Ahem
Tags: bitchings, Penny Arcade, Resident Evil
I don’t talk much about Penny Arcade around here. Everyone knows who they are. I have enormous respect for those guys and what they have accomplished, particularly with regard to the Child’s Play charity, which has set the public’s perception of “gamers” ahead 10 years all by itself.
That said:
I keep reading about “sluggish controls,” but let’s go with “obstinate” instead. It’s more literary and more accurate – I would have settled for either, honestly, so this is a real treat. I would say that sluggish controls represent a technological or design concern that manifests in the simulation’s inability to reflect your will. That’s not the case with Resident Evil 5, or 4, or (I would say) any Resident Evil ever. The controls work precisely as they were designed to: to make you mindful of your play. If you don’t like it, and certainly that is your prerogative, at least have the self-awareness to recognize it as the twisted, petulant sense of adolescent entitlement that it is.
Allow me to provide a properly petulant, adolescent response to this: fuck your fucking twisted sense of grandiose pomposity. Those controls are outdated and ridiculously clunky. Period, full stop. I provided reasons for why I believe that to be the case; just braying about the poor unwashed masses and their “not getting it”, while condescending to all of us who dare not enjoy the game, is a far greater example of adolescent entitlement than any whining I have read on any forum. Literary? Accurate? What in the name of zombie jesus is he talking about?
But hey, if Tycho wants to further explain and extrapolate the sublime nature of making me think extra hard to remember that a crappy knife slash is LB+RT, I’m all eyes. And I do mean that: if someone can wave a verbal wand and somehow make Resident Evil 5 fun for me, I want to hear it. But judging from the reactions I have read around the web, I am far from alone on this.
7 responses to “Ahem”
Played the demo yesterday for the first time… My first Resident Evil game as well.
Is this supposed to be fun? I tried 3 different control schemes and it was almost unplayable. Fucking awful.
Does look pretty, just wish I could actually play it. The Dead Space demo (while a horrible demo) was 10x better than the RE5 demo.
Meh, Tycho is a pompous jackass. I honestly don’t see what he contributes in terms of the comic. I rarely pay attention to what he has to say and go straight to the comic.
Essentially, Tycho writes the comic. Gabe draws it.
I’m a fan of Tycho’s writing and frequently find that I share his take on games. I don’t take as dim a view of the RE5 controls complaints as he does, but I certainly don’t find the game unplayable.
I generally think he’s a pretty good writer too; I agree with his opinions maybe half the time, and that’s fine. It’s when he’s completely dismissive that I think he’s spent too much time on his own forum reading fanboy warz.
But don’t tell me (us) I’m being a child for not liking something that is at least arguably bad, and then spin on your heel and exit, with no reasoning. That’s fucking lame.
Anyways, like I said before, I think if you played and enjoyed RE4 then this is probably a nice update, especially with a real co-op partner to play with. But I didn’t like RE4 much, and so… yeah.
I think you may be misunderstanding the, admittedly labyrinthine, comments made by Tycho. When he states:
“If you don’t like it, and certainly that is your prerogative, at least have the self-awareness to recognize it as the twisted, petulant sense of adolescent entitlement that it is.”
The child-like ‘it’ that he is referring to is the choice by the developers to maintain an unwieldy control scheme, not the player’s entitlement to a better one.
His use of ‘literary’ and ‘accurate’ refers to using the word ‘obstinate’ instead of ‘sluggish’ when describing the controls. While how the word ‘obstinate’ is more literary than ‘sluggish’ is debatable, he is basically correct in stating that it is more accurate. By his account, the RE5 controls do everything that the developers intended, and therefore are not broken by outside forces (dodgy frame rate, poor or laggy input response, slowdown, etc.).
The only notable situation that comes to mind wherein controls would be both sluggish and obstinate would be games that sacrifice instant control response at the altar of animation completion (Flashback, original Prince of Persia, Tekken). In such a case, the game is performing both as intended by the developer (obstinate) and poorly by widely held standards (sluggish).
Initial impressions seemed to put RE5 into the more obstinate category. Yes, the control scheme is archaic and possibly slow, but they are all purposeful, intentional, and functional in the design choice of the developers to coincide with the game’s rule set (developing tension, stupid but powerful AI, environmental awareness). Basically, Resident Evil plays like Resident Evil…if it played differently, it would be a different game. Would you appreciate Pong more if you could move horizontally as well as vertically? Would approaching the net make Pong a better game, or just a different one?
Sorry, I should of said it’s not my thing.
I just don’t understand how these controls are the only way this game could be “Resident Evil”. Seems to me like they are holding the game back from being intense rather than stressful.
But then again this is my first Resident Evil game (somehow). I’m usually not a fan of survival horror types, but Dead Space made me think differently.
I used to agree with Tycho around 90% of the time or even more and it’s down to around 50% or less these days. Too often these days, his opinions are based on what he’s read on Kotaku or Joystiq that morning without really knowing all of the facts behind something he’s condemning. He also seems to fall prey to group think all too often these days and while I’ll never call them sellouts, Gabe and Tycho are way to friendly with some companies and it has colored their opinions on occasion.