Since last time I used maps to show where I was going, I'll continue again here, but since the in-game ones are of poor quality, I'll instead be linking to Evil Resource's maps for the PSX game. Differences in items I'll mention.
Still on the ground floor, let's go for the "Itchy, Tasty", room located in the central hall on the west side. I'm concerned I won't be able to get anything here, but at least it isn't anything important. Just some ammo. There's no turning around in time to deal with a zombie directly behind me.
And...uh...well, I feel like this is a damning statement even if this unfinished. The zombie's just already out? Given the way the file system works, it's not like picking it up even does anything. You've already got most of the Itchy, Tasty journal in there, along with a message from a researcher to his girlfriend Alma. Most of it, the last bit's gone. All that creepiness, gone.
One hallway south, and I enter the piano room. It's fine, I guess. The sheet music's on a shelf in the corner. Use it on the piano and the game fades in and out, revealing a passage in the wall. A quick jaunt to an itembox, then to the dining hall to pick up wooden emblem, and the freshly dropped blue jewel. Replace the golden emblem inside the room. Do the reverse in the hallway and the grandfather clock in one corner moves to reveal the Shield key. I briefly looked it up to make sure there was nothing this game was missing, but no, that was always the sequence. I expected the clock to need a specific time, but that is a common puzzle.
I continue on through to the entrance, going first through the door on the northeast side. There's a zombie inside here, easy stuff, but curiously, I didn't find any items. It's perplexing, but most of it was just ammo, which I don't really need, so small loss. Second trip through the southeast hallway gets no zombie dogs either, but judging by the weird scripting going on, I suspect this is just something the game is incapable of dealing with.
Eastern-most door leads to an outdoor herb garden, guarded by two zombies. Probably confusing this with the remake, but I could have sworn there were dogs here. Once again, only one of the herbs gives you herbs, but in this case, it gives me three red herbs? How very generous. I got so confused by this mess that I went to the way to the second house, only to find no dogs there. Well, we're not going to be meeting any until we go outside then.
The gallery puzzle proves to be annoying thanks to something I haven't really mentioned, hotspot trouble. Now, this wasn't enough of a problem in the original that I don't remember any issues off-hand, but here, it's a pretty big issue. You can only turn in about eight or so directions, and where you can pick something up and what your character looks like they can pick up are two different things.
Normally, this hasn't been much of a problem beyond the usual one this game is giving, it's very tedious. Normally. Here, this sort of has an odd effect, because you actually need to use the paintings in sequence. From the cradle to the grave goes the painting that I couldn't activate. Unfortunately, one of the paintings is situated that you can only activate in an odd way. I didn't get it right a couple of times thanks to this, but the crows aren't here, so it doesn't matter.
I head to the set of bedrooms located above the eastern safe room. There's a zombie, more camera awkwardness, and Barry again. It's another cutscene, where Barry shows Jill the Researcher's Will, the document I mentioned last time. It's the start of the traitor plotline, where we all wonder who could possibly be the traitor. The cutscene is very strange in this version, partially because it doesn't actually show you what is being read.
This is only the beginning of this screen's awkwardness. There's something in the coat by the door and believe me, this is a pain to get...only its an ink ribbon. Oh, I worried about that? Ha. The second is that there's a hidden item here. At first I thought this was something I needed an item for, but just flip the switch and it reveals some shells. Where it's actually supposed to be grenades. I looked up this room to find out what the note was. Guess I'm not using the Bazooka then.
The other room also has shells, in addition to a red herb and the lighter. Finally. This means I can head all the way to the end to the fireplace and get the second floor map. Since the game is only letting me look through maps I've acquired, it's nice to be reminded of where I'm going...and if you've guessed that it doesn't actually do anything, you've started to figure out that this game isn't playing nice.
I'm going to go ahead to the trickiest crest next. The one guarded by the snake. The entrance here is south on the eastern reverse C-shaped hallway. Richard's in this opening room, the usual conversation about how he found a snake demon and is badly wounded. In this case, it looks like his head has been taken off. The cutscene is weird, because there's no sound except the music, so once again the only indication there's something here is when it actually pops up. A quick jaunt to get the serum and I have the radio.
Before I reach the attic, I need to clear out the two areas before this. Even if there's no point to picking up ammo. First problem, the zombie in the area between Richard and the snake is programmed to come out of the wall. Not literally, this game just has poor design so it only looks that way. Lucky I didn't get killed. Otherwise this area goes as you expect it to. The other room with candle to reveal...shells. I go back to the west safe room, do the blue jewel in the tiger room, and load up on health items.
I was worried about this fight for a while. The snake is a tricky enemy when you have good agility. Here I feared it might genuinely stop the game. I wouldn't be able to dodge and fight successfully. Not at all. Dude's cute as a button and doesn't even move. Is this what all boss fights are going to be like?
Right, final crest, the one with the push puzzle. The easy puzzle where you push statues over vents. It's just so simple in the original...and yet that simplicity doesn't come over here. I died for the first time, possibly ever, on this puzzle. Between the moving of these objects and how poor you can see some things, I missed one of the vents. A problem that didn't exist in the original.
The four crests are in, still no dogs, and it's time to see what's in the shed. For once, you don't need to push the stairs to get the square crank. There's also another small key. Eh, that just opens ammo caches, I don't need that! I get interrupted in my search by accidentally activating the door out.
Ah, outside. Now we'll fight some dogs. I carefully advance screen by screen only...for nothing to pop up except Brad trying to contact someone to find out what's going on the ground. There's a map of this section and if you guessed it does nothing, you'd be correct. There aren't any herbs either. You know what, I will grab that small key. There's also nothing else from here to the second house. No snakes after you use the crank, no dogs, not even any herbs. Just emptiness. Also, that crank is a pain in the butt to use. Hotspots in this game continue to be terrible.
The guardhouse starts off uncomfortably empty. There are no blue herbs here. Which I hope means there is no poison. Really hope that. In the meantime, these areas are surprisingly empty of anything unrelated to advancing the game. Sure, there are still zombies, but seemingly no wasps or anything else. The traitor plots advances as we find Barry talking to someone over the kidnapping of his family, but at this point, everything seems pointless but seeing what little remains of the game.
Downstairs is surprisingly mundane. There's just one block to push, and there are no sharks in the water. The water doesn't even really exist as a thing, just as another visual. I'm not doing the whole V-Jolt thing, so the meeting room is pointless, but oddly enough, trying to enter the room next to the control room is a problem. Moreso because keys tend to just disappear when they should be used...except here it does it and now I can't enter anywhere.
After reloading, I get the third key inside the armory and head for the third dormitory. Red book in the place where the white book was. I did not forget where that was, no siree. As you might expect, Plant 42 is disappointing. There are many disjointed angles and I'm not sure that shooting it is doing anything. Probably because if I touch it nothing happens. It's just...there. The key is in the fireplace as usual, and now it's time to find out if there are Hunters.
First though, there's a conversation with Wesker in which he deflects concerns about his disappearance and tells Jill to go to the other house. Presumably, that part didn't get put in despite the game being otherwise perfect at depicting the text of a cutscene. There's also Brad asking for a sign on the radio when I'm outside, since the radio Jill has can't send messages.
Back in the mansion, I walk through the opening hallways with tension. There will be no cutscene of course, but if something happens, something will at least appear on-screen. I make it to the room off to the side. There's the usual, magnum rounds which look suspiciously like grenade rounds, and the second doom book. I enter the room outside the save room, only to encounter nothing. There's nothing here. They only programmed in zombies.
Most of the rooms opened by the Helmet key have no point now. There's a herb in the room off to the center of the entrance, but otherwise, it's straight to the second fight with the snake. Who has the AI of a zombie. Eventually I manage to break away and start unloading...and he dies in four shotgun blasts. It's not obvious where the place to go next is, because nothing changes after he pops up.
Randomly pressing A around the area that the hole should have appeared when the snake popped up eventually gets me to the hidden grave. Which doesn't have Barry appear, for some reason. Instead, you just walk over to the grave, the rope has appeared, then walk back and Barry does his apology speech. What, is waiting too difficult for these people to program in? You can't do anything inside the grave besides this, and the game doesn't give you the passcode. Instead, you just have to guess that. Or look it up.
The passcode opens a door on the second floor, one which has more zombies and originally had some blue herbs...and still does despite there being no poison enemies in the game. This area is pretty much the same as it was in the original. Just the puzzle with the statue is simplified owing to how the game can't let you push something in more than one direction. I come out of it with the MO disk along with the battery for the second elevator. Which means I can reach the area hidden by the waterfall back outside.
Underground has no Hunters, no boulders and no Barry. We still have Enrico...at which point Barry shows up. He explains the whole traitor plot, and as he starts to explain that Umbrella caused all this, he gets shot. By someone. Could be Barry, could be Jill, really, nobody knows with this engine's cutscenes. He gets shot so hard his corpse disappears and so does Barry. Hex crank shows up where the mysterious assassin is, and a janky action later, I can go through the rest of the caverns.
The only thing that pops up is the spider room. No spiders, but the door is still webbed and thankfully, there's a combat knife here. I drop it off in the safe room a bit down. I've nearly filled the item box, so that's nice. I have actually been ignoring some items for a while, since it isn't like I'll need a clip/magazine or magnum rounds...ever. The rest goes pretty much as you would expect this would go, janky, simplified versions of already simple puzzles, and I have the two medals for the fountain and the second MO disk.
The lab is somehow both completely intact and quite a bit broken. Enemies in the main corridor are less in number, and sometimes are beyond the planes of existence. The game simply isn't capable of showing four enemies on-screen at a time. They managed to bring in the whole computer password puzzle.
There are none of the Chimeras around, so putting in the power is easy. Getting the passcodes is trickier, hotspots in this game are trash. This brings us to Wesker and the revelation that he's the traitor. The game keeps cutting to a strange, broken image for some reason while this dramatic cutscene happens. I will say that having this all in text form does reveal how some of the weirdness of the game's dialog is down to the voice acting, but a lot of it is just very strange writing.
The cutscene stops and I'm moved inside the Tyrant room. The Tyrant is just there, in front of the tube. The only reason why he's the Tyrant is because of context, otherwise he's just a black creature which turns into noise if you shoot him. Four shots, like everything else. At this point, a cutscene is supposed to show up. It doesn't. So I look around for about five minutes, trying to find a key, only to get nothing. This is as good a place as any to end.
This Session: 3 hours 30 minutes
Final Time: 4 hours 15 minutes
Normally, I would summarize my thoughts in a separate entry, but I don't feel like this deserves a rating. Yes, it's bad, a terrible adaptation and the ilk, but what annoys me most of all is how they've done so much and so little. Reading up on the production, I got the impression this was nearly finished. It...it isn't. What is here hasn't really been through any kind of quality testing.
As a tech demo, this is impressive, however, I feel like this should have led into something original rather than attempt a 1-to-1 remake of the PSX game. It's very impressive, yes, but there's a lot that the PSX version has that a GBC game simply will never be able to do. I'm not talking about voice acting, there's simply so much in the cutscenes that can't be done here.
I could talk endlessly about how the game fails, but I think that's worth talking less compared to what this game is actually a useful example of. How any game can go wrong if certain factors are changed. More importantly, how some games are simply doomed due to the scope of what they're trying to do and the limitations of what they can do.
Next time, something from 1984.
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