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Having finished Leon's campaign in Resident Evil 6, I have a question for you:
WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING
Okay, Capcom. I'll be charitable, and assume what you wanted to do was have a massive, city-spanning boss battle of epic scope and size and excellence. A fight against a relentless, ever-evolving monster that would force gamers to stay on their toes mentally, make them constantly re-evaluate their strategies and use every weapon and trick available to attain victory.
What you actually did was--well.
This is going to take awhile, so I suggestback buttoning before the whine you get comfortable. I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS TO SHARE.
CHAPTER 5, BOSS BATTLE THE FIRST:
A MUTHAFUKKIN T-REX
NEGL, this is one of the best ideas you've ever had, Capcom. I'm glad you didn't let niggling details like 'design concepts' and 'ours was a spider/insect theme' restrict your imagination. Somebody decided a virus-dino was a thing this game needed, and that somebody stuck to his guns and delivered.
I'm not even being sarcastic here. FIGHTING A DINOSAUR. A dinosaur inexplicably formed by human bone and flesh, and with an eyeball in its mouth, yes, but it's Resident Evil and they can do that. RE1 featured a mutated shark in an underground mountain laboratory. Sticking to a universal design theme and making any sort of sense are not exactly strong points within the series. The point is, I was okay with fighting a dinosaur.
I was less okay with fighting a dinosaur over and over again. Capcom, you didn't even bother changing up virus-dino's attack patterns or weak spots or anything. I literally ran around a room and shot at eyeballs until virus-dino became a boring virus-person. Then I QTE-punched his face so that he would...become a virus-dino again?
I'm sure you're tired of people comparing RE to Gears of War, but I think it's important to point out that in Gears, when you punch an enemy in the face multiple times, it dies, sometimes with its head exploding in a shower of gore and/or flowers. They do not come back as if nothing happened to continue kicking my ass. I'm not saying you should try to make RE like Gears of War, but I do think you should remember that a common concept in gaming is rewarding the player for doing the right thing. Why did I have to fight the exact same virus-dino like, eleventy billion times, Capcom? The first round was fun. The second round was expected. The third round was getting excessive. Everything after that made me want to punch babies.
CHAPTER 5, BOSS BATTLE THE SECOND:
A rope.
Sure, Simmons in a, um, boney liger form (first seen in chapter 4) is there, beating up on Ada in the background, and eventually if you're playing as Leon you'll even get a chance to engage in another thoroughly tedious fight with him. (BONUS: You'll also get to talk about RELATIONSHIPS and FEELINGS with Ada and Simmons, which is important because we all know how integral RELATIONSHIPS and FEELINGS are to the Resident Evil series.) But the real challenge here is the fucking endless rope climbing QTE. The whole alternating trigger presses concept is the definition of mind-numbing, and being forced to do it for-fucking-ever made my very brain weep for its rapidly dying cells.
I suppose the rope climbing ~enhances~ the accompanying boss fight, in that a normally dull objective (unloading bullets into an enemy while dodging shit until enemy dies) suddenly became a thrilling and welcome change after Resident Evil 6: Rope Climbing Edition.
Also, whoever decided that the zombies and boxes next to Helena could drop anything other than sniper rifle ammo needs to be fired, because wtf is she going to do with 50 shotgun rounds when she's a jillion meters away? Watch a slow-as-molasses fight while being grateful she's not on that fucking rope, at least? EXCITING.
CHAPTER 5, BOSS BATTLE THE THIRD:
The world's most durable bone-fly!
Yeah okay so this is better than the second fight, but not as dinosaurrific as the first one, and I am a firm believer of 'less dinosaurs = less fun.' Anyway, the objective is pretty standard final boss procedure: shoot the glowy, squishy parts until you've done enough damage, then interfere with the enemy's excessively long, inevitable healing process so that it kills itself in a fit of irony. It's not innovative, but it should be reasonably entertaining, which is better than some of the other stuff the game makes you do.
Anyway, the irony delivery device happens to be a gigantic lightning rod: you trick Bone Fly Simmons into stabbing himself with it. The actual steps towards the stabby bits aren't articulated well, but the idea itself is not bad. (Leon says you have to 'ground' Simmons, and then a zombie is impaled by a lighting rod, and eventually you see Simmons grabbing random zombies to heal himself. Ideally at this point, you go AHHHH and kill all the non-impaled zombos so that Simmons has to grab the impaled one. But no one actually says this is what you have to do, and the in-game prompts don't hint at it either.)
The problem is that you have to do it three times. This is because the overall theme of Resident Evil 6 is not ridiculous monsters busting out of cocoons, it's "if you can do it once, doing it a million times over is BRILLIANT GAME DESIGN." It's not, Capcom, and you should take it upon yourself to fire whoever convinced you it was so.
CHAPTER 5, BOSS BATTLE THE FOURTH
KIDDING! There is no fourth boss fight. Unless you consider shooting rocket launchers at a bone bug monster a fight. Resident Evil 6 is all about evolution and change, except for all the times it reverently honors series cliches. HOORAY FOR PROGRESS
PS Whoever decided that Simmons should bleed so much that he fills a massive floor with blood in such a way that it creates the Umbrella symbol is as amazing as the guy who decided that Simmons needed a dinosaur form. (ARE THEY THE SAME PERSON???) Regardless, I think you should hang on to this developer(s) because I like the way they think: hilariously, and what they bring to the games: cliches delivered with a side of batshit crazy.
With equal parts love and boulder-punching rage,
terabient
WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING
Okay, Capcom. I'll be charitable, and assume what you wanted to do was have a massive, city-spanning boss battle of epic scope and size and excellence. A fight against a relentless, ever-evolving monster that would force gamers to stay on their toes mentally, make them constantly re-evaluate their strategies and use every weapon and trick available to attain victory.
What you actually did was--well.
This is going to take awhile, so I suggest
CHAPTER 5, BOSS BATTLE THE FIRST:
A MUTHAFUKKIN T-REX
NEGL, this is one of the best ideas you've ever had, Capcom. I'm glad you didn't let niggling details like 'design concepts' and 'ours was a spider/insect theme' restrict your imagination. Somebody decided a virus-dino was a thing this game needed, and that somebody stuck to his guns and delivered.
I'm not even being sarcastic here. FIGHTING A DINOSAUR. A dinosaur inexplicably formed by human bone and flesh, and with an eyeball in its mouth, yes, but it's Resident Evil and they can do that. RE1 featured a mutated shark in an underground mountain laboratory. Sticking to a universal design theme and making any sort of sense are not exactly strong points within the series. The point is, I was okay with fighting a dinosaur.
I was less okay with fighting a dinosaur over and over again. Capcom, you didn't even bother changing up virus-dino's attack patterns or weak spots or anything. I literally ran around a room and shot at eyeballs until virus-dino became a boring virus-person. Then I QTE-punched his face so that he would...become a virus-dino again?
I'm sure you're tired of people comparing RE to Gears of War, but I think it's important to point out that in Gears, when you punch an enemy in the face multiple times, it dies, sometimes with its head exploding in a shower of gore and/or flowers. They do not come back as if nothing happened to continue kicking my ass. I'm not saying you should try to make RE like Gears of War, but I do think you should remember that a common concept in gaming is rewarding the player for doing the right thing. Why did I have to fight the exact same virus-dino like, eleventy billion times, Capcom? The first round was fun. The second round was expected. The third round was getting excessive. Everything after that made me want to punch babies.
CHAPTER 5, BOSS BATTLE THE SECOND:
A rope.
Sure, Simmons in a, um, boney liger form (first seen in chapter 4) is there, beating up on Ada in the background, and eventually if you're playing as Leon you'll even get a chance to engage in another thoroughly tedious fight with him. (BONUS: You'll also get to talk about RELATIONSHIPS and FEELINGS with Ada and Simmons, which is important because we all know how integral RELATIONSHIPS and FEELINGS are to the Resident Evil series.) But the real challenge here is the fucking endless rope climbing QTE. The whole alternating trigger presses concept is the definition of mind-numbing, and being forced to do it for-fucking-ever made my very brain weep for its rapidly dying cells.
I suppose the rope climbing ~enhances~ the accompanying boss fight, in that a normally dull objective (unloading bullets into an enemy while dodging shit until enemy dies) suddenly became a thrilling and welcome change after Resident Evil 6: Rope Climbing Edition.
Also, whoever decided that the zombies and boxes next to Helena could drop anything other than sniper rifle ammo needs to be fired, because wtf is she going to do with 50 shotgun rounds when she's a jillion meters away? Watch a slow-as-molasses fight while being grateful she's not on that fucking rope, at least? EXCITING.
CHAPTER 5, BOSS BATTLE THE THIRD:
The world's most durable bone-fly!
Yeah okay so this is better than the second fight, but not as dinosaurrific as the first one, and I am a firm believer of 'less dinosaurs = less fun.' Anyway, the objective is pretty standard final boss procedure: shoot the glowy, squishy parts until you've done enough damage, then interfere with the enemy's excessively long, inevitable healing process so that it kills itself in a fit of irony. It's not innovative, but it should be reasonably entertaining, which is better than some of the other stuff the game makes you do.
Anyway, the irony delivery device happens to be a gigantic lightning rod: you trick Bone Fly Simmons into stabbing himself with it. The actual steps towards the stabby bits aren't articulated well, but the idea itself is not bad. (Leon says you have to 'ground' Simmons, and then a zombie is impaled by a lighting rod, and eventually you see Simmons grabbing random zombies to heal himself. Ideally at this point, you go AHHHH and kill all the non-impaled zombos so that Simmons has to grab the impaled one. But no one actually says this is what you have to do, and the in-game prompts don't hint at it either.)
The problem is that you have to do it three times. This is because the overall theme of Resident Evil 6 is not ridiculous monsters busting out of cocoons, it's "if you can do it once, doing it a million times over is BRILLIANT GAME DESIGN." It's not, Capcom, and you should take it upon yourself to fire whoever convinced you it was so.
CHAPTER 5, BOSS BATTLE THE FOURTH
KIDDING! There is no fourth boss fight. Unless you consider shooting rocket launchers at a bone bug monster a fight. Resident Evil 6 is all about evolution and change, except for all the times it reverently honors series cliches. HOORAY FOR PROGRESS
PS Whoever decided that Simmons should bleed so much that he fills a massive floor with blood in such a way that it creates the Umbrella symbol is as amazing as the guy who decided that Simmons needed a dinosaur form. (ARE THEY THE SAME PERSON???) Regardless, I think you should hang on to this developer(s) because I like the way they think: hilariously, and what they bring to the games: cliches delivered with a side of batshit crazy.
With equal parts love and boulder-punching rage,
terabient
