Retronauts - 494: The Resident Evil Ranking Hootenanny

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Wow, what a hootenanny! Host Diamond Feit recruits Stuart Gipp and SuperGreatFriend to enter the world of survival horror and rank every canonical game in the Resident Evil series. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us and more great shows like us at podcast.hyperx.com. This week in Retronauts, that's right. This is the ultimate Hootananny. Good evening, good morning, everyone. Welcome back to Retronauts. I'm dumb and fight. I'm your host this week. And it's time for another ranking hoot and any.

And as we record this, we're recording it in October. It's spooky season. And I think given a recent release and what's on everyone's mind right now, I think it was the best time in the world to possibly go back. back, review a monumental, world-famous Capcom-produced survival horror series. Yes, we are ranking dinosaur crisis this week. I'm so happy. Wait, I'm sorry, no, that's next week's show. No, we're going to do Resident Evil. Yes, also known as Biohazard in some territories. We're going to rank all the Resident Evil's. However, we have two rules. One, we're counting remakes, but not

ports. So there is only one Resident Evil, but there are two Resident Evil, if you count, the remake, but I like the Saturn version. The Saturn version is the same as the... It's fine. And we're also skipping all the extra stuff. No spinoffs. No guidance. Okay? Outbreak

is gone. Survivor dead to us. We're just not doing it. But that still leaves us with 15 games, which I feel like is an awful lot of Resident Evil games to discuss. So, before we start, obviously I can't do this alone. Let's go to our correspondent in

the UK who's joined us on last time for Resident Evil. Hello. Oh, hello. I'm Stuart Jep. My favorite ghost is the Ghost of Christmas future. Thank you. Are we doing ghosts? Yeah. I thought, I mean, it's Resident Evil. You know, that's what

it's about. It's a fellow going around seeing Ghosts, going Ah, ghosts. Spooks. Oh, no. I guess they almost did that one, yes. I didn't do a huge amount of research. I looked at on YouTube at a few videos of it

and that's the impression I got. I'm sure you're spot on there. And joining us, not for the first time, but the first time in a while, from, actually I don't know where you're located, but please,

somewhere in America, I think. Right, Parts Unknown is the official name of it, I think. Okay. Well, yeah, I'm SGF, just some person who's been doing playing video games on the internet for way too long and for some reason was asked

here to give my opinion about this series. Not many people know about it, very obscure, called Resident Evil. Apparently there's 15 games, at least. When did that happen? Well, we're going by what our expert deemed as canon. And our expert, by the way, is Alex Anil, who literally wrote a book about Resident Evil. He interviewed all the developers. He spoke to everybody at length. The book is called Itchy Tasty. He was going to join us. And I'm afraid, I guess maybe he had too much Halloween or just something came around, but he's not feeling up to it today. So he's not going to be with us on the show in voice. However, he did share with me his rankings, his expert rankings

of the Resident Evil games. So I feel like that will give us an edge, you know. And we're all going to discuss our numbers and we're going to come out on top, because let's face it, if nothing else, Resident Evil is all about data and the combat of said data. So I feel like we're going to of combat data. Yeah, it's money in the bank. I just realized something. If you're SGF and I'm SG, that's kind of interesting, right? Yeah, I'm just throwing that out there.

I thought the listeners might like to know about that connection. Carry on. No, my last name begins with an F, so, I mean, we got a lot of overlap today. Yeah, and the G sounds a bit like D. This is crazy. Kismit. Kismet, it's a word. All right then.

For those of you who haven't been, haven't joined us for a hoot-nandy before, here's how it works. All of our panelists have ranked the Resident Evil games from one, one being the top. That's the number one. And 15 being the lowest. 15, by the way, not necessarily a bad game. We can argue if they're bad, but at least for our discussion today, we're ranking them on the Resident Evil chart. So maybe the 12th best Resident Evil game is a good game, but it's not as good as 11 other Resident Evil. So please, you know, by all means, share your comments and send us emails if you'd like,

but please understand, we're not here to call Resident Evil bad, but someone has to go on top, someone has to go on the bottom. It's just, it's just math, so. Come at the, bro. Yes, I know. I'm still... By the end of the, my objective here is to make everyone mad. And the only way I can, and the way I'm going to be doing that is by sharing my genuine

heartfelt and not contrarian opinions, just my weirder opinions. and people are going to get mad about it, and it's going to be great. Okay, so 90 minutes about why Resident Evil sucks actually. Mm-hmm. I don't even know why I was brought on. I hate Resident Evil. No, but genuinely, I hope that people don't get too mad when I give my bizarre rankings. I'm quite nervous about it.

It's fine. By the way, we're not going to do any special audio cues or anything, but I am going to have a timer on the side just because we're going to try to keep the discussion of each game down to a reasonable amount. I figure seven minutes, seven minutes is enough time to podcast about each Resident Evil game. I get the joke. Thank you. So I'm just going to have that timer on the side. But, you know, if we're heated and we're going, we'll catch up with it.

It'll be fine. All right. So introductions are done. Everyone is here. Let's begin at the beginning with Resident Evil, originally released in 1986 for the PlayStation 1. also came to Saturn, had some director's cuts and Dual Shock Editions. Why don't we start with SGF? SGF, where do you place Resident Evil, the original Resident Evil, on your Resident Evil chart?

Okay, well, out of the 15, I put Original Ari a 10. And I don't like putting it that low because I really liked Resident Evil. But when I was arranging the listings, I mean, there are games that are definitely exceeded it. The original game maybe hasn't aged that well. But I liked it a lot more than maybe a ranking of 10 indicated. I played the game not long after it first came out. I was very captivated by it because I, it really hadn't been anything like it, or at least nothing that I had played at the time.

I always liked horror movies as a kid, and horror was not really a genre that was represented all that much in video games up until that point. So I was really taken by the game and gotten to the series right away. But still, I am going to have to put it down. a 10 because you can see how you play the game you see how these are new ideas that they're just starting out with that really are not polished that need a lot of development but at the same time it has the core of what made the series great and also still has the best voice acting in the series it's never exceeded we can't argue that absolutely all right SGF weighs in with

10 for the original Resident Evil uh how about you Stuart what would you say about the original I gave it a slightly better ranking. I gave it a six, but for me it's a six. I think it's pretty timeless. I think it's a pretty excellent game. So don't think that putting it at six means it's bad. I'm not going to say that for every single thing that I give a low ranking, but I will explain. So, you know, yeah, Resident Evil, it's essentially a perfect like encapsulation of survival horror, I think, with, you know, you've got your spooky house. and everything that sort of surrounds it you've got multiple characters to play us

to get yourself a different challenge, you've got kind of iconic puzzles that don't tax you too much and they're not too illogical and the whole focus on conserving ammo and everything and there's just enough ammo to get by and it's just a really tightly designed an enjoyable game unfortunately it has been succeeded

by other games in the series which we'll get to But, no, I think this one deserves to, but, I mean, for me, it deserves to stay at the top of that original PS1 trilogy at any rate. Well, as for me, I still have a lot of affection for the first Resident Evil. It was definitely, you know, when I played it, it definitely, it blew me away. It was not, it was not something I was prepared for. I was excited about it. You know, I read about it.

I was there on launch day, but I still wasn't ready for it when I played it. and it's it scared me. It scared me a lot. I honestly could not play it alone. I actually had to play it with friends, but we played it a lot. We played it for hours at a time. I've written about it several times.

I just, I still love it. And even though I think it's weird and that, you know, we'll get to it. They remade it and the remake improves on this one a lot, but I still really love this game and I still really feel it. It has a lot of qualities that I still have a huge amount of affection for. So I am giving it a three

For me it is still very high on my list Weighing in remotely We have Alex Alex is actually much more in line with you He gave it an 8 So kind of splitting between you two right there But already the very first game We've already got a variety of opinions

All the way from 3 to 10 So I am real excited to see where this goes from here But I think we all agree though From a voice action perspective And I think also live action The only game that actually has a considerable live action portion. When are they going to bring that back? They absolutely should bring that back.

Live action cutscenes need to make a return. They had a snippet, a snippet in the Resident Evil 3 remake, and it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough. Look, the time is now. Video quality has never been better. I mean, Capcom learned so much from Fox. It was Foxfire? Firefox?

I've already forgotten the name of it. The 1996... Oh, Fox Hunt? Fox Hunt. I'm sorry. You, I learned about it from you, SGF. Yeah, Capcom published that game. I'm sure they gave them many lessons that has informed their game design in the year since.

All right. Well, excellent. Let's move on then to Resident Evil 2, which debuted two years later, 1998. Famously, there was going to be another one that came out sooner, but then they decided, you know what, this isn't working, and they started over from scratch. And did they make the right choice? Stu, what do you think? How did Resident Evil 2 turn out for you?

I mean, it's pretty great, obviously, but I gave it an 8. I don't like it as much as the original. The original for me, as I said, feels like a very compact, tight kind of, you know, it's a sweet home kind of thing. It's just the house. And when I think of that game, I think of the house. And when I think of Resident Evil 2,

I don't really know what I think of. It's a much more of mixed back. It is an excellent game. The whole, having two routes through the game that sort of change, depending on which order you do them in, is pretty special. And it does capture the feel

of a kind of blockbuster horror movie a lot more. But the thing is, blockbuster horror movies aren't as good as slightly wonky old decrepit horror movies, which is what Resident Evil is. So the vibe's not there for me, but, you know, I'm not going to pretend it isn't an excellent game. It just doesn't quite appeal to my aesthetic as much as the first one does. All right, all right.

I definitely understand that. Given the spooky season, I have been watching a lot of horror movies this month, and definitely sometimes you see a movie that looks like it was filmed for like $200, and it's just a little bit scarier because I don't know. Maybe you worry that someone actually did die during production because they didn't have the coverage. You know, who knows? SGF, how about you? Resident Evil 2, 1998. So, original Resident Evil 2, I gave out a 7. Stewart mentioned that the vibes are different, that it's less of a horror movie, more of an action movie. I agree with that, and I do like the horror vibe more.

But with Resident Evil 2, I think they really improved and polished a lot of the ideas that they had in RE1 in terms of how the game plays. the pacing of it. It is a larger game, not as tight as the first game. I think they do a really good job with that additional length, having the two separate campaigns that, well, I mean, honestly, it's more like four, because depending on which path you do with which character, there are differences. And then it ties together in the end with a true last boss an ending. And I'd not seen anything like that at the time, so I was very impressed with that. I played it somewhat recently before the remake of, two came out, I played it again. And it had been many years since I played it, really had no idea how it was going to hold up. And I was pretty amazed at how well it held up over that time. It played very well, very smoothly. I didn't think it felt all that dated, honestly, despite the dated graphics. And I feel that for me, a lot of games from that particular generation aged worse than basically any other generation, talking about PS1 and 64.

RE2, I feel like it still feels good to play. It still hasn't missed a beat, I think. I think someone could pick it up now and get just as much enjoyment out of it, despite it being very dated technically. So I gave it a 7. That still sounds a bit low because I do think that there are games that have exceeded it, but I do think that RE2 ended up being a great improvement over RE1. I think for me, what I'm really surprised by is that.

you know, Resident Evil, obviously, the very first game gave you two choices of heroes. And the campaigns play out differently depending who you are, but they are, the broad strokes are the same. And it also doesn't matter which one you play for, like, they're independent of each other. So I think it was really, it was really brilliant of them to decide, okay, this time we're going to do the two heroes thing again, but their campaigns vary in different ways. And depending on which one you play first, if you play the other one second, things are changed for them. You can leave things behind for the other person. I mean, timeline-wise, it doesn't quite make sense because, like, are, you know, did they kill the boss or didn't

they kill the boss? You know, like, I know when I was playing it, I was like, so am I doing this? Is this a dream sequence? Like, what's happening here? Didn't I already get this key? But I do think, like, from a, from a player perspective, I really think that was an incredibly strong choice because it just makes, it makes the game feel more connected. And it makes me feel more connected to it. And it also, like, incentivizes me to play it again. which is a big deal for me, because honestly, I didn't play it that much when it was new. I actually only played it in the last couple of years, at least to the end, that is. So I'm actually going to give this one a very high score.

I'm actually put Resident Evil 2 as my number 2. Wow. Because I feel like it is still very, very strong. And in light of recent events, I feel like it's still easy to recommend. And it's borderline available. I guess if you have a Vita, it's available, or I guess it's the PC version. But is it on PS5 as part of the classics, or is it just the first game so far? Because I know I have the original Resident Evil on PS5.

Right now, I think they have directors cut as part of the PS Plus classic, no sugar, new formula. I forget what it's called. But I don't think they have two or three on there. But I have two and three on my beta. So it's weird about how those have not been re-released on everything. It seems like a series at Capcom would have just kept re-releasing every generation. I don't know. I don't get it.

If you've got a PS3 still plugged in, you can buy it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, still works on PS3 and Vita and PSP if you have one of those, but not on four or five, to the best of my knowledge. Or, of course, there is emulation, but I didn't- Don't forget to delete the ROMs after 24 hours. Yeah, that's right. And you have to make your own backups. Don't forget.

Yeah. By the way, he's not here, but Alex remotely gave this game a five. So he ranks it higher than the first game, but still, leaves a lot of room for improvement. So, 28, 7, and 5. Again, a pretty broad range of hits. So let's move on. Let's move on to Resident Evil 3, The Nemesis.

So originally released in 1999 for PlayStation 1, famously, it was going to be a spinoff, but then it turned into a regular entry, and it's a little late in the PlayStation's lifestyle in 1999, but it came out, and it certainly had a lot of implications for the for the fiction, and it gave us Nemesis a big kind of lipless monster that chases you around throughout the game and generally just makes you uneasy and

upset for huge portions of your life. I did not play this that much on the PlayStation. I have revisited since. I think it has a lot of great factors to it, and I think the nemesis in general works out very well, but it also

I don't know. I guess to me, like, as much as Resident Evil 2 ratchets up the action movie feel over one, I feel like three goes even further because you have all these sort of, you know, like these dodge moves, and if you're fighting the nemesis, you get more stuff for your

guns to make your guns stronger, and to me, I feel like it was a it didn't quite click for me the way the other two games did on the PlayStation. So I'm actually going to go a little low. I'm actually putting Resident Evil 3 as a as a 10 because I like it, but it's

doesn't quite click for me. So I'm just going to I'm going to go ahead, and I'm giving Resident Evil Nemesis 3 a 10. I got the title wrong, but we all know what I'm talking about. SGF, what do you say about Resident Evil 3 Nemesis? Well, over the years, I had a change of heart on this one. When I first played it back when it was new, I didn't like it that much. Like, I thought it was okay. But I thought, this is weird.

You don't have the two separate characters, and RE2 had like multiple paths you could take, and this seems like a smaller thing. And I don't like how it plays. as much as the previous games and I don't know about this and so I just sort of thought it was kind of mediocre but then I went back

to play it again before the remake came out and I had a much higher opinion of it after that because I was now thinking after putting some time into it that I thought that the gameplay improvements were for the better

Jill's Dodge move gave you a certain option in terms of movement that the previous games didn't have and most games didn't have really. I thought that the sort of, you could call Choose Your Own Adventure Path thing that they were doing

was interesting. Didn't play, didn't really make that much of a difference, but I thought that that was a neat little new thing that they hadn't done before. I thought that, well, I don't know how much I really liked the side characters in the game. I think that they did a better job with that in the remake, but I was impressed with how Nemesis was able to chase you from room to room. I like the stalker mechanic there. Even though they did start the stalker sort of thing with Mr. X in the previous game,

they did iterate and improve on that with Nemesis. So after replaying it in the modern day, I found that my opinion of it had gone up quite a bit. So the score I gave for Nemesis was an eight, which is right under what I gave RE2. I don't think it's quite as good as RE2, probably just because it does. doesn't really have a big memorable set piece. Like RE1 had the mansion. RE2 has the police station. In RE3, the equivalent is basically the city streets.

And I just didn't really feel like, I didn't feel like that was strong enough. And so it's a little less than RE2. But I do like it more now than I did then. All right. Yeah, I think that's definitely part of, I think, the vibe difference for me is the fact that you don't, you don't really feel like you're trapped somewhere. Like, you're in the city. the city is the city's gone to hell but you're still outside all the time

but like the streets are like just wrecked enough so you can only go certain ways and I guess you know the hospital the hospital stuff's kind of neat but also it's you get the Carlos stuff yeah I think I think we're in agreement here Stewart what do you think

are we wrong um no I gave it a similar score I gave it a nine um it's just below ready two for me um I don't know maybe I've overranked this

because I didn't like it that much. It just, it kind of feels like DLC for two in a way, but it's just kind of, I don't know, like revisiting, like, locations and just fighting the same old zombies again at this point, I think, is getting a bit old. And Nemesis is cool. I like the way that he's kind of incentivized replays because replaying with sort of better weapons

means you can actually, like, down him more easily and first encounter and stuff like that. that, if memory serves, that's what you can do. Because downing him in the first encounter without having a decent weapon is kind of futile. The Choose Your Own Adventure stuff, I mean, what is just like, what were they thinking? Like, what, I mean, it's not damaging really, but what's the point? It's so stupid. It's like, you can either go into the police station hide or surrender and fight later.

That's like the first one, I think. Why is that a selection? Why don't you just make the choice in the game? You see nemesis and you're like, oh, shall I try and fight this guy, or shall I shall I go inside? Well, just don't pause and make you do this pointless choice or something you would have to choose to do anyway. It just feels like they need a new feature for the back of the box, you know?

Decision point, but there are plenty of decision points. The whole of survival horror is a constant series of crucial decisions that you make. So going like, this one's got decisions in it, just feels kind of odd to me. Nine, it's fine. It plays fine. There are much worse games than this, but it's the bottom of the barrel for that PS1 trilogy for me. All right. And really shockingly in line here, Alex gives it a seven. So this is like, we got a straight here. Yeah. She's playing poker with his hand. All right. So seven, eight, nine, ten. We are very much in alignment on Nemesis. He scares us, but we don't all agree if he's good or bad.

We all have busy lives these days and can't afford to waste a day stuck on the couch because of a few drinks the night before. Zbiotics is the answer we've all been looking for. Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by Ph.D. scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for your rough next day. Zbiotics produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down.

It's designed to work like your liver, but in your gut, where you need it the most. Just remember to drink Zbiotics before drinking alcohol, drink responsibly, and get a good night's sleep to feel your best tomorrow. And from my own experience, Zbiotics works great. recently went on vacation and brought Zbiotics along for the ride and drank it before having any alcohol. Now the last thing you want is a night of fun to drag down your next day when vacation time is so precious and finite. So I'm happy to report that Zbiotics allowed me to wake up feeling absolutely normal. And since it comes in these little glass vials, you can pretend you're drinking tiny potions. Folks, it's a win-win situation here. Give Zbiotics a try for

yourself. Go to zbiotics.com slash retro to get 15% off your first order when you use Retro at checkout. Zbiotics is backed with 100% money back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money. No questions asked. Thanksgiving is coming up, so order a pack of Zbiotics so you and those joining you around the table can indulge a little this holiday and still feel thankful you did the next day. Remember to head to Zbiotics.com slash retro and use offer code retro at checkout for 15% off. Thank you, Zbiotics, for sponsoring this episode. think it's time to move on to what will certainly be the least controversial, Resident

Evil, Code Veronica, 2000, for the Sega Dreamcast, the first game to leave PlayStation, the first game to leave behind pre-rendered backgrounds. I would say the first game to really, you know, action action, like it opens with an action scene. So, let's go back to SGF. How about you, SJF? Code Veronica. So with Code Veronica, like with RE3, this was a second game that I had a turnaround on over the years. Back then, when it came out, I had a Dreamcast. I was a big Sega fan and a big Capcom fan. So I got Code Veronica, loved it, I thought it was much better than three, and played it many times.

I don't actually know how many times I played through that game, but I didn't have many games at the time, so this would have been one that, like, I was in the double digits on, probably, in terms of play-throughs. then I hadn't played it for a long time I played it again somewhat recently like maybe a couple years ago and I was thinking oh this actually doesn't feel that good to play

in comparison to the PS1 games I don't know why I think that now and didn't think it back then but it feels kind of awkward and stiff and the real-time graphics was very impressive at the time those were top of the line graphics on the Dreamcast And now, obviously, today, that's not really something special, whereas the pre-rendered graphics in the PS1 games is a more unique look.

Today, having real-time graphics for the backgrounds is just expected. And since they're real-time, that means you don't have the level of detail that you do in the pre-rendered graphics. So not actually that much to look at, usually. You did have the return of a couple of characters like Chris and Leclair, Chris, and then Wesker as the villain. And that was cool. But I felt like, in comparison to the previous RE games, it felt like it went on a bit too long. And by the time you're as Chris in Antarctica, maybe it's wearing out its welcome. And in the end, I felt like I had a lower opinion about the game than I did back when I first played it.

So I ended up giving Code Veronica a nine underneath Nemesis. Still, it's all right. But I think that if I had rated this years ago, it would. have been higher up on this list. All right, Stu, I know you've got Code Veronica feelings. Yeah, I'm sorry, folks, but I don't like this game. I gave this one 14. Wow.

Okay. I think there's, and that doesn't mean there aren't things about it. I do like. I think it has some of the most memorable boss battles in the series. No, Serrata, your sniper battle, the battle in the sort of very enclosed space with a tyrant. I think it's cool. The problem I have with this game is it's broken. You can actually quite easily, if you're not careful, I suppose,

get into situations that are effectively unwinnable where you have not enough ammo to deal with the boss battle that you're in because they didn't design the game carefully enough. And yeah, you could say get good, but I feel like, I mean, I'm fairly certain as a sequence where you can lose everything that you've got stored. Yeah, because you lose access to an area of the game that holds it, it or something. I forget how it works exactly. So if this is nonsense, please tell me in the

comments. I think what you might be thinking about is that when it switches from Claire to Chris, and you don't have access to the box anymore, as one character. I think that's what I'm thinking of. You're right, yeah. And I think that suggests a level of apathy that I feel kind of

strongly comes across the whole game. That seems like an oversight rather than a challenge. You don't know that's going to happen. So, I mean, I suppose on the second playthrough, it ceases to be a problem. but it should be beatable fairly on your first playthrough and I just don't think that it is unfortunately plus again

diminishing returns from three they're just doing the same thing again and yeah it's not a thing that sucks it's an okay game I would never say to someone straight up this is a horrible game don't play it because it's obviously polished and there's obviously some kid that's got into it it's nicely expansive the challenge is quite high

I think this is the hardest one of the traditional resigents by some distance not just because of its oversights. And as I mentioned, memorable whilst it's quite memorable story that delves into more of the origins of the whole thing. And, yeah, I don't know what else to say about it, really. It's just more res-y that happens to be quite frustrating and not really that fun for me, unfortunately.

All right, Stu. How much this is about Steve? Is it all about Steve? Is Steve a deal-breaker for you? What's... No beef with Steve. No beef with Steve. Me and Steve, we're tight. I'm core with Steve. It's all good. Everyone's my... I'm friends with everyone. You know, it's all good. All the lame game characters and nobody likes. I'm okay with all of them. You know I am.

All right. Jacks, Gemma, Mac, Chuck Rock. Love them all. Well, I still have a lot of strong things by this game. I have not played it recently, so it's quite possible. If I did play it again recently, I might have

a re-evaluation, a re-awakening. So, perhaps my ranking is still based on the fact of, you know, how I felt when I played it when it was new, because when it was new, it was extremely exciting for me. And it was, uh, with the returning characters, with the, um, the unexpected moments, you know, the fact that you, you get in this base and all of a sudden, you're, you're in the mansion again, like, there's parts of the mansion that are just, like, recreated in this lab base, which is somewhere in the end, like, I just, that stuff, I ate that stuff up.

The, you mentioned the bosses, like, I'll never forget when we, you know, you get down to that, that base and you're, you're walking on the ice surface, and you see a giant spider walking on the underside of the ice like that God that terrified me oh my God and I knew it was going to come out eventually I just didn't know when

and eventually it does come out and you got to fight it so I am perhaps way off the mark here but I give it a four oh you monster here we go

now we're hooting honey I'm sticking it with a four because I still I still have I also it's kind of a weird one in that it's if you have an Xbox, any Xbox, you can play the HD remaster, and it actually is HD, like, they actually have new textures. Whereas if you play it on PlayStation, it's not, like, it's, it's, it's

widescreen, but it's not HD. I don't know what the difference is, but... Well, it was released as a PS2 on PS4 game, which is, was that initiative where they were releasing, like, like, upscaled versions of PS2 games on the PS4, and the PS2 Code Veronica was one of them. Now, the PS3 got the HD version, but PS3 games are not compatible on the PS4 or PS5. So, that was kind of a weird thing where the PS2 version is the one on the Sony ecosystem

that you could still actually get. The version on the Xbox that you can buy now is the 360 games straight up, I believe. But they do, because the Xbox now upscales a lot of its 360 games. It still might end up looking better. That is one of the backwards compatible 360 games, yeah.

Yes. Yes. And I know if you are a long-time game subscriber, gold pass subscriber, they did give this one away for free not that long ago. It was one of the free games of gold choices. So if you've been came up with that for a while, you might have this game sitting on your hard drive and maybe you can play it. And maybe you'll tell me that I'm a fool. Or maybe you'll tell me that Stu was wrong. I don't know. One thing is, I do think it's a shame that Capcom is not remaking this one as it's really.

the game that is most in need of a remake. Yeah, strongly agree. Yes. And, of course, we would all want to see the remake version of Steve. Yeah. He's who would all, you'd want to see. Steve H.D. I think, you know, Carlos...

Stephen, 4K. Carlos got a much better haircut in the remake than he did on three. So I feel like Steve would likewise benefit from, you know, a makeover. Mm-hmm. Anyway, Alex is not going to clear this up because he's just somewhere in the middle here. He's giving it a six. I don't think it should be any surprise after all Alex's name on Twitter is CVX Freak. That's Code Veronica X Freak.

So he's got a lot of strong things for that game. So he's closer to me, but he's not as high as me. So 9, 14, 4, and 6. That's quite a spread. Well then, let's move on to the first remake, the Resident Evil GameCube version, 2002. Definitely kind of a weird one at the time. We didn't, I don't think anyone expected this to happen. You know, the game was only six years old.

People didn't do that. People just didn't come back and say, hey, that game we made six years ago, we're going to do it again. I mean, now, now I, you know, now we get the last. of us every three months, but it was big. It was a big deal that Capcom decided to do this, and that they did so much. They didn't just port it. They made a brand new version of it. And I think it turned out very well, but I'm not going to lead off the conversation.

How about Stu? Stu, you start this time, Resident Evil remake. Yeah, you guys can hate me after this one. I respect this game in the sense that what it offered is very clearly a, very heartfelt new take on the game. It's essentially a definitive take on the original Resident Evil. It adds so much extra ways to play the game. And everything is...

I don't know how... This just sounds weird and I don't have to explain it, but everything is in game. Everything feels immersive all the way down to the opening, like, menus. It's a very beautifully put-together package. I have a fundamental problem with it that makes me hate it. So I gave it 14. Wow.

No, sorry, excuse me, 13. Okay. Because Veronica is worse. Veronica's 14, okay. This game for me fundamentally doesn't feel good and enjoyable, and the reason why is going to sound really stupid, and like I said, everyone's going to hate me now. I think that the original Resident Evil had very stiff controls by design. It has tank controls, which a lot of people will take issue with. I don't take issue with those controls.

they work for what they present in that game. It is a kind of an ugly, stiff-looking game as well as being a fairly stiff controlling game. Those two things meld and make sense. The way you move in Resident Evil makes sense, because it's the only way that you really could move in Resident Evil and have the world make sense around you. In the remake, everything looks amazing. like everything has been rendered

incredibly beautifully everything looks absolutely outstanding there's no visual junk anymore there's no seams anymore it's all perfect looking and you still run around like the same way you still control like Resident Evil One and there's this mental

disconnect between the way you move in the game and the way that the game looks and I'm really susceptible to that like sometimes I can tell if I'm going to like a game the first time I move the analogue sticks sometimes and with this it just immediately I was just like absolutely not and they actually try to remedy that

because in the PS4 remake of this remake or re-release of this remake they added non-tank controls but the problem is the non-tank controls also break the game because they mean you can essentially nutmeg the zombies in an incredibly obnoxious easy way, so they're all so wrong.

So basically there is this game that looks absolutely amazing, is beautifully designed and has a huge amount going for it that I just can't enjoy. So I'm afraid I'd give it 13. All right, strong words from a strong man, presumably. No, I'm pathetically weak. A child could beat me up. SGF, what do you think, remake? All right, so remake one.

So my opinion is pretty different. I'm giving this one a four higher on the list that's my highest rated one so far of these okay so when this came out like you said it was surprising

about remaking an existing game I mean some companies had done that like Nintendo had made Super Mario All-Stars but that was just kind of a relatively minor touch-up in terms of the graphics and controls and music but Resident Evil remake when that came out it looked like

magic. It looked like something that shouldn't actually exist. And I mean, we know the technical reasons why, because the backgrounds were still pre-rendered. So the GameCubes processing power could focus entirely on characters and enemies. But it looked like a game that wasn't part of that generation, but like something from the future. And already liking Resident Evil, already being a fan of the series, that was something that really kind of blew me away. Like I mentioned Code Veronica did have top of the line graphics when it came out. It looked excellent, but like, Resident Evil on GameCube was far, far beyond it. And it's amazing that it still looks good and still looks atmospheric today, playing the one that's currently available. I do understand

that there's, the controls certainly don't feel as modern as the way the game looks. In addition to the tank controls, it feels heavy. It's like a, it feels like, it feels like these are heavy characters clomping about. The characters don't feel agile. That is true. I do feel like the pacing of the game works well enough to accommodate for how it feels. I guess the reason I'm giving this one such a high score is because I feel like this is one of the few games that really is, really still succeeds at having a tone of tension. Many horror games, I feel like, try to do it, but don't succeed at it, or as years go by, maybe what appeared to be an atmospheric game appears to be a little comical.

The given example of this, if you remember Kenji Eno's D, when I first, I played that when it first came out, and I thought that atmosphere was thick as hell. And then I played it years later, I did an LP of it, and the common opinion of was, this seems stupid. It seemed ridiculous. I'm like, oh, but when I was 13, I thought this was very scary. I think that Resident Evil remake, I think, still maintains a sense of tension and atmosphere, even though it's all these years later. I still feel it's one of the higher-up games to be able to still maintain that. Also, it's kind of, I mean, in terms of the Resident Evil series,

all of the remakes are kind of the gold standard, I think, in terms of any remakes from any video games. And this was the first of those remakes. It did kind of blow everyone away when it came out. And I still think the game does hold up very well today. So I gave it a four. Yeah, I didn't play this that much when it first came out, but I did play it again over the years.

And I replayed it entirely, fairly recently. And I think I'm kind of amazed that it somehow works both ways. It works as a game. If you never play a Resident Evil before, it's like, okay, try this game. And I think it works. It scares you. But if you came at, you know, the way they made it, releasing it only six years after the original, if you played it back then, knowing where things were, it just contained all these little pieces to mess with you, you know, to subvert your expectations.

And some of those don't translate at all to, if you don't know, if you don't know the dogs are coming in that hallway, then the weird rock that breaks the window doesn't mean anything to you. You're just like, what is that? A rock? It's someone throwing pebbles at me. but other things absolutely do still scare you. Like the whole crimson head thing to me is just an incredible choice. And you think the zombies are dead. You shoot them, okay, they fall down.

They're dead. I can't hit them anymore. They don't respond anymore. But then you come back in the room and it's like, like, the bodies are still there. That's weird. And then you come back enough times and the body gets up and it's mad. It's angry now. And yeah, I've just been thinking about this a lot.

You know, a few months ago we did our podcast about Resident Evil versus Resident Evil. we talked about these two games together, and I couldn't really decide. But lately I've decided I feel like this one is better than the original game. So I'm ranking it as my number one. All right. That's the first number one so far. As for Alex, Alex chimes in. He gives the remake a three.

So he also ranks it very high. I'm sure his walkthrough of the game is still popular in GameFit Q's. He's written many of those, so I think it's probably still one that gets a lot of traffic for him. So, wow. four, three, one, and 13. So, Stu, actually, you gave it the same score as me and Alex, just combined with the digits. I did, yes. How did you do that?

I think that was the magic power known as a pure coincidence. Well, then, speaking of numbers, let's move on to a goose egg, a zero, Resident Evil, Zero. You know, I was saying about this. Is this the first Western game that had a zero like this? It might be. I mean, Street Fighter Zero became Street Fighter Alpha, but did anyone else make a zero and get it to America as a zero? Then Resident Evil? I don't think so.

I can't think of one. I'm going to think about this for the rest of the Holocaust now. Hang on, Mega Man Zero. Was that before this? Oh, but that's a guy name. Isn't that the robot's name? It's a Zero. That's what you said. Oh, yeah. You got me. I'm bested. SGF, why don't you tell us about your Zero? How do you feel about the Zero?

No sugar. Okay, so the Zero. I did play this one when it was new. And it was the first time I think I played a Resident Evil game, and I was thinking, oh, well, this isn't very good, is it? Yeah, it was, I mean, it looked like Resident Evil remake. It was the same engine, same style of graphics, so I had fairly high expectations for it. It was featuring Rebecca, a character from the first game, but never, didn't, she never had anything beyond that. It was going to be a prequel, which I thought was strange. I mean, I guess prequels are more common now, but the idea of you're going to find out what happened before Resident Evil seemed kind of weird because, oh, what,

like kind of nothing happened before Resident Evil. It was just, hey, there are people being killed in a forest and now we're in a house. Are you going to make a full game out of that? And so it turns out, no, they're going to make a game where you're on a train and then there's another separate entire mansion before Rebecca eventually will go to the R1 mansion. And it seemed weird to have this entire adventure that happened before RE1. But I would be open to it if the game was better.

and it's not. It's been a long time since I've played the game. I do remember not being taken in by the character switching mechanic. If I remember this right, there are no item boxes. You just have to leave items lying around.

Am I remembering that right? Yeah. And you just kind of have to keep track of where you just dropped things. Obviously, every game, they go for some changes to try to freshen things up to make things new,

to just see if they can mix up the formula a little bit. And I understand that they did that with Zero. I just don't think any of the changes they made were an improvement over the previous Resident Evil's. Also, the villain is a man made out of leeches who was actually the real creator of the virus, not Birken. And they have a cutscene specifically showing Berkin and Wesker taking his research. And then that never gets brought up again in any game because no one wants to remember Resident Evil Zero. I was not, I wasn't, I didn't like it very much.

So I gave it an 11, which for me is right under the original Resident Evil. However, despite them being so close in terms of numbers, I would play the original RE any day over RE0. All right, Stu? 15. This is the worst one by mile. It's basically a piece of crap. I'll tell you what I like about it. and this is pathetic, so I apologize in advance.

The idea of picking up and putting down items that you leave out on the map all over the place and having to remember where they are, they stole that from Dizzy on the spectrum. That is straight up, Dizzy the Egg. So that kind of gameplay is very familiar. It's overly linear. The story is stupid. The monsters are stupid.

And the puzzles are stupid and frustrating because they're not based on any kind of real lateral thing. there based on remembering where you put things, how many things you're carrying. And that shouldn't be a fundamental part of the puzzles. It should be part of survival. This game's a mess. I got nothing nice to say about it except Dizzy stuff. And I like the fact that, you know,

there's a level in Unbrother Chronicles based on it that's better than the game. So go play that instead. I can't believe it. Listeners, if you had Dizzy on your bingo card, go ahead and check it. Stu managed to bring up Dizzy in our Resident Evil ranking podcast. Yep.

I'm going to keep doing it, too. Well, Stu, you and I are in total agreement here. I only picked up this game recently on Steam. It was a big sale, and I got zero and four at the same time, both of them for, you know, a pittance. Yeah. And I was excited about both just because I really hadn't played that much of either one. We'll get to, we'll get to the one in a minute. But when I mentioned, oh, I got zero, and everyone's like, oh, but now you have to play zero.

And I was like, but I want to play it. I bought it because I want to play it. And yeah, when I started playing it, I'm like, this, this really isn't, this is not endearing me, like, from the get-go. I feel like, you know, it has, right from the start, you get this big scrolling text, and this man is telling you, but where do the T-virus come from? And, like, I don't really care that much. I feel like a guy made it in a lab, right? Isn't that enough? No?

We're going to do more than that. And, I mean, I know this is a weird world, and it's full of weird ideas and, you know, strange locks that unlock stranger doors. But to me, I really had a hard time accepting that, oh, yes, it is 1998, and we're all going to get on a fancy train to go out to the mountains of a suburban town? Like, are we in Europe? Like, no one, no American city has trains like this. Did they ever? I mean, like... I mean, Rezion, I mean, a survival horror on a train is kind of a good idea.

Yeah. And, I mean, you know, there aren't that many games set on trains. You've got The Last Express, and there's Chase the Express, which got renamed something else in America, which I don't know what it is. And, you know, that Spectrum game, we were on back of a train. I forget the name of. You know, there'll be a whole episode about that at some point, I imagine. But this was just a misfire, total misfire. Could have been good.

It's sad. Yeah, you mentioned horror in trains. I just watched Train to Busan recently, and I thought that movie was very exciting. And, yeah, the whole time is, yeah, you're on this train. Like, do you stop the train? well, then you get more monsters. If you don't stop the train, then people on the train can't get help.

It was, it was wonderful movie. Wow. So we got 11, 15, 15, and Alex chiming in, Alex gives it a 13. So I feel like we've got our first real consensus. No one here likes Residence. So it's more like Resident Evil Zero, more like Resident Evil Zero.

Yeah. I don't know what, I mean, this sounds a bit gamer whiny, I know, but like, I don't know why they even bothered remaking this or re-releasing this. It's just hurting them in the long run. I mean, was there a big fan cry for Resident Evil Zero to get re-released? Was it, is it one of those games where everyone's like, because it's not accessible?

It's like, yeah, it's a hidden gem. It's amazing. It's a great game. It's amazing because you can't play it. So no one can actually verify whether or not that's true. And then they re-released it and you're like, oh, I see it sucks. Stu, I've got two theories for you, Stu. I'm fuzzling the timeline, but I feel like this came out around, around 2013, 2014.

And I feel like it came out because, number one, they were going to, they were doing the remake, re-release. So, like, they're already working with, working with, oh, let's bring back an old GameCube game. So they figured, well, why not what is? So I guess the tech was there already, wasn't it? Let's do both. Let's do both the GameCube games. But also, this came out in that period of time where it's like they really, you know, Resident Evil 6 had come out and sold millions of copies. We'll get to it.

But a lot of people didn't like it. And I feel like they were trying to course correct. Like, oh, we want Resident Evil to be scary again. Remember when Resident Evil was scary again? So they kept remaking things and re-releasing things. And every time, you know, I was in the press at this point, I'd always have these meetings and everyone have to tell me, oh, we're going back to the roots. We're going back to the roots.

It's going to be scary again. Like they kept saying it. And I feel like this was part of them saying, no, no, really, we wanted to be scary again. Don't forget about what this used to be like. And I feel like if you play this game, I don't think you're going to be scared. I think you're just going to be irked. Survival irked. Well, let's move on. Let's move on. Let's move on to the big one, I believe. Resident Evil 4 came out,

Two, three years later, quite a large gap. You look at the timeline so far, that's a long gap. But then again, much like Resident Evil 2, they were making this game, and they decided, you know what, this isn't working. We're going to make a new game, and we're going to change everything. And, yeah, Stu, the ghosts and the guy with a hook, he got cut. They cut the guy with the hook.

What the hell? Instead, we got giant statues and chainsaw men and bugs, and we're in Europe somewhere. They're speaking Spanish, but we're in Europe. Resident Evil 4. I guess the jury's still out. What do you say, Stu? Resident 4. Hit me. Well, it's great, isn't it? This was, when I was quite a lot younger, I didn't actually like Resident Evil because I did consider it kind of stiff and archaic, like I said. And it took me a while to actually warm up to it. But Resley 4 was when I picked up from some charity shop for about a pound for PS2. because I was like, why not give it a go at that price? And, you know, of course I just got completely hooked on it.

I mean, it's a total departure from what came before in almost every respect. The only thing that it really has in common is certain elements like the herbs and, you know, the movement being a tiny bit stiff. But now that you've got full 3D free aim shooting, the focus becomes less on evasion and more on extermination. though they do work around that by having large hordes of enemies and set pieces that lock you in small environments where you've got to sort of escape the enemies, as is very famously one of the first sequences in the game in the little village where everyone decides they hate you and wants to eat your face. I just don't even know where to start praising it.

I mean, everything feels great, the shooting feels great. This is gross, but bursting an enemy's head, so one of the plagues sort of over there. called, comes spurting out, is still visceral to experience. It's very satisfying. There's tons of things to use, tons of items you can use to help, you help you out, so you're never completely bereft.

The whole treasure system where you can find treasures, but you can also find sub-treasures that you can then combine with other treasures to make better treasures, is incredibly satisfying. With the whole thing, with the merchant, completely changes the way the game works and makes it fully focused on combat and shooting, with much fewer puzzles, though there are some still in there. They're a little bit obtrusive and silly.

Like the sliding puzzle that you find early on in the game, it's just kind of like, what is the point of this? But constant location changes as well. Really memorable boss fights, it's just great. So, you know, it's my number two. It's hard to top this. All right. Stu with a two. SGF, I know you've definitely revisited this game recently.

I've seen you do it, although it wasn't VR. Yeah. And I would just say RE4 VR is maybe the best VR game. I know we're not talking about the ports, but it probably is. But as far as the regular Resident Evil 4, so like you said, there was a long delay between RE games as they were figuring out what they were doing here. And I think that there was some apprehension towards what this was going to be because it was going to be so different from what we had previously, and you would ask, well, how is this a

Resident Evil game anymore? It's so different. And yeah, when it came out, it did turn out to be very different, not just in terms of the camera view, not just in terms of how the shooting worked, but in also terms of map design. It's very different from, say, RE1, where you're in this one contained house and you're going back and forth between rooms and hallways. The map design here is you're in an area, and then you're going to shoot the enemies in the area, find items, go to the door, move to the next area, and you're not going to backtrack much at all, really, until the game directs you to do that. So many big differences, and you would wonder, is this really still going to be a resin evil game? But somehow they managed to

keep the feeling, the tone, I think, of a resin evil game. The story's different. They start off by just saying, hey, you remember umbrella? Forget that. We're not doing that. This is different now. Yeah, it's Leon. You know Leon, but forget everything else that you were thinking this was going to be about. We're going to somewhere in Europe. Don't worry where that is.

It's somewhere deep in Europe in some forest. And Leon is going to have to rescue the president's daughter because he works for the president now. And we're going to have a brand new villain. It's not going to be zombies. It's not going to be a virus. It's going to be something different. Here is short Napoleon. Here he is.

And also here is a large man in a trench coat. Oh, did you think he was a tyrant? He is not. But we made him to make you think he was going to be. So there's a lot of expectations that get broken. And that's very risky. It's very risky to do that. But somehow Capcom just hits it out of the park with this game.

All the changes they make are great. the game plays fantastically. The tone is fantastic. Soundtrack is fantastic. Game looked top of the line for when it came out. It still feels real good today. I know that there are some complaints when people play it today, who haven't played it before, that you can't move when you aim. And that is a very specific decision that they made. So you just stop dead when you aim your gun. It's a very, very highly balanced game between what you're capable of doing and the difficulty. everything there just feels deliberate. And even though it's a longer game than the previous RE games, I feel like it stays fresh and stays interesting all the way through. I know some people feel like the game kind of gets old by the time you get to the island. I feel the islands still had a lot new to show you and was the point where you're really going all out with your maxed-out weapons and everything.

Story is corny as hell, but in the best way. Um, the characters are some of my favorite characters from NERE game. I feel the pacing is excellent, and it is something that I could go back to and play at any time. It's always fun. It's always a good time to play it. I would go as far as to say, Resident Evil 4 may be the best game of its generation, so I would put it as number one on this list. Hell yeah. I've got some friends who don't like this game, and they can all go to hell. I'll not on the record. Thanks.

Okay, so I feel like you need to say it's up front. I like this game. It's not that I don't like it. I just, when it came out, it was definitely not what I expected. And I also didn't play it that much when it was new. I was excited to see it. I was excited to try it, but it also was very different than when I was used to. So I didn't get very far on it.

I have revisited it since, but I haven't played it as much I played the others on this list. So I'm ranking it a little lower just because I don't have as much hands-on experience with it. I am still impressed by it. I feel like more than a lot of these games, even more than the first game, which kind of set up the template for survival horror. The reason you know, hundreds of companies tried to make survival horror games in the 90s was because of those first Resident Evil games. Yet somehow Resident Evil 4 is more influential and has a bigger

tail because it just, it just, this is an action game now and all of a sudden everyone who wants to make action games, like, oh, we should just do Resident Evil 4. Let's do Reson 4. And like everyone started making these games again. Can I interrupt you very briefly to make a possibly stupid point about that? Go ahead. I feel like this is one of the games that advanced game design in a sense. Like, once this came out, we started to get stuff like Dead Space, which is fantastic.

I love Dead Space. And it is the most blatant Rezi Four Rip-Off ever made. I like, the games adopting this standard made shooters better. It made third-person shooters better. It's like when Dark Souls came along and suddenly everything was good again. It just changed games.

It made them awesome. That's all I wanted to say, sorry. No, no, I think you're spot on there. And also, do the math. This is 2005. Dead Space, I believe, is 2008. So three years, that is plenty of time to look at a game and decide we need to do that.

Let's do it. And then three years later, they did it. I think it's a perfect timeline. Yeah. But I think that's part of the problem I have is that because I didn't play it as much when it was new, and I've played other games that draw from it, I feel like when I do revisit it, some things about it don't feel quite as familiar to me. So I think that, in part, lowers my evaluation of this game.

I still like it a lot, and I still want to spend more time with it. I am amazed at how tense it still is, even though you have all these new offensive options, even though you're outside a lot. You don't really feel trapped, but you've got all these creatures around you, and they're hard to predict. Like, the monsters are not really zombies anymore. Like, they're slow, but they're not really zombies.

They work together, and they do things you don't expect them to do. Sometimes they just shuffle to the side. It was supposed to laugh when they just shuffle to the side. Like, I'm standing over here now. I think that the depth of design here, it shines through because the game, very rarely, if at all, tells you what to do next. I mean, other than there's a spot on your map,

which is organically kind of brought up in conversation with one of the stupid telephone chats that you have or something, it lets you progress kind of in your own way and discover things in your own way. It doesn't say, shoot shiny things because there'll be a treasure there. It doesn't say, like, shoot down the crows because they'll have money on them. You think it might be fun to do that, so you do it, and the game rewards you for it.

And I respect the hell out of that approach, basically. So it's a seven for me. Again, I don't dislike it. I like it. I just, that's where I was when I wrote this list. I feel like seven. But I'm going to keep playing it. I'm going to keep going revisiting it.

And I feel like, you know, someday another version of me will rank it higher. But for today, for tonight, it is a seven. I mean, I can't take too much issue considering that I gave, Remaker 13, so... It's all right. For what it's worth, you know, Resident Evil expert, Alex, he gives it a one. So he is very much

on the page with you guys. So he says one. I'm two ones. Yeah. It's going to be hard to beat that. Yeah. I don't think so. Hello, my name is Jonathan Dunn, host of the O3C podcast every week, I'm joined by my best gaming buddies, Chris and Minty,

and we talk about the games we're playing, the games we love, and how they rank alongside our sacrosanct top 100 favorite video games of all-time lists. Deep dives into gaming mechanics, history and law, bound, all topped off with lachings of irreverent bribe, British wit, witterings, and wisdom. For details on the show and more,

head to 03C.games, and tune in every Monday on the HyperX Podcast Network. If you're a shrewd shopper, it's about to be your favorite time of the year. HyperX will be running massive sales for the holiday season. Get up to 50% off some of our most popular products, like the ultra-comfy Cloud 2 headset, the tough, responsive Alloy Origins mechanical keyboard,

and the fan favorite quadcast USB microphone. Sales will be going on at all major e-tailors, but be sure to head to hyperX.com and sign up for the newsletter to get the scoop on the biggest deals. Happy holidays from HyperX. For every episode of No More, Whoppers that you listen to, we will send you a 25 cent coupon for participating Kroger's. How many Kroger's are participating? None, but you're still getting the coupon.

And it's like 25 cents in 1985 dollars. Right. So today that's like... 28 cents. No more Woppers. Take that to the bank and smoke it. On the HyperX Podcast Network and no more Woppers.com. But then again, next is Resident Evil 5. I mean, five is bigger than four. Yeah, that's just math. You can't argue that.

again four years later is it still the best selling game oh it was when it came out it was it was capcom's best selling game of all time and i don't think it is anymore that's a shocking statistic it did surely monster hunter surely yeah yeah definitely i think one of the monster hunters has definitely passed it by now but when this came out in 2009 it did become capcom's biggest selling game of all their games and that mattered but let's talk with this game and let's, well, I don't want to say what's not bring it up, but I feel like probably we're not the best able to touch upon some of the more controversial aspects of this game. So, we can acknowledge them at least. Yeah, yeah, we could, we can talk about it,

but let's, let's just start, okay, SGF to start us off here, Resident Evil 5. What, how do you feel about it? What, okay, Resident Evil 5 is where the series lost me. I said that when I went to RE4, I was like, yeah, let's do this with this new direction. RE5, I'm like, No. No. I don't think this is my series anymore. So this is the first game on the list that I didn't actually finish. I only played some of it. I just wasn't compelled. And I think it was because they leaned so much harder into the action direction. They introduced the two-player aspect because games were adding multiplayer. You had to have multiplayer back then for your big budget game. It was just a thing everyone was doing. doing. So now there are two characters. If you don't have a second player, the second player will be controlled by AI, which is always a great solution. I know that they were trying to make more, make it more exciting. Like, say, if you go through your items, I think the game doesn't pause, but rather, enemies still keep attacking and you have to do your item management and transfer

between characters in real time, if I remember that right. Yes. Yes, I think that's right, yeah. Yeah, it's fast-paced. It's meant to be fast and exciting, and like a big edge on your seat roller coaster and it did nothing for me absolutely nothing i stopped playing the game i'm giving this a 13 okay stewart what's your what's your five i gave it four wow i very much enjoyed this game however i think everything you said is true um i think it is basically four with knobs on It's very much like four on steroids in a sense. Like Chris. Yeah.

Everything is amped up to ridiculous, absurd levels. It's a cartoon, essentially. But what you mentioned, that multiplayer, the fact that I can sit down on the couch with a mate, where you can both play, or is essentially a Rezi4, but together, that went a million miles for me.

I love co-op play. I love local multiplayer. Any game that includes local multiplayer, I'm going to give higher numbers than anything that doesn't, most likely. And the fact that there is this full-fledged AAA action game full of little secrets non-lockables hidden BSAA emblems, which I found all of. Very cleverly hidden at times. Like, there's one that you only know is there if you pay attention in the cutscene because it's only visible within this cutscene, briefly. I think that's great. I love stuff like that.

The secret treasures are back, hidden all over the place. If I can mark it down for anything, I think that the extensive turret section towards the end of Act 1 is garbage. I absolutely despised that. It did no place in a Resident Evil game. I never want to get on a turret ever in any game, more or less. But unfortunately, I had tons of fun with this. And as you mentioned, we're not the best ones to address this. But I enjoyed it despite the fact that it's, holy shit, it's racist as hell.

This game is ridiculously racist. And it's not just the stuff with the literal tribal people literally throwing spears at you. It's the fact that it plays on racist notions, like feeling unsafe in a, you know, in sort of black community. The opening of the game is you walking through this village and it's intentionally just like, oh, oh, look out. It's racist as hell. I had to say it. I'm sorry. And despite that, I managed to give it a force.

So to hell with me, I suppose. no you can think both things you can you can you can be you can be repelled by the messages contained within a game you know intentional unintentional but if you're you know if you push the buttons and you're having fun with the game then it's going to be a fun game for you it's what do you call a problematic fave for me unfortunately um i also had a really good time with this game uh i have indeed i've played this game much more than i have a lot of other games on this list I had a lot of it was just good timing. You know, 2009, this came out early 2009.

So my wife was pregnant, but not, we didn't have a baby yet. So during that time, you have a lot of time where it's like, well, my wife's not up to do anything. She's just going to go to sleep. But there's no, like, little human who needs my attention. So what am I going to do? Well, I've got a friend who's online and we're going to play this game together. So we play this game together a lot. I almost platinum this.

And the reason I didn't platinum it is because, as you mentioned, the goddamn turrets. I hate them. They're awful. And, you know, especially in this game because, you know, if you play this game enough, you get to unlock all kinds of crazy weapons. You get to unlock infinite rocket launchers. You get so strong, it's impossible to be defeated. And yet, there are stages where you must operate this turret and the turret sucks. And you can't just like, I've got a rocket launch on my back.

To hell with this machine gun. I'll just rocket launcher this thing. No, I can't do that. It's actively, like, I don't, there was that period of gaming where every frigging game had some kind of turret section it felt like. I mean, remember Dead Space's turret section, it's even worse. Mm-hmm. But the turret section in this game is absolutely stinking. It has no place in a Resident Evil game.

How is it scary when you're behind a minigun turret? How can anything possibly scare you? Like, yeah. Or even unnerve you. It's ridiculous. So, because of all that stuff, I actually, I'm going to, giving Resident Evil 5 a 6. Oh, hell yeah.

So, I really enjoyed it. I've had a lot of, I've had a lot of fun with it. I definitely, you know, a lot of the cultural content rubbed me the wrong way. Even at the time, even before we were reading the press about it, me and my friend were playing it. Here in Japan, we're kind of like, this doesn't seem right, you know, we felt it. We felt it. I feel as though, maybe I'm off the mark on this, but I feel as though the only reason it's accepted is because it's already out? Like, if they try to pull that now,

it would be like, hell no. No, people would be real mad if Capcom tried to do that again. That does bring up the question of, would they ever try to remake this game? I mean, if you remake it, can you mend it if you remake it? It's not beyond salvage, I don't think. I think it could be done. One of the takes that I remember reading, I forget who said this, but they said this game would have felt a lot different,

and it would have smoothed over a lot of those edges if it had starred Josh and Shiva, Josh being the other guy, like the other local. Like, if it had starred two locals, dealing with a problem in their country, it would have made a big difference. But instead you've got Chris, you know, Chris is this impossibly, he's gotten impossibly huge somehow.

You know, look at Veronica Chris and look at five Chris and tell me, like, why did he eat the other Chris? Like, what happened? I suppose it's worth, it might be worth mentioning and maybe cut this if it's getting into edgier than we want to get. But, I mean, Resident Evil 4 is also kind of racist, right? With you going into your scary, foreign, you know, spooky, like Spanish village full of, that also feels kind of racist to me. I don't know.

It's not quite as on the knuckle as five is because, Five is just, that imagery is just inherently, like, incredibly problematic, but four seems like similarly racist, I think. That's not a defense of five. It's a condemnation of four as well. I think, Stu, that's probably what happened with five. I think we're not going to get too much, because I feel like I want to do an episode of five someday, five and six, because I feel like it's well, count me in if you do, man. Yes. I think what happened was, honestly, I think because of the way four worked and they figured, oh, five, let's just do four, but bigger. And they figured, let's just go somewhere else and let's go to Africa

and they didn't realize that the optics would be different. You know, going to somewhere in Europe and fighting a much of nondescript peoples who are just, they're just poor. I mean, they're, like, it's still like punching down, like literally Leon will punch these people. He's punching down.

But it's just, it's different than having Chris go to a impoverished country in Africa and he's beating them and blowing them up with grenades. Plus, it's, you know, it's the difference between cop and heavily decked-out military personnel, I think. Yeah, that also was part of it.

Yeah. But we'll table that. I think I want to do a whole episode on five and six at some point, because we've done, we've done one, two, three. We did a whole four. I want to do a five and six episode to talk about the action Resident Evil's. If you do that without me, I'll hold it against you for the rest of your life. No, no. It's a co-op.

We've got to do a co-op. Alex chiming in, he gives Resident Evil five a ten. so I guess he likes it twice as much. Interesting. Wow, 13, 4, 6, and 10. Another broad range of opinions on that one. Well, let's move on to the next game, and the first dedicated handheld game until they ported it to home systems, Resident Evil Revelations, 2012, originally on the 3DS. Are we sort of rolling both versions into one for the purposes of this hoodnani?

Yes. Or are we speaking specifically about the 3DS version? Okay. No, it's basically, I mean, you know, it's got nicer textures, but it's essentially the same game, so. Yes, yes, it is. Revelations, hilariously misspelled on the package, but it is a whole game. It's a whole game. You can play it.

Let's go with Stu this time. Stu, what do you think about the Revelations? I only played it briefly on the handheld. I played it most on my PC when it got an HD release. I liked Resident Evil Revelations, and what I liked about it was its simplicity. I got a kick, a collect-thony sort of kick out of going into every room and scanning it, that scanner thing. Mm, the genesis.

Find, yeah, finding hidden items like that, I thought was genuinely fun. It made me feel like I was achieving something when I was like, ah, cool, more ammo, more herbs, you know. The game has been heavily streamlined in every respect for the handheld, and playing it on HD version does feel like you are playing a 3DS game because it's very small, it's very compact. Though it does clean up nicely. I have to say, it's an spectacular looking game,

even today on 3DS, it looks outstanding if you play it in 3D. But not a lot of people are going to be doing that. So focus on the main game. I think it's a fun campaign. I think it's much better than you'd expect it to be. I think it has a very cool sense of like boss designs as well. There's not many of them, but they are quite memorable. I think that first boss that you fight in this very interesting complex, multi-story area

that's also full of other weird wiggly enemies. I don't even know what they're called. And, of course, there's raid mode when you finish the game, which is expanded upon greatly in the sequel, which we'll get to, but that's a fun way to get to have more gameplay going on it. Also condenses down action resi into straight up nothing but shooting. You know, it's like Route 50 enemies, then you can leave. I dug it. I give it a 10.

I think it's very mid-table. I don't hate it. any means, I don't think I would ever play it again, but I enjoyed finishing it. I thought it was nice. I liked the setting in the old ship, which is something they've really done to death now, to some extent, but I thought it was nice. I enjoyed the silliness of it. I like mowing down ridiculous numbers of hunters in the flashback sequences and towards the end of the game. And I like the character, whose name I forget that you, the male character who's with you almost the whole time. Parker. I thought he was cool. And, you know, I'm just

going to say it, you get, you spend the whole game looking at Jill's bum, don't you? Like, they knew what they were, they knew, they knew what they were doing. They even have a character say, me and my sweet ass are on the way at one point. It's a very ass-focused game, isn't it? You know, I should call it Resident Evil rear end or something. You know, I'm sorry, I know it's crass, but it's true. Stu, there's a character, I think it's Jessica, I believe her name is, and she's hanging out. She is wearing this sort of skin-tight outfit, Except for one leg, one leg and like one ass cheek is out. I don't know how, who dressed her that way?

I don't know. SGF, what do you think about the revelations? Well, about the, oh, by the way, I appreciate you spelled the game the correct way on the Google list. Yes. I'll just something like that happen. I can't believe that. It was a time period. It's the same with the Capcom, you know?

Capcom, yeah. As far, I mentioned with RE5 that that game. kind of turned me off for the series for a while so it's going to be a consistent thing for a few games here because this is from that period where I'm thinking I don't think this is the series for me anymore so I only played some of revelations and that was pretty recent it was the PC version what I played of it I thought it seemed pretty good it's something that I might be interested in playing more of unlike RE5 or some of these others I thought it controlled fine I thought the scanning mechanics

seem like it could be interesting, like a little, just a little addition to the regular gameplay. Jill's back is the main character, and everyone likes Jill. It seemed like something

I might be interested in continuing to play, but I didn't play all that much of it, and I kind of wish I did now back when it was new on the 3DS, but I just didn't

because during this particular time period, I just wasn't really into the series that much. so because of that I'm going to give this game a 12 a little bit above RE5 for me not because I didn't like it

but just because I haven't been able to get around to playing through the whole thing Can I really chime in on something that you just said about when it first came out on the 3DS because I think this is worth noting

this was quite this was a bit of a poster game for the Circlepad Pro I believe because this supported it fully without it without it the controls were quite awkward in my experience, because I tried both ways. With the Circle Pad Pro, you're essentially playing a twin, you know, normal action resi

twin stick, but before then, most people would have been playing it with more like Save Resident Evil the Mercenaries, that 3DS game, which we're not covering, which did not control great in my experience, so that's probably worth mentioning at least so it's on the record, I don't know. Yeah, I did forget that that was the time period where Nintendo wanted to push the CirclePad Pro, which was kind of a ridiculous peripheral. What a stupid picture really are. Yeah, if they wanted to do that, just make a second analog stick when they made the thing.

I don't know, it was weird. It was weird. On a side note, when I did try out Revelations on the PC, I tried it on the Steam deck. So that's obviously the real handheld to play this on. Yeah, I got mine recently. I haven't played any Resil on it yet, though. Games run surprisingly well on it. I'm quite excited.

I'm going to put one of the next games coming up on it, and I'm going to play it to death. I'm really excited about that. I'm looking for I still have no deck I have a steam deck keychain which I think is very cute but I don't have a steam deck yet yes it's true

this man has no deck sorry you had to do the Ghostbusters reference no that's very timely Stu okay ghosts again there we go yes that's what I'm saying

you're on fire here I know I'm very much I'm very much on the line with you I enjoyed this game a lot I feel like it is a weird it's in a weird place and that again

And this is a time when they kept saying, we're going back to horror, we're going back to horror. And they still want it to be action. They still want to be horror. So it's kind of this sort of weird middle ground that you are exploring this one space, but you keep jumping between different characters, which kind of breaks the illusion that you're trapped there, because you're just, you're going to other places. And I think because it's a handheld game, they very wisely made these sort of episodes, which I think were brilliant. And when you finish an episode, you start a new episode, it tells you what happened in the previous episode, like a TV show. about that, yeah, yeah, yeah. What I think was just really smart.

Yeah, it lets you play the game piecemeal and get your rank up that way as well, which I like. Yeah, you can always replay earlier stages and get more, get higher stuff. And I think that all... Having said that, didn't four and five do that as well, or to some extent. Yeah, four had axe. But they had like a chapter end screen, yeah. Yeah, but they didn't do the recap like... No, did not recap events or anything like that.

Yeah, five had no recaps, but definitely five had little segments that you could, you could, very easily go back and play again, because when we were going for the platinum, we definitely would go back and play certain bits of the game over and over and over again to get up, you know, get S-Ranks on them, whatever. They stole that from Alone in the Dark on the PS3.

Wait, the remake? The idea of making it, the idea of making it episodic and having recaps and stuff, that they got that from Alone in the Dark, so thank you Alone in the Dark, you crazy, crazy bastard. Well, Resident Evil ever stopped stealing from

alone in the dark. Never. But I and Alex, we actually are agreeing here. We're kind of on some big page here. We're both giving it 11. So I have 11 and Alex has it 11. Can I also note that when SGF was talking about the game and said, Jill's back as the main character, Diamond laughed.

Yes, Jill's back and Jill's back. It's perfect. It's perfect. The puns are on part. Okay, so we all agree, Revelation's good stuff, maybe not great, but good enough. Let's talk about Resident Evil 6, also 2012, just a few months after Revelations, I think it even... Now we're talking. I think Revelations even had like a...

a trailer for Six embedded in the game somewhere because they really wanted everyone to play six and they did it's the second best selling game in the series it's huge

they sold a lot of copies I bought one I bought one certainly and SGF so you said you were so on the outs so what happened when Six came out

okay so I guess I need to ask do you allow cursing on this podcast yes okay so I didn't actually play this when it came out because it seemed like a continuation of what I didn't like about Resident Evil. So I only played some of it recently to just get a taste of it to get an idea. And holy shit, what fucking trash.

This is incredible that Capcom made their big swing to make this enormous, apparently 20-hour, AAA game. Yeah, it's long as hell. Yeah, to compete with the big moneyed AAA releases, this was their attempt to make Resident Evil that. And I don't, what they turned it into is something that feels almost completely unrecognizable. Yeah, there's zombies. Yeah, they're shooting. Oh, hey, there's Leon and Chris as well. But, man, I, it's, it feels incredibly bad.

Now, I've heard people say that if you take the time to learn the game, that it actually has a pretty in-depth melee system where you can combat role, yeah? It has really in-depth combat in general, but I'll talk about that when it's my time to talk. I've heard people say that, but from what I played of it, I was just kind of like mouth agape at what this was, and I've had a very negative opinion about it. It carried over the things about RE5 that I didn't like, such as the action-focused, but turned up even more so, the AI partner still there.

They were still going all in on that direction. And I understand why RE5 sold so well. So this was basically the epitome, the ultimate version of this vision of Resident Evil. And it completely turned me off. It wasn't anything I wanted to continue with. So that's why I'm giving RE615. this is at the absolute bottom of my list by significant margin. All right.

So that's how you're going to feel. What's say you? I gave it 11. For reasons I'm going to try and elucidate. I like trash. I like things that are stupid and kind of bad. Now, as I mentioned before, any game that you can play in full corp is going to score better than any game that doesn't. And this is a game, a 30-hour-plus game, that you can play.

entirely in split screen. I respect that. I like the fact that the game throws a million different things at the wall and sees what sticks. You've even got a dark soul-style invasion mechanic going on, where you can take... An online player can become one of the zombies. No point. Nobody cares about that, but it's there. You've got, I think, believe four campaigns, each of which is roughly six hours long. There's a lot of game there. I respect that, again. The combat system is incredibly... You can do all sorts of diving and quick shots and crazy melee stuff. The problem is, you never need to.

It's not been designed to need any kind of skill besides hiding behind cover and shooting. Leon's campaign is essentially condensed Resident Evil 4 slash 5 except shit. Chris's campaign is essentially Gears of War with not a trace of... not a trace of joking and that's what it is and Jake and Sherry's campaign if memory serves is just kind of bad stealth

mixed with more bad shooting and terrible snowmobile sequences that made me and my friends so angry that we just dropped the game you don't know seriously it's like Dragon's Lair or something you don't know where you're supposed to drive this snowmobile to not die but

what I like about Resident Evil 6 is the fact that it's a load of crazy or bollocks. Like, that's genuinely appealing to me. I like things that are completely mental and misguided. And that's what this is. It's a box of fun that I can duck into, laugh at the absurdity of it. And there's, that's, that, that means more to me than something like Resident Evil Zero, which is just dry and bland and boring. Resi 6, anyone who puts it at 15, says it's the worst Rezi game. My response to that is, that's entirely fair enough, because it really is very, very bad.

But I still kind of like it. I've gotten positive memories associated with it because when it first came out, I was staying with the friends in Scotland and we were all hype for it. And then it dropped, and initially you're like, wow, this is amazing, there's so much game, and then it slowly

sinks in that it's a load of old shite. So, yeah, got a soft spot for this one, despite it being absolute rubbish. So it's 11 from me. All right. I have it as a 14. I did not care for this when it came out. I had the same friend, the same friend who I played all the five with.

We were ready to play six together, you know, online, but we just, we didn't really enjoy it. We didn't have fun with it. We were, we kept trying different campaigns. And each campaign was like, I don't like this was try another one. I don't like this, just try another one. It is, we'd never click with us. You're right in this, well, it's full of too many ideas. They definitely, you know, someone should have come in and killed half the ideas.

I just, you're constantly, yeah, like, nothing ever stops, nothing, you're never resting, you know, it's like, when everything explodes, what's an explosion, you know? Like, when you're in constant danger at every moment and everything around you is falling apart and this, the city is poison and the sky is lava and the, like, I think, I think the secretary of defense turns into a dinosaur. I mean, I, am I crazy? Oh, my God, the T-Rex is the dumbest thing. Oh, my God. I just, yeah, I just, no, I'm sorry. I feel like I understand what you're saying, Chris, I understand what you're saying, Stu, and I can see why there's definitely ways to enjoy this. I've seen people who stream it and they're basically laughing at it, not with it, but they're having a good time. They're still laughing. So I may come back to this one day and try and get through it, but for now, to me, it is still not as, I don't know. I'm putting it right there with zero. I just did not have a good time with it. So I'm 14. And full disclosure, Alex actually ranked all the Resident Evil games.

He went all out. So he actually ranked Resident Evil 6 somewhere in the 20s. But for the purposes of this list, it's 15. Alex, he did it wrong. You got to do it again. You scored all of the Resident Evil games. Yeah, yeah. Did he put six over Guyden?

His full list was, yeah, he did, starting with 15, Outbreak File 2, Outbreak, Darkside Chronicles, Umbrella Chronicles, RE6 was 19, excuse me, and then Raccoon City, dead aim, resistance, reverse, Gun Survivor, Umbrella Corps, and then Guyden at the very, very bottom. Guiden is the worst, huh? That's what he said. Hmm. Now I can't throw in my copy of it you today's seeing the fire because it's digital.

I know, seriously, folks, it's a good read. Yes, absolutely expert. I look forward to the fact, the book doesn't cover this era of Resident Evil, so I do hope he writes under the book where he gets to talk about the decisions that came into making these games and how they were felt. And, you know, whether my theory is correct is that when these games sold very well, people didn't like them, that they decided, oh, no, we have. have to, we have to make more scary games again. Speaking of which, let's go on to 2015, so three years after six.

You wanted to keep it 90 minutes, and we're only just about like three quarters of the way through. Hey, I, I feel like we're picking up speed. We're picking up speed. We're picking up speed. It's, it's a train. It's a train. We're going, we're going downhill now.

Resident Evil Zero. No, Resident Evil, Revelations 2. Revelations 2, 2015, came out on just about everything. Seriously, just a massive. Even the Vita. It did. It came out on Vita. runs like crap

Probably No it does Okay I think it's Yeah I think it's your turn against Stu To tell us about Revelations Two Okay

For love of don't get mad This is my favorite Resident Evil game ever made I absolutely love this This is my one I put this at the very pinnacle of the series Wow Wow

Everything this game does I think is almost crafted To appeal to me specifically Again, full game co-op, but not just co-op this time, it's proper co-op, because one of your characters directly assists the other with their mechanic. Now, it has been a while, but Moira, the new character, Moira, she assists, I want to say Claire. Yes. By shining her flashlight.

She doesn't generally use a weapon. She has a flashlight. She has like an aversion to guns as part of the story. You shine a flashlight in an enemy's face. Eventually, it will become stunned, at which point. Claire can use a crowbar to do incredible damage to it. So, Moira is essentially evading and assisting Claire, who's doing all the shooting, all the combat.

And when I played that with a friend, I assumed we'd want to switch up because it might get a bit boring, not shooting anything in a shooting game. But no, we stayed in our roles the whole way through, had a great time. Now, the other side of the game, Barry and I want to say Natalia, it's been a while.

But Barry fights a lot of enemies that are straight up invisible, and only Natalia can see them. and her ability to point doesn't make them visible, it just warns the other player where to shoot, and it makes for a very tense experience because if those invisible enemies get Barry, he's dead.

You don't just take damage, they're instant kill. Now, some people wouldn't enjoy that, but we got very into it. The stealth elements, I thought, worked better than usual. Because they were so laid out, there was no confusion.

It's obvious what's going to happen in any given situation. If you foul up, that's on you. I enjoyed the enemies having weak, points that weren't just their heads, they would appear all over their bodies. And if you got them wrong, it made things a lot more stressful and difficult. If you shot out the wrong limbs, the enemies would go crazy, basically. You got a full campaign episodically released that was long and fun. I enjoyed every aspect of the campaign. You've got post-game modes that

are genuinely enjoyable. There was one where you played as Natalia, and there was another one which just completely escaped me. But I enjoyed that too. where you're in some sort of village helping out people or something like I don't remember how it works there was a Russian chap in the main game who you help out in one of the DLCs that I enjoyed it's still action resi

so it's still very much a shooter but it leans into that makes the shooting more fun, gives you better weapons that you can upgrade and make more powerful the mixing and combining is all very quick and very simple to use the locations are well designed with lots of

hidden secrets and collectibles There are BSAA emblems come back in some form. There are Kafka things you can only find by shining the flashlight on them. Lots of replay value there. And I haven't even mentioned the number one reason why I love this game so much, which is Raid Mode. They ramped up the Raid Mode to insane proportions. You can play as almost any character you'd want to play from the entire franchise.

It's pure fan service. And yes, it is essentially just repeating the same content. to incrementally fill a bar up to level yourself up to get access to more better weapons. Constant stream of better weapons, new skills you can equip your character with to tailor your play style to kill more enemies across something like 55 raid mode stages.

Me and my friends played that mode until our fingers fell off. Hundreds and hundreds of hours in raid mode. It's the best. It's my number one. It's the perfect package. And the story is great. It is a great and insane Resident Evil story, and I will stand by that,

has one of the best endings to any Rezi game as well. I love it. Absolutely brilliant. The only thing I don't like about it is you can't do proper head shots. You can shoot enemies in the head, but the heads don't pop, so boo to that. Yeah, they're like bubbles. They're like bubbles on their head, and you shoot the bubble off the head, and then, like, they don't, you know, they lose their precious bubble.

I think because they reused a lot of the models from Lost Planet 2, the enemies behave the same way as the Lost Planet enemies, essentially. It's very blatant because it's most blatant when you equip taunts, because all the torrents you can equip are straight out of Lost Planet 2. But yeah, as you can tell, I get very enthusiastic about this game because I genuinely love it from the bottom of my heart. Hey, if it's your one, then it's your one. And I want you to tell me why it's your number one.

Yeah, it rules. So, SGF, this can't be your one, so this is your two then. Obviously. But this is at the tail end. of the style of R.E. that I just didn't get into. And I mean, after everything Stuart just said about it, I really don't have that much to say. I only played some of it just to try it out, to get a taste of it, see what it was like. And it just wasn't connecting with me. It was, I like Claire. You know, I enjoy, she's one of my favorite RE characters. I just wasn't connecting with the style of gameplay in the early going. Once again, you have two characters, which was the style. Once again, I had the AI controlling Mora. Just nothing I was doing in that early part was really clicking with me at all, which I felt was a shame, and that maybe I should go back to it to try it again at some point.

But just, I think a lot of how I feel about Resident Evil Zero actually also applies to this, because I felt like it was quite dull. there just wasn't much of anything interest happening. Granted, this is only the early part, but I just didn't see much of a reason to continue, as was the case with many RE games of the time until 7 came out. Which is why for

Revelations 2, I ended up giving it a 14. Understood. To that. So this is a game I have not played that much of, but the portions that I have played I have actually really enjoyed. I really

like the dynamic between Claire, and Moira, like you said, Stu, because of the gameplay stuff. But also, they just have a fun rapport. You know, these two women are not cops. They're not. I mean, Claire is some sort of authority. She's working for, I think, Terra's save, or she's working for some kind of agency, so she's got business.

She knows how to handle a gun. It gives the game the line because Terra doesn't have to end with Orest. Oh, God. That opening cinema, my mouth, my mouth hung open. I couldn't believe what they were. what they were telling me. But, yeah. Well, Moira's my, I'm not going to interrupt, I'm sorry, but Moira

is my favorite Rezi character because she just cuts through the shit. Like, there's a bit where you go into the factory area and it's all just like blood and rust everywhere, obviously. And Moria just says, an excuse to swearing. She says, of course this factory would have to be a fucked up factory. And I'm like, yeah, hell yeah.

Of course it's a effed up factory. So you just say it. You know, what a legend. Yeah, I think when you rescue her, She says something along the lines of what in the moist fuck is going on. Like, she... Yeah, she does. Yeah, she's great.

But yeah, I just, I like their dynamic. And I like that part of it. I think the monsters are kind of, I didn't, I didn't care that much for the slimy, fishy, fissioning enemies. Even me, you were in a boat. So I got they were going for seafood. But the Revelation 2 enemies are like, the ones that I've seen so far, like, they're guys with a bunch of stuff stuck in them. And they're kind of freaky looking. And I'm like, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm,

disturbed by this. I don't want, I don't want these men near me. Get away from me, sir. So my score is a little on the low side for now, because I haven't gotten that far, but I'm giving it a nine in that I really want to go, I really want to get more of this down. And I feel like in the future, this will go up, in my opinion, because I, so far what I've seen, so far what I've seen, I really liked. So as for Alex, he is closer to SGF. He's calling it a 12. So not one of his favorites. favorites. I think that might be the one with we've got the most different opinion on

the one and of 14. We go from one to 14. That's pretty different. Gifting is hard. Bombas makes it easy with socks, underwear, and t-shirts that feel good and do good. They feel good because they're thoughtfully designed with the softest materials. And they do good because for every item you purchase, Bombas donates another to someone in need.

I miss particular about the way I dress. as I am about the gifts I give, and Bomba's everyday basics give me a way to do both perfectly. With premium materials like pima cotton and ultra-soft marino wool and bold, modern colors and designs, bombas apparel looks as good as it feels. And Bombas adds an extra layer of meaning to feel good. It's not just so their clothes are soft and comfortable to wear, but they come with the satisfaction of knowing that you've done a good deed. After all, socks, underwear, and t-shirts are the three most requested items and homeless shelters,

and Bombas donates one item for every item you buy. That's more than 75 million items of clothing so far. That's a whole lot of comfort and a whole lot of good. So give the good this holiday season with Bombas. Go to Bombas.com slash retro and use Code Retro for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash R-E-T-R-O, Code Retro, for 20% off. Bompas.com slash retro, code retro. Man, I hope no one in my family hears this commercial, and it'll spoil a surprise.

So, let's reinvent the system again. Let's go to Resident Evil 7, 2017, a.k.a. Biohazard, aka, yeah, both games in both regions have both names. That's kind of an amazing localization, I got to say. So, SGF, did this game brought you back in then? Did it win you over? Yes. I was interested in this immediately when they announced it. I remember seeing the trailer where they first showed the game.

And I was thinking at first, are they making a new condo? I love condemned. And it wasn't that, but it was almost that. It was pretty close, actually. So seeing that they were intending to go much more in the horror direction that they decided that what they were doing leading up to RE6, we're not going to do that anymore. We're going to go back to horror. It's going to be first person. It's going to focus on being creepy. This was all very interesting to me. And so I tried out the demo when it came out. And the demo, I think, is worth mentioning, because, Because it is actually pretty different than the main game. The demo really is reminiscent of PT more than anything else in that it just, it tries to be very creepy. It has tries to have a very scary tone to it. You don't do any fighting in the demo. There's a lot of atmosphere. It's funny because the full game ended up being pretty different than that.

But for a while, I was playing that demo and trying to find its secrets. Because if you remember, there was a thing about a fake hand in that demo that people were trying to figure out what its secrets were and how to actually get the good ending. It was initially a VR thing called Kitchen, wasn't it? Yes, yes. And they, okay, so Capcom hyped that up by not actually showing any footage of it. They just showed footage of people playing it and screaming while they were sitting in a chair. Eventually, they released that demo. I have played it.

It's very short. It's not all that spectacular. but it was a fun move on Capcom's part to refuse to show any footage at all from it and just show people being terrified as to what it was and it got you wondering as to what that could be. And then they said that, oh, actually the full game of this is Resident Evil 7 and it comes out, it starts off very similar to the demo in that it's slow-paced and you're wondering what's going to happen.

Then it gets more fast-paced, gets exciting. You end up with this cast-of-form. characters, which are one of my favorite cast of characters from any RE game, being the Baker family. As far as villains go, they are top notch. I was always interested when they were on the screen. I was sad when they died, actually, because it meant we wouldn't be seeing him again. I felt that the whole thing just kind of captivated me for most of the game. I feel like up to a certain point the game is an all-time classic.

The certain point I'm talking about is the point where you decide who gets the vaccine. After that, the game does go downhill a bit. I still think it's good, but it doesn't reach the highs as it did previously. I think that the style of the game

was something that Ari greatly needed. And of course, that is going to, that opinion is going to matter greatly on whether or not you enjoyed the direction Ari had from five to six to the revelations one and two um but seven was much more of what i was interested in what i wanted to see i was curious about how they would handle first person uh and i thought that they handled it very well um combat could be a little clunky sometimes but i mean that's kind of more or less

expected for resident evil at this point i think r e7 had a tremendous amount of dLC and it was it was good DLC too. There was a lot of good variety to the DLC. I played through all of it all the different modes, played through Ethan Must Die. Had some of the best, one of the best DLC modes I've seen in a game,

that being End of Zoe, in which you play as Joe Baker, Jack's cousin who lives in the swamp and punches monsters. Suplexes molded. I love it. I absolutely want to see him return in a future game. I don't know if he will ever see that, but here's hoping that Joe Baker returned someday. I feel like of the new

R.E. Games, like, aside from the very old R.E.7 is the one that I have the fondest memories of, is one that I could go back to and play at any time. And I feel like it's, I mean, it's not that old, but I feel like it has held up very well in terms of its tone and atmosphere. The only downside maybe is that the main character, Ethan, was kind of a blank slate, just normal guy. Nothing really special about him, though that changes a bit in Village. As far as RE7 goes, he's just Joe McNormal guy, as opposed to the previous protagonists

that had a bit more charisma to them. But in seven, it's really the villains who have the charisma this time. R.E.7, I gave it a three. I think it's one of the best R.E. Games. All right. Stu, what say you? I gave it a five. I like it a lot. I had a great time with this, and I was very surprised that I did have a great time with this, because I thought that the change to first person and to, let's face it, streamer-focused kind of gameplay in that original demo, where, you know, you're supposed to react to it. It's supposed to jump out of people.

skin and you watch people you're supposed to watch people jumping out of their skin but then when I played the full game and I found myself placing a ox-shaped crest into a doorway or something I was like yeah this is resi it very quickly goes from that intro into screaming madness once again when the character Mia starts attacking with a chainsaw I was in like from that point on this game is absolutely disgusting with its gore in places like way goes way further than any of the other Resi games did in my opinion

exploring in first person adds a whole new dynamic to looking for things you have to open drawers, crouch down, look on the floor you have to actually search rooms now to find things instead of just hotspots and I think that's great I think it adds a lot to the game it makes you feel more accomplished when you look under a fridge

and you find some coins that you're going to then use to unlock some kind of bizarre gun upgrade. I think the variety of locations is good. I think that they prey on different fears very cleverly, like the giant bugs in Marguerite's section. The boss fight with Jack in the garage is an all-timer, as far as I'm concerned. The boss fight with Marguerite in the house where she's crawling all over the place is

terrifying, Jungi Ito style. Absolutely dug the hell out of it. I suppose the only disappointment is that you don't really fight Lucas, but you kind of do with the deal. See if memory serves? Yes, you do. That's Chris. That gets resolved in the DLC, which I also enjoyed, by the way, despite being quite perfunctory.

Yeah, loved this game. I thought it was great all the way through to the ending, which is completely insane. I gave it five, loved it. Good fun. All right. Well, by sheer coincidence, three plus five is eight, which is where I'm putting this game. I haven't given this as much time as I want to yet. I definitely, it took me a while to get used to the idea of having.

a first-person Resident Evil game. The demo kind of confused me a little bit, but I was intrigued, and I just haven't given it a full look-through that I really, I'm comfortable with. So I'm kind of hedging my bets a little bit by putting it towards the middle of the list, because I am very intrigued by it. I've had friends tell me that, oh, no, you need to finish this one, you need to finish one, go back to it. So I am curious about it, but yeah, I think, as SGF mentioned very briefly, the Ethan stuff

was like, who is this guy? I kind of was a little bit turned off by Ethan. So there were a lot of things that were just kind of pushing me away for it at the time. And also, 2017 was a complicated year for me. So we won't get into that. But so this is much like Revelations 2. It's like, I want to spend more time with this. I haven't, but I will.

So eight. Alex, who I'm sure beat this, he gave it a four. So Alex ranked it very high. But really we're all in the same zone there. Three, five, eight, four. That's pretty close. We should probably briefly comment that. that this is a series that has now been reinvented twice successfully,

which is kind of crazy to think about. It's weird that it had to be reinvented. That's kind of strange. They keep changing it up and realize, oh, wait, no, we need to go again. We need to change again. Well, it's like they made sort of three games, main games, and then changed it up, and then three more main games, then changed it up again.

It's interesting that they're doing it that way, I think. Yeah, and we'll see what happens next. I know they've, I was just at TGS this year, and they were already talking about how this new DLC is supposed to be the end of the Winter's family story. So does that mean they go to the Baker story or did they go to somewhere else? Will Resident Evil 9 be something completely different but also in first person? Who knows? But that's what they're saying.

They're saying this is the end of the winter's family at Residential Village. But we're not a village yet. It's time for the second remake. The remake 2, Resident Evil 2, 2019, all the HD consoles and NPCs. Pretty big deal when it was announced, pretty big deal when it came out. People talk about it saying it's a pretty big deal. Stu, is it a big deal? I didn't like it that much.

I'm sorry, I gave it a 12. I didn't have a good time with this one. Okay. It does the same thing as the original remake, I feel, which is that it marries state-of-the-art visuals with some more gaming mechanics that don't really work for me. Like, I realize that this is more my problem than the game's problem, but when I shoot a zombie in the head, I want that zombie to die.

Hmm. I did not like the fact that you could really not reliably kill zombies, even if you had enough ammo. It felt deliberately wasteful, and it felt it could once again get yourself in the situations where you really couldn't progress. And that is your fault, but at the same time, I didn't like it. I thought it was clever to have it the way that they adjusted it aiming so that your aiming gets more precise, the longer you sort of stand. still, which means you put yourself at risk in order to get a better shot. I thought that was clever. But then when I realised that you couldn't really even properly kill zombies,

it didn't really seem to be any point in fighting them at all. Which I guess is the point, but if that's the case, then why give so much ammo? I don't know. Mr. X is the big thing everyone talks about, and his entrance is an all-time moment, I think. It's absolutely spectacular. but I got caught by Mr. X on purpose because I wanted to see what cool thing would happen and he just punches you and you lose like a quarter of your health and this is on normal and I was like oh so he's not really that scary because on the one hand he just is easy to

kind of dodge anyway on the other hand he can't really kill you and I should already have low health so why should I worry about him before that point I spent every time I heard his footsteps, I would just be like, okay, I guess I'm not doing the goal. I'm not doing the mission now. I'll just have to go backwards, because I assumed he would kill me, but he doesn't. He's just there. Didn't enjoy the puzzles with the plugs and that. Just thought that was tedious. Finished it eventually using the DLC that gives you Infinite Minigone and Rocket Launcher, because I wasn't enjoying myself. And to be honest, I didn't even enjoy myself using those. And if you can't enjoy a game using Infinite Ammo, minigone and rocket launcher, then I feel like your game has kind of failed.

But I respect it in the same way I respect the original remake, and I would like to go back to it sometime, because I feel like I probably could get over my issues with it and have a good time. But it just didn't work for me. It felt like a collision between action resi and survival resi that didn't quite come off. I just feel like when you've gone through about six different games where you're encouraged to shoot first, hide later, that being thrust into something there's also third person that also has third person

aiming controls but has a completely different set of priorities is a difficult adjustment so it's on me, not the game but yeah, it's a 12 for me. All right, that's a 12. SGF, please.

All right, so remake two, of course, highly anticipated because remake one came out and people liked it and had been asking for years when the second game was going to be made. And it just never happened.

It's interesting to think about if the second game was remade in that style what it would have been. But, of course, that isn't what actually happened when Remake 2 did come out, as they were going for taking the premise. Like, where Remake 1 is the same kind of game, but everything is polished to a mirror sheen. Remake 2 is taking just the premise and the characters of the original game and making a new game from that, taking the maybe slower-paced, more horror tone of seven, but giving it the over-the-shoulder camera of action-RE games, and basically making a slower-paced, more horror-themed action-R-E game, trying to combine these two elements. And I think they did an excellent job of it. I feel like kind of the opposite from, from Stewart on this, about how

the resulting mixture of these things came off. Um, I thought that the slower-paced, trying to be more accurate with your shots, kind of an every shot counts sort of thing with the zombies, I felt was very effective. Whether or not you should try to kill the zombies, maybe that will take more ammo to do, or maybe you should try to shoot them in the knees to take them down, maybe kill them with the knife, which in RE2 remake is overpowered. That's, that was probably a mistake, but probably a bug. But, yeah, the knife in that game really tears up those zombies. It is the kind of thing that really appears much more scary before you know how everything works. And Stewart mentioned Mr. X, and that is an example of that. Mr. X, not that big of a threat on his own.

He can be a threat if you're running from him and then there's more enemies around. Like, say, if you're in a hallway, there happens to be Mr. X. And say, if there's one liquor in that same room and same hallway, that's a, That is a big problem. But before you know how he works, he is very menacing, he's very ominous, and a tremendous upgrade from the original Mr. X, who had only appeared here and there in sequences where he was not that difficult to get around or to kill the idea that he's now taking the role of nemesis and that he's following you from room to room.

And there's no real reliable way of actually getting rid of him until you actually make progress in the game. I thought was very menacing. And this really kind of bit me on my second play-through of the game. I first played as Claire, then I played the B campaign as Leon, if I remember that, right. And I activated him too early because when you go into the, when you're in the police station the second time, if you go in, if I'm remembering this right, the west wing of the, of the, if you go to the Star's office, the second time around, he appears at that point. and I went there like basically the first thing I did which brought him into the map and that made my second play through much harder because now he's always there and if you know what you're doing then you don't do that until you're just about done but I felt that Mr. X was menacing I felt that they did a really good job basically the best version of a stalker type of enemy I think that has been in a horror game I felt that the combat they nailed just right. I felt that the new versions of Claire and Leon were charming. There are some changes

to the settings. They, if I remember this, yeah, well, the lab is a bit different. It's like now called The Nest. It's more streamlined than how it was in the original game. If I, if I remember right, I think the sewers were dramatically increased from the original game. Sewers are very small in that original. They really built that out. the police station. I think the changes made to the police station were excellent. I said that the original RE2, that the police station is an all-time classic environment. And I think they did an excellent job in, well, one, recreating it for this new engine

and two, changing certain things around, just to maximize the amount of time that you stay in there, how you get around it, how you have to unlock doors. And eventually, when you leave the police station seemingly for good, you do go back, to it if you find a little secret to go back into, say, Wesker's office and get an additional item. I thought that the police station, the first half of the game, is the best half of the game. Drops off a little in the second half, but not that much. I had a tremendous time with it from beginning to end. DLC, okay, not as good as RE7, but okay. I feel that remake two is the best of the remakes, and I think that for a lot of people, that's going to go back and forth between

remakes one and two, just due to the style, do you want the old survival horror style, or do you like the new one better? In the end, I feel like remake two was the better of the games, and I put this at number two. All right. Two for you, 12 for Stu. I gave this game a five. I really was impressed by it. It took me a while. Again, I had to do catch up. I caught up with a few years after it came out, but I was really impressed by the changes they made. I was impressed by how scary it felt,

kind of at all times. I can see, yeah, I can see, I sort of agree with both of you in that, yeah, it's kind of unfair that zombies never, you're never sure if they're dead, they keep getting up, but it's also kind of like, but that terrifies me? Because I'm the kind of player who likes to clear out of space and then know that I'm

okay to go back there, and this is the kind of game, like, well, it's never safe, sorry. So that really freaks me out. So, yeah, I'm really into this one. I thought was very good, and I do want to spend more time with it and get more into it. And I'm also really intrigued by, I believe it's called Daymere, like the fans who were making, they were going to make their own Resident Evil 2 until this came out. And like, okay, well, we'll just, we'll call it something else.

And I definitely also want to play more of those games, too, because it's like, it's someone else's version of a Resident Evil 2 remake, which intrigues me as well. Meanwhile, Alex Alex also gives us two So rather high all around Except, oh man, Stu, it's Mario World over against Stu Oh my goodness Yeah, maybe it is, yeah Does Stu not like Mario World

We had a Mario Ranking episode And three of us loved it and Stu gave it a 12 So it just kind of Okay And it's like it okay It's just the worst 2D Mario game Like in the main line I played it again recently

to see if I liked it better and I think I liked it a little bit worse. So to stand by it. It's all right. We don't have to re-litigate it. Let's move on. to another remake. A year later, they said, you know what? You like two?

Let's do three. Here's remake three. I don't think they don't have nemesis in the title. They didn't put nemesis with a three in place of the E. They missed opportunity there. So, remake three. I guess it's your turn, SGF. What happened with remake three?

Re-three-make. Okay. Remake three. So a lot of, I noticed a lot of negative feelings online about remake three due to its, It's a much shorter game, much more streamlined. There are environments in the original game that are not in this one, like the clock tower. The Dead Factory at the end is replaced with another nest, like an RE2.

And the Choose Your Own Adventure bits were removed. So a lot of negative feelings, but I greatly enjoyed remake three. I guess maybe the way I'm looking at it is I'm not thinking about what's not there, but thinking about how well they did what is in there. Yes. And I thought that remake three's movement, just the movement in combat was an upgrade over two. I think they did a fantastic job with the Dodge move, which it gives the game an entirely new feel of completely different feel about how you are controlling Jill and how you are fighting these zombies, which makes her feel much more capable than Claire and Leon do in the first game, in a remake game. two, which is appropriate, considering

Jill is much more experienced, so she should come off as being able to handle this better than those two would be able to. And I kind of wonder what that means for remake four if Leon is going to be just like a super soldier or something, but that's for remake four. For remake three,

I greatly enjoyed how to control. The environments, I thought, looked good. The Raccoon City streets looked good. I do think that it would have been nice if the clock tower was there. though, I didn't feel like it was that big of a loss because the clock tower is a very short segment in the original game. It's not big at all. It's just kind of a short interlude. The main environments are really the city streets. Then you have a section with what clock tower. Then Carlos in the hospital. Then you're in the park on the way to the Dead Factory. Then the Dead Factory is the big finale. So I felt that those cuts were not that big of a deal. I feel actually because it's so short and streamlined. This actually maybe makes it the most replayable of the modern Resident Evil games

because you can you can bang out a replay of this in one session if you want. It's really not difficult to do. And I think it's still fun to do that. The characters, I think, get an upgrade. I do like this version of Jill. I think this version of Carlos is much better than original RE3 Carlos. I do like him more. Maybe Nikolai doesn't get so much screen time in this as in the original. I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure. But I did like what they did with Jill and Carlos at the very least in this. But I think one of the big controversial parts is how they handle Nemesis, the big boy, the big enemy. In the original game, he is impressive and that he can follow you from room to room. In this game, it's much more scripted. Like,

he'll appear and then you'll run away from him. And it doesn't last long he doesn't there's nothing really dynamic about him it's just more that he will appear to chase you out of a certain area and then you'll run into a cutscene or something so the stalker element that mr x has isn't here people were hoping that would be upgraded even more with remake three it wasn't nemesis isn't really a stalker anymore so much as much as he is like a just something that appears every so often to make you run I do agree that that's a little disappointing, but I didn't feel this was a game breaker for me. I still feel the game just feels tremendous to play, is a lot of fun, so much so that I did

end up playing it through its hardest difficulty, Inferno, which was really hard, but still I felt worth it to play, though when you actually get the final nemesis, final nemesis is a bit ridiculous. He's a last boss where if you make one mistake, then you're dead. So it's a little bit ridiculous at that end fight. But for most of the game, I thought that it was fun enough and controlled well enough to justify the high difficulty. So this, again, this is an opinion that I feel is different than a lot of people online. I feel the consensus online tends to be, wow, wasn't Resident Evil 3 remake? A big disappointment. It's a good thing they're not going with that team for RE4 remake. And I feel, no, it was good. It was a lot of fun. I liked playing it.

it's the most replayable, I think, of the modern games. I feel it gets a bad rap. So I'm giving Resident Evil 3 remake a 5, just under Remake 1 for me. All right, five. And Stu? I won't say much, but I got a kick out of it for the same sort of reasons, much more than I liked Remake 3. I gave this as 7.

Okay. I feel, as SGF said, the way it was streamlined and focused and confident in being an action Rezi game essentially meant that it was just a presentation of some genuinely spectacular set pieces like the whole opening where your apartment block is being annihilated by Nemesis is fantastic even though it is not much more than a glorified cutscene it's proper high octane action horror stuff it's very very impressive and then the main game as you say is so short and breezy that I find it difficult to dislike it um every area is cool like there aren't any badly designed levels or anything and they're all quite bespoke so they stand apart so you can compartmentalize them and memorize them individually and get good at them individually uh the boss battles again nice mixture of spectacle and tech gameplay uh and then the ending where you just pile drive a massive rail gun if memory serves through his face is extremely cool um

yeah, I think this is a really, really good remake. I liked it better than remake two, and I liked it better than remake one. I would do because it's action. I prefer action to survival horror, but yeah, I think this gets a very bad reputation. It doesn't deserve. All right. Well, I fear I may be leaning, I may be leaning too far in that direction of that reputation, because I didn't, again, much like remake two and a lot of the more recent stuff, I haven't given this as much time as I want to. I did find, the streamlining kind of a turnoff just because so much of it just felt, it felt so rigid. I mean, I do appreciate the combat, and I think the combat is good. I just, I feel like much like the original Resident 3, to me, like, because you lost that sense of space, because you were just going through the city, I feel like this one has the same problem. I was like, well, we're just going from place to place.

I don't feel like I'm anywhere. I'm just, you know, the hospital comes close, but, yeah, I don't know. So I'm actually putting this fairly low at 13. I don't hate it, though. I really don't. And I do want to play more of it. I just, yeah, it didn't click with me the same way that the remake 2 did. Alex seems to be on my side.

He says 14, so he's even less enthralled by that. But again, we got five, yeah, 13, 14, 5, 7, very widespread there. If you're a shrewd shopper, it's about to be your favorite time of the year. HyperX will be running massive sales for the holiday season. Get up to 50% off some of our most popular products like the ultra-comfy cloud two headset. The tough, responsive alloy origins mechanical keyboard, and the fan favorite quadcast USB microphone. Sales will be going on at all major e-tailors,

but be sure to head to hyperX.com and sign up for the newsletter to get the scoop on the biggest deals. Happy holidays from HyperX. All right. It's after midnight here in Japan. Pan, which means it's actually officially Halloween, so what better time to get to the last game, the spookiest game of all, possibly, Resident Evil Village. It's a village, it's not eight? Is it, is it officially eight, or is it not eight? Is this, as it is. Yeah, the V-I-I-Ledge.

Yes, yes. That's eight, right? Okay. It is. I forget whose turn it is. Stu, why don't you go? This is my three, I think this is a great game. However, I don't think that's going to be necessarily agreed with because I do think it has problems. It's extremely gamey, this one. The atmosphere is not really there. It's very much like a shooting gallery with hidden secrets, treasures like in four. I think it's very good, but it is also very disjointed. The actual main village and say the area where you go to, I think it's called Castle Bienven, is an extended horror section involving a giant baby that doesn't really fit in the rest of the game. Now, it's very cool and it's scary as hell, but after you've done it once, it's never different.

There's no way to play it differently. There's no way to distribute it differently. You always have to do that section in the same steps. The only thing you can skip is there's a door code that you'll already know because you've played it before. Now, I know I'm criticizing a game for replay, but replay value is an important part of these. games, I think. Resident Evil Village is not a long game. It's short to the point that when I finished it for the first time, I immediately restarted it and played it again, because I don't do that except with games that I

really, really like, and I really, really liked this. I think it leans into Resident Evil silliness. It leans into overpowering you. Like, after the first few hours, you don't feel any fear of anything because you aren't in that stupid baby house anymore, and you're have a million bullets. The Duke, I love the Duke, he's very cool, and it's nice seeing him in the DLC

in a different kind of role. And what else can I say about Village? Yeah, I dug it. It's insane, it's dumb. It has a lot more in common with Regis 6 than I'd like to admit. But it was fun. I enjoyed the hell out of it,

and I'm thinking of doing a third or fourth replay after I beat the DLC, so I loved it. I have a great fun with it. All right, three is high. How about you, SGF? I guess I could figure it out by doing the math myself, but go ahead. Tell me which number is. Well, so Village, of course, follow up to seven. And this is like the bigger version of it. Like you can tell this is much more ambitious instead of the one swampy setting. Now, we have a bunch of different settings. We have the village, the castle, the house, the reservoir, the factory. So it's a lot of different things. You don't spend too much time in any one place. And it's pretty. impressive about how they have so many different kinds of environments. It's also kind of funny in that this results in certain characters not getting as much screen time as you thought.

So, like, Lady D was kind of advertised as being the big villain, but it's like, oh, no, she's actually only the villain for the first level of the game. Now she's gone, which I think surprised a lot of people. I enjoyed it. I mean, I enjoyed seven, and eight is the continuation of that. We still have Ethan. Ethan gets more interesting in this game. He does get, I think, some characteristics that he didn't have in seven to, I think, by the end of the game, well, when I first started playing the game, I was wondering, why is it that we have Ethan in another game?

What's so interesting about him that we're going back to him? By the end of the game, I think they justified it pretty well. I did enjoy the likens. I feel like the Likens are probably the most intimidating enemy that's been in a Resident Evil game. I mean, eventually you figure out how to fight them. But when you first encounter them, they seem overwhelming. They're really fast, maneuverable, agile. There's bunches of them at once, and they can mess you up real quick.

You eventually learn how to fight them. But at first, I think that this just seems like a tremendous upgrade over the stock enemies you have from previous. games like zombies or Gondos or the Moldman, just scarier, more intimidating enemies. I enjoyed the format of the game where you go into a location such as the castle and then you go back into the village and you've unlocked more of the village, you explore that, you go to the house, when you're done with the house, you go back to the village, unlock more of it, explore more of it, and you keep doing this throughout the game until by the end, you've unlocked all the gates, you've gone in all the houses, you've explored

the whole thing. I do like how it kept going back to that at the end. And then at the end, you play as Chris and it basically blows up the village as you're now going through this village that you've gone through many times before. But now everything's exploding. You are heavily armed. Everything is just like big mold is bursting out of the ground. You're sending in airstrikes. And it's just I felt was a really nice feeling climax to all this time you were spending in that village. The story, I think, is goofier than most Resident Evil games. Whenever I try to explain what the story of Village is, and I get into this part about,

well, you see, there's just this giant mold that apparently saves the consciousness of dead people, and there's a woman who's trying to pull the mind of her daughter out of it, and she needs your daughter to put the brain in and it's it kind of when you think

about the story it just it does I can't even really start to explain it and it never makes any sense

and it just reminded me of it because now I started playing through the DLC Shadows of Rose

and it starts off immediately by reminding you about this dumb dumb plot about mold

saving your consciousness for future reference so I'm going to see how that turns out

but I haven't finished that yet. I greatly enjoyed playing through Village. Stewart said it felt pretty short. I actually felt that it sort of was wearing out its welcome a little bit by the time I was getting done with Heisenberg's factory.

I don't know. It just kind of felt like, yeah, I'm about ready for it to be done around now. But fortunately, there wasn't that much more to go. I did prefer how maybe more focused RE7 was, and I did like the Baker family

more so than the lords in Village. So, R.E.7 beats this one out for me a little bit. I still greatly enjoyed both, but I would lean towards more towards seven. For R.E. Village, the most recent game, I gave this one a six. Six. Okay. Six, three. Unfortunately, I am so retronauts that this is, this game is so new, I haven't played much of it at all. I've barely touched this game. Indeed, as we're recording this, the Gold Edition just came out with a brand new third-person mode,

which is something I'm really looking forward to trying. I know I saw, I saw you play at SGF a little bit, and, uh... Yeah. Um, I think it's, it's, the implementation seems okay, but I still feel like it, it's a game that was designed to be played in first person. I mean, you can play it in third person. I just don't think it's as good. Okay.

Well, I'm, I'm looking forward to trying it. So for now, this is, I would say this is a placeholder ranking because I ranked everything else, and this ended up as 12. But honestly, I haven't played much of it, so it's kind of like, I, I'm pretty sure it's better than Resident Evil 6 and Resident Evil Zero, but I don't think it might, it's probably not as good as Revelations yet. But if I play it, who knows? As far as Alex, Alex, in absentia, says 9. So, we have all the numbers. Give me a moment here, and I'll do some quick math, and we will get our answer as to what is the greatest Resident, game of all time.

All right. All right. The math has been completed. We have our list. I'm going to start from the bottom for dramatic. purposes. At the very bottom with... Remember, the lowest score wins here, because we've all ranked them from number one to number 15. Across the board, no surprise. It's Resident Evil 6, 55 points, that is dead last.

One point difference. Resident Evil 0, 54 points. So these are not great games. Sorry. Resident Evil Revelations right now, 44. It's currently occupying very low on the list. Similarly, remake 3, 39 points, very low on the list.

Revelations 2, 36 points, getting a little higher, but still not a lot of points there. Resident Evil 3, the original, at 34 points, considerably lower. One point higher, Resident Evil 5. Actually, we have a tie. We have Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil Code Veronica are both tied at 33 points each. Village comes a little higher at 30. Then we have Resident Evil, the original game, at 27 points. Resident Evil 2, original Resident Evil 2, at 22 points.

Just one point higher is remake two, but it's tied with remake one. So we have a tie for third place. Both remake one and remake two are tied for third place. One point higher than that, Resident Evil 7. And surprisingly no one, Resident Evil 4 comes in at the very top of the list. At a strong 11, honestly, I'm dragging that down with my seven points. But yeah, there you have it. We've got a full list of Resident Evil games.

And I guess the good news is that most of the high games are readily available on modern systems. I guess the hardest one to find at this point would be Resident Evil 2, Classic Edition, but the bulk of the top of the list is available on modern platforms, so yay, Capcom. But then against, so is the bottom the list.

That's definitive now, so yeah, don't even bother complaining. Right, this has been mathematically proven. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, this is, it's just simple science, and I'm afraid that if your opinion is different from this, and I'm afraid they're now officially wrong, All right. Well, we've got to wrap this up because it is after midnight here in Japan. It's Halloween. I've got to sleep and then I got to spook somebody. So before we go, however, he's not here. I just want to mention Alex. Thank you very much for contributing to all the data you've given us. Thank you very much for writing your book. Itchy tasty. I think it just came out in paperback. You can find Alex on Twitter at CVX Freak. And I'm sure he will tell you about, you know, which games are better and why Dinus, uh, Dinna,

Dino Crisis is not as good as any of these games. SGF, please tell us about you and your internet travels. You know, I just play video games on the internet for some reason. YouTube channel is super great friend. Twitch channel is super great friend without a D because I am bad at SEO, but that's what that looks like. So I'm playing Shadows of Rose right now, finishing up October, playing horror games.

And in the midst of that, you played... All Superman 64, so I have to ask you, where is Superman 64 on this list? Is that better than any Resident Evil game? I'm going to say no, you know. I do like to try to see the best in bad games. There was nothing to see, unfortunately. There was no gem in the rough there. With Superman 64, everyone criticizes the bit where you fly through rings, but that's fine. It's the bit after that that's horrible. Yes, it's the actual levels between No one mentioned that to me You have seven seconds to do something You have no idea how to do it

Yeah, everyone talks about the rings And if you fail, you have to do the maze again If you fail Yes, no one talks about The actual levels between those rings No one talks about how there's no checkpoints No one talks about I like finding three rings

It's fun Well yeah, I mean It turned out to be the most fun part of the game Crazy Stu, where are you on the internet People can find you You can find me on Twitter That adds tubercarbara where you'll find me less, what's the word, pleasant than I am on here.

I'm very rude on there sometimes, and I apologize for that. That's what Twitter is for. Yeah. And I have a book coming out from Press Run called All Games Are Good, which is a compilation of things I've written about video games with everything nicely spruced up with a big clutch of new stuff as well, and it's going to be a lot of fun. I don't know when it's coming out yet, though, so keep an eye on that, and I'm sure I'll inform it eventually.

I read Mary Hell. Thanks. Thank you. In the meantime, this has been Retronauts. We are a community-supported podcast, so please, if you would, go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. For $3 a month, you get all our episodes, one week early, higher quality audio for $5 a month, which is just $2 more than three. That's just, again, this is simple math here. Athetically small amount of money, really, isn't it? Yeah, if you pay annual, it's even less. Not only do you get two extra episodes, exclusive episodes every month.

You also get a weekly column and a podcast from me. I write the column, then I read it to you. That's how it works. I've already covered several Resident Evil games in that column. I'll probably do one again pretty soon because Resident Evil Zero turns 20 in a matter of weeks. So look forward to that. I had no idea. It's coming up very, very soon.

It came out the same year as Remake. Speaking of columns, I am collecting those columns into a book for Press Run just like Stu is collecting his work, so look forward to a more detailed announcement about that. But, yeah, all these columns been writing for now. I've been writing the column since 2020, so I've got three years' worth. That should be a pretty big book.

And speaking of me, it's me again, you can find me on the internet, Fight Club, F-E-I-T, that's my last name, C-L-U-B, that's a noun or a verb you're familiar with, and Twitter, Twitch, I have a different name on Instagram, but you'll find me. It's time and fight.

It's easy to find. And I fear that's it. We've ranked everything we can rank. So I guess we'll just have to come back next week and, I don't know, rank mascot platformers on the GameCube. I don't know. Step off. That's my territory. If you really want to get daring at it, why don't you rank the game.com library?

I don't think anyone's done that. It's unmapped territory. Are there even 15 games? There might not be. I mean, I'm doing the Sonic Ranking Hootnanny at some point, so... Yes, I look forward to that. That's sure to be a disaster. All right, but for now, this Hoot Nanny is closed.

Good night! Bye-bye. Bye. Thank you.