6. resident evil requiem
okay, so, this one has context.
so one of my friends online played this game on steam for under 2 hours, decided he liked it, but then refunded it to instead go in on this deal on amazon or whatever for a monitor that came with a free key for the game. but then the key kept getting delayed or something? so he just bought the game on steam again and then when the key from the monitor deal finally came in, he's like, "okay morgan, you can have this i guess." he said it was so he could hear my thoughts on the game. maybe that was true but maybe he was trying to keep me from killing myself. when i went back to new york everyone was worried i was going to kill myself. anyway, to add even further context to this story, like 2 days after that happened, another friend from online, who lives in the same state as the re9 friend, was going to fly to new york and drive me and all my stuff in a uhaul all the way down the state so i could then go live on my re9 friend's couch. all that is to say, it was a very hectic time in my life when i played resident evil requiem.
i liked it! i took forever to get through grace's first big open section of the game because i wasn't utilizing the map (i know, okay, i've played re games before, i don't know, i wasn't thinking) but then it was pretty smooth sailing. honestly a little too smooth. uh oh, loaded statement alert.
i wish grace had to work harder for her resources. she gets plenty of ammo and heals early on but then once they introduce that blood transfusion thing it's like, i never went hungry again. not to mention all those big special zombie types who wander around, they go down just like any other zombie, just with more bullets. not much of a survival horror if i'm having an easy time surviving and an even easier time mowing down the horrors. i didn't even kill the butcher guy my first playthrough, i just assumed he was invincible like the big scary stalker guys usually are in resident evil games, but he was just another special zombie variant who goes down in regular combat.
on that subject, the concept of unique zombie variants in general didn't really work for me. there's a ton of unique zombies with little zombie personalities now, like the zombie who loves light switch - now that guy's funny! but check it: in the best re game - which is re2 remake, if you're not reading these in order - which you should, by the way - if you kite a zombie from the library to the bathroom, that zombie is in the bathroom now. it's an interesting mechanic that adds a layer of permanence to the game world and your actions within it. wherever you last saw a zombie, that's where they'll most likely be. in re9, you can get that light switch zombie to chase you from woodlawn to crown heights, it doesn't matter, he's still gonna go make his merry little way back to the hallway with the light switch. it makes the whole place feel a little less authentic, and it makes me feel like my actions matter less, which hurts the horror aspect compared to past re titles, where everything that happens feels like a direct consequence of a past decision.
i guess i forgot to say what i liked. the puzzles felt satisfying and i enjoyed the game's attempts to make me feel disempowered as grace (even though she is, in fact, quite powerful). i was detecting a strong barbarian influence throughout grace's whole section of the game. which i think is interesting, considering, y'know. i liked the story, too, during grace's section. it was ridiculous but mostly in that fun way re games tend to be. when that science guy starts shooting people in the street with the gun that makes you zombie i died laughing. i wish grace wore her glasses the whole game. even though i can't see her because it's in first person, it would make me feel better if she wore her glasses. let's get more glasses-wearing protagonists in video games. there's joker. bayonetta. gordon freeman. that's really all i got.
anyway, when the day came that i had to move, i couldn't sleep at all so i ended up playing re9 all night, thinking i could finish it before my friend arrived to drive us down. well, spoiler alert, that game is long as shit. i thought when you switch to playing as leon it's almost over, but no, there's like a whole half of the game left. i don't think i ended up sleeping at all for about 40 hours at the beginning of that drive. thankfully my friend drove the whole time, but it was still exhausting.
i didn't want to move. i wanted to call the whole thing off, but then i would think, call it off and do what? i wasn't going to be able to stay at my grandmother's long term, none of my friends had the stability to house a fully unemployed person, and i couldn't fathom any eventuality where i was happy, or even just not constantly terrified and suicidal, no matter where i went. it was too late, anyway. i'd paid for the uhaul, sinking myself further into the credit card debt that is currently swallowing me whole, and my friend had already gotten his plane ticket - out of his own pocket, mind you.
when re9 switches to leon's campaign, it's kind of a sobering moment if you've been particularly lost in the game up until then. it disinvolves you for long enough to remember the world outside of the screen exists, and by the time i was there, the sun was already coming up on what has so far been the last day i spent in new york. i was excited to see my friends, live with my friends, and be in an environment where i wasn't perpetually circling the drain on homelessness, but i was more excited at the prospect of blowing it all off. i didn't want to move, didn't want to go to school, ultimately just didn't want to do anything except curl up into a ball and rot away and just be able to play video games all day and not have to ask for anything else but that. unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.
the leon section of the game, like the grace section, is a mixed bag. whereas i felt grace's access to ammo was way overtuned in a way that ruined the tension, i remember running out of ammo for leon early on, around the time i realized that this climactic, end-of-game shooting gallery funfest was in fact an entire second campaign.
then there's the environment. oh man, the rubble of raccoon city is such a fucking snoozefest. getting that dumbass door open takes a million years and it is entirely unengaging. the visual design in the place, too, completely just sucks. a grey sky hanging over grey buildings surrounded by grey debris atop grey streets. i get it, it's the ruins of a city that got bombed out, but there's no excuse for an environment to be that boring.
those are pretty big problems, but thankfully, leon's long-ass section keeps going for a while after raccoon city and that's where his gameplay gets to shine. it's the most fun i've had piloting a resident evil character. everything is so responsive and satisfying, and the enemy encounters are beautifully arranged with a virtuosity i can't claim to have seen from the series since i first played the original re4.
more than anything, the fun i was having piloting leon made me wish for an entire game that was just this, and i guess that's the problem with re9. it's two half-games smashed together to make a game that is simultaneously exhaustingly long and also feels somewhat incomplete. it does make me excited for re10, though, or any game that promises to offer in gameplay what the leon section of re9 did.