Game 50
Ghostbuster: The Video Game Remastered - Finished playthrough, all upgrades and PKE scans.
This was a very good game, or for a licensed game it was great. Written by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd and starring all the actors from the films, the game carried the same sarcastic and often absurd humor the first movie did. In this game you play a rookie member who just joined the team just after the events of Ghostbusters II and work your way through set pieces and location from the movies scattered around New York city like the hotel, library, sewers, etc. The music is also pulled straight from the films. Gameplay is 3rd person and honestly feels really good. There is almost no HUD, everything is displayed on your proton pack, similar to Dead Space, something I wish more games did. Progressing further into the game, as dimensions merge, you find yourself in increasingly bizarre locations and unlocking more functions of your proton pack. There are several fun boss fights and plenty of exploration to do while looking for secrets with your PKE meter. The game is pretty short by modern standards at around 8-10 hours, but I feel that is about as long as the game needed to be without getting repetitive,
Game 51
Resident Evil Remaster - Finished Jill run, 100% items
This is the first Resident Evil game I've ever finished. I absolutely suck at this style of game. The deliberately clunky controls coupled with the fact that I can back myself into a corner with item overuse and the fact I hate not killing the zombies every time I see them means I tend to get frustrated way too fast playing these. I am a huge fan of the games though; I used to watch my siblings play them. The setting and story are fascinating, uncovering the messed-up things that happened in the mansion are the kind of thing I've always gravitated toward. I finally did myself a favor and forced myself to play the game properly and push past my grievances with the controls. As one would expect, it took an hour or so before I stopped noticing the controls and started enjoying exploring the mansion. This version of the game has a ton of new content over the original PS1 title, and the animated backdrops hold up quite well despite how much time has passed. The voice acting is still trash, but not nearly as awful as in the original game. This was a massive hole in my gaming history, I'm looking forward to trying more games in the series.
Game 52.
Resident Evil 2 (Gamecube) - Finished Leon Scenario A and Jill Scenarios A
I went into this game expecting it to be more than a little rough but came away surprised at how well it holds up. While I never played this game back in the day, I did watch my siblings play it a lot, I remembered a lot of it, but in pieces. While I still tend to struggle with tank controls at times they never get in the way of the game. In this game the mansion is replaced with the Raccoon City Police station and all the strange structures tied to it. The PD is similar in size compared to the mansion, but the layout feels easier to navigate. The separate areas are also more contained, meaning keys and secret items tend to be used mostly in the area you find them in. This game takes itself a bit more lightly than the first, with goofy characters and scenarios popping up throughout the game. The game is chock full of jump scares, most expected but back in the day the licker jumping through the interrogation room mirror was pants-shitting stuff, not because I was scared but because I just felt like doing it, I do what I want when I want, it's my hot body! Splitting the game up into multiple scenarios makes replaying the game worthwhile, I only played scenario A for both characters, but I'll eventually run through scenario B for both which brings in new things and events, like the Mr. X encounters.
Game 53.
Resident Evil 3 - Completed playthrough, killed off Nikolai
This game is better than 2 in many ways, new control features mean you can quick-turn and dodge attacks, you can make your own ammo, and the visuals got a huge bump up from RE2 (sometimes). Unfortunately, Raccoon City's map is nowhere near as well-planned and fun to traverse as RE2 and when you need to backtrack it's down a spaghetti mess of narrow, samey alleys. Puzzles are of a similar vein as previous entries, nothing is too hard to figure out as long as you look around for the answer. The atmosphere in this game goes further down the goofy path from the original, Umbrella becomes more and more cartoon villain-tier evil as the series continues, but I actually like that. Nemesis was fun, he shows up all the time at the worst possible times and unless you take care of him, he won't let up. The choose your own adventure sections are an interesting addition to the game but honestly, I doubt I would replay this one just for a slightly different section here and there, it's a far cry from the various scenarios in RE2 that completely change how the game is played. In the end I found this game felt way longer than it needed to be but then I discovered that I had only played it for 7 hours. Where I still want to go back to RE2 after a dozen hours, I think I'm good moving on from this one.
Game 54.
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X - Completed playthrough
I had a lot of fun with this one. Umbrella continues to become more and more cartoonishly evil with a literal Bond villain-tier military complex run by an insane lunatic. It's got everything a good villain island fortress could ever need. There are a bunch of great characters like the prison guard who regifts you your own lighter, Steve "Not John Connor" who doesn't know how to hold a gun, Wesker who has become a supervillain and of course there's Alfred Ashford who is actually
schizophrenic. This game changes the series forever with a switch from pre-rendered 2D to fully polygonal backdrops. On one hand the game lost the gritty (but low resolution) details off previous entries but in place of that came dynamic camera angles that had a degree of movement making it easier to see and required a lot less camera swapping. Despite still using tank controls, the game feels a lot tighter to control and thanks to the polygonal environments you can tell where the collision boxes are, so you get hung up a lot less than in previous entries. The map in this game was really well done, compared to previous games it's much bigger but at the same time easier to navigate. Backtracking is frequent like before, but it never feels like I'm going out of my way or that a safe room is annoyingly out of reach. This was by far the most enjoyable map to explore so far. There's not too much new in terms of weapons, but the combat feels quicker with the quick turn returning and more responsive movement. Jump scares are constantly popping up but I found the game was lighter on the horror aspect this time. Overall, this is my favorite of the Resident Evil games I've played so far, but I expect RE4 will probably top it.
Game 55.
Resident Evil 0 - Completed playthrough
I actually started playing the Gamecube version using Dolphin and got past the train section where the emulation had issues getting past a bunch of FMV sequences. Apparently I own it on Steam as well so I restarted the game there. The game itself doesn't follow Code Veronica in its presentation. While Code Veronica moved to polygonal environments this went back to the FMV backdrops first used on the Gamecube REmake. The Gamecube game was a really good looking game in its day but the PC HD remaster is really pretty. The FMV backgrounds were all redone in higher resolutions and in many cases they were completely changed including slight camera angle changes. I would honestly love to see this done with modern storage. The gameplay also goes back to REmake, but with a new co-op mechanic where you control Rebecca, Billy or both at the same time. Solving puzzles over multiple floors of the training facility was a new twist for the series and for the most part was a fun addition. Another new feature was the removal of item boxes, instead each part of the map could contain a set number of items, allowing you to just dump items you either don't need, or want to save for later. The AI controlled character was, unfortunately, an idiot. Even in the middle of a boss fight they would often just stand there waiting to get hit before retaliating. The origin story in this was absolutely goffball-tier stuff, once again Umbrella is pushed further into cartoon villain territory which I 'm loving. I didn't expect to enjoy this one as much as the others but overall came away pretty impressed with it.
