Is anybody watching Gamescom this week?

[Lemon Zing]

It started today, but to be honest, it wasn't particularly interesting. The week is young, though. The event is going to conclude on Sunday.

To be honest, I think I'm more excited for Tokyo Game Show. We could potentially be seeing the Silent Hill reboot in September. This year, Dusk Golem has been talking about it a lot.

Maybe they'll show off another trailer for Resident Evil Village tomorrow...

 

[Misery]

Nah.

There was a time when I might have cared, but I've since realized what events like this REALLY are:

Ads. It's all ads. Often, ones that are absolutely not truthful. These companies lie through their teeth all the time, but nowhere is it so intense as at a major event like this.

It's even worse with public events. You effectively pay to be advertised at non-stop.

My advice to anyone following this or anything like it: Dont trust a single thing you see. Not... one... thing. Whatever you see, treat it with extreme suspicion.

Sadly, that suspicion is usually warranted.

Actually, that's just one bit of advice. The other, and the one I emphasize more strongly:

Dont even bother. If you're interested in a game, dont expose yourself to all those stupid trailers and that nonsense. WAIT until the game releases. Wait until it's been out at least a week. And then watch some REAL gameplay on Youtube, and hear what people are saying about it, whatever it is.

And DEFINITELY dont get excited about the Silent Hill thing yet. I can tell you right now: It's going to suck.

There are alot of bad companies out there. Konami is so ridiculously awful that they might be outright worse than EA and Activision. And unless Kojima has joined them again (no) well.... it'll be Silent Hill in name only.

....And probably full of predatory crap.

Dont forget what they did to Metal Gear. I doubt I have to explain that one.

There's plenty of other great horror games out there. Look around, instead of waiting for something that's being put out by the decayed, shambling mass that is Konami these days.

 

[Lemon Zing]

I know. It's all about how much money they can make. It's the same with the garbage music ads promoting an artist's new album. Very few people paid to promote that junk even actually like the music they're advertising. They're paid to plug it to the people that like that sort of music, but that doesn't mean they care for it themselves. Which I don't by any means. Believe me.

But about Silent Hill in general...

Hideo Kojima got a lot of praise, sure, but he didn't work on the really early games. That was Team Silent. In fact, the series was going on for many years after Team Silent disbanded, long before Hideo Kojima came on the scene anyway. This is why the games didn't do so well, though. They lost the core team that made the franchise so special. But Hideo Kojima didn't make the series what it is today. He had a major hand in its revival, you could say. However, he wasn't the guy who made 1-4 and so on.

I think that breaking up Team Silent was probably Konami's bright idea, due to Capcom making the RE games more action oriented. They essentially wanted to go in a similar direction, and it didn't pay off at all. So not only did they screw over Hideo Kojima, they did Team Silent dirty years beforehand as well. But I don't know for sure what lead to who leaving. All I know is that they were asked to move along after 2005. Maybe there is bad blood, but I don't know all of the facts. That they disbanded Team Silent though is in itself incredibly stupid. They were the heart and soul of the series.

To be honest, RE sucks without Shinji Mikami. Yet a lot of people still like RE just the same. At times, it feels too obscure, even for RE, which is pretty bizarre in any case.

 

[Misery]

I know. It's all about how much money they can make. It's the same with the garbage music ads promoting an artist's new album. Very few people paid to promote that junk even actually like the music they're advertising. They're paid to plug it to the people that like that sort of music, but that doesn't mean they care for it themselves. Which I don't by any means. Believe me.

But about Silent Hill in general...

Hideo Kojima got a lot of praise, sure, but he didn't work on the really early games. That was Team Silent. In fact, the series was going on for many years after Team Silent disbanded, long before Hideo Kojima came on the scene anyway. This is why the games didn't do so well, though. They lost the core team that made the franchise so special. But Hideo Kojima didn't make the series what it is today. He had a major hand in its revival, you could say. However, he wasn't the guy who made 1-4 and so on.

I think that breaking up Team Silent was probably Konami's bright idea, due to Capcom making the RE games more action oriented. They essentially wanted to go in a similar direction, and it didn't pay off at all. So not only did they screw over Hideo Kojima, they did Team Silent dirty years beforehand as well. But I don't know for sure what lead to who leaving. All I know is that they were asked to move along after 2005. Maybe there is bad blood, but I don't know all of the facts. That they disbanded Team Silent though is in itself incredibly stupid. They were the heart and soul of the series.

To be honest, RE sucks without Shinji Mikami. Yet a lot of people still like RE just the same. At times, it feels too obscure, even for RE, which is pretty bizarre in any case.

Eh, Konami disbanding stuff is just Konami being themselves. As Jim Sterling often says "Konami is Konami, and Konami is the worst". Which sounds bizarrely redundant, but after watching that publisher enough over the years I see what he means.

Right now Konami barely even is a game publisher. They mostly do gambling stuff now. They're literally almost not even touching the industry at all at this point, and when they do, the result is usually slimy. All the more reason for suspicion, really. If they see a potential for profit to the point where they're about to do something like what they're currently saying, it's like a 99.99999999% probability that there's a bunch of shady nasty crap behind it all.

As much as everyone was bothered by the event with Kojima, I've always figured that it was probably a good thing for Kojima himself. He doesnt have to be tethered to those slimeballs anymore.


As for RE, I dunno, I'm not familiar with it. I never liked the series too much. Horror games lose something for me when you can just take a shotgun and blast the face off of whatever "scary" thing is supposed to be chasing you down. Unfortunately almost all mainstream horror games fall into that.


You know what's sad though, thinking about all this, is memories of what Konami USED to be. Way back when, if you saw the Konami logo on a game, you knew it was going to be amazing. Now? The Konami logo is more like a surgeon general's warning on a box of cigarettes. Because it's all about toxic addiction now. Depressing, really. I really miss what they used to be.

 

[Lemon Zing]

I agree. Konami and Capcom are terrible companies now. OK, Capcom being awful is debatable. I can't speak for their other franchises. I just know Resident Evil kind of sucks from time to time, although I'll never truly stop being a fan. But Konami screwed up all of their biggest series.

I better not link to Michael Does Life. His streams get too rowdy. It's not PG-13 enough to be on here.

 

[Misery]

I agree. Konami and Capcom are terrible companies now. OK, Capcom being awful is debatable. I can't speak for their other franchises. I just know Resident Evil kind of sucks from time to time, although I'll never truly stop being a fan. But Konami screwed up all of their biggest series.

I better not link to Michael Does Life. His streams get too rowdy. It's not PG-13 enough to be on here.

Nah, Capcom is just as bad as the others.

Not all that long ago they started putting ads into Street Fighter. What's that you say? Plenty of games have ads?

Well, I think most games dont have ads.... on the freaking characters' outfits.

Yes, really.

To be honest, I think the only reason they didnt go further and try to stuff the entire thing with microtransactions is because it would likely destroy the community for the game. Some games can make it with MTX. That one would not. But if they could have... they would have.

It could be worse though. It could have been the insane vortex of greed that is the DoA series. Even EA or Activision wouldnt do THAT. Probably.

 

[Lemon Zing]

Yeah. Resident Evil has been a crappy franchise ever since Resident Evil 4 came out, back in 2005. It is not a bad game in general, but it fails miserably as a RE sequel. The same with RE5, RE6, and whatnot. They are good action games, and fun to play with a friend, but they aren't terrifying at all. You wanna see scary? Play both of The Evil Within games, and tell me Laura and the Keeper aren't intimidating foes.

The whole point of the RE series up to RE4 was that the Umbrella Corporation was the company behind the viruses, and this lead to Raccoon City being destroyed. But the games all had something in common. Anybody who survived at the end really wanted to find Umbrella and make them pay. It was like the series was setting that up to happen, so Capcom not going forward with that in a way that makes sense is so sad.

RE4 begins with a stupid "recap" of what occurred, and they just say Umbrella went bankrupt. OK, that of course makes some sense, sure, but it was really forced upon us. Then RE4 starts and this is where my hate for RE4 in general comes into play...

Every enemy in RE4 feels mythological, or way too obscure to resemble anything RE related. Plus, every enemy you kill drops coins, jewels, healing items, or bullets. Come on. That's just dumb. Yes, it's all because it's an action game. I know this is why it happens. But hell yeah. That's just stupid all the same. The merchant in my opinion, is also a really stupid character as well. How does he move his products everywhere?

The Umbrella Chronicles is a Wii game that attempted to clear up the Umbrella story, but to be honest, who even likes that game? It's an on-rails shooter, with co-op. It's not a survival horror game. It's just not. I'll say one thing, however. The remake sections were actually more faithful than the actual remakes we got over the past year and a half. Those were lame. The remake of 2 was so overrated in 2019.

Now we're in 2020... and the series is best summed up as being an absolute mess. Although I did like Revelations 2, and I feel that game is underrated. And 7: Biohazard was decent, but I cannot say that felt like a RE game either. The Molded monsters were also lazily designed. They resemble giant walking turds that crept out of a toilet bowl. Apart from the little girl and the family she took over, the Molded were the only other enemies. And they were not interesting creatures, especially when you remember how the early games had zombies, dogs, Neptune, Plant 42, Lisa Trevor, Nemesis, Alexia Ashford, and of course, Albert Wesker. Also, they really ruined Chris' features when they hired a guy to model him for the RE Engine, who doesn't look anything like Chris. I'm glad that Capcom decided to undo that mess for their upcoming sequel, because Chris actually looks like Chris again. But I think adding in werewolves and witches is just so over the top, even for a franchise as big as RE. That's something you should be seeing in a separate series, not linked to RE. But it's like they just want to copy Konami, since they got all that attention with Silent Hills, which was unfortunately cancelled in 2015. But they basically just copied their ideas...