Oct 1, 2018.
I was fifteen years old in the summer of 1996, which was the first time that I played Resident Evil. This was the summer between freshman and sophomore year, and a friend let me borrow the game to play during the school break. So my ritual was this: late at night once everyone else had gone to bed, I'd move my Playstation down to the living room so I could use the 'big' (like 27") TV that was hooked up to stereo speakers. And I'd generally play until I was too freaked out - the only one awake in the otherwise quiet house. To say that the original Resident Evil left a huge impression on me in some rather formative years is an understatement. I have a lot of memories of that original summer with Resident Evil. I mean, the game was scary in a way that no other game I'd played before was scary. I've re-played the original Resident Evil in various forms over the years. And as much as the original release holds a special place in my heart, the so-called "REmake" long ago became the version of the game for me. So here's the embarrassing thing I need to admit: I've never actually beaten Resident Evil. Whoo. It feels good to get that one off my chest. So here's the thing; I consider RE to be one of my favorite franchises. And I consider the original Resident Evil to be one of my favorite games within that favorite franchise. And I've been playing it for over twenty years. And somehow I've never managed to actually beat it! I have a bad habit with these games, though. I'll be playing and loving and then I'll get to some part that'll frustrate me (Resident Evil 0) or scare me (Resident Evil 7) or I'll just get distracted for whatever reason (Resident Evil 4) and plan to come back to the game later but then when I do I'll forget where I am or what I was doing or what I'd already done and I'd just have to start over. In the past two decades I've played hundreds of hours of Resident Evil games... it's just that in many case it's the same opening hours over and over again. The upside to all this is that the opening section of Resident Evil feels like riding a spooky bike for me. It's been nearly a decade since I last played this game, and yet it's all coming back to me. (Dammit, now I have that horrible Celine Dion song in my head, which I guarantee you has never been related to RE in the past). What I find a testament to the staying power of the original game is just how effective it still is to me. That first cutscene where the zombie turns and looks at you? Still iconic. The tension I feel going through that hallway that I know zombie dogs will jump through windows? Still horrifying. I mean, that hallway is now totally 'off limits' to me because I just don't want to deal. I can backtrack the long way if I need to. I remember going outside to grab the plant chemical stuff and hearing dogs growl - and I know that they can't actually get me... it's totally just an audio sample - but it still puts me on edge. I've now gotten myself a shotgun and made it to that typewriter room just below the stairway. Y'know the one, right? I decided to save here (I still hate limited saves... you can tell me all day that it raises tension in a horror game, but... c'mon) and figure that's sort of the best way to space out my sessions here. Anyway, I feel good about the early progress I've made and am looking forward to pushing ahead this month. There's something strangely comforting about Spencer Mansion. Oct 2, 2018. Meanwhile, back at Spencer Mansion... I'm making some pretty good progress on the early game. Let's see... I got the map of the 2nd floor, and got the armor key. I've been making sure to set as many zombies on fire as I can. I did have to deal with a crimson head which can be a bit stressful compared to the typical zombies. On the flip, there are some zombies (the one above the dining room) that I just don't even bother with. He's so easy to evade and get plenty of space between that why mess with him? I have to admit that the dog collar section sort of made me nervous. It's stupid because I ended up blasting the first dog that approached me with a single shot, snatching his collar and hauling it back into the mansion like it was no big deal. But it took me a few minutes of getting myself psyched up to do it. Also, now when I go through that hallway the remaining dogs are apparently charging the metal door. They can't get in if I remember correctly, but this is one of those audio cues that does kind of trigger some anxiety. The game is good at that. I'm trying really hard not to use saves often. The whole ink ribbon thing is still a bit annoying to me. Mostly because it means that once I get to a convenient spot to use one, I just stop playing for the night because I don't want to make more progress and have to use a second one. I think I've used 3 ribbons already on this playthrough. I don't actually remember how many ribbons are ultimately available in the game - I think it's upwards of thirty or something? That said, I'm trying to keep in mind that this is probably a ~10 hour game, so even using one per hour would be fairly conservative. I think I have six or seven left in my inventory right now. Anyway, I left off on the part where I need to backtrack to the medical supply room to get the snake venom serum. Oct 3, 2018. We re-watched Stay Alive over the weekend. It's a hilariously bad b-movie but Sophia Bush! It's about a survival horror game where if you die in the game, you die the same way in real life. Basically a mix of Final Destination, The Ring, and... video games. Oh, and Elizabeth Bathory. It's interesting because they talk about actual specific games (Fatal Frame, Silent Hill 4) rather than made up games. Oh and Malcom in the Middle calls the ghosts "punk ass bitch motherfuckers" while wearing an upside-down visor. Just see it once. It's worth it for the lulz. I've been much busier this month than expected, but I did make some more Resident Evil progress. Trying to think - I guess the big thing was that I killed the plant. I always thought that section was cool. I did hit one good jump scare. There was a part where some zombies crashed through windows in one of the hallways. Totally forgot about that and just wasn't expecting it (like the dogs), so I jumped. What else? Oh that stupid knight armor puzzle. I feel like that one is totally trial and error. I can't remember ever figuring out how you'd really know which order to push them in. After getting gassed twice, I decided I'm too old for this and just looked it up. Also crimson-heads suck and I'm getting low on kerosene. Anyway, if memory serves, I'm getting fairly close to the snake boss soon. Oct 4, 2018. Been a very busy week, but I did make a little bit more progress in Resident Evil last night. Um, I played the "Moonlight Sonata" to open that secret entrance. I remember that part of the game blowing my fifteen year old mind back in the day. I mean... It was a real piece of classical music used in a game, but it was used in a way that made sense in context of the game. It wasn't like, y'know the title screen to that collection of Genesis games on Sega CD or an interactive encyclopedia that was just showing off that redbook audio could be done with the CD-ROM format. Rather, there's a plot-related reason to have this piece of music in the game. And it's performed on piano in-game rather than as background music. Ugh, this game is so good. Also I made it to the snake boss and Richard beefed it. I grabbed his gun and booked it across the mansion to the save room before realizing I had forgotten to snatch the death mask behind the snake. Dammit. I'll have to go back there. Nov 5, 2023. [I found the above gaming journal while digging through old things I wrote, and I felt the need to publish it mostly as is. I did fix a few grammatical errors, and lightened up some crass language because my vocabulary has changed somewhat over the years, but I felt that this was a really important piece of writing for me on a personal level. Back in 2018, I had decided to start up Resident Evil to play through for the month of October. I mean, gamers tend to dip into horror games as Halloween approaches. Nothing weird there. But there was a reason that I stopped playing Resident Evil that month, and I felt like this piece preserved a moment in time for me the same way that a diary might. October 5th, 2018 was a Friday. My wife and I got home from work sometime after 5pm, and the plan would have been to make dinner and watch a show. Then most likely I would have continued playing Resident Evil that night after she went to bed. We got home and I changed out of my work clothes, and then put on some music while we were about to start making dinner. I remember my wife coming out of the bathroom at 5:35 and saying, "look at what this says." She was holding a pregnancy test. We stood there in the living room, hugging and laughing for a long time. October 5th, 2018 was a day when my entire life changed. I didn't fully grasp that at the time, but I had a subtle understanding of how everything was about to change. Suddenly we were making plans for converting a room into a nursery, booking appointments with doctors, thinking about names, and all of the various huge decisions that come along with parenthood. At the time, we were months into house-hunting, but decided that one life-changing event was probably enough at once. We wanted to go into nesting and make a nursery instead of finding a new place to live. As I write this, my daughter is actually four years old. I can say from experience that fatherhood changes you in ways that cannot be put into words. I feel that I've learned whole new levels of patience and strength. And yet, my anxieties are just as severe, but just different ones than before. Somehow, I'm both more confident and more glass-like at the same time. Before October 5, 2018 I used to retire to my game room every night after my wife went to bed. But after that night, I got way more into playing portable games. I just wanted to be more accessible to my wife. What if she needed me? I wanted to be right there. In the years since, I've kept that way of thinking. I gave up my game room to make space for a playroom. And even now, I play my PS5 using an external capture card running into a Chromebook. That way when I'm gaming, I'm in the living room, but not tying up the TV. I'm always accessible. I'm not a hermit in a game room anymore. I still love Resident Evil, though. I stopped playing it that fateful night because everything in our life just got so crazy. Not bad crazy. I mean don't get me wrong, I was a product of divorce, so I won't pretend the concept of fatherhood wasn't scary. But everything was new and exciting. And focusing on a horror game was suddenly the least of my priorities. But some little piece of the gamer me finds it interesting that Resident Evil will forever be cemented in my mind as a hugely important game to me in my personal life. It could have been any game I happened to be playing that week. But it turned out to be a game that I had loved since I was fifteen years old. I'll forever link Resident Evil to the day I found out I was going to be a dad. And that might seem like a weird link game-wise. But as a dad who's loved that series since it originally started, I don't know. It feels cool. I can't really think of that original game now without thinking back to the day I found out that we were expecting and my entire life changed. There's huge moments in your life, and you think of all the time between those moments as just chunks. There's before and after high school. There's before and after I met my wife. There's before and after we got married. And there's before and after October 5, 2018. In that chunk right before, I was playing Resident Evil every night and I had all the time in the world. So I guess I love to think back to Resident Evil as this moment frozen in time. That night I gave up the aimlessness of unlimited time. That night I stopped playing Resident Evil, and began the rest of my life.]
0 Comments
|
Games
All
Archives
February 2024
|