Resident Evil: Mother Nature's Revenge...?

Owing to a couple of things, this actually takes place a while after I last played Resident Evil. Thankfully, I remember the events of the game well enough at this point that such a situation is not a death sentence.

First order of business, I check that room in the zombie hall, next to where the western save room is. It is unlocked by my key, and it has some real treasure. A magazine, some shells and a broken shotgun. The last one would be very useful if I were playing as Chris right now, but since I already got the shotgun thanks to Barry. Come to think of it, why did they make that possible? It's such a weird change between characters.

Lot of running here, running away from the zombies in that hall, then past the zombies in the next hall so I can get the one hall here without zombies. Reenter the previous hall, take out the zombie blocking the other unentered room here, before exiting and reentering. Because zombies are made alert by gunshots. They get really stuck on walls if they can't see you though. Or even if they can see you. This allows me to enter a room with a tiger statue, in which I need to find gemstones to put into its eyes. I don't have the gemstones yet, so I'm going to reload and come back later when I have gems. Or the other one, because I found the blue gem in the remains of the statue I pushed from the upstairs half of the dining room.

I clear out the other big hallway in the eastern side of the mansion. Which gives me a poor choice of camera angles. Nothing like wondering if the slow-moving melee enemies off-screen are walking towards you or not. This does give some credence to the theory that this was intended to be difficult, as opposed to the one where people who can't figure out tank controls lack spatial awareness. This only opens up two doors for me now, one leading south into a bit block of nothing and one interior, which has the last door for the armor key. One thing I like about this game is that it tells you this and allows you to discard the key, very useful in a game with limited inventory space.

The interior room is a puzzle room. Two moveable blocks with statues on them, two vents and a button. At the far end is a display case you can't open. Now, I can't remember if this was different in the Gamecube version, but regardless, what happens here if you do the puzzle wrong, you get gassed. So I push the blocks on top of the vents, and then press the button to open the case. Probably could have figured that one out anyway, since vents are insanely suspicious outside of a place where water should be. I get a sun crest for my trouble. Right, into the big unknown.

Past a blind corner I find, Richard Aiken, a member of Bravo Team. He's been bitten by something that isn't human. (dramatic tension is somewhat ruined by midi guitar music) He tells Jill to be careful, this house is full of demons, and that he was bitten by a poisonous giant snake. Now he needs serum. The game does the lame thing of not actually telling you where it is, just showing you it. It's in the western save room, which, conveniently, I got a path to earlier.

A short jaunt later, and Jill administers the serum to Richard, but sadly, it's too late. Richard is about to die anyway, but before he does, he gives Jill his radio. This isn't an item, it instead adds another option to the inventory menu. It does nothing for now. Past him is another room with a blind corner, this time containing a zombie. This guy's really annoying to kill because all the camera angles in this room are just awful. I can just barely knock him to the ground before he reaches me, and then I can go to a small hallway, which I finish him off in despite the camera angle bizarrely changing halfway down it. I know where the snake monster is, because there was a bloody handprint next to some stairs. For now, I'll look through this side door.

Another blind corner. Sigh...this room has another ink ribbon and in that closet, some ammo. Nothing suspicious going on in here, whatsoever. No siree. After moving the moveable cabinet, the room is a small hidden closet. Thankfully, containing no enemies, but it's a cabinet that's too dark to see. Well, that leaves me with the boss, and in an unusual move for me, I'm going to save here. Back to the save room, and then to the attic, I guess. The door up is apparently locked, which raises some logic questions.

Weird, in gameplay it was obvious this is dust, yet as a screenshot, it looks like it's coming out of an oven.

The giant snake, or Yawn, is actually optional here. You just need to grab another crest, this one of the moon, and then run out. I get hit twice, but that's okay, I just have to rush over to the serum room and...

...Oh, Jill passed out, a mysterious figure comes and puts Jill in the serum room, and she's healed. Huh. After checking the item box here, I notice I have a lighter. So I make the journey back to the secret area, and it doesn't work. Drat. I now have two areas left to deal with, both of which I entered and noped out of.

The exit area, which I didn't want to deal with the dog. There's a puzzle here which requires four crests, which is unfortunate, because I only have two. The game puts forth this long descript describing how you should put the crests in, only for the game to automatically place them when you use them. Lame.

Not far from there is this art gallery. There are a half dozen paintings with switches underneath and one painting entitled "Give me peaceful sleep." without any switch. Each painting is of some stage in a person's life from birth to death. Crows wait above to kill you should you make a mistake here. Now, I remember the version of this puzzle from the Gamecube version, but not this one. As it turns out, the puzzle is the same, the text here is just obtuse. You have to pick out each painting by the life stage, from birth to death. I, thinking this is different, just picked the final stage. Wrong, crows attacked me, and as I don't desire to lose health or ammo to these guys, I reload my save before Yawn.

I take the opportunity to pick up any herbs along those paths that I missed, expecting I might need them later. Yawn is quite the annoying boss fight because of how his movement works, he's a giant snake, and you can't just walk over him. So it's very possible to get stuck in an unpleasant situation, albeit, it only happened to me one out of three times. Anyway, after solving the gallery puzzle, I now have three crests. But where's the last one? I start exploring rooms I left because of enemies.

That outside herb room only has herbs and dogs, that's okay though, I got myself five herbs out of the deal. I figure since the lighter has been of no use, I must be missing something. It turns out that I should have lighted a fire place on the second floor, netting me the second floor map. Bit late, considering that now only locked off areas remain. That doesn't help me though. I find out how to see inside the secret area, I missed some candles just outside it. That gets me acid rounds. That helps me in the long run, but right now I'm still missing something.

Half out of desperation and half out of a desire to clear out the other herb room, I decide to put the blue jewel in now rather than later. Ah. Half-remembered knowledge of this game and it's remake is now screwing me over. Good. I leave the mansion now, with an item box full of herbs, 24 grenades, 21 shells and over 4 mags of pistol ammo.

Almost, first I have to do a push block puzzle to get a crank. What a weird puzzle.

The courtyard. I see two red herbs and three green herbs straight off. I can hear the dogs. I take them out, well, it's unavoidable. The amount of herbs the game is giving me is suspicious. I think this gives me something like 5 full heals, which would be 6 if I didn't use the first aid spray after Yawn. That's really generous, and I suspect I may just need them thanks to the amount of ammo I've gone through. I drop some of these back at the item box and return to see...blue herbs. Blue herbs, in case you forgot or I forgot to bring them up, remove poison. Which means soon I'm going to need to remove poison soon.

Otherwise this room just has a winch for an elevator, which I can't do anything to yet. There's a map next to it I almost didn't notice. This is a small area, basically four rooms and a fifth one off to the side. Two of these rooms loop back in on each other, so the inevitable way back isn't too dangerous. Probably.

In the next room, there's a pool and something which has a hole for the winch. Naturally, you use it to direct the water elsewhere, in this case an area down next to some sewers. Before you can go there though, you have to run past some falling snakes. Finally, something I can just avoid. Sadly, the next area isn't so lucky, two more dogs. Not liking this, I hope there's more pistol ammo in the next area or I might very well be toast in this run. I know at some point previously cleared out areas are repopulated with new monsters, which is why I'm being so darn cautious. Sadly, the running water blocks off some sewers and the other path up doesn't have power. Guess that's part of what's going on in the next area, get a battery.

My only path forward also has two dogs, at least this one has some herbs. I think I might just want to reload at this point and rush past one without getting hit. I may need to do so, I'm down to 30 bullets now. Health is irrelevant if I try not to get hit, only poison is useful right now, merely because I suspect poison enemies are going to be annoying to dodge. We'll see how this goes in the Guardhouse.

On one hand, I appreciate the generosity, on the other, 7 blue herbs (in total) is far more than anyone should need...I hope.

And there are three blue herbs here. Right, well, I'm reloading after exploring this place some then. If I need more than 3 blue herbs, I'm probably going to die anyway. There's a save room right next to the entrance, which has a first air spray and some explosive rounds. That's going to be helpful later.

There's another hallway, this one containing two zombies. I don't know if you can shoot zombies off-screen, which is just annoying with some of these angles. What's worse is you need to kill these two zombies, they're guarding a red book which is blank. That means I need it for a puzzle. Hahahahaha. I almost miss some shotgun ammo on the side of a desk. Well, I guess that's an acceptable use of resources. Next to it is a suspicious bathtub. I know how this goes, I've seen The Beyond...and it's just a key in the tub, no zombie.

Back to the first hallway, then through some double doors. This is what I call a good camera angle. Two spiders, they're on the ceiling until you get close, then they jump down. They have a spit attack and a charging attack, but because of the layout of the room, it's difficult for them to charge into you. I did get hit, but without getting poisoned. Huh. Instead, the problem is that there's a pool table with clearly labelled balls. In short, a code. I hope this isn't the kind of code that changes, because it might be annoying having to enter here.

Past a hole in the floor I assumed might break, but instead turned out to have a tentacle in it, is another hallway. More herbs. I get the feeling I was supposed to run past a lot more enemies than I did. Well, I'm not going to complain too much, at least this gives me considerable leeway. I could even just take some hits from the dogs right now...

Barring the the discovery of another keypad, I guess the pool balls are supposed to answer this...except you can bruteforce it, so who cares?

Next area, innocent at first. I find myself looking at a keypad, with that stupid light game as the method of unlocking it. Sigh...It leads to a room containing chemicals. I'll explain that in a moment. Everything else is locked, but, oh, look, there's a key next to a wasp hive. Yeah, they're as goofy as they sound. The key opens a door in the last hallway.

Dorm 2 is suspiciously lacking in any zombies. Very suspicious. There's a map and a note detailing Plant 42, describing how got so big thanks to the same virus that infected everything else, how it gets water from the basement, which was flooded by a "crazy scientist", and sucks out nutrients with it's tentacles. Which, naturally, I now have to find a way to kill. What I need to do is mix together a chemical in the aforementioned chemical room to use on the plant's roots in the basement. There's another box of shells in the desk, and if I enter the bathroom, there's just a zombie and a clip. Oh, yeah, and a secret path into the basement for some reason.

Downstairs is a series of weird puzzles. First, a block puzzle. Push some crates into some water, with the only difficulty being whether or not you accidentally push them into the wall. I guess it does help with the fear of what lies beyond that next corner. As I walk into a central tank area, I find water slowly rising, naturally meeting with what was said by the note about how the basement was flooded.

Even sharks get stuck on the walls...

On one side is a break room where the plant's roots are, but on the other side is the control room. As I approach I get a cutscene, sharks. One big one and two little ones. I shoot them a bit, until I just walk into the control room. Hey, I have the key and enemies can't go through doors. From the control room I can drain the water and then unlock the door next to it.

It's an ammo room, unfortunately most of the ammo is wet. But I can still get two packs of shells, two magazines and another dorm key. Okay, time to see how much ammo I can save getting here. Reloading back at the end of the mansion. I can quite easily get all the herbs right outside the door before any dogs get near me. I could also get the blue herbs if I wanted, but I don't know if that's going to screw with the dogs' spawn. Running past them is surprisingly straight forward, even if they start running at me I can make the door in time. This is almost reasonable.

I only end up being hit in the sewer room, and not because I didn't dodge the dogs, merely because I ran at the exit door at the wrong angle. Nothing a little bit of picking up a spare herb and exploiting how the game resets whenever you change rooms can't fix. That was easier than I expected, but I suspect on the way back I won't get through quite as well.

Because of the way this area is set up, there's considerable benefit to setting it so that you go through the tentacle hallway only once. That means dropping as many items beforehand. Hopefully I won't need the knife. Yeah, like this is going to be the one time in the game the knife is actually more effective than just bleeding on the enemy. But what weapon to bring, since it's basically a straight shot to the boss? It's getting to the point where the pistol might end up being more trouble than it's worth, but bringing it to a boss fight is dangerous. The shotgun is always going to be useful and it's presence will mean I have more inventory space, since I don't need to pick up as much ammo. But will it last if I start using it now? The grenade launcher is a problem solver, but this early?

In the end I picked the pistol, with the knowledge that I can always try again with something else. So, V-Jolt...you have to do a combination item puzzle, as outlined on two writings on the wall. Kind of like that stupid water jug puzzle, only with four bottles, and you have an easy to follow set of instructions. At least in theory, the game doesn't seem to want to give me anything besides water for mixing. Figures. I check a few walkthroughs on the subject and all of them are quite vague beyond the obvious steps. Meaning, nobody writing one of these walkthroughs actually bothered to put in that you need the note explaining the V-Jolt to make it. Well, then, I guess you can use the V-Jolt after the water has been drained? Huh.

I continue going through the area as normal, now reaching the third dorm room. It's suspiciously empty, not even a note anywhere. Just a desk, this time containing an ink ribbon, and a bookcase which the game is obviously drawing my attention towards. It has one white book among many red books, and there's a nearby moveable cabinet I can't move. The solution is obvious, but I don't quite want to risk that yet. How about the bathroom? Flame rounds and another zombie. Didn't realize flame rounds were a thing in this version, they seem slightly less useful here. Taking out the white book reveals the V-Jolt report, good, and the red book just reveals a door. Right, back across the tentacle to empty out my inventory and then finally make the V-Jolt. V-Jolt takes a bit, but it's fairly simple so long as you can follow instructions.

Now, Plant 42. After running back to the item box, I decided on the grenade launcher and the newly found flame rounds. I figure if I need more than the six grenades it came with and the six flame rounds, I'm screwed anyway. And wouldn't you know it, but the first time I enter, I miss a lot. Plant 42 is really very easy once you understand how he works. His tentacles slowly move around the room, and that's mostly how he attacks you. It's not a lot, because they only go around so often. He also has a drip something from the ceiling attack, which hurts to a small degree. What's tricky is his hitbox, I was aiming up because of how it looked like that was important.

...But it wasn't. I aimed straight at him and fired six times. He's dead and now I have the helmet key.

On my way back to the save box, Wesker shows up...shooting at something off-screen. He says he ran off because monsters came after him in the hall. He also establishes new objectives, we need to get out of here, and Jill needs to explore the rest of the mansion. And that, is what I'm going to do next time.

This Session: 3 hours 30 minutes

Total Time: 7 hours 00 minutes