Making good progress through Resident Evil Zero so far, though I'm finding that it's oddly exhausting to play. Not that it's not enjoyable, mind — it's that it involves a surprising amount more brainpower than a lot of modern games.
As I wrote in my piece on the subject over on Rice today, Resident Evil Zero absolutely has its roots in classic adventure games — and I'm talking properly old-school adventure games of the text parser era, not just point-and-clickers. Limited inventory space? Yep. Ability to drop items? Yep. Often find yourself running around the same five rooms over and over in the hope of being struck by inspiration on what to do next? Absolutely yep.
With so many modern games making real effort to lead you by the hand through their narrative without really putting up much resistance — a lot of titles these days are more tests of endurance and patience than skill or intelligence — it's actually rather refreshing how often Resident Evil Zero has been making me genuinely think. Not about the narrative, of course; it's Resident Evil and is, of course, absolutely delightful B-movie nonsense. But in terms of what I spend my time doing in the game.
Who will I send ahead to scout out the next area? Who should carry what? Should I take Billy and Rebecca together or go separately? Can I afford to spend some ammunition on these enemies, or should I just trust in my abilities to get around them? Do I need to go that way? Is it safe to open that door? Is this thing I've been carrying around ages really useless or have I just not found what I'm supposed to use it on yet? Should I still find the giant spiders genuinely horrifying at the age of 40?
It's good stuff, but after a long hard day and a couple of hours battling through the mansion basement, it's time for a little break, I think. I've not challenged today's Trackmania Track of the Day, after all, so I think it's probably about time I took a look at that…
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