Just revealed, both in Japan and here at home, are a trio of new Resident Evil titles on the way. In addition to the two titles bound for the 3DS that everyone already knows about, is a pair of remakes and an original third title.
Let’s start with the remakes; it’s Code: Veronica (which originally appeared on the Sega Dreamcast, and was last seen on the Nintendo GameCube) and Resident Evil 4 (which was first on GameCube, later on the Wii). As one might expect, both are getting HD upgrades…
… A few additional shots of the redux can be viewed at Capcom’s announcement page, but they’re way too dark to make a real assessment.
Upon first hearing the news, I was excited by the idea of seeing C:V updated to match today’s specs, since it’s still a favorite entry of mine and one that’s over ten years old, so a facelift is not such a bad idea. RE4 on the other-hand is relatively new (the original’s only been around for six years; the Wii only four) and still looks damn fine by today’s standards.
But once word hit that they’d be DLC and not retail offerings, much of my interested immediately died away. Why? Well, not to be overly speculative or dramatic, but that just speaks to me of a half-hearted attempt. And once I got wind that in the case of RE4, the vastly inferior PS2 version would make the foundation of the revamp (from some dude on Twitter granted, but he knows what he’s talking about, trust me), my hunch was all but confirmed.
The last REmake that actually mattered was part 1 for the GameCube; you could tell Capcom actually cared because they put a lot of time and effort (and money) into the production. Meanwhile, these latest efforts sound like lazy ports, in which existing assets will be updated for sure, and that sounds great on paper, but the finished product rarely meets its potential.
Meanwhile, what about the third title? Well, VG247 states that the latest issue of Official Xbox Magazine is where you’ll find info pertaining to Resident Evil: Racoon City. This American based effort, by former SOCOM devs, puts you in the role of the bad guys, the Umbrella Security Services Squad. So instead of blasting away zombies and attempting to discover the truth, your job is to destroy incriminating evidence and killing innocent survivors.
Oh boy. Aside from the fact that it’s already been confirmed to be nothing more than some bizarre side-story (in which you can “change the history of Resident Evil”, to the point that you can kill prominent characters, which would totally mess up the timeline), it’s the whole “you’re the bad guy” that gives me bad vibes the most. I can already see a scene eerily reminiscent of the now infamous airport massacre in Modern Warfare. Or to be more exact, a crappy take on it.
Again, time will only tell. But given how dumb the Devil May Cry revamp is looking thus far, again, I’m not super optimistic. But yeah, at least those 3DS title still look great!