2019 Vlog: Resident Evil 2 criticisms, Dragon Quest, Bioshock and more

2019 Vlog: Resident Evil 2 and other stuff

Cool Looking Horror Games of 2019

So as I said previously, 2019 is going to be the year of horror games for Identity Gaming, both old and new.  So I'm gonna kick off this horror festival by talking about some upcoming horror games that I think look pretty good.

 First I wanna start with World of Horror, pictured above.  Here's the trailer

It looks like some kind of retro-style point and click adventure horror title and I can't wait to play it.  The game is still in development but you can download it for free from the website (https://panstas.itch.io/world-of-horror) and then support it by donating to their patreon! 

The one thing that the game seems to be very proud of is it's inspiration from a Japanese manga artist called Junji Ito.  He's famous for writing things like Uzumaki, Tomie and the profoundly strange Gyo, which is about sharks that grow robot legs and attack people on land.  I'm a big fan of Junji's work so any game that takes inspiration from him is one that's worth watching out for.

I know it's free and I can download it now but I'm gonna hold off for a bit and see if it gets a full release soon so I can play a full version straight off the bat.

 Someday You'll Return is another one that I'm keeping a close eye on.  Here's the trailer

While it doensn't look like there's any combat, from what I've read it seems like surviving in the mountains is of paramount importance and hopefully there will be some puzzles that will help separate it from being just a walking simulator.  You can also see some clear Silent Hill inspiration in the trailer with shifting realities and the game is about a dude looking for his daughter and where have I heard that one before?  There isn't an exact release date but it's scheduled for 2019 and I for one am rather excited.

 Supermassive games, responsible for Grim Dawn (a game I've not played but will be buying very soon I think) is back at it again with The Dark Pictures Anthology.  It looks sort of similar to what I've seen of Grim Dawn only this time its on a boat.  To be honest I'm just a huge fan of the trailer and the British man giving us an ominous synopsis of the game. 

Finally there's The Sinking City, a clearly Lovecraft inspired horror games by those guys that did those Sherlock Holmes games.  "Lovecraft inspired" is a term that makes me roll my eyes as much as games about zombies does nowadays but there's something about the trailer that gave me a little shiver with how cool it was when I watched it.  Also deep water and anything involving deep water freaks me the fuck out so this game will probably get right under my skin.  Even just entering the water temple in Zelda kind of makes me feel uneasy and while horror games don't usually freak me out too much this one has a good chance of breaking through my barriers.  Here's the trailer if you wanna see it

And of course I'm looking forward to the Resident Evil 2 remake but I don't really feel like I need to talk about that too much since the hype surrounding it is fairly large.  If there's anything else I should be keeping an eye on, lemme know in a comment!

Torn About Resident Evil 2 Remake

So a remake of Resident Evil 2 got announced and when I first heard the news I was absolutely fucking stoked.  Resident Evil 2 is quite possibly my favorite Resident Evil game and the idea of having a version of it that's all in shiny next-gen-o-vision is a truly exciting idea.  However upon seeing some of the game play footage for it, I'm a little torn.  First let me start by showing you a video of the demo that someone has done that doesn't have any commentary on it so you can just see and process for yourself.

Like I said, on one hand I'm really excited because at the end of the day it's fuckin' Resident Evil 2.  It's the best game in the series made to look all pretty and have modern game play and whatnot but that's also half the problem.

I didn't WANT this.  When I first saw someone on my social media post about it I had visions of REMake but it's Resident Evil 2 instead of 1.  That's what I really wanted, just a nice shiny remake of the 2nd game for modern systems.  REMake had some extra content as well in the form of Lisa Trevor and all that stuff so maybe this dream RE2 remake I had in my head would have had some of that too.  Hell, I bet there's a lot of stuff from RE1.5 that could be implemented as bonus modes or as extra content to the main story.

But what we got was the RE6 looking thing that's stolen RE7s interface with all new shit going on.  Of course that isn't inherently a bad thing but I'm having trouble getting over the shock of it not being REMake 2.  I think that one things that long standing fans of survival horror have wanted for a long time is for games to go BACK to that old style because it helps to serve the horror.  I hate the fact that all modern "horror" games have just turned into 3rd person action games with jump scares and gore and that seems to be the direction that Resident Evil 2 Remaster is taking.

Still, I'm not going to completely shit on it just yet since a short game play video and a trailer aren't really enough to form a complete opinion on.  I've yet to see anything of Claire's campaign and I'm interested to see what they do with the plot since I've heard that they've done away with the whole A/B thing that the first one had.  Let's hope they do it justice.