tsukaesugi
Holy shit, it's a ninja!,
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2002
- Posts
- 6,933
Went to the bookstore this morning and picked up a copy of the Famitsu Capcom DVD magazine with the Biohazard 4 demo disc.
Just spent the last twenty minutes or so playing Biohazard 4 (it's a short demo), here are my impressions so far...
-this is the darkest, most grotesque BH yet. I don't know if Shinji Mikami & Co. are trying to compete with Silent Hill, or this is the direction that they were travelling in anyway, but things are starting to get spooky. It's obvious that there aren't going to be any ghosts or spirits or anything, and at the end of the day it'll be Umbrella Europe with a new batch of viruses behind everything, but the atmosphere is still pretty eerie
-the demo only allows you to play in a house, a path, and then part of a village. Most of the scenes have already been shown in preview screenshots, there was nothing really new. The only monsters you encounter are the zombie-villagers, again from the previews. The atmosphere is a lot like the Blair Witch Project meets Deliverance
-the game is way more gun-oriented. Gone is the automatic aiming system from the other BH games. In its place there's now a laser sight which allows you to aim at and shoot anything in front of your character. You can aim high and low as well, you're not stuck on a two-dimensional horizontal arc. There are various barrels and boxes full of ammo, herbs &tc that you have to shoot to open (you can knife them open too though), dynamite attached to tripwires that you have to shoot to pass (wouldn't want to try and knife that), there was a crow on a post so I took aim and blew him off. The laser sight really helps in combat: without the automatic aiming system you'd be SOL. The laser sight also allows you to try for head shots. Blowing the head off of a villager-zombie is way more fun than a regular zombie: it's just like killing a real human being! (Whoops, did I say that last part out loud?)
-there's a phenomenal level of detail in the game. Shoot a person (whoops, I mean zombie-villager. Shooting people is bad) near the head and they stagger and their hat falls off. I was hiding inside a building and a zombie-villager woman saw me from the window and raised the alarm, so I shot her right through the window! The glass broke, she crumpled and everything. People throw axes and knives at you, they crawl in through windows to get you, the whole works. The AI is way better than any of the other BH games
-we still have typewriters for save points, but the 'door opening animation' when you move into a new room is gone- the door just opens and you walk in. I'm guessing this has more to do with the improved data storage capacity of the GC over the PS or something like that than any aesthetic decision
-Leon not only has a new leather jacket, he's got a new voice actor as well. The new guy has a voice about four octaves deeper than BH2 Leon so it's funny to hear him speak
-you can pick up money as well as herbs, ammo &tc. It looks like there's some unlockable stuff with the demo disc- it says if I collect 30,000 coins than I can unlock something. I've only got 4800 so far so I'll have to get back to you on this
Well, I'm off to blow up some more people's heads, I mean destroy some more zombies again. I'll try and post some info about the magazine and the DVD (there's some Capcom Fighting Jam stuff on it) later.
Just spent the last twenty minutes or so playing Biohazard 4 (it's a short demo), here are my impressions so far...
-this is the darkest, most grotesque BH yet. I don't know if Shinji Mikami & Co. are trying to compete with Silent Hill, or this is the direction that they were travelling in anyway, but things are starting to get spooky. It's obvious that there aren't going to be any ghosts or spirits or anything, and at the end of the day it'll be Umbrella Europe with a new batch of viruses behind everything, but the atmosphere is still pretty eerie
-the demo only allows you to play in a house, a path, and then part of a village. Most of the scenes have already been shown in preview screenshots, there was nothing really new. The only monsters you encounter are the zombie-villagers, again from the previews. The atmosphere is a lot like the Blair Witch Project meets Deliverance
-the game is way more gun-oriented. Gone is the automatic aiming system from the other BH games. In its place there's now a laser sight which allows you to aim at and shoot anything in front of your character. You can aim high and low as well, you're not stuck on a two-dimensional horizontal arc. There are various barrels and boxes full of ammo, herbs &tc that you have to shoot to open (you can knife them open too though), dynamite attached to tripwires that you have to shoot to pass (wouldn't want to try and knife that), there was a crow on a post so I took aim and blew him off. The laser sight really helps in combat: without the automatic aiming system you'd be SOL. The laser sight also allows you to try for head shots. Blowing the head off of a villager-zombie is way more fun than a regular zombie: it's just like killing a real human being! (Whoops, did I say that last part out loud?)
-there's a phenomenal level of detail in the game. Shoot a person (whoops, I mean zombie-villager. Shooting people is bad) near the head and they stagger and their hat falls off. I was hiding inside a building and a zombie-villager woman saw me from the window and raised the alarm, so I shot her right through the window! The glass broke, she crumpled and everything. People throw axes and knives at you, they crawl in through windows to get you, the whole works. The AI is way better than any of the other BH games
-we still have typewriters for save points, but the 'door opening animation' when you move into a new room is gone- the door just opens and you walk in. I'm guessing this has more to do with the improved data storage capacity of the GC over the PS or something like that than any aesthetic decision
-Leon not only has a new leather jacket, he's got a new voice actor as well. The new guy has a voice about four octaves deeper than BH2 Leon so it's funny to hear him speak
-you can pick up money as well as herbs, ammo &tc. It looks like there's some unlockable stuff with the demo disc- it says if I collect 30,000 coins than I can unlock something. I've only got 4800 so far so I'll have to get back to you on this
Well, I'm off to blow up some more people's heads, I mean destroy some more zombies again. I'll try and post some info about the magazine and the DVD (there's some Capcom Fighting Jam stuff on it) later.
YAAAAAAAAARRR!!! 
...
I have an AR Replay ( Action Replay ) enhancer for my GC & so it can
