Ned Flanders
Banned
In playing RE4 I must say that I'm distinctly reminded of the feelings I got when I first fired up Code Veronica on my Dreamcast some 4+ years ago. The impression that the series had been taken to another level was overwhelming back then, and I dare say that RE4 has done Code Veronica one better.
CV's graphics were just as impressive for its day as RE4's are now. The full 3D was obviously revolutionary for its time, and the sharp richlycolored textures and well-rounded models made the transition from the world of pre-renders pretty seamless. I remember being blown away by the facial animations, the lighting, and the realtime water rippling (probably the only visual weakness was the non-rendered "circle shadows"). Where the game didn't do a whole lot in pushing the genre forward was the gameplay department, where despite a few improvements, it remained largely the same RE in shiny new clothes. The fact that the camera angles now had some pan-and-scan was nice, but the view was still constricting.
RE4 comes in as perhaps the most stunning looking game this gen, sporting copious amounts of polys, ridiculous lighting, and generally fantastic texture work. I remember thinking back in 1996 how I couldn't wait until consoles could do "rendered" looking games in realtime, and RE4 is about as close as they've yet come IMO. RE4 has also taken the liberty of knocking the dust off the gameplay, keeping the good stuff and spicing/speeding/tearing up the rest for about as playable an experience as the series has yet delivered.
Its almost sad looking back now, remembering how blown away I was by CV and thinking to myself "this is the new standard", only to be thoroughly disappointed when the series reverted back to prerenderville (although I did play both ReMake and 0). Perhaps thats why RE4 is so reminiscent of CV, because I'm finally back in the full-poly world the series first entered (and should have remained in) in 2000. Its hard to say which game impressed me more..although CV popped the visual cherry and was a solid addition to the series, RE4 somehow manages to retain the great RE feel while at the same time feeling like a different style of game altogether.
Playing RE4 has given me a strange itch to go back and play CV (which was my first solo experience with an RE title, mind you), which I never finished due to the fact that I didn't have an empty fire extinguisher to finish the last segment of the game, and had saved over my previous save inadvertently...I would have had to start the game all over again. Maybe its a sign. Here's hoping I don't have the same problems finishing RE4!!
CV's graphics were just as impressive for its day as RE4's are now. The full 3D was obviously revolutionary for its time, and the sharp richlycolored textures and well-rounded models made the transition from the world of pre-renders pretty seamless. I remember being blown away by the facial animations, the lighting, and the realtime water rippling (probably the only visual weakness was the non-rendered "circle shadows"). Where the game didn't do a whole lot in pushing the genre forward was the gameplay department, where despite a few improvements, it remained largely the same RE in shiny new clothes. The fact that the camera angles now had some pan-and-scan was nice, but the view was still constricting.
RE4 comes in as perhaps the most stunning looking game this gen, sporting copious amounts of polys, ridiculous lighting, and generally fantastic texture work. I remember thinking back in 1996 how I couldn't wait until consoles could do "rendered" looking games in realtime, and RE4 is about as close as they've yet come IMO. RE4 has also taken the liberty of knocking the dust off the gameplay, keeping the good stuff and spicing/speeding/tearing up the rest for about as playable an experience as the series has yet delivered.
Its almost sad looking back now, remembering how blown away I was by CV and thinking to myself "this is the new standard", only to be thoroughly disappointed when the series reverted back to prerenderville (although I did play both ReMake and 0). Perhaps thats why RE4 is so reminiscent of CV, because I'm finally back in the full-poly world the series first entered (and should have remained in) in 2000. Its hard to say which game impressed me more..although CV popped the visual cherry and was a solid addition to the series, RE4 somehow manages to retain the great RE feel while at the same time feeling like a different style of game altogether.
Playing RE4 has given me a strange itch to go back and play CV (which was my first solo experience with an RE title, mind you), which I never finished due to the fact that I didn't have an empty fire extinguisher to finish the last segment of the game, and had saved over my previous save inadvertently...I would have had to start the game all over again. Maybe its a sign. Here's hoping I don't have the same problems finishing RE4!!
(not like I would've benefitted, played it on a friend's TV ... but you get the picture).