or SNES. They were too concerned with going after the audiences that the Xbox and Mega Drive brought into the market. The GameCube was a proud Nintendo console. They'd spent the N64 struggling to release any 3D games at all, and the bulk of its biggest hits were made by foreign companies who'd already got practice in 3D on PC games and Amiga demoscene stuff. By the GameCube, they'd caught up, but they weren't just going to trot out predictable 3D sequels. Everything had some weird, ambitious new twist that set it out. Metroid was first-person, Zelda was cel shaded and focused on expressive character animation, and Mario was, bizarrely, a game about spraying water in the tropics. Nothing was what you expected it to be, but seeing how frequently those games turned out well, it was thrilling. They completely earned my trust. Whatever stupid-looking mistake they announced, I was pretty sure it was going to be incredible by the time I actually played it.

One of their most exciting initiatives at the time wasn't in their own projects, though. It was in their third-party relationships. They'd dropped the ball with Japanese developers in the mid-nineties. Their demands were too limiting, their hardware was too complex and expensive to work with, and they'd become complacent in their dominance after the NES and SNES. Sony stepped in and ate their dinner, encouraging experimentation and allowing publishers to print games as they sold, rather than committing to bulk orders of thousands of expensive cartridges. Demographics took a back seat, and games became more of an expression of the creator's will. Nintendo must have been raging through this all of this, because by the time they were ready to make the GameCube, they were willing to pay out big to acquire exclusive Metal Gear, Final Fantasy and Resident Evil. That gave us Twin Snakes and fuckin' Crystal Chronicles. But Resi? That was a good investment.

Maybe not commercially, but culturally.

Mikami's discussions with Nintendo won him over to their vision of the industry. Before long, he was joining Miyamoto on stage to announce that Resident Evil was now a GameCube-exclusive franchise, reviving the abandoned N64 Resi 0 project and personally directing both a remake of the original game and the much-anticipated Resident Evil 4. Later, he'd also reveal his "Capcom Five" initiative, announcing GameCube exclusives, Viewtiful Joe, Dead Phoenix, P.N.03, killer7 and reassuring the audience that Resi 4 was coming along well and would be "scary than ever before". Mikami jumped head-first into the biggest logistical nightmare of his life. Slowly, the realities would creep in, and sacrifices would need to be made. Exclusivity promises would be discarded, P.N.03 would be rushed to release and Dead Phoenix would be scrapped entirely, but it didn't matter. All he really had to do was make sure Resi 4 would be the best game in the world. And by god, he did it.

I remember the day my pal's US import copy arrived. The European release wouldn't arrive until months later, and here we were, playing this game from the future. It totally felt like that. Enemies would duck and weave as you took shots at them, inventory management was now fun and compelling, and every 15 minutes the game would take some unbelievable new turn. You barely managed to get past the introductory village, but then you were fighting a giant, crushing houses underfoot, and an enormous lake monster, and then the standard enemies sprouted tentacles out their heads. It was a breathless experience, and every time you thought it was wrapping up, it introduced some mad, elaborate new section that you couldn't wait to jump into.

This review follows my first post-remake playthrough. The obvious differences between the two games are all entirely granted, and there were minor ommissions I totally forgot about (did you remember the Dark Souls/Deathtrap Dungeon swinging axe room?), but there were still substantive discoveries on top of that. It doesn't seem like nearly as dramatic a leap from the classic formula now. It's a perspective shift, progression is more nakedly linear, and the puzzles are barely even a part of the game, but it's old heavy Resi. Pick your spot, plant yourself there, and fire as the monsters close in. The knife button feels like such a welcome addition to the classic formula that they put it into the DS's Resi 1 remake, and instantly made it a bit of a pain in the arse to go back to earlier versions. So much of that old Resi appeal is here.

For all its wild contraptions, setpieces and ludicrous characters, the original Resi 4 is surprisingly restrained in its presentation. No, honestly. Quite often, large sections of the game - full of memorable little ideas - will play completely without music. The sound design's carried by the oozing tentacles, clanking suits of armour and shotgun blasts. Even when there is music, it's often subtle and atmospheric. Percussion and wailing. It's important that the things in the game feel impactful through everything layered on top. You always know how powerful this stuff is, even when there's flaming barrels and exploding towers all around you.

I also think the level design choices are consistently better in the original, too. Rooms are designed so you're always presented with a route through during hectic encounters. If you're supposed find a crucial puzzle piece when tensions are high, the structure and camera will make sure it's presented clearly to you. It's not so overt to be patronising, but not so obscure that you'll die over and over as long as you're not completely freaking out. It's just a cracking game that takes consideration for the breadth of players who will be getting through it.

I've often argued in favour of QTEs. Instances of direct engagement during elaborate action sequences that couldn't be fully realised within the limitations of regular gameplay. That's a fairly haughty position on the matter. Really, I like QTEs when they're in games that are happy to have a big laugh with them. Ryo Hazuki dodging the football, and that. At one point, you're shown a "RESPOND" prompt to lay Krauser with a retort as snappily as possible. They basically put the "TRENCHANT INSIGHT" button in this. I can't imagine that making Resident Evil 4 was even slightly as much fun as playing it, but there's moments in here that just make me picture the hysterical disbelief at the studio as they were put together. "Fucking hell, we can't seriously be doing this" - "Aye, we're fucking doing it. Come on." Even today, Production Studio 4 veterans are still laughing about the giant mechanical Salazar statue. As much warmth and good humour as there was in the remake, it was a people pleaser. I have so much more respect for the original's wilful disregard for its audience's demands.

It's also clear how well engineered the game was around the GameCube. I won't argue with anyone who say they can't go back further than the Wii Edition, but the button layout is such a good fit for this controller. Those face buttons almost seem like they were engineered with Mario in mind, but they never made a GameCube entry where you held B to run. Leon Kennedy's here to pick up Nintendo's slack. Those big triggers feel so great as you steady your aim or draw your knife. All the fiddly wee buttons are dedicated to the more intricate, cerebral actions like inventory and partner management, while all the lizardbrain shit is right under your fingers' resting spots. I haven't conducted the survey, but I don't think the folk who love this game the most are the ones who first played it on the PS2.

There are undeniable drawbacks to the 2005 release, though. As good a display as you can manage, you're still not seeing that lasersight when you're aiming more than 10 feet away. I'm not going to argue that loading screens and a mid-campaign disc swap make this version better, either, though they do warm the spot in my heart reserved for "Real Game Shit". Man, play whatever version of Resi 4 you like. You're not seriously considering buying the GameCube version if you're not already inclined to love it.

If you obsess over the creative process that brought these games to audiences, there's an appeal to getting as close to the source as you can. For the cultural touchstone it's become, there's a coherent logic to why, after multiple retreats to the drawing board, that this would be the game that would finally receive the "Resident Evil 4" title. How the action genre had progressed in the decade since the PS1 original's release, and Mikami's devotion to Nintendo's vision for the industry. It was always a mad gamble, and shifting market trends meant it stood as something of a martyr for the Japanese games industry for years after. Japanese audiences would drift away from consoles, western influence would radically shift the trajectories of big studios, and outspoken developers would be silenced as publishers chased US money. Nintendo had been right, though. They knew the strengths of Japanese developers, and with the Switch, global audiences are finally starting to side with them again. They were right. Mikami was right to side with them. And Resident Evil 4 is one of the best games ever made.

Here is a list of every single joke review I considered making:
Shellden Ring
Floodborne
Dark Shoals
Lies of Sea
Black Myth Dugong
Shellkiro: Shallows Rise Twice
Coral Shell

I couldn't pick one.

Anyway, weird how the funny-ass crab game is the best soulslike ever made that wasn't made by fromsoft. A fun art direction, a surprisingly good story, a really cool shell mechanic, and some very strong boss encounters. It's certainly lacking polish in a few areas and the music is occasionally quite bad, but I had a really REALLY good time with this game!

Unstellar Blade

A game so milquetoast that it literally crashed my PC in switching inputs from my PS5 to my main display so I could write this review, and thus I lost all of my notes I had carefully constructed over the past three days of playtime. What I pulled together is that this was an attempt at making Nier: Automata without actually making it fun and without Yoko Taro.

I remember Stellar Blade's Official Reveal as Project Eve, named after the game's main character, jumping out of an otherwise uneventful and boring Sony State of Play with its flashy combat, beautiful environments, and overwhelmingly attractive protagonist. Hot character bait aside, I was interested in this game because of the influences it was clearly wearing on its sleeve in the aforementioned Platinum Games magnum opus. Many have tried and few have succeeded in nailing hack and slash as well as Platinum or their cousins in Capcom have done with the plethora of impressive titles between the two. Did I think Stellar Blade was going to go one on one with Nier, DMCV, or Metal Gear Rising? Absolutely not, but I did think it was worth a try, to see if there was a company out there who could go to bat with the best of them and put an effort forward that would be worth paying attention to in the years to come. I was excited for Stellar Blade as the release date neared, because it meant that I could one quell the discourse over the design of Eve by providing actual input on how the game plays, and secondly because the need for a fast paced hack and slash was weighing heavily on me after playing slower burn titles like FF7R2 and P3R fairly recently. Within a day of playing my interest waned but I remained hopeful, however on the third complete day of playing and the day I ultimately completed the game... I came away fairly perturbed.

The good, lets start with that why don't we? This game is downright beautiful. I played it on my PS5 on my 4K display with HDR enabled and woah nelly, it looked great. One of the greatest aspects of this title was how great both characters and the world looked from a graphical standpoint. As you transition from dilapidated buildings and streets into destroyed railways and misgiving deserts, your eyes will feast at the eye candy abound in the backgrounds of the world. I found myself navigating the camera up and down constantly at the world I was interacting with as it was tremendously rich in flavour and care from a design standpoint. I felt like the developers put a great deal of effort into creating a visually striking game, which unfortunately seems to have accompanied a trade off in other aspects of the title. More to come on that shortly, as I do want to praise the team for putting some of the best facial and body design in gaming forward. As I've already experienced, much of the conversation about Stellar Blade has been lost in the perceived attractiveness of Eve, but every character you interact with truly looks incredible. Though their proportions and mannerisms may not be totally... human, they are indubitably crafted with an intricacy and care to look astonishing. Stellar Blade if nothing else is a journey of eye candy, but that's kind of... it.

While not exactly fast enough to be a Nier-like, and not fun punishing and explore heavy enough to be a Souls-like, Stellar Blade attempted to forge a path forward that played out like a middle ground between Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and the Jedi: Fallen Order/Survivor games. Eve's combat relies on using a plethora of learned abilities and tech to parry and dodge her way through a litany of grotesque alien foes who have claimed Earth to be their own. Where this goes wrong is in quite a few places, but the most apparent and earliest was in the poor "janky" feel and lack of reliability in both parry and dodge timings. This can be sort-of remedied by investing in Eve's skill trees and upgrading Eve's exo-spine but never really feels... good. Even if I was a dissenter of Sekiro over all, I felt like it mostly gave the right kind of feedback and snap to the parry/dodge timings required to master such a difficult title. For a game as infuriatingly hard as Stellar Blade gets in its late game, I felt like I was at the whimsy of luck in my dodges not directly feeding into a followup attack by a boss and my perfect parries not being read by the game because of poor latency or buffer timing. Time after time I'd land a perfect dodge only to be hit by the boss moving faster than Eve could recover right after. Cheap is the way I'd put that and it proliferated throughout the entire runtime of the title.

Difficulty is something I've spoken about ad nauseum in action-rpg titles and I'll continue to do so as I have an affinity for these kinds of games. After grinding my teeth in the (generally) slower paced Fromsoft classics and the speedy Platinum/Capcom games of the last decade and change, I feel like I'm fairly qualified. Stellar Blade early on feels hard, but not in a way that cannot be conquered. If I was getting my tail kicked by a group of world enemies or a boss, I found that I could readjust my stratagems to craft a better gameplan, coming back smarter and using my abilities at optimized times to come out victorious. I found my confidence growing, something that did not happen this early in Sekiro, and I continued on to the later stages of the game. I opened up my Playstation menu to check my progress, a feature of the console that tracks how far you've made it through the main story, and saw I had notched at 89%. I labored on to the area boss on one of the last major quests of the game. It was here I through my face into a wall, stressing with every ability and item I had to make it through the three phases and effective six health bars that the boss had. I double this up because of the way shields work. See in Stellar Blade, simply doing damage and having fun taking down your enemy's health bar is simply not allowed, you must first deplete their shields before you can do any "meaningful" damage to their hitpoints. Meaningful in quotations because even then on a fully upgraded weapon, after laboriously taking away the superfluous shield bar, you are granted the ability to do slightly more damage to the bosses health per hit. I've played Dark Souls underleveled and with un-upgraded weapons enough to know torment when it comes to weapons doing very little damage to bosses... and even that does not compare to how insulting Stellar Blade's damage counter feels.

It wasn't even until a few bosses later that I truly came to terms with my disdain for the needlessly draconian difficulty that exists within Stellar Blade's late game boss fights. I threw everything together that I could into defeating the (name kept out of review due to spoiler) boss. I thought I could craft a winning effort of combining my ultimate abilities with my tertiary skills and burst maneuvers, but nothing was taking. I couldn't perfect dodge and parry any longer against the multi-faceted and multi-phase boss fight at hand. Visual clarity was completely nuked from orbit as I could barely tell what moves were hitting me, where certain objects were, or where my Eve's reactions would take me next. A greater qualm I have with games at large now, I wrote about these most notably in my FFXVI DLC reviews, is a complete lack of being able to actually see what's going on in boss fights because of the "ooh how cool" quality that moves need to have. Keeping this in mind, the bosses began to teleport away CONSTANTLY from Eve so as to reposition their efforts while tarnishing any offensive effort I had put forth. This was rhythm breaking and tore any motivation I had towards chasing the enemy down, I felt discouraged and unmotivated to capitalize on optimized windows because I knew the boss would simply teleport away at any given moment. After being unable to keep up with this, the visuals going on, and the randomly included DPS checks, I put the game on "story mode" (reminder this is in the last hour or so of a medium length title) and kept chugging. I'm not actually sure this did anything to make the game easier. What it does in theory is give you windows to dodge and parry, popping up with on screen prompts of what button to press to not be hit by the enemies maneuvers. Does this work? Absolutely not. Most of the time these move to fast to even parse what move you're supposed to use, and half the bosses moves don't even populate your screen with a prompt at all. Through the next couple bosses and into the final boss I became increasingly confused if this was actually a difficulty slider at all or simply an effort to make you "feel" better by putting a semblance of choice of difficulty in front of you.

A best in class soundtrack (potentially one of the best of the year) and impressive visuals couldn't prop Stellar Blade up enough to go against its resoundingly poor English VA (I eventually played in Korean,) drab narrative heavily borrowed from Nier: Automata, and impressively frustrating and unrewarding combat. This is absolutely not a title worthy of purchasing at a $70 price tag, maybe half of that at best. I commend Sony and SHIFT UP for putting together a brand new IP and throwing some serious marketing at making this game stick out, but it felt like a great value Sekiro meets Nier at best. I would not recommend Stellar Blade to anyone with a PS5.