General Biohazard series is synonymous with tech advancement

[Yama]

Just a random thought, but I really can't think of a series that shows a bigger leap in technology than Biohazard as a series. From pre-rendered to 128-bit rendered PSX to DC, or the incredibly well done REmake on GCN essentially following up a 32-bit era mere years prior. Gaming is in an odd place, I enjoy quite a bit and find the good in this gen, but the advancements made in the past are stark. A game can come out 10 years apart now and the old title can hold up, hell even be better in many ways. To think this was just THREE years apart is actually quite insane:



Feel free to share some other comparisons within the series or even gaming in general, we can make an exception in this thread.

 

[Caffeine Addict]

I agree. They hold up well today, especially RE1. I even think the graphics in games like Silent Hill 3 are just as stunning, as the attention to detail is there in every room. This was for me, the golden age of horror games, and they were so atmospheric. The genre was all but spoiled once they became shooters. That isn't to say you still couldn't take in the pretty scenery, but the emphasis was not about being scared anymore.

Now gaming has gone so far, it looks like you're really there. The countryside in Days Gone is beautiful, and this is one game I long to see a sequel to. But I think some people tend to think this is a distraction from the gameplay as a whole; I always see people throwing up comments like "movie game", etc. Which while true, is just stupid to say.

 

[Burton]

I remember when I played the classic trilogy back in the day on the PS1 the graphics blew me away, and then when I played Code Veronica at launch on the Dreamcast I was so stunned at how much better it looked, which is funny because now Code Veronica doesn't look that great lol.

The graphics really have been cutting edge and pushing the limits of each generation and it has been a privilege to have been on that journey since the beginning.

 

[Caffeine Addict]

CV is pretty underrated. Besides the amazing 3-D graphics, I just find the game so eerie, and it is like the other games, in that you play two characters for one epic experience.

Alfred was insane and his Norman Bates type persona is laughable, but that just added to the game's notability as being spooky. The same with Steve and his voice.

Personally, I find RE4 and 5 are overrated AF and not creepy whatsoever, other than a few sections like the castle and the place you go inside with the Regenerators. I feel that even RE6 gets a lot of unfair hate as well, because it has just as much action sequences as 4 and 5. So anybody saying 6 has 'too much action' needs to think about what they're comparing it to.

RE3 though, has to be the most underrated of all RE games. I see people mentioning its short length. It's just the same length as completing at least one scenario in RE2, to be honest.

I meant the original. Not the 2020 version.

 

[Duty]

REngine has been great and they are always improving on it with new features and updates have been released aplenty.

This is playing on PC though, cannot speak for console versions.

RE7, RE2R, RE3R, RE8 are very well optimized and has lots of fun tinkering with the settings and getting a buttery smooth +100 frames per second. This was especially mandatory with RE8 because whilst I did not like the story or the heavy emphasis on combat, you can at least make the combat really fun if you know how to calibrate the graphics to suit shooter-type gameplay.

Then RE4R came out and kinda crushed my hopes a little bit, as the game, whatever opinion you may have of it, was not very well optimized on PC and suffered from huge performance dips and caps due to poor coding. I found this very strange considering how well RE2R was optimized, as both games were developed by the same people.

I am hoping this was just one dirty marker though and RE9 is well coded. Capcom did announce prioritization of PC gaming going forward so I am fairly confident that RE4R was just a bad one-off.

Again, this is just my experience from playing on PC, console and iPhone users could have a completely different experience. Based off of all the data and opinions I have gathered it seems best to play RE8 on PC, as you can at least make the gunplay fun with a high refresh rate monitor and good GPU. Console users do not have that luxury, unfortunately.

 

[Yama]

REngine has been great and they are always improving on it with new features and updates have been released aplenty.

This is playing on PC though, cannot speak for console versions.

RE7, RE2R, RE3R, RE8 are very well optimized and has lots of fun tinkering with the settings and getting a buttery smooth +100 frames per second. This was especially mandatory with RE8 because whilst I did not like the story or the heavy emphasis on combat, you can at least make the combat really fun if you know how to calibrate the graphics to suit shooter-type gameplay.

Then RE4R came out and kinda crushed my hopes a little bit, as the game, whatever opinion you may have of it, was not very well optimized on PC and suffered from huge performance dips and caps due to poor coding. I found this very strange considering how well RE2R was optimized, as both games were developed by the same people.

I am hoping this was just one dirty marker though and RE9 is well coded. Capcom did announce prioritization of PC gaming going forward so I am fairly confident that RE4R was just a bad one-off.

Again, this is just my experience from playing on PC, console and iPhone users could have a completely different experience. Based off of all the data and opinions I have gathered it seems best to play RE8 on PC, as you can at least make the gunplay fun with a high refresh rate monitor and good GPU. Console users do not have that luxury, unfortunately.

A few hitches aside like you said with RE:4, Capcom really has treated us on PC like first class which I can't express enough gratitude for. I suppose now it's becoming more mainstream after 2020, but it sure was nice to get simul releases that took advantage of our hardware when so many Japanese companies failed to do so.

Edited the images in the OP btw, sorry about that, they were broken.

 

[Duty]

CV is pretty underrated. Besides the amazing 3-D graphics, I just find the game so eerie, and it is like the other games, in that you play two characters for one epic experience.

I remember when I played the classic trilogy back in the day on the PS1 the graphics blew me away, and then when I played Code Veronica at launch on the Dreamcast I was so stunned at how much better it looked, which is funny because now Code Veronica doesn't look that great lol.

Whilst the jump from Biohazard 3 to Code Veronica was impressive graphically, Shinji Mikami does deserve some criticism for making graphical leaps too fast. The problem with Mikami is that he has a hard time understanding consistency. Instead of waiting for PS2 to release and developing CV with that hardware in mind, he felt the need to rush to Dreamcast and get an RE game out ASAP. The result was lackluster sales and a largely overlooked title.

See, the vast majority of RE fans were on Sony PlayStation, if he would have just been patient and waited just a little while longer, they could have utilized the complete depth of PS2's hardware, released Code Veronica on that platform, and sales would have been many many more times what they were and the series would have continued to thrive on PlayStation with continuous graphical and mechanical improvements, whilst keeping the series roots intact.

Mikami then doubled down and something even more stupid: he decided to make RE GameCube exclusive, and every game released on that platform before 4 did poorly sales wise, which led us to the over the top action thriller that was RE4 which, in the long term, caused much damage to the series and made it almost completely something different than what it was, and has hardly recovered from that till this day.

So yeah, Mikami's business blunders and dumb decisions are directly responsible for the series metamorphosing into something different, there has been some improvements recently, but Mikami being impulsive and sidelining Sony caused lots of long term damage.

Shinji Mikami and Kenichi Iwao could be classified as the 2 prominent founding fathers of Biohazard. I like to make a joke that Iwao made Biohazard and Mikami broke it.

 

[Burton]

It would have been interesting to see how Code Veronica would have turned out if it was originally developed for the PS2.

 

[Caffeine Addict]

Someone knows their zombies.

Resident Evil 2 Remake Fan Figures Out The Origin Of Every Zombie

Like many of the zombies that Leon and Claire shoot at, my mind is blown.

www.thegamer.com

 

[Yama]

I do very much miss the identity certain engines in the past had, especially nowadays with so many going the way of UE. For instance seeing DMC3 and it feeling oddly similar in tone to Outbreak, only to find out it used the OB engine (very underrated engine). Even proved OB could easily have been 60fps, but that's another topic for another day.

 

[Duty]

For instance seeing DMC3 and it feeling oddly similar in tone to Outbreak, only to find out it used the OB engine (very underrated engine).

One of those occurrences that was not "part of the plan" but actually worked out great. MT Framework engine was not quite fully operational at that time so they decided to use Outbreak Engine for DMC3 instead as a plan B. The results were spectacular.

More proof that great things usually happen by accident not design.

 

[Carlos]

It would have been interesting to see how Code Veronica would have turned out if it was originally developed for the PS2.

I purchased the X (PS2) version, and it was a poor port. Not bad, but also not perfect. Dreamcast is the defacto version, anyone who bought it is lucky. I mean, the game is crisp on Dreamcast. Not just the framerate, but what they did with the graphics. There's just something about it. And even the fog helped the overall presentation of the game. It's kinda like buying Tales of Symphonia for the first time on GameCube, but subsequent re-releases got botched. The PS3 version of ToS was significantly downgraded, not a whole lot, but I mean, you notice it. Like the prison stage, the fog is gone. Framerate dips here and there.

I do very much miss the identity certain engines in the past had, especially nowadays with so many going the way of UE. For instance seeing DMC3 and it feeling oddly similar in tone to Outbreak, only to find out it used the OB engine (very underrated engine). Even proved OB could easily have been 60fps, but that's another topic for another day.

QB was tailored to DMC3 which is why the engine feels good. It's kinda like taking RE engine and putting it into DMC5, worked out pretty well.

 

[Yama]

One of those occurrences that was not "part of the plan" but actually worked out great. MT Framework engine was not quite fully operational at that time so they decided to use Outbreak Engine for DMC3 instead as a plan B. The results were spectacular.

More proof that great things usually happen by accident not design.

I actually didn't know that bit of history, makes sense given the time frame. I remember more so being surprised that the game was great again after DMC2 nearly killing the series.

MT had a beautiful start with Dead Rising though, which for me was the sole reason I kept my 360 early on.

 

[Burton]

I purchased the X (PS2) version, and it was a poor port. Not bad, but also not perfect. Dreamcast is the defacto version, anyone who bought it is lucky. I mean, the game is crisp on Dreamcast. Not just the framerate, but what they did with the graphics. There's just something about it. And even the fog helped the overall presentation of the game. It's kinda like buying Tales of Symphonia for the first time on GameCube, but subsequent re-releases got botched. The PS3 version of ToS was significantly downgraded, not a whole lot, but I mean, you notice it. Like the prison stage, the fog is gone. Framerate dips here and there.

QB was tailored to DMC3 which is why the engine feels good. It's kinda like taking RE engine and putting it into DMC5, worked out pretty well.

Yeah Code Veronica back when it came out was amazing on Dreamcast. For me it was the pinnacle of that old classic gameplay style. I revisited it when it came out on the PS2 and haven't played it since as I'm hoping for a remake and don't want to spoil it.

 

[Yama]

Yeah Code Veronica back when it came out was amazing on Dreamcast. For me it was the pinnacle of that old classic gameplay style. I revisited it when it came out on the PS2 and haven't played it since as I'm hoping for a remake and don't want to spoil it.

CV truly does hold a special place for me, especially being the Dreamcast fan I am. I’ll never forget those early promo images (pink pants Claire) and how that FMV intro blew away even non gamers. Ironically its best feature, being fully rendered, is the one that made it age worse. I’d love to see a fully realized remake one day.