The Wednesday Inbox debates what to do about Fire Emblem and Pokémon’s graphics, as one reader admits to liking Fear Effect: Sedna.
To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk
Crossing the line
I don’t know if many other people are going to agree with this but I think Capcom should stop making Resident Evil remakes. Resident Evil 2 was great and that worked but when you try and do it with Residnet Evil 3, which features a lot of weird, complicated puzzles and nonsensical locations (what was that Clock Tower and park all about?) that really don’t work when you have realistic graphics.
It doesn’t matter now, because they’ve done it but I really, really hope they don’t remake Resident Evil 4. A remaster that plays exactly the same as it did originally is fine but remaking it they’ll make it so you can move and shoot and the game just wasn’t designed for that. The enemies, the weapons, everything about the design was perfectly honed as it was and just changing one bit is going to throw everything out of kilter.
If you don’t like not being able to walk and shoot then fine, don’t play Resident Evil 4. Go play Gears Of War or something else instead. Resident Evil 4 is one of the best games ever and should be preserved, not butchered and ruined. More importantly Capcom, and everyone obsessing over ‘improving’ old games should just get on and make new games.
You can make something similar to Resident Evil 4 easily, just don’t call it a remake. I’m always astounded for gaming’s lack of respect for its own history and for me remaking the best Resident Evil would be crossing the line.
Baker
Any excuse
I’m still feeling burned from those Silent Hill rumours turning out bad, even though they seemed legit, but I don’t remember so many different sources seeming to agree on something as the Super Mario All-Stars style remasters. I’ll get them any way they’re sold but if it is a giant compilation that’d be amazing. Especially if they give it some kind of 3D hub menu and maybe throw in the 2D games as well.
What does make me laugh though is this pretence of the 35th anniversary being important. Nintendo made a really big fuss for the 30th and the 25th, but I wouldn’t say 35 was a particularly prestigious birthday. Plus, if they’d just waited a year it would’ve been the 40th anniversary of Mario himself (the 35th is just Super Mario Bros.), which seems much more significant.
What am I saying is that this seems like obvious filler and anniversaries have nothing to do with it. I’m not say that as a bad thing, because I’m glad it’s happening, but it makes me think something has gone seriously wrong in Nintendo’s production line that they’ve had to pull out the big guns to make up for it. Maybe Zelda: Breath Of The Wild 2 has been seriously delayed and perhaps some others as well?
Oh, well I’ll happily for settle for a Super Mario 64 remaster and all the rest instead!
Caulfield
Same old lessons
I’d say the thing most likely to annoy Resident Evil fans is that a new game wouldn’t be scary, and there could be a few reasons for that. Multiplayer does some the most obvious, Capcom seem to be obsessed with adding it to Resident Evil and I have no idea why. It’s never worked and it just gets people angry.
The only time it came close to being worthwhile was the co-op in Resident Evil 5 and yet that’s the one thing they’ve never really gone back to outside of Resident Evil 6 and the Resident Evil Revelations series. Clearly 6 was awful but I’d totally be happy with a new Revelations, although I guess the previous ones didn’t sell that well so that’s why they keep making these weird spin-offs instead.
A guess that they’re trying to do an open world game inspired by Monster Hunter sounds pretty believable to me. It could work, I suppose, but I don’t see why it has to have the Resident Evil name attached to it. I thought Capcom understand the series again with 7 and the remake of 2 but now I’m worrying they’re losing the plot again already. Resident Evil is scary, has cheesy dialogue, and silly puzzles. Anytime it stops being about that it never works. Do we really need to learn that lessen anew every five years?
Korbie
E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk
Smallest ever
Standby for a revelation but… this year is really weird. It was already weird before the coronavirus but now I just don’t know what’s going on with gaming at all. Final Fantasy 7 Remake is out next week (really, I can’t believe it!) but after that the next big game is The Last Of Us Part 2 on 29 May. That is a long gap, remember when everyone thought 2020 was going to be the biggest year for games ever?
There’s a few smaller games in between that, like Predator: Hunting Grounds and, um, The Wonderful 101: Remastered but it’s almost back to being as bad as it was at the start of the year.
Worse than that we have no idea when to expect news about new games, no idea if the next gen consoles are really coming out, and no idea when they’re going to properly be announced. We basically know nothing and have nothing in terms of new releases. Blaming it on the coronavirus is letting people off easy if you ask me, 2020 was a shambles before it even started.
Daltones
Too late
I can’t say I’m surprised to hear that turning over Panzer Dragoon to some no-name developer to make on the cheap didn’t turn out well. I feel the same way about Sega that I do about Konami, that they should just sell their games division to Nintendo or Sony or someone and let them do what they’re clearly unwilling to do.
But at the same time I get it too. Panzer Dragoon was never a hit, but Streets Of Rage was, they’ve just left it too long without doing anything with it. Same goes for Golden Axe, After Burner, OutRun, and all the rest. Even Phantasy Star has been stuck in a niche with the online games. Sega should have sorted this out two decades ago and now I don’t think there’s anyway back for them.
The next Sonic game will be terrible, as they always are, and then any benefit they could’ve got from the movie will be squandered, especially as they’re late with it already. It really is amazing what’s happened to Sega since the Dreamcast days, and I don’t use that word in the positive sense.
Creed
Hard decision
In response to the Inbox letter from Jez yesterday, the issue is that a game’s difficulty can often be intrinsically linked to the gameplay.
Arguably the most famous example of this is the Soulsborne games. The knowledge that one mistake can you get killed and having to learn from those mistakes is what makes exploring those worlds so exhilarating. The mechanic of having to collect your souls after dying also wouldn’t work if you didn’t ever actually die!
Another recent example of gameplay and difficulty being linked is Celeste. Minor spoilers here, but the difficulty is designed to mimic the characters struggle with mental illness, if you just breezed through the entire game the impact would be lost. (Celeste does actually offer a clever solution to the problem of difficulty which is discussed in this excellent video.)
There are thousands of games available, and a quick Google search will tell if a game is difficult or not without actually spoiling anything, so I don’t see any real issue with developers wanting to make hard games…
drlowdon
Against the grain
I am glad to announce I have finally finished…. Fear Effect: Sedna.
I re-read your review of Fear Effect: Sedna and still decided to try it (when on sale). And… I wouldn’t disagree with the criticisms of the game. Is it tactical? Is it action? I also found the controls a bit clunky and oversensitive at times. Yet I enjoyed it enough.
And this got me thinking. What other poorly reviewed games have others enjoyed?
Obakasama
GC: We’ve tried to run this as a Hot Topic a couple of times before, but people are always too reticent to admit they played a badly reviewed game. Good for you though.
Catch up on every previous Games Inbox here
First try
I imagine the teams who made Fire Emblem and Pokémon have mostly only really made games for handheld machines and I don’t think it’s as straightforward as throwing in more resource to substantially boost production values.
I think it takes a different skill set to deliver that. The options would probably be: give the entire Pokémon or Fire Emblem projects to a new team, who has never made one of those games before; or bring a lot of new resource with different skill sets on board to collaborate with the existing team (potentially pulling that resource away from projects those new people are more experienced at); or let the existing teams gradually learn to migrate from handheld-only tech to modern home consoles.
The first two options might be unnecessarily risky, especially if the third option is the cheapest, allows for instalments to be released more regularly, ensures the traditional gameplay isn’t mangled too much, and guarantees to sell a lot anyway (to start with).
I’m not saying it’s necessary for the games to exist the way they do (they could easily have not released them at all until everyone involved was up to speed with non-handheld tech) but I also don’t think it’s as simplistic as ‘throw more money at these games and they’ll suddenly be the Breath Of The Wild of their respective series in one fell swoop.’ Even if it would only take one or two experienced people just to improve the scenery or decrease the ‘jaginess’ that might add a few months to the development time and the sales of those game’s demonstrate it was probably the correct decision to release them in the state they did, at least in the short term.
When you look at the games where Nintendo did bring in more experienced resources to get their tech up to speed (Breath Of The Wild and Xenoblade Chronicles, for example) it still took six years of no Zelda, and that’s considering the core Zelda team still had plenty of home console development experience.
I appreciate Pokémon and Fire Emblem are among Nintendo’s biggest series and they absolutely warrant proper production values but clearly some franchises fit the ‘once in a generation’ business model for Nintendo, while some don’t.
I think in time it’ll get to the stage that the scenery on these games is up to standards of other Switch games but the way I see it, delivering that first time following their last 3DS games would’ve required no new releases for a while and, although I personally see that as preferable, I don’t think that’s a compromise Nintendo would’ve been prepared to make. So, I agree there’s not necessarily an excuse but I do see something of an explanation.
Panda
GC: You make a lot of good points, although the primary technical developer on Three Houses was Koei Tecmo, who make almost nothing but home console games (rather badly most of the time, unless you happen to be a Dynasty Warriors fan). It’s true Game Freak have little experience with 3D games, but Nintendo are extremely well placed to offer help given how big the company is and how experienced its various studios are. What worries us most though, is that because both games were successful Nintendo may now see no need to increase the production values, or even become convinced that people prefer it that way.
Inbox also-rans
Uh-oh, just realised it’s April Fool’s Day this week. Guess it’s time for not to believe a word I read on the Internet anymore again!
Bronco
GC: We hate April Fool’s Day with a passion you can only dream of. So many people, being so unfunny…
I totally believe that Activision would be behind these Call Of Duty leaks. Think about it, the only think that didn’t get leaked (even though it was obvious) was the PS4 exclusivity, which is the one negative people wouldn’t be happy about. Not a coincidence, I think.
Ashar
This week’s Hot Topic
The question for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Onibee, who asks what do you think, and hope, Nintendo’s next games will be for the Switch?
It’s now six months since they had a general topic Nintendo Direct and there are currently no major new Switch games scheduled for the whole year, so what do you think is going on? Although the coronavirus is exacerbating the situation Nintendo’s secrecy started last year, so why do you think that is?
What new games do you expect to see come out next and what surprises are you hoping for once they are finally announced? What do you think the secrecy is in aid of and what do you think Nintendo should do in order to try and counter the release of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X?
E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk
The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length.
You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.
You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.
MORE: Games Inbox: Nintendo’s next big game, Resident Evil 3 epidemic, and Bravely Default 2 demo
