Welcome House 2 (1996)

Name:Welcome House 2 - Keaton and His Uncle
Number:247
Year:1996
Publisher:Gust
Developer:Gust
Genre:"Survival Horror"/Adventure
Difficulty:3/5
Time:2 hours 30 minutes
Won:Yes (110W/79L)

There's a certain measure of apprehension when you see a video game sequel released the same year as the original game. By default, it means that unless you carved up a bigger game into smaller chunks, you've spent less than a year on this game. This isn't really a problem during the '80s, because you generally just focused on a gameplay loop, or even during the early '90s. Id did their best work in around four years. But by the time 3D models started getting good enough to resemble something?

Welcome House, in case you forgot/missed it, is a Japanese-exclusive PSX game centered around a man called Keaton visiting his uncle's mansion. These days, it reads as a strange parody of survival horror games. There's no real enemies or threat of violence, but it plays like the genre, looks like the genre, and feels like the genre.

There's going to be a lot of this, often just as "telegraphed".

This time around, Keaton's been living with his Uncle Parkinson for a while, but uh-oh, it's the Fourth of July and his prankster Uncle has set a whole bunch of explosives off in his room. Turns out, he's set the entire house up with similar exploding presents. So much so, that he's rigged phones to explode. You better get used to this, because everything in this game explodes.
 

There's going to be a lot of this.

Which sounds like an exaggeration, but the game is practically non-stop explosions. The game really ramps up the physical comedy, to the point that it centers around it. Were it not a comedy game, the mansion would be a deathtrap. Bombs, phones turned into bombs, pits, mechanical traps and even bear traps. Parkinson probably got himself on a few lists with the purchases he made for the events of this game.

Control-wise, the game is unaltered from the first game. Tank controls, circle opens your item menu, square functions as your general action button. Once to use something in front of you, hold down and move forward to run. Start pauses, opening a map, press it again and you get the save menu. In general start functions as an accept button and cross as a cancel button. Which caused me a bit of confusion at first. 

Unlike in more serious games, a sign labeled danger is an indication that you should use it.

Much like the original game, this is advertised a polygon cartoon. In this case, it feels more like a description of gameplay than the general style of the game. You only interact with the game just to engage the game's jokes in the sequence the developer wanted. Everything else is an illusion, you get things like descriptions of objects and rooms, but they don't ever tell you something beyond what you can see in front of you. It's one long joyride.

But the game does have a problem. While it does flow well for the most part, once you stop for whatever reason, it becomes apparent that the game is basically just a series of events that happen, and your contribution is just advancing the plot. Actions that advance the gameplay are either a matter of gameplay, using an exploding phone, obvious, key and door, or random luck, walk through a doorway in a certain way.

One of the descriptions you get when first entering a room.

A good example of this is a room on the second floor with four big cabinets. You can enter here beforehand, only to find nothing inside. What you actually do is wait until later, when Napoleon the Dog flees in here after you get stabbed by him in military regalia. This makes no sense in context either, you just randomly turn away while chasing him around the room. Once you get him inside, whenever you open a cabinet, he appears in the opposite row. How do you solve this? You go to another room, sit on a random chair, which puts a "kick me" sign on Keaton's butt.

Which is not helped by the game following this up by making you give this axe to a lady of the pool, as in, a water elemental that appears in Parkinson's pool, who then gives you the choice of three axes, only one of which advances. I'm also reasonably sure that in order to get this axe exchange, you need to actually go down, talk to the guy repairing the diving board, go up to the second floor where a set of stairs upwards are, which somehow causes the board to be repaired, then return. Not exactly a series of puzzles which tends towards anything but random actions, but at least I understand the logic to axe lady of the lake and axe against chain of same color.  

Keaton gets his revenge against a statue.

Unlike the last game, there is no long awkward backtracking sequence once you seem to reach the end of the game. Instead, it's put all across the game. In a certain sense, the game suffers for this. It's obvious what the really big things you need to go back for are, but all across the game you get little ones which make you go back and forth across most of the mansion. For a game that isn't that long, it's odd that there's such blatant padding in it.

There's voice acting this time around, which is nothing special. They're doing the job you expect them to do and doing it well, but the job isn't special. Nobody rises above the level of the archetype they're expected to do. Because of what the game is, this wasn't ever not going to be the case.

Admittedly, out of context it just looks like a guy laughing at a dead dog, which is a different kind of weird.

The ending of the game is quite spectacular. In order to stop Napoleon from pranking you, you need to bait him with a bottle of booze. Which is in the spirit of what this game is imitating, but damn, it's pretty ballsy to do something like that. That seems like a risky move, even in the '90s. Then, after finding all the objects you need to open Parkinson's secret bedroom/viewing room, you get treated to one, spectacular final explosion. No wonder there wasn't a Welcome House 3, there was no house anymore. Onto the rating.

Weapons:
None.

Enemies:
None.

Non-Enemies:
With the exception of Allegro, most of the characters are one-note and only state and offer simple things, only ever being more than scenery when the rare puzzle comes up involving them. 1

Levels:
Not having a last-minute point in the game where you have to go all across the mansion again and seeing the bizarre changes the game has made over the course of the game does wonders to improve the quality of the place. 4

Player Agency:
Same as last time. I feel like the game could have used a sidestep function, it really, really could have used that. 3

Interactivity:
In addition to the usual look/use actions, you get a lot of choices. Sure, these choices are often for things you have to do, but you get the option. 3

Atmosphere:
While I didn't much care for playing the game, I must admit, the cartoon violence and what awful prank Keaton would fall victim to more than made up for it. 6

Graphics:
It's cartoony, but charming. Keaton gets a wide variation of animations for the various calamities that befall him, albeit he's pretty much the only character with more animations than the usual you'd give a character who walks and talks. That said, it is very obvious that whenever something calls for an object to lose part of itself, the model completely changes. 5

Story:
It's the Fourth of July and let's just have the most explosive one ever, and boy howdy, does it ever deliver. 4

Sound/Music:
Low quality but fitting sound effects and a smooth jazz soundtrack. Unlike last time, when the tracks played in different rooms somewhat randomly, you get some degree of control, since there are radios in numerous rooms you can change the song on. Which doesn't apply to the licensed songs you can find around. These still only work on the jukebox, all one of them that I found. 5

That's 31.

I feel like I was very harsh on a few aspects last time. Despite taking longer than I should have on it, it was enjoyable as an experience, at least. One of those odd games where it could be said that a let's play is the better experience than actually playing it. Since you won't get the joys of wandering around a big mansion wondering what you have to interact with in order to advance.

Next time, another spooky game, albeit, one that's also not quite the usual fare. It's Elvira - The Adventure Game, an adventure/RPG hybrid which is one of the first games to lean into horror more seriously. 

Tomb Raider (1996)

Name:Tomb Raider
Number:200
Year:1996
Publisher:Eidos
Developer:Core Design
Genre:Third-Person Shooter/Platformer
Difficulty:4/5
Time:14 hours
Won:Yes (81W/64L)

The game that put third-person shooters on the map, despite not being very good at being as third-person shooter. The game that also put sex appeal in games on the maps despite games doing that long before this. The first 3D cinematic platformer. In retrospect, it's not really hard to see why history has felt the need to condemn the game since cinematic platformers were only ever really popular thanks to the spectacle of them. All of the concepts used in Tomb Raider have since fallen out of favor, it doesn't matter how good the game is in the end, that lack of fashionability is always going to triumph over fun factor.

So, let's get the most controversial aspects out of the way first. Lara Croft herself. The aristocrat turned self-made woman. There's a lot of talk about her character ranging from a feminist fantasy to the opposite. Usually both statements are from people who would not make the argument for anything else. People who are anti-feminist arguing up Lara's feminist aspects, people who are feminists basically calling her a whore. There's a vitriol around this character that I only ever see otherwise said about female politicians. I don't feel like repeating them. The former is arguably just the usual political grifting, the latter feel like they're genuinely slighted by the existence of a fictional character. A character who isn't that important in the grand scheme of things beyond being a danger junkie going into this not because she's a hero, but because she gets a kick out of it.

I'm alluding to it, but Lara's not a complex character, yet somehow this amount of character has eluded most people. The manual talks about how Lara used to be a member of the nobility til she decided to leave it, becoming a world traveller, that's her actual job, not raiding tombs. Even the in-game story sets her up differently than you would expect, she's not in this for money, she says as much, she's an adrenaline junkie. Sort of the purest representation of a player's desires, to fight bizarre creatures and explore strange locations. Well, the average player's desires, anyway.

Thinking about it, it's not so much an unimportance placed on her character that makes her the target as much as being a right-wing ideal. A woman who pulled herself up by her bootstraps, while also being an old money aristocrat beforehand, really likes guns, has no qualms about killing animals or locals. If we throw in points from later games, a Christian who, despite the great power of artifacts from other religions, ultimately prove powerless against the might of a single believer, as well as taking down ancient conspiracies who secretly control the world. Absurd, of course, but I don't think it's the most absurd statement ever made about Lara's character.

For a character who has produced so much analysis and critique, so much of it is shallow. Men referring to her as a sex doll, which I feel like reveals a whole lot about the mental state of the speaker rather than the character. The kind of men who make assumptions about women who have certain kinds of bodies. Women referring to her as competition, which sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Are you really that unpleasant a person to think of a fictional character as possibly being better than you, even counting that the character is fiction?

I just don't see the hype beyond, oooh, hot chick. This isn't a movie, you don't really stop to oogle the protagonist unless you don't actually want to play the game. As a general rule you're not looking at the protagonist as much as around the protagonist. You have to concentrate on actually playing the game as opposed to staring at polygon butt and legs. This feels like something that only happens if you never play the game and instead watch other people play the game.

Wall textures are very pixelated, sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't.

Then there's the other controversy, about this game's controls, I guess I should address that. A lot of people say tank controls, clunky or just outdated in a way that feels superficial. In a sense it is the latter, but unlike say, Bubsy 3D this is less like a technical limitation and more a conscious choice. Tomb Raider was never really in-date, it was trying to take the controls of a game like Prince of Persia and put it in a 3D environment, and at this it succeeds beautifully in a way that people criticizing it don't really get.

It's hard getting good jumping pictures because the keys for these actions happen to correspond to unpleasant ones for taking screenshots.

What I mean is, the game's very precise, Lara does precisely what you tell her to, no more, no less, as a real person would, if she were an olympic level athlete. The expected actions, run, jump and shoot. Weird actions, like pressing back causing a short back jump are in service to this. Lara can grab onto the edge of any tile that's level enough. While this game doesn't represent insanity in the service of realism like, say, Splat'ers, it is trying to make something more realistic than a Mario game where you're given an extreme amount of leeway in platforming. A balance of fun and realism.

Let's take, for instance, walking. Pressing walk causes Lara to walk, you do this so Lara doesn't fall off a ledge. She goes like any other platformer if she just runs. In practical terms, this represents her paying attention about where she's going in the former and not paying any attention to where she's going when running. You don't run off a ledge. In gameplay terms, the former is necessary because Lara should be facing flat towards her target, an angle and she might miss. Or you might need to look around from that ledge. If you wanted to go off a ledge, you could run off, probably die from fall damage, or turn around, back jump off the ledge and grab it. Or press the roll button and fall off weird.

But if Lara needs to jump over something, she can then do so, grabbing it if necessary. Keeping in mind that there is a difference in her jumping capabilities grabbing a ledge or not grabbing a ledge. If need be, she can do that short back jump again, which is precisely one tile in length, the length needed to do a running jump. Lara always takes at least two steps before doing one, if she's in the middle of a run and you press it, she'll do it at her next step. This is often criticized, but like everything else, Lara always does it in a certain way, one you can do on the dot every time.

Only rarely are areas so big you cannot see one end from another.

While the tiles are not the most aesthetically pleasing graphics around, they look like that for a reason. Soon enough in any given area you should be able to see where Lara can go. Lara can jump across two tiles level, meaning she can jump over any one tile gap and grab the next ledge if she is so ordered. With a running grab jump, she can reach across three tiles. She can even jump up one tile if you do it right.

I feel like this is one of the few platformers which actually gives the player a character that actually feels like they're jumping. A lot of platformers give players so much leeway it doesn't really feel like they're jumping, you're basically a bouncy ball. There's a sense of weight and movement that arguably hasn't ever been achieved in a 3D game since. You're either jumping when one pixel of your foot is still on the platform or the game practically plays itself. Tomb Raider actually tries to make the platforming feel like platforming and get unfairly crapped on for it.

The pillar to the left is one such object, and isn't a problem because you are exceedingly unlikely to run into it.

The only time the game actually fought me as opposed to it being my fault was with 3D objects, that is, objects that are not the walls that exist in 3D space as opposed to being items or enemies. These things always screw around with collision for some reason. If you're lucky, Lara just won't go there, if you aren't, Lara will jump around to a place you don't want her to. This happened to me twice that I can remember. The first level with ropes on the bridge, which is partially my fault because nobody playing the game is just going to try to climb up the bridge. In Egypt with one of the Sphinxes, with its nose thing being one such object.

Look ma, it's a first person shooter. (vomits after doing a jump)

The camera isn't great, of course, but it generally works unless Lara's back is against a wall. Which does happen a lot, but not cripplingly so. It's usually behind Lara's head, meaning usually directly behind her or focusing on whichever enemy you're shooting. If you need to look around, you can always press the look button, very useful for seeing what's below. For a game designed at this point in time, the camera works remarkably well.

Rarely are there traps underwater.

Swimming is simple. You can't fight down here, so you're a sitting duck in or getting out of water. Some levels take advantage of this. Otherwise Lara takes to water beautifully, she feels faster down there than in land. She has an air supply, which, while not absurdly generous, does allow you significant leeway. Lara slowly runs out of health whenever her air is gone, which you can stop with medikits if you really need to.

Combat is interesting with this system, because the controls are made for platforming, not shooting. Lara pulls out her guns whenever you press the activate weapon button or switch weapons. Lara automatically shoots whenever you hold down the ctrl or action key. She shoots in front of her, or at an enemy if one crosses her sight, even if that enemy is dead. Which sounds like a problem but the game is so generous with ammo that it really isn't. Even discounting how Lara has infinite ammo for her regular pistol.

Most enemies are faster than Lara, so you have to use positioning to avoid getting hurt. Kind of like a more modern game. You can jump around, but I didn't because of system problems, so instead I had to figure out how else to defeat the enemies. Rather than just standing on some pillar or just tanking hits. Enemies have tank controls too, and they can't turn very well. Most enemies can't, anyway, so simply running around them in a circle prevents them from ever hitting you. Unless they can shoot back. By the time you fight enemies this doesn't work on though, you usually have the method to survive anyway.

All three of Lara's better weapons are here, but some are harder to see than others.

There are four weapons, three of which you have to find multiple times throughout the game. The first three are basically the same, Lara shoots both in tandem, and if an enemy goes too far to her left or right she just shoots one, not shooting at all in an area around her back. She'll return when you turn back. Keeping the action pressed ensures Lara can go back to shooting it when she sees it again, rather than just shooting at the air. The pistols just shoot, the magnums do more damage while the Uzis have a higher firing rate.

The shotgun is the exception to this rule. Lara fires, pumps the shotgun and takes aim again. It has the highest damage per second of any weapon, but it takes a moment between shots. Lara also has a different firing arc with it and can't shoot it while jumping. There are also much less ammo for it compared to the other two, which at some point you could practically just use it without ever running out.

Combat isn't really great, but it's helped by how satisfying it feels. The sounds, and the animations just feel so impactful. The pound of a shotgun and the death growl of some strange animal. The snapping that ensues when something very bad happens to Lara. Considering the whole mainstream appeal of the series was Lara, it isn't surprising they made the combat animations just as interesting. This is ultimately an illusion though, as the combat itself is mostly just breaking up the sections between exploring.

Now that we have the requisite complaints out of the way, let's talk about the very good parts of the game. Level design. It's great. Given what I said about the game's controls, you would think the game couldn't do much that was exciting. You would be wrong. For a game that seemingly has such a limited skillset, there's a lot that it does and yet still leaves possible. I estimate that what I saw here is about a third of what can be done, half if you count Unfinished Business.

There are five distinct levelsets to the game, Croft Manor, Peru, Greece, Egypt and Atlantis. Croft Manor is a separate option from the others, it's a tutorial. It explains the movement a bit more simply than I did, but it is interactive. It introduces most non-combat moves, except the roll, in a rather open environment and swimming, which you'll otherwise only find out about when it first pops up...

Peru is the first real levelset, and goes over quite a wide area. From caves to an ancient city to a green valley to finally a bizarre ancient tomb, this has the most variety to it. While later levels certainly do have variety, this one is such that each level has a distinct visual flair to it not seen in the other levels. We begin in The Caves, a fairly typical intro level, doing a good job of introducing you to it, everything is gradually introduced. It's everything an intro level should be.

It does introduce a few key elements in the design itself rather than things like collapsible floors. Exploration is rewarded. While you will never get put in an unwinnable situation, you can make things harder for yourself by doing things the wrong way. Here it's relatively painless. Relatively.

You know, I never saw those skulls again either.

This is followed by City of Vilcabamba. It's here that you first start collecting ammo, you're going to be doing that for a while, even if it's usually just in secrets. This level also introduces moveable blocks, something you could very easily get confused by if you're one of those people who didn't have the manual. This one introduces actually deadly elements in it's traps and enemies, though before you could maybe see some if you failed a jump or two. It's starting here that you're liable to actually die as opposed to just needing a medikit.

Two more key elements of the design are introduced here, but in subtle ways. A lot of levels have these big central hubs you gradually go around until you find the way out. This has what I assume are individual buildings that you solve then find a jump in-between. The second are big secrets, not quite as big as say, Blake Stone, but big enough you could assume it was part of the actual level. This is another game where if you play things casually and don't look for stuff you're going to have a hard time later, and unlike games where that makes ammo conservation an issue, this just makes it less fun.

Where this takes place is quite confusing, it's supposed to be a hidden valley, yet because of then engine limitations, you get black ceiling. Remakes make it blue, but since this is supposed to be in an area next to a snowstorm, this doesn't quite make sense.

So you enter some strange valley. Corpses abound, and while you have seen a few before, perhaps even got a shotgun off one, not in this volume. Then out comes a raptor. This, it has to be said, is a very effective moment. Until now, for all the player knows, this is just Indiana Jones with hot female protagonist, very mundane and normal. These guys pop out, and the tone changes significantly, for the better. Now, anything can happen. This tone shift also marks the point where the player can no longer sleepwalk through the game, these guys can take a bite out of Lara. Though it can be easily avoided once one figures out that most enemies can't really deal with Lara running around them in a circle.

Even with extended viewing distance, this works really well.

Then a T-Rex pops out. The game's first boss. This is about the only boss the game does well, you aren't necessarily expecting him, and you can mostly deal with him mundanely. Mostly, he has a one-hit kill attack which is incredibly cheap. Then some more raptors and you have the valley to yourself. This is one of those sections where Tomb Raider shines, big open places with a half dozen secrets that make the player feel like he could go anywhere he wanted in the game.

Tomb of Qualopec is where the game begins showing it's true nature in being a difficult platformer rather than a nice, fun romp. Up until this point, the most difficult jump you were required to do was in The Lost Valley, which required you to understand that there was a difference in jump length between Lara just jumping and Lara jump grabbing and getting the most length possible out of it. It's not that big a deal if you were doing all the secrets until now though, since by now you've probably seen one of the worst ones. Because now you have to do diagonal jumping.

I use this term for jumping diagonally across a tile, as opposed to the usual jumping straight along a line as you should be doing. See, this is where that tile based design came in. Lara walks to the edge of a tile, does a small back jump, then runs off. This is what the game trained you to do. Then this level pulls the rug out from under you and gives you places to jump to that are not directly across from where you are. It's a bit tricky to get used to, which is why the game puts spikes under your first encounter with them.

"Oh, no, I am going to get rolled over."

There are three important introductions in this level. The first, most obvious and least important is the rolling boulder. Why wouldn't you have one of these in a game about exploring tombs? Boulders fall down whenever the designer decided they should fall down, usually by Lara stepping 2 tiles away, and go in a single, usually obvious, direction. There are basically three methods to dodging these, getting out of the way, not knowing you activated one to begin with, and hanging from a ledge. The second one is where being savvy about these things results in the player getting killed, if you jump thinking it'll hit you, you'll jump into it. Boulders aren't instant deaths, but they do hurt if you jump past one. The third the game introduces later on, where you hang from the ledge where the boulder is about to roll over, not on the ledge where the boulder is rolling to, that will kill you.

Surprisingly, you aren't about to get hit in the back...

The second important thing is that there are nasty creatures here. These are Atlantians, who you only find out about gradually as the game wears on. Here, you can shoot one, but it doesn't shoot back. Don't worry, by the end of the game you'll be sick of them. Each area corresponds to a tomb of one of the three Atlantian kings, Qualopec is here. They're connected to the item that Lara was hired to find, the Scion, which was divided among the three kings.

...at least not that guy.

The third is that the person who hired Lara, Natla, doesn't really trust Lara, and sent another guy called Larson after her, introducing ranged enemies to the mix. Later ranged enemies have some minor strategy to them, Larson does not. Larson just acts like Lara but with a Texan accent, his shooting deals damage effective over time whenever you're within his range. Unlike Lara he doesn't dodge. If you kept shells for that nice shotgun you found off that corpse, you can take Larson out with it.

Story-wise this is the kick the story needed. Until now, this has been the story of a self-made woman going on what amounts to another adventure. A game like this doesn't really need a story, but it helps. Now that we're wondering why Natla tried to kill Lara for what is seemingly no reason. Lara breaks into Natla's HQ to find information on the next piece.

St. Francis' Folly [sic] set in Greece. This is where the design of Tomb Raider becomes complete. Before now, you were generally on solid ground, and while this always has solid ground, now there's a hell of a lot more platforming. You're platforming a lot between very high up pillars, ledges and whatever. Fall damage isn't some unhappy accident, it's a guarantee if you mess something up. Slopes, that is, tiles with so sharp an angle that Lara slides down it, become less part of the scenery and part of navigation.

Now, Greece in general has it's own design language. Each level has a way out you need to find a bunch of items to reach, and you need to get those items from little mini-areas. These are always so fun because they make something oh, so, clever in each. Of these, St. Francis' Folly is my favorite, with it's great downward shaft, containing four mythological challenges.

New enemies here are lions and gorillas. They're basically the same as the wolves, both are stronger, but lions are faster. I shot so many gorillas that I made a joke that Lara hated Jane Goodall. You also get litterbug and fellow adventurer Pierre DuPont taking potshots at you a half dozen times each level. In the original game he would flee when his health went down to half and disappear in the fog. Here he just sort of disappears into thin air. There's not really much to fighting him.

The real new challenge here are the crocodiles. On land, they're really fast, but they can swim. They don't move between land and water, rather they stay in one unless you adjust the water level elsewhere. Larson took potshots at you while you were in the water, but the crocs represent the first time the game has put you into a situation where the water isn't safe. (there are also rats, but they're not really worth talking about)

The Colosseum is a big colosseum. You pretty much get what you were expecting. Big area, more platforming like you'd expect, some nice lever puzzles in an area under the arena. Not really an area with much to talk about, but it was fun at the time. Kind of violates the general design that this area is going for, since you're not trying to collect a bunch of items to reach the way out.

Palace Midas is another level with one of those iconic moments, in this case, a hand of a statue of King Midas, which turns Lara into a gold statue if you land on it. It's a relatively pointless death in a game that delights in trying to kill you. What I feel is more shocking is a section where you enter a room with a large pillar, do the usual journey down to find a lever, and then hear a loud noise. When you return, the pillar has been destroyed and sand has filled part of the room. Level changes on such a vast scale are something that didn't really happen before...or since.

Up until this point I've had almost zero complaints about the level design, outside of some things being a bit too hidden. This level makes that a problem, it's almost too good. What I mean is that I don't know what's the way forward, what's a secret and what's just an optional extra. Things I wouldn't think are secrets are secrets, and things I would think are secrets are the way forward. I daresay the game would get a perfect score from me except for...

Cistern. That's not to say I dislike this level in it's totality, I like the big hub you spend most of the level moving around, it's another awesome level. You have to fill it up and drain it multiple times in order to reach each door, since you need to find a bunch of keys. I like the end, where you fight on a chess board, with some of the tiles being collapsible ones. What I dislike is that this level seems to expect you to do some considerable backtracking, while that isn't entirely unusual, you're basically taking a short trip over an area you've already been in, this is quite noticeable. While most of the level is fine, the last chunk involving the main room overstays it's welcome. Doesn't help this level has a rat squeaking in the backing track throughout the entire level.

Tomb of Tihocan is the one level I think could use some significant cutting. While all levels have been connected to the next, this one really just feels like the last level going on for longer than it should. That said, it still has what I think is the best fight in the entire game. Except now considerably more linear. There's a statue that you haven't the slightest indication of anything being wrong, and when you open the door next to it, out pops a centaur that shoots exploding plasma orbs. This is a classic example of old games working wonderfully, one moment you aren't suspecting anything could be wrong, the next you're fighting some cursed creature. Oh, and you finally kill Pierre afterwards, and if you haven't already, you get the magnums.

I can't forget that there are like four sphinxes in this level because why wouldn't there be?

This leads to Egypt and the City of Khamoon. While all levels have generally flowed into one another, this levelset is the one that feels the most like one big level. There's an area here that you see at the beginning of City of Khamoon, and then in the next one you return to it to reach the final level. Egypt is where some people cite fatigue with the game, I even had it here whenever I played the game before, but this time I didn't really feel that way. Perhaps it was because I'm used to playing awful games that I savored this, perhaps it's because I was trying to minimize my number of saves. Egypt feels like a natural thing to place as the second-to-last levelset since Egypt is the stereotypical place for a game like this.

To get all the secrets on this level, you jump from that left pillar, to the central pillar, then one obscured on the other side.

Egypt has the last "find four items and bring them to a door" set of puzzles in the game. This time made a lot more obvious by both the items and the place you put them in being obelisks with one on each side. And a stuff on top. It's sort of a reverse St. Francis's Folly, instead of going down then up then down, you go up, down then up. It's another fine set of areas which has been expanding what kind of platforming it expects of you, here it can get very tricky going through even the right way.

Both player and enemy are guilty of shooting at corpses.

There are also a lot of Atlantians now, mummified vaguely humanoid creatures with exposed muscle and bone. By now you should be able to just shoot them with the magnums instead of Lara's default pistols. I hope so, because these guys are tedious to kill. They move fast in a circle, so you can't really use previous methods to dodge them. They move fast, so unless you know where they are ahead of time, you can't escape to a ledge. Even if you can, sometimes they shoot energy bolts at you. You can dodge those, but they are a pain to kill. Some fly, but these are usually less annoying to kill. Sadly from here on out you'll have to kill a lot of them. There are also panthers, but they're just reskinned lions, so they're not really new.

You end Egypt by killing Larson again, or maybe Lara somehow didn't kill him the first time, it doesn't really matter. Then we get a cutscene where Natla and her goons take the Scion off Lara as well as her weapons, but before Lara can be killed, she escapes. Then Lara sneaks onto Natla's boat and reaches the final levelset, Atlantis.

Natla's Mines is an interesting level. You start off without any weapons and gradually pick them up again over the course of the level, with her pistols being what the opening puzzles are all about. You're not really worrying about enemies, there are only three and only one is one you're likely to fight without working towards it. Here paying attention to everything is not really the way to find secrets as much as the only way to advance through the level, secrets instead are becoming quite difficult to find, almost impossible even. For instance, one of the puzzles you have to solve involves you reaching a hole before a boulder can, Lara isn't hurt by immobile boulders but they block her movement.

This guy is weird, from being on a skateboard in a weird skateboard park to talking like Robert De Niro for some reason.

The three goons aren't terribly interesting as enemies, mostly they're a second source of weapons, possibly even the first time you can see some of them. They're like Larson and Pierre, except they run around a lot more. More interesting is a secret where you have to find places you can land on a big series of slopes.

Atlantis is where the game turns really dark. Now you're in some bizarre fleshy structure, like the inside of someone or Doom's hell levels. There are a lot of Atlantians around, but more importantly this is where the platforming really expects a lot out of you. Hope you've been paying attention, even to some of those secret areas, or you won't get very far here. Even though I find the Atlantians somewhat tedious to fight, it's a fine level, the constant background heartbeat and the environment really sell it.

In-between deadly traps and jumps, there's a sort of boss in a weird doppelganger. This is a puzzle boss, you can't shoot it because it shoots at you. Instead you have to get it to fall into a pit of lava. It's slightly clever, but as far as doppelgangers you can't fight and have to resort to trickery to defeat, this isn't that clever.

At the end, you find the Scion again, in a big cutscene you get a bunch of revelations. Natla is the third ruler of Atlantis, and they buried her because she misused the power of the Scion. To say she's psychotic is putting it mildly. She gives the usual manic speech to Lara before she tries to destroy the Scion, bringing us to...

The Great Pyramid. There are not one, but two bosses here. First you get a giant Atlantian. It's a damage sponge, keep shooting at it, hopefully with either the Uzis or the shotgun and eventually it'll die. It is very slow, and it has no ranged attack, so you're not really in any danger. Then more of that hard platforming Atlantis loves putting in front of you. Hope you like figuring out how to dodge a boulder with basically no spare space!

That's not very interesting, so take a look at this unusual platforming exercise. There's something on the other side of the collapsible tile, but it takes a jump from there to reach.

Natla, meanwhile, is the final boss...and she's not really that impressive. She flies and she shoots at you, but by this point I had a ton of ammo and plenty of medikits and who cares about something shooting at you? Enemies running into you are worse. And that completes Tomb Raider. There's a lot more platforming I glossed over, but there's only so many times you can gush over that.

Graphically, this is carried by art direction rather than quality. It's very nice looking, but has a lot of problems. Animal models are goofy, and human models are...okay. The artists' talents clearly lie in making humans, both animations and the look of humans are far better than the animals. The animals sometimes even have human characteristics instead of animal ones. They can't even really do fur well. Lara could stand some refinement, but her animations are flawless.

Something that hasn't come up a lot here yet is texture alignment. That is, making it so one texture connects properly to the next. It's a very important job in 3D and even 2D games, but until now I haven't had much cause to complain. This is the first game I've blogged about that screws this up in a noticeable way. Worse still is how the game does textures quite badly regardless of whether they're properly aligned or not, textures shrink and expand in a way so noticeable that I haven't seen a professional game before or since.

I kind of dislike the CGI cutscenes. They don't really look any better than the in-game stuff and the animation quality takes a large nosedive here, feeling incredibly amateurish. How these two aspects are so vastly different, I'll never know.

The game really sells itself as an adventure where Lara is going through ancient tombs, because it really works. A subject like this needs a minimum of combat, especially with human enemies, as you're supposed to be going through places humans haven't tread in ages. By the time the game turns into a fight against ancient beings that really doesn't matter anymore, because it's made a smooth transition. Even those places still feel like some sort of ancient tomb, just with the original inhabitants being a bunch of psychotics with a hatred of the intruder, playing into the usual mummy curses.

While the story isn't impressive, I do think that it works really well with what it's supposed to be doing. Woman gets hired to find artifact, gets betrayed by employer, finds out employer was convicted for crimes against creation, kills employer twice. It doesn't overstay it's welcome and fits quite well in the Indiana Jones knock-off the story was going for. Also, gotta love the strong accents of the Americans and Brits, yet thte Frenchman sounds like he's phoning it in. Is this truly the nation that gave us 'Allo 'Allo?

Sound-wise, the music is nice, but often spoils combat by switching to a combat track long before you could expect to see an enemy. It works best when you have subtle background sounds, or the music becomes grand when you see some nice new room. The sounds themselves, despite being low-bit, are very satisfying, from guns feeling better than they are to shoot and the sounds of someone getting killed, be it Lara or something else, sounding sufficently crunchy. And that's all I have to say except for the summary.

Weapons:
There's not a lot to combat, but these weapons do feel satisfying to use. 3/10

Enemies:
There's some nice variety, but because combat isn't the most interesting, it feels somewhat wasted. 5/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Nearly flawless, possibly even too good in most places. I do think some cutting could be done at the end of Greece. 9/10

Player Agency:
Lara basically has two flaws, a lack of turning speed and a slightly awkward camera. 9/10

Interactivity:
While there isn't that much going on environmentally, what is going on is very well done. This game exploited the heck out of it's tools to the best of it's abilities. 6/10

Atmosphere:
I have never seen another game do abandoned tombs and cities so well. 10/10

Graphics:
Good art direction and animations, at least outside of the CGI cutscenes. A lot of texture issues though. 4/10

Story:
Simple but effective. 4/10

Sound/Music:
A few awkward triggers, but otherwise perfectly fitting everything. Noticeably low-bit rate though. 8/10

That's 58, or third/fourth highest rated game here. It's the same score I gave Doom 2, which will probably go a bit lower when I next reach it.

Reviews, a lot of positive stuff here. Frankly, so many just echo my sentiments it's hardly worth pointing out. Outliers are either reviewing the iOS version, which is not a fair comparison, or Famitsu, which I don't seem to find the full version of, and considering what I've heard about Famitsu, isn't going to be insightful anyway. Modern criticisms are mostly regulated to controls and graphics which I don't think we really need to go over again. There's also the realism argument, but in regards to this series, I can't help but think of this video.

On a more serious level, there's a point at which a game loses the fun it gains from making the game more interesting in the realism department, and making Tomb Raider any more realistic would go in that direction. Making combat more like ARMA would not make the game more fun. Making fall damage more realistic would be annoying, be it decreasing the height or making the damage worse. All the little things that makes real life differ from fiction, like insects, minor cuts and scratches, removing brush or dealing with the aftermath of wounds only work if you balance a game around it, and even so people don't generally like survival games outside of that niche. Games where you just eat don't count, and considering Tomb Raider that would be more busywork.

I decided to make some changes to what was being played. Firstly, I decided the way I was playing Star Fighter 3000 was going to produce an unbearably long entry and I was unwilling to restart it at this point, so out it went. It will be a regular game whenever I get to 1994. Regular selection of games will pop out in the new year. Until I fire up Elm Knight, we'll be seeing Commander Keen games. As someone pointed out to me that it might be a good idea to play Anniversary sequentially, which happened to line up with the game being discounted on Steam. Has some real "you know what I love after a workout? another workout." energy to it, but I would probably never get to it otherwise, so why not. I'm putting something between this and that though.

Anyway, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my readers.

Resident Evil (1996)

Name:Resident Evil
Number:197
Year:1996
Publisher:Capcom
Developer:Capcom
Genre:Survival Horror
Difficulty:4/5
Time:24 hours
Won:Yes (80W/63L)

Resident Evil is a game series near and dear to my heart, being the first "mature" series I can remember being allowed to play. Specifically the Gamecube-era remake and the 4th entry in the series. Which is weird when you think about it, but when you get down to it, are zombies and chainsaw maniacs really any worse than driving through sidewalks at 90 MPH blasting Kickstart My Heart or ripping out someone's spine or gritty realistic warfare? I didn't play this one as much as the remake since at the time this was one series I wanted to actually own my copies of rather than just emulate, and in general I haven't played any of these games in any significant amount in 10 years, so it was really nice coming back to it.

One thing I can appreciate now, looking back, is how much of a western game this is. In the sense that this was uniquely the product of the western world in the sense of that hopeful, interconnected world building upon previous cultural achievements in a way that makes the whole thing better. A Japanese game, set in America, inspired by Italian and American zombie movies, and playing almost exactly like a French adventure game. In turn, that adventure game was inspired by American horror writers and other adventure games, some French, some not, with some of the very same influences Resident Evil would get. Even Resident Evil's status as an unofficial remake of Sweet Home ties into that worldly influence, haunted mansions, by their very nature, are alien to Japan, and very much their own takes on American and European phenomena.

I also appreciate the general plot now. While the original source of the modern zombie film, I Am Legend, went into detail on how it's vampire virus worked, it, to my knowledge did not explain how it happened. While the explanation of the virus would only happen later, this level of detail is nice to see in a genre which usually just throws its hands up. It's a shame that this level of detail would be used for a series which would later go so far into sci-fi that the usual perpetual motion machines would seem realistic by comparison.

Meanwhile, the actual meat of the story is disturbingly plausible. A pharmaceutical company is creating a virus, which if released, might possibly end all life on Earth, and escapes because of poor lab security? The government, while not completely on-board with this, is aware of it and knows what it could do. Even though most real pharma companies are just implicated in corruption scandals, it doesn't seem that far off from reality.

This has a lot of potential too. Obviously, we have an outbreak in the city in the first two sequels and the Outbreak spin-offs, but there's so much more you can do with the setting. This is an international company responsible for the destruction of an entire city. Suddenly a lot of people are going to be very interested in what the local Umbrella building is doing. Some of those people will be under official orders to kick doors down, others will be going in vigilante style. Better hope those people don't accidentally shoot a vial containing another zombie virus. To say nothing of what the war on terror might be like if Al-Qaeda might be dropping zombie bombs instead of kamikaze attacks. After all, why do the work yourself when you can get your enemies to do it?

Even in the small scale depicted in the game, the story is interesting. I've seen the Japanese title described as a spoiler, but it doesn't really take a while before you can figure out that the virus is man-made. It just unfolds in a neat little way, though it can feel like the player and player character do not make the leap at the same time.

The same cannot be said for the voice acting. It's only good in a way that makes you physically cringe. I expect goofy phrasing from my horror games/movies, whoever was translating Italian horror films in the '70s and '80s did so like a hacksaw to a tree. I do expect voice actors to at least try, and this does not sound like they tried. I know more words have been written about the voice acting than the game itself at this point by others, but as humorous as it may be, it damages the serious vibe of the game.

It's odd because the rest of the game's sound design is spot on. The tell-tale sound of an enemy, to the gunshots to the background music. Everything is very satisfying and fitting. The music goes for a very thematic rather than memorable sound, but it works. Every player, upon first going outside, no doubt freaks out hearing those howls in the background. Are there more? Are there?

Getting to the meat of the game, the mansion itself. I like it. It's well-thought out, and every room has something to it, be it an item, a key or some strange trap. Each room is filled in and doesn't just feel like it's there to take up space. While the background art really has that'90s CGI look to it, the art direction is nice, really feels like a mansion. I have no complaints about backtracking through it, it adds a new twist and you know where you have to explore. All my complaints are really just minor. For instance it has no master bedroom. The biggest is the Keeper's room, which really just looks like your average Midwestern bedroom.

A lot of the areas after this are kinda disappointing though. I can forgive the garden for it's straightforwardness, it's a constant rush. The background art is strongest here, just feeling like a low-res version of something much higher quality than looking off. The mansion basement? The mansion basement only exists because the developers needed another way to screw over Chris. It's mostly just a random bland hallway that has no reason to exist. The underground area is similar, feeling like it was taken from a completely different game, though it's attempts at changing up the game's formula are nice at least.

I like the guardhouse, but that might just be superficial liking. Any chance you have of knifing any zombies is gone here, the rooms are just too small and awkward to do so. It's also surprisingly linear despite seeming more complex, there's only one real path forward throughout this section. My art criticisms towards the mansion apply here too.

The lab is kind of linear, but has enough to it to make up for that. It's a pretty straight shot to the final boss, but there's quite a bit to see and do. While it doesn't pull many traps like the mansion, it gives the illusion of it pretty strongly. Also, a room where you can shoot four zombies in a row!

Pre-rendered cutscenes have a cheap feel to them.

Locations don't quite line up with what the game implies. Much like an Italian horror film, there's something not quite right about the mansion. I don't mean the traps, I expect those. I mean the layout of the mansion. There's a welded door where you get out of the underground tunnels. Where does it lead? As near as I can tell, the indoor garden area, which seemingly has a section you can't ever reach. I can't imagine a bunch of scientists going through a greenhouse every time they have to go to work.

Then we get to the lab itself, and it's underwhelming. Notes build up a grand location full of test tubes and monster pens, and when you get there the labs proper are like four rooms. No wonder the virus escaped, they don't have any method of containing it short of blowing the place up. The mansion is almost perfectly scaled, yet the lab is so underwhelming.

Coming back to this game after so long, I'm forced to come to a conclusion I wish I didn't have to. Either Resident Evil is a lot easier than it's given credit for or I've just gotten really good at the genre. I'll get into specifics at the moment, but there's evidence for both parts. I note that in both playthroughs I had a pretty good number of supplies that by the end I didn't need to worry about ammo anymore.
On one hand, I used the knife in melee, successfully. I never killed a boss with it, but it's very much the mark of a good player to be able to use a melee weapon in a survival horror game well. Outside of those games specifically designed around melee combat. Meleeing everything in a survival horror game is a lot more manageable than meleeing everything in a FPS.

On the other, there are several aspects that are clearly just "perceived difficulty". That is, difficulty that's only there because you think it is. There's probably just enough ammo to kill every enemy that isn't invulnerable or respawning, and even if there isn't, you can run away from most enemies, except ironically enough, the zombies, pretty easily.

Though I will note that this game has given me a revelation regarding my skill level at games in general. Before this I was of the mind that while I was better than Joe Average, I wasn't particularly skilled, just in comparison. Now, I think that I'm pretty good. Not the best, and any dedicated player of a game could whoop me, but I feel pretty confident.

Control-wise, the game hasn't changed much from Alone in the Dark. That said, the additions are very welcome, and some missing aspects are even better. In the later, I for one am grateful not to have to do another jumping sequence with a cinematic camera! There's a run button, and rather than having to choose which action you can take from a menu, you just activate things and/or shoot them without having to enter the inventory screen at all.

For many of the things cited as negatives, tank controls, limited saves and limited inventory space, I don't necessarily mind any of them. Something between my eyes and the game itself is going wrong, because whenever I run I never quite seem to be able to go where I want to. Other than that, the only thing I really need is a quick turn. No auto-aim isn't that much of a loss since it's fairly easy to figure out where your character is aiming.

Limited saves and limited inventory space are also not quite troublesome. I think even as Chris there's something like 18 saves, which should be more than enough to get you through the game unless you save every five minutes. Inventory space as Jill is fine, 8 slots, more than enough for a weapon, ammo, the knife, a health item and a key. For Chris, that's 6 inventory slots, and now your inventory is nearly full up.

Chris has it really bad at the start when you have no access to an item box though.

Speaking of character differences, I have to say that neither is really better. From a gameplay perspective, Jill works the best, every weapon is useful, your side character does his own thing, and it's just the most fun as a game. Chris works better from a story perspective, but he's down one weapon and his choice of side character awkwardly fits into the game. You are forced to make a decision regarding Rebecca you have no idea will have consequences later when at the time you make it, you have no possible reason not to chose that choice.

This lends more credence to the theory that certain aspects of the game are supposed to suck. Something which feels like detractors of the game exaggerate as an opinion of people who like the game more than it really is. As a general observation, I don't think anyone ever picked out tank controls because they were supposed to suck. In Alone in the Dark/Resident Evil's case, it's because the game was designed around the cinematic camera, and it's a necessary evil because freedom of movement in such cameras tends to suck. You think you want it until you're constantly fighting against camera angle changes.

Now, there are absolutely camera angles in this game designed to screw you over. Does that necessarily make them something that's supposed to suck? I think that kind of depends. While I never confirmed it, I don't think you can shoot enemies off-screen. A lot of screens force you into a position where you don't know when a zombie is about to arrive until it's too late, so you have to risk it when you know something is off-screen. This isn't necessarily sucky, it's cruel. There is a difference. It's not so bad as to be unmanageable though.

But that's not going into how the camera works. You get a view that shows you all that's around you, while still being within the game world, as opposed to isometric or side-scrolling. The cinematic camera, as the name implies, makes it look cinematic without having to stop the game every 5 minutes for a cutscene. Taking out an enemy or running away like this just looks cool. As is slowly walking around a corner while you hear something unpleasant going on.

Combat is intriguing both from an atmospheric perspective and a gameplay perspective. You are seemingly against the odds with these creatures, every shuffling or clicking off-screen a sign of impending terror. As you fight them more and more, you gradually realize how to defeat them with minimal loss to yourself. Every weapon has a niche...I'm sorry, almost every weapon has a niche. From the lowly knife to the mighty magnum, almost every weapon is far more useful than you might think.

The weapons:

The knife is a deceptively useful weapon. On the face of it, you're relying on a weapon that doesn't stun enemies, has a short range, and because of the combat system, means you can't run away. If you screw around with it enough you start to figure out how you can use it effectively. You move faster backing away from zombies than they do towards you, and hunters have awful turning arcs. Even in hallway you can abuse this knowledge. And that's all you need to know. This is why I think I've gotten really good, I can actually use it effectively; I'm not going to be good enough to knife a Tyrant or anything, it's just a neat party trick.

The pistol, meanwhile, is a deceptively weak weapon. It's ranged, but it doesn't do much more damage than the knife. It's only effective against zombies and dogs, but it's very situational in how you should use it. Do you have the room to fight? How many are there? Will they all approach at once? Hunters ignore it, and chimeras, well, who is still packing a pistol against them? 

The shotgun is a weird weapon. As Chris, it's basically your heavy duty weapon for most of the game. Jill can afford to use it more casually. This is very much on the extreme end of video game shotguns, you need to press it against a monster's temple for it to be effective, otherwise you're basically shooting slightly more powerful pistol rounds. That makes it dangerous to use, because you're usually within stabbing range if you get the full effect. Hunters in particular require a bit of precision and luck, but everything else is manageable.

The grenade launcher (or bazooka) functions weirdly too. Jill is the only one to get it, and it's by far the most useful weapon in the game. Since you can get it practically from the start. You get three ammo types, acid, explosive and flame, whose usage can seemingly only be understood via outside game materials. Acid rounds are apparently useful against all living things, which is fair, but video game logic dictates that a giant snake is strong against poison, of which acid is usually lumped in. Flame would be the most logical choice, yet that is apparently weaker. Considering that you can't unload grenades from the launcher, this feels unnecessarily complicated.

The magnum is the most powerful of the weapons. It takes out most enemies in 1 or 2 shots only tempered by a relative lack of ammo. I'm going to let you in on a little secret though. If you track down the locations of all the magnum ammo in the game, you have more than enough to get rid of any hunters in your path and the Tyrant. Granted, you need to get there first...

The flamethrower is Chris's exclusive weapon. You cannot reload it, but there are two of them. They're all on pins which control whether a door is locked or not. One locks the only door out. In this game, there is no sane reason to use that one. The other you also don't have much reason to use or get, until you discover that it opens a door later on. As such it's only used against some hunters, one boss and a webbed up door. Since you can just bypass the boss by burning the door, why would you want to use it on the boss?

The enemies:

 Zombie, on the surface, the least deadly enemy. You can knife them with some practice, the pistol takes out most before they can reach you, and anything stronger kills them in one or two shots. By the time I reached the endgame as Chris, my opinion changed somewhat. They hit very hard, if you get unlucky you might find yourself burning through herbs against them. You can't dodge them like you can other enemies, they automatically grab you if you're within their range. To say nothing of how the camera screws you over most often with these guys. That makes it tricky to run past them, as the only way you can do so is when their AI decides to just walk against a wall than towards you. I do like the trick of having them fall down before they die again, to fake you out, though it can be annoying when the camera angle hides the tell-tale pool of blood that occurs when they're dead again.

Cerberus, or zombie dog. Fast, but rare. They seem dangerous on the surface since they always come in packs and slowly walk around until you decide to run. This is very deceptive, their primary attack is to jump at you, which I found quite easy to dodge. You get a good moment to change the direction you're moving in, and they cannot correct in mid-air. At least if you have the space to do this and you're not dealing with three at once. The pistol works beautifully against them, stopping them in their tracks.

Yawn, or the giant snake. This game doesn't mention the name to my knowledge, no idea if that was in the remake or if it's mentioned in some manga or something. You fight this guy twice. He's really annoying thanks to the way he moves; he's a giant snake and you can't walk over him. I didn't figure out the trick to this guy, beyond it being a horrible idea to use the magnum. The first time around you can just run past him and get a key item he's guarding. If you get bit the first time, you get poisoned. This usually triggers your partner bringing you to the other side of the mansion to give you the curing serum, which only works on the snake's venom.

Snakes and spiders. These I'm lumping together because they were basically the same, poisonous enemies you can easily run past. The snakes appear 2-3 times. All in places where it's not really in your interests to walk. I never fought them because I would never need to. The spiders at least have some reason to fight in their 2 appearances. Thing is, all their attacks are telegraphed and the rooms they appear in are optional. Poison isn't really a problem because the game gives you 9 blue herbs.

There are also wasps and crows, neither of which I was ever on-screen with long enough to actually fight.

Plant 42, the giant plant. The first unavoidable boss, but there is a way to make it easier. There's one of those liquid pouring puzzles that you can solve just before reaching him, do it and you cut his health by half. Jill has this guy easy, if you stand in a corner with the grenade launcher you can plink away at him. Chris doesn't, he needs to point his shotgun up at the guy and stand close, leaving him very vulnerable to getting hit by his tentacles.

Hunters, the bane of anyone who walked back into the mansion expecting an easy time. Fast, jumpy fellas with an inclination to decapitate you. That tell-tale off-screen clicking sound is a terrible sign. They're curious enemies. The pistol is next to useless against them. Using the shotgun is more effort than it should be, you need to be right on the money with it and it takes more hits than feels comfortable. The magnum and grenade launcher are very effective, but the former requires you to go through most of the mansion to get it, and if you're playing as Chris, that's not going to be easy. Knifing them, in contrast, while difficult, is not as hard as it seems. They're almost all left-handed and they have turning arcs, so if you're right behind them they'll move around awkwardly before attacking. It's also very easy to just run past most of them...at least if there's not too many in the room.

Chimeras, fly monsters or the last enemies in the game. Nothing about these things is explained in-game, for some reason. They're difficult to kill, but not that hard to fight. They're on the ceiling most of the time, which means you can run past them. Easily. It's hard to hit them with weapon because you can't aim straight up, you aim up at an angle. On the ground they're not much harder, but they run faster than you, which is a point in their favor.

Tyrant, doesn't have any pain animation whatsoever, but every time you fight this guy you get plenty of space to dodge. If you haven't been burning through ammo, you shouldn't have a problem with him. Really, that's true of all bosses in this game, they're just another enemy that takes a few more shotgun shells.

I was greatly disappointed in the puzzle design here. I think there's a total of four puzzles that can't be summed up as key and door, sometimes the key is a crest and block pushing. Someone on the dev team was proud of implementing block pushing, so proud. Every variation he could thing of, like a zombie-infested Sokoban. I do not care for the block puzzles. I don't think highly of the key puzzles, but at least that can be acknowledged as forcing the player to look around.

Of those four, we have two follow the instructions puzzles. I think more fondly of the painting puzzle than the V-jolt puzzle, simply because the painting puzzle requires a little thought. Mixing a bunch of stuff together is such a tedious process, especially in a game with limited inventory space. We get a game of Lights Out to reach the V-jolt puzzle, which I hate.

Then we have the lab password puzzle. Technically not that impressive, you have to read a very simple cypher to figure out a four letter password. The game itself offers the option to basically spoil this, by giving away what the cypher is if you move an obviously moveable cabinet. Even without that it's not that hard, but it actually stopped me for a moment to think about it, and I appreciate that.

Outside of conversing with Rebecca, the game packs in a lot of ways the game can go, seemingly unimportant actions can result in fighting a zombie where you don't want to. The game tracks a lot of variables I wasn't expecting it to. I suspect there's a heck of a lot more going on than I found, and even that was a lot.

Finally, I like the models. For a game of this era on consoles, they all look great. They have the right amount of detail versus abstraction to work with the PSX's capabilities. It also helps that the game rarely lets you get close to a model, almost always they're from a fair distance. The humans have a very nice, somewhat anime-esque look to them, while all the monsters have a sufficient vile rotting nature to them.

The map feels like a flawless example of how such things should work, you're in the red area, green are areas you've visited, outlined areas you haven't visited but found the map.

Weapons:
Well-balance, but less than I would have liked. Chris gets unfairly crippled in this department. 5/10

Enemies:
Despite the small number, most of the game's mainstays are well thought out from all perspectives. 7/10

Non-Enemies:
The game puts in an incredible amount of effort to put in NPCs that can follow you, yet also takes them away before you can engage in any combat with them next to you. 1/10

Levels:
A well-designed and interesting place to explore, only brought down by the odd out of place section. 9/10

Player Agency:
It could stand to have a few improvements in the movement department, especially a quick turn around. No real menu and no way to cancel out of actions you'd prefer to not have done. I don't mind the loss of auto-aim, but I do wish there was some method of showing that the player is actually aiming at his target. 6/10

Interactivity:
Despite some poor puzzles, an incredible amount of foresight on the developers in reacting to what the player does. 4/10

Atmosphere:
Works beautifully as both a horror game and as an action game. 10/10

Graphics:
It's aged, some aspects more than others, but good art direction saves it from the same fate as many of it's contemporaries. 7/10

Story:
Intriguing, but minor point loss for the betrayal subplot feeling awkward in it's execution. 5/10

Sound/Music:
While the voice acting is goofy, the rest of the sound design is quite effective, and music never overwhelms the game itself. 7/10

That's 61, which puts it as a tie for number 1. Considering that whenever I replay Doom it's likely to lose a few points, that might as well put it at number 1.

In regards to the modern debates that seem to happen in regards to whether you should play this or the Gamecube remake, I would say it ultimately depends. PSX is a lot more approachable, it fits in with the rest of the series more, and it has a better artstyle. That said, it's aged graphically and it has several things which make the controls more aggravating than it should. GCN is more challenging, fills in the series lore nicely, and looks nearly flawless. That said, outside of some of that lore, it feels completely disconnected from the rest of the series in what it changes, some of the new gameplay elements are annoying and some aspects were put into the game solely to screw with players of the original.

My real opinion is, who cares? It's like having a choice between sex with two beautiful women and then badmouthing the one you didn't pick. If you like one, you'll like the other, and everything else is just being nitpicky.

While it's obvious I'm going to play the other games in the series at some point, I need to talk about the various versions of the game and which one I'm going to play. There are noticeable differences between rereleases, consoles and even countries. Of note, we have Director's Cut for arrange mode, basically changing up the entire game, the Saturn for Battle Mode, and Deadly Silence which changes things around. At some point I'm going to talk about the original Japanese version, but that's going to be a one-off.

That doesn't include the remake, of which I'll have to check both the original and one of the later versions with the option to not have tank controls. The only tricky part here is Deadly Silence, a Nintendo DS game. I could overspend on another copy of Resident Evil and play it in my DS with a slightly awful screen, or I could play it in a nice crisp emulator, and end up dying because I need three hands to use an emulated DS's touch screen controls. Decisions, decisions. For another day, anyway.

Starting next year, I'm going to make two changes, start with survival horror games in September and start focusing on these games chronologically. Survival horror as a genre seems like something that has been poorly defined and used over the years, and it seems to be getting worse. I'm looking at lists of early survival horror from Wikipedia, Giantbomb, TVtropes among others and all of these games have barely anything in common with each other. Sifting out the crap some dude really wants to push as the first survival horror game from the real survival horror games is going to be a herculean task. In the meantime, it's back to business as usual, with one exception, one final game from 1996 (for now) and quite possibly my candidate for greatest game of all time.