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eziojensenthe3rd · 7 days ago

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Midnight Gaming: Saturday Morning Residental Malevolence

So hey, been a while. So I had some family emergencies I had to deal with involving my father. He's had to go to the hospital on three occasions, the first cause of kidney and liver failure, 2nd cause they discharged him early due to catching covid where he then fell and broke his arm due to low-iron related fainting and the 3rd cause he was out of sorts and unwell due to his liver being damaged enough to require a transplant in the future, hopefully soon.

This resulted in me needed to stay at his house and mind his dog for over a month. Right now tho im back at my own home now and im gonna write this post as a wee catchup. No news here but I am gonna talk about 2 games I played in the past month, both past midnight so it fits. I played Resident Evil 2 (2019) past midnight on the 31st of october and 1st of november respectfully and I played Toonstruck past midnight on the 5th of November. Lets talk about them.

Survival Horror is becoming something of a genre associated with indie gaming these days with games like Crow Country, Alisa and Conscript. Part of this could be pushback towards the prevalence of mascot horror games, AAA gaming slowly deciding to make stuff for that genre with Capcom and even Konami doing some stuff but nostalgia also plays a role in it, with many of the newer titles taking serious inspiration from older franchises along with remakes from well known franchises such as Silent Hill and of course, Resident Evil.

Although being a well-known driver behind the Survival Horror genre, the Resident Evil series, does owe a lot of mechanics to its older contemporaries, namely Alone in the dark for its use of static camera framing and tank controls and Sweet Home for its item management and residence of notable malevolence. Regardless, the first game on Playstation one did help propel the Survival Horror genre into mainstream and necessitated a sequel in the eyes of Capcom. This process eventually led a full do-over mid-production, redesigning the game in its entirely and leaving the abandoned version to be known as Resident Evil 1.5.

Eventually Resident Evil 2 came out and it became a hit, seeing incredible sales and renown and helping push the franchise foward. Some time later, the original Resident Evil from PS1 gets a full, from the ground up, remake exclusivly for Nintendo's Gamecube Console, which ended up being highly regarded as one the best remakes to be made. The design and graphics being highly polished to represent the atmosphere of the game, the sound and music heightening the tension as you move through the updated Spencer Mansion. The remake was respectful of what moments it preserved and new additions they added, leading to a version of the original that is an improvement in every way possible.

So after that, people were expecting Resident Evil 2 to also get the same treatment but unfortunately it didnt happen for a long while, might be because of Resident Evil 4 completly dominating sales and causing the series and genre as a whole to divert into more action oriented, quick time heavy schlock. For a long while, survival horror was somewhat abandoned by the AAA space as it was seen by many a gaming executive as a financial dead end, with many claiming that people didnt want survival horror games anymore, that the genre was effectivly dead.

Indie gaming however doesnt really concern itself with sales or focus groups. Its not bound to the decisions of executives and publishers whose understanding of video games is ignorant "at best". Eventually new horror titles start to pop up and become well recieved, leading to many of those publishers to change their minds and finally decide to greenlit some horror projects. And with the success of Resident Evil 7 being praised as a return to form for the franchise, the Resident Evil 2 Remake project is finally approved with an announcement from Yoshiaki Hirabayashi saying the words "We do it!"

So with Resident Evil 2make, I started with Leon for the A scenario and then Claire B the following night. Leon A was simple enough, finding the medals, fighting Birken 1 and making it through the car park. I say simple but in fairness it was more tense than simple, mainly do to how the threats in the game work. The main zombies here are often critiqued as being bullet sponges, soaking up entire magazines of ammo and still moving onwards. Thing is I understand the reason for this and how it helps support the horror in this game.

See, zombies are pretty well known these days, they come in hoards, they bite to infect and convert, you need to shoot them in the head. Thing is the deal with horror is that what you dont know is what you end up fearing the most and with zombies, there isnt really anything you don't already know by now. Its why most zombie media tends to focus on other humans being the most dangerous or they just make infection instantaneous and the zombies into runners, its trying to change and redesign the monsters to try and make them scary again. 2makes method of making them tough sumbitches does help with making zombies scary again because it adds back that uncertainty along with supporting one of the features often seen in Survival Horror games, item conservation. You could try to take out that zombie in the hallway but how many bullets will it take? What if you need those bullets later? What if you run past the zombie? What if it catches you? What if you do take it out, is it actually dead? or merely incapacitated but ready to come back later when you return? What if you got lucky and explode the zombies head, guaranteeing its demise? What if you miss and waste a bullet? These kinda help form the tension for a lot of these encounters as well support the narrative of the game, that for an american town like Raccoon City, having access to small scale firearms BARELY helps when dealing with a zombie outbreak such as this, with many of them able to resist several gunshots to the head while their prey only needing to be bitten once to be doomed. Getting stronger weapons like the shotgun and grenade launcher does help with them being more effective, but their ammo is also more scarce, making the decision to use them another one you have to contend with.

The lickers being a tough enemy that is also blind, leading to situations where you can try to sneak past to avoid a fight? Definatly a good change but that pales in comparison to the one change that this remake is most well known for: Mr X.

What was a reoccurring boss from the originals B scenario, is now an ongoing threat for a good chunk of the game, leading to situations where you need to get past several zombies while the big lad stomps towards you in pursuit. He does not die, you cannot defeat him in a way that matters, you need to run to lose him and when you do, you need to try and do whatever you need to progress while making sure to avoid him as he stomps around trying to find you. Anytime Im trying to go somewhere to grab something and I see that bastard come around a corner, the hairs on my neck stand as I turn to retreat and try to come up with an alternative route.

Eventually I make it through the rest of Leon A and reach the end, leaving Claire B for tomorrow. I've heard somethings about 2makes handling of the B scenario, namely how it wasnt that much different from their A scenario. The only difference being you have Mr X much earlier and you use a unique handgun for that character that uses stronger ammo, some puzzles are slightly different. Otherwise it plays very much the same with the same bosses and thats... dissapointing. Maybe they had plans to make the B scenario more different, maybe have areas locked behind the club and heart keys be exclusive to either scenario instead of just the character. I dont know but I still made it to the end. That section where you play as Sherry hiding from Chief Irons... jesus christ that was horrifying. Despite some criticisms, Resident Evil 2 Remake is definatly fantastic, theres a lot in here thats done well more then there done poorly. Alot of the mechanic's help create the tensions needed in this survival horror game. I'll need to see about playing the bonus modes later at some point in the future but for now, its an easy recommend and a good time to move on to our second game.

Toonstruck is the 1996 point and click fmv game about Christopher Llyod being isekaied into a cartoon world, tasked with finding items to build a machine to help stop a villain from corrupting everything into a edgy mess.

So full confession, I suck at point and click games, i've always had an issue of trying everything I could do but always missing that one thing I needed to do in order to progress. Honestly I just end up giving up or using a walkthrough and thats what I've done while playing this game, having a walkthrough to lead me to where I needed to go so I dont end up stuck.

So you know walking through town, talking to various toons, head into a barn and oh dear the cartoon cow needs her butter machine fixed and theres elmer the old horse and..NO FLUX YOU CANT USE THAT WORD....yeah this is definatly game from the 90s where that word was.... anyways..

The game has an all star cast of voice actors that you'd recongise if you were a purveyor of saturday morning cartoons from dan castlenetta, tress macneille, jim cummings, dom deluise to name a few along with tim curry voicing the main villian, because of course you do. The main person you go through this toon nightmare with being known Drew Blanc as played by Christopher Lloyd. Honestly Lloyd does a great job at managing to be a straight man to the cartoon nonsense surrounding him as well being quite toony himself with his facial expressions. The man comes off stressed from the strange scenario he's in, often backing down when threatened and tries to be polite to defuse the situation. Of course he's also accompanied by the purple shape known as Flux Widly who often plays with Drew's personality, often being abrasive and snarking at the odd characters they come across.

Of course talking about toonstruck there is one matter to talk about and its to do with the fact that the game was cut down from its intially planned length with the 1st act revolving around the three toon lands and the 2nd taking place in nefarious's castle until the end. The game ends with a cliffhanger with hopes that they could add the rest of the planned content in its sequel, though you can already tell where this heading. The game bombed on release despite receiving good reviews from critics, this was released on oct 31 around the same time Command and Conquer Red Alert released on dos, round the same year that had Duke Nukem 3d, Quake, Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen, Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot were released. A point and click game based off of cartoons didnt attract much interest depsite the star-studded voice cast.

The sequel gets dumped and for years Toonstruck sorta became a cult classic with folks hoping for a sequel or even a remaster. Given how games like Po'ed and Killing Time got a remaster from Nightdive, it'd be a surprise to not see them produce a remaster for this game. Only time will tell.

So thats that. I'm gonna try and get back into writing these semi-regulary but I do wanna ask one thing. Before I tried to see about creating an RSS feed to act as a third host for Midnight Gaming along with Tumblr and Pillowfort. Honestly though I'm unsure how I can really host an RSS feed as it seems likes its more for people who have their own website like on Neocities. I'm unsure if I can do that with just a Carrd page. Thing is, I do have Newgrounds and I could potentially post on that accounts blog. Would anyone be interested in that though? Maybe let me know if you're down for that.

For now, thank you all for reading, feel free to leave feedback and game suggestions. Talk with you another time.

#midnight gaming #gaming #resident evil #resident evil 2 #toonstruck #point and click #survival horror #cartoon

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