Goodbye puzzles, goodbye labyrinthian level design, goodbye ink ribbons, goodbye limited inventory, goodbye horror. Goodbye... most of what I love about Resident Evil.

It really is wild just how different this is from the classic Resident Evil style; you can barely even recognize it as Resident Evil beyond the title and a couple reoccuring characters. Even wilder, this game is somehow the fan favorite, even today after a series wide tonal redirect and a remake of this exact game.

And yet, RE4 is still so damn good. I don't know when was the last game I played when I was absolutely giddy at the start of each play session. All I wanted to do for weeks was go home and play Resident Evil 4.

Part of it is the campiness is perfect. It's the exact right type of unironic tone fused with ridiculous dialogue to make a perfectly blended horror/action smoothie. As much as I love how terrifying the isolation of Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 are (and as undeniably disappointing it is that this isn't that), the cheese is hilarious and delightful, without ruining the potential for good scares. This is a script I want to quote with people forever.

The shift in tone also extends to the action. You could totally call this an action game before a horror game and you wouldn't be wrong, but it somehow fits with the series and feels like a natural evolution of how much more action there was in Resident Evil 2. There's no reason to ever run past anything, just kill everyone. Ammo drops are practically bottomless, and the gunplay is always fun no matter what weapon you choose to use. My kill count at the end of the game was 929; I think combined between RE1 and RE2 there weren't even 929 enemies total. This ends up being the main avenue that the game delivers scares: the shooting is still so fun, so just focus on that, keep the resources limited, and overwhelm the player with sheer numbers to keep the risk of failure. It could easily have become a disaster, but they miraculous strike the perfect balance of scares, difficulty, and fun gunplay to make it fun throughout (mostly, more on that later).

The biggest hurdle with the experience is easily the controls. I got used to it semi-quickly, but not being able to move and shoot at the same time makes it feel extremely archaic compared to every other shooter ever, before or since. This restriction made sense with tank controls and a bird's-eye perspective, but changing to over the shoulder and kinda-sorta tank controls limits both your mobility and visibility, and with this level design and sheer number of enemies, it's a tough pill to swallow early on. That said, I did get used to it fairly quickly, and once I did it was a great time. Plus, it's obvious to see how everything else in this game is weighted in the player's favor to make the controls more tolerable. Enemies more often than not walk super slowly, giving you plenty of time to take aim or just run away. Music only plays when there are enemies nearby, and they yell at you before attacking, so you'll rarely be caught by surprise.

The village is a great intro that really emphasizes the scares, and I like the castle too, it feels like a good setting for your now more intermediate skills. The island however I'm not really a fan of, and I think it leaves a bit of a sour final impression to end the game off. Not only are there a lot more enemies now, the military base aesthetic of both enemies and locales makes the experience feel a lot more Uncharted than Resident Evil, both in the sense of the scares being super toned down, but also in the shooting feeling much more generic. Saddler as a final boss also ends up feeling underwhelming, mostly due to the free rocket launcher you get. Also the final cutscene just feels rushed and sloppily handled with Saddler's unceremonious fight and with Ada's escape at the end. Like, Leon's really just going to water ski into the sunrise after losing the sample like that? Get outta here. I haven't finished Separate Ways yet, maybe that will help.

I guess I can throw in the token comment that Ashley sucks. I'm really glad that more often than not she's kidnapped so you don't have to deal with her, but realistically even when she's with you she's not that much of a pain. There are even a couple good sequences where you're forcefully separated from her that do a good job at making you tense.

Between this, RE1 and RE2, I think this is my least favorite Resident Evil. Partially because of the focus away from horror, but I think more so because of how chapter 5 drops the ball a bit. That said I think I could more easily see myself replaying this than RE1 and RE2, and a second playthrough feels like it'll be completely different. Still, this was a great time; an easy recommend and a must play in the series.

DOOMATHON entry #18/20
List: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Mariofan717/list/doom--quake-campaigns-ranked/

The marathon starts to come full circle with the game that was unsurprisingly my introduction to the series. Doom 2016 is very funny to me, because it succeeds as a reboot and throwback not by embracing "retro" design tendencies, but by instead discarding most of what contemporary AAA games are lambasted for in favor of focusing on what they're able to do best with a massive team and budget. This game is polished to a mirror sheen, delivering some of the most satisfying combat to ever grace the genre while being nothing short of an audiovisual marvel - although not entirely without being weighed down by decidedly modern design trends.

Classic Doom works as well as it does by seamlessly blending its action and exploration - every moment of gameplay serves to progress you in some way as you familiarize with each maze and make choices based on characteristics of specific weapons in your arsenal and enemies that are placed in ways that give each level a specific identity; the best classic maps are essentially puzzle boxes that lend themselves to organic discovery. 2016, by comparison, is quite starkly segmented into combat arenas and the exploration in between them.

Where Doom 3 chose to emphasize the scares over the shooting, this game leans farther in the opposite direction than the series ever has before within a structural and aesthetic framework that's surprisingly similar. It's hard to imagine that the art direction of this game's realistic Mars facility where nothing but the pickups look out of place and the more fantastical ancient architecture of Hell didn't take cues from its predecessor, which made for a fairly smooth transition when paired with the conspicuous placement of larger encounters. It's in these arenas where the difference comes into play - where Doom 3 encourages you to make every shot count against enemies you can outstep but not outrun, 2016 urges you to RIP AND TEAR unlike any shooter I've played before.

Every game in the series is ultimately about the struggle of optimally dealing and avoiding damage against enemies whose codes you eventually learn to crack, and this entry stays true to that core while fully immersing you in the role of a seemingly immortal force of nature through clever design choices, an arsenal that looks and feels amazing, and a visceral, adrenaline-pumping soundtrack from Mick Gordon. At the heart of it is the Glory Kill systems, epitomizing the two aforementioned pillars of Doom combat by rewarding calculated dealing of damage and careful positioning with extra health and gloriously brutal (sometimes hilarious) execution animations. It's a beautifully realized power fantasy, one that still demands mechanical mastery to exert that power to the fullest.

Such exhilarating action, however, comes at the cost of proportionally understated downtime. This is where 2016 goes from a shining example of what can be accomplished with AAA polish to an example of how even the best games in this space are ultimately beholden to the expectations of modern consumers as exemplified by its large host of upgrades and the checklist nature through which they're acquired. This game has two different mods for each weapon, upgrades for each of those mods followed by a mastery challenge, upgrades for your health, ammo, and shield capacity, and runes which give more specific broadly applicable bonuses. Many of these are tucked away as "secret" collectibles, but the map system turns "discovering" these into a trivial chore that you'll be punished on higher difficulties for ignoring. The Ubisoft brainworms that I've yet to successfully kill compelled me to go for 100% on this replay, and although there was fun to be had with the bite-sized Rune challenges that impose specific restrictions that put your mechanical knowledge to the test, getting all of the collectible upgrades, toys, and text logs was a matter of going through the motions; the mission challenges that I'd neglected to mention until now are no different. This added several hours to what was already one of the longest FPS campaigns I've played, and that's simply too much! This aspect of the game is by no means a grievous misstep, but it's a glaring compromise that clashes with an otherwise super strong creative vision.

As another note on that vision, the storytelling here noticeably takes after Doom 3 as well, which is quite funny given that it has no clear place in the newly revised Doom Slayer saga. There is a narrative here that, unlike the classic games, can't be easily ignored! It's nothing mindblowing and the text logs are bit dry for my liking compared to the often hilarious UAC communications found in its predecessor, but Samuel Hayden is a highly entertaining presence who, as I discovered as I was writing this, is a remnant of Doom 3! While honestly not as much a return to form as it was made out to be, Doom 2016 offers a bold vision for the franchise that could have been nearly perfect here if delivered with a bit more confidence. Even if it doesn't manage to fully escape the creative confines of the industry, it's a staggeringly successful reboot and arguably the single most important shooter of the past decade.

Cross-posted on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariofan717/status/1767108522385482109