Really need to get around to playing Doom, heard nothing but great things. When I next have that FPS itch, that will be the next game that I play.

Anyway been replaying Resident Evil 2 and actually got my first A rank as Leon (finished Claire A scenario with a B rank) and in turn unlocked 4th Survivor (where you play as HUNK) which is real fun and a cool extra where Zombie Brad appears outside the Police Station. Just finishing it all reminded me of why it's one of my favourite games of all time and makes me even more excited for the reimagining (which I was initially disappointed about being TPS and not having cinematic cameras like REmake).

Also led me to play RE5 again which I hadn't played since release almost a decade ago. Loved it upon release date and lived up to my hype after RE4 blew me away. So it's nice to return to these games again and find they're still so great. The combat for me is the most refined in the series, yes, including RE6, which tried to take the series into new territory (more towards even more action focus with melee counters, quickdives, dual wielding and beat 'em up elements). Not that RE6 combat was bad or anything, but RE5 just hit that sweet spot between staying true to being the action adventure game whilst refining what made RE4 so great in the first place. I feel that RE5 is greatly underrated by the fanbase despite it being a clear attempt by refining what people loved about RE4's aesthetics and gameplay mixed with trying to stay more true to the "RE mythos", as it were, since RE diehard fans complained about how RE4 "betrayed" the story canon by changing everything up. Also the co-op aspect is fine by me too, Sheva's AI is better than what people were moaning about back then too, her AI was programmed smartly to get you out of hot spots (heal, revive, take out the enemies gathering around you etc) and the boss encounters are great as well. Such a great game, screw the haters.

It also makes me know that the RE2 Remake is in great hands, since the Director is actually Yasuhiro Anpo, who was the director of RE5 and lead programmer of RE2 (and a member of the Onimusha team, working as a Planner and Lead Programmer on those games also). So his credentials check out, out of the remaining members of the Resident Evil team, I think the RE2 Remake is in good hands with him at the helm.

Locking this thread as the question has now been answered.

FYI - if anybody wants to gripe about it and go through the "pre-order cancelled!" motions, do it elsewhere. By which I mean off-site.

Thanks.

Anyone who's struggling with why expanding the cutscenes from 4:3 would be so difficult should try playing with the widescreen settings in an emulated version of Shenmue for additional context.

When something isn't "on-screen" during gameplay, the game isn't fully rendering it for what I would assume are performance reasons. The textures/assets pop in as Ryo turns to them. Since the screen will literally be wider in the HD versions, you'll be able to see more of the game world at a single time.This was possible because the game is programmed to adapt to the player's actions.

Now think about cutscenes. In comparison to gameplay, these are intricately staged and the player was never meant to "see beyond" what was on the screen at a single time. For these cutscenes to properly display, d3t would need to create and stage additional assets that just aren't in the game right now. If you really think critically about this, you can see why keeping the cutscenes in 4:3 was the only feasible option.

Now think about cutscenes. In comparison to gameplay, these are intricately staged and the player was never meant to "see beyond" what was on the screen at a single time.

I'm reminded of something I read about the remastered versions of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes. The episodes were shot on 35mm film and then edited for television to 4:3. So some fans are like, "release the remasters in widescreen!" However, since the cinematographers knew that 4:3 was the target format and they framed their shots with that in mind, the widescreen footage contains things that shouldn't be seen in frame... abrupt edges of the sets, boom microphones, crew members at work, and so on.

With Shenmue's cutscenes, of course there aren't mics or crew members, but the characters sometimes freeze immediately when going out of the 4:3 frame. Then there's the suggestion (or, for some, the furious demand) that D3T reframe the shot - somehow zoom it in until it fills the 16:9 frame. Well, this may be possible, though it's not likely to be as easy as we imagine based on the camera controls in contemporary game engines. But beyond the technical issues of working with source code from a 20-year-old game that runs on its own custom engine, changing the zoom, camera placement, lens angle or however else you would achieve the new shot, is the artistic issue of changing the director's original vision. As furious as some consumers get about not having every pixel of their widescreen TV lit up at all times, that's as uncomfortable as some creators get about having their work altered by others. Particularly in film with regards to matters of framing and cropping. And Shenmue is one of the first truly filmic games, so it's easy to imagine that Yu Suzuki would not be comfortable with handing the keys to the Ferrari over to the work-for-hire guys at D3T and allow them to make those kind of creative decisions.

But then one might say, well... all the rest of the gameplay has been altered to 16:9 - isn't that changing the creator's vision? I suppose it is, in a way. But I would say there's a significant difference between a cutscene, which is fully directed to convey the story in a particular way, and gameplay in which the player has agency to choose the view (within limits).

Ultimately there's no clear solution that will satisfy everyone, so I also think there's no reason for anyone to become irate about their preference not "winning." (No reason to be furious on the internet? Yeah, right!) There are difficult technical challenges and difficult artistic decisions and it's really a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't position for the developers. So I say take a deep breath and just enjoy the games for what they are.

Ok, I was curious and did some analysis using the stream uploaded on youtube, timelines are in the pictures and you can check yourselfs too.

Window in Dojo isn't rendered, it's passable I guess but noticeable:
https://i.imgur.com/2r8u8T1.png

Camera inside Ryo's arm, noticeable:
https://i.imgur.com/cuIxDZA.png

Camera inside lights, not very noticeable:
https://i.imgur.com/a7JqhoP.png

Kid stuck in the back, very noticeable:
https://i.imgur.com/NaHs1Ne.png

Camera inside Ryo's head, very noticeable:
https://i.imgur.com/ftKwcSu.png

Fisherman stuck in the back, very noticeable:
https://i.imgur.com/NLUKtAf.png

Camera inside Hisaka-san arm, noticeable:
https://i.imgur.com/v2rK3KE.png

Camera inside Ryo's arm, noticeable:
https://i.imgur.com/hPa5Q4L.png

Camera inside Ryo's head, very noticeable:
https://i.imgur.com/AmRSgAS.png

Actually it's kind what I was expecting, keep in mind that this is what I noticed (could be more) and I only did it until reaching the beginning of disc 2, didn't feel like continuing.
As you can see there's a lot of problems just for this portion of the game alone.

As for Shenmue 2 I didn't try looking at it yet but its a mixed bag, one would expect to be the best game to support 16:9 because of the letterbox already implemented but the game just keeps jumping from 19:6 to 4:3 in cut scenes with QTEs. Probably would be very jarring, everything would need to be cropped I guess...

Probably disc 4 would be passable since there's almost no QTEs there. I'm curious what they will do with this game actually...

Doing a replay of SH2 for the first time since the PS2 era and being reminded of Akira Yamaoka's OST.
Masterpiece. Probably still his best work yet.

Not as barbaric as death by marlin cannon

Henry Spencer wrote:Doing a replay of SH2 for the first time since the PS2 era and being reminded of Akira Yamaoka's OST.
Masterpiece. Probably still his best work yet.

Thats crazy. I just started playing Silent Hill 2 on xbox for the first time a couple weeks back. Man this game is creepy as fuck even today.

Full vision does exactly what it says on the tin. Full vision. There no point adding takes on it to suit your opinion.

If your point of view is, "Yu Suzuki said this, but he didn't mean this..", then it's a bit of a futile stance to take. We can agree to just disagree, and like I said, people are free to increase their original pledges. But we will not be running any sort of campaign to get to 7 million.

Anyway been replaying Resident Evil 2 and actually got my first A rank as Leon (finished Claire A scenario with a B rank) and in turn unlocked 4th Survivor (where you play as HUNK) which is real fun and a cool extra where Zombie Brad appears outside the Police Station. Just finishing it all reminded me of why it's one of my favourite games of all time and makes me even more excited for the reimagining (which I was initially disappointed about being TPS and not having cinematic cameras like REmake).

Also led me to play RE5 again which I hadn't played since release almost a decade ago. Loved it upon release date and lived up to my hype after RE4 blew me away. So it's nice to return to these games again and find they're still so great. The combat for me is the most refined in the series, yes, including RE6, which tried to take the series into new territory (more towards even more action focus with melee counters, quickdives, dual wielding and beat 'em up elements). Not that RE6 combat was bad or anything, but RE5 just hit that sweet spot between staying true to being the action adventure game whilst refining what made RE4 so great in the first place. I feel that RE5 is greatly underrated by the fanbase despite it being a clear attempt by refining what people loved about RE4's aesthetics and gameplay mixed with trying to stay more true to the "RE mythos", as it were, since RE diehard fans complained about how RE4 "betrayed" the story canon by changing everything up. Also the co-op aspect is fine by me too, Sheva's AI is better than what people were moaning about back then too, her AI was programmed smartly to get you out of hot spots (heal, revive, take out the enemies gathering around you etc) and the boss encounters are great as well. Such a great game, screw the haters.

It also makes me know that the RE2 Remake is in great hands, since the Director is actually Yasuhiro Anpo, who was the director of RE5 and lead programmer of RE2 (and a member of the Onimusha team, working as a Planner and Lead Programmer on those games also). So his credentials check out, out of the remaining members of the Resident Evil team, I think the RE2 Remake is in good hands with him at the helm.
Weird timing! I just dug out a couple of RE posts we made in this topic in 2011.

Finished RE1: Director's Cut (which I had never played before; arrange mode is really cool) & Resi Evil 4 (PSN "HD" version, which is basically a port of the Wii version) clocking in at 15 hours and gave Mercenaries a quick whirl. Great games, forgot how great they really are actually. Now I'm playing RE2: Dual Shock Edition and just completed Leon A [which gave me infinite rocket launcher and infinite chaingun!!!], now onto Claire B. Resi Evil 2 is still my fave in the series.
I always found it strange that Claire A - Leon B is the "canon" version of events, pretty much everyone I know played it the other way around, especially with Leon's disc being the first one.

I love the old Resident Evil games, I have fond memories of playing the first game on the Sega Saturn, my friend and I were so scared that we boarded up my door with some furniture and insisted my dog stayed in the room to protect us.

I got the second game when it was first released, it was easily my favourite, a friend of mine still does speed runs of it every now and then. I'm sure that I got Nemesis on release as well but I only completed it once, which is pretty weird considering I've bought all the ports of it, essentially I've bought the same game three times and only really played it once.

I loved Code Veronica though, I did "knife only" runs for huge portions of it, I never quite understood why it wasn't a numbered game, I remember reading something about keeping the numbered titles on the Playstation or something...

After that I sort of lost interest in console gaming and while I did buy a Gamecube exclusively for the Resident Evil remake and Zero, I never really played them properly, which is a real shame as I've since watched friends play them through and they look great.

Anyways, here endeth the diatribe.
https://i.imgur.com/mcOXaE4.png

A mere 7 years later and I'm finally going for it with REmake!

This game is brilliant, I'm genuinely creeped out the entire time I'm playing it and a couple of the scares got me good. :oops:

Definitely no need for me to take a "what RE character are you?" quiz.

https://i.imgur.com/z8DFkph.png
Relatable.

The previous console generations all had a slew of "hidden gems", games that usually have modest sales that are either loved by the critics and hated by the public or vice-versa, that are usually not perfect but bring forward something new and original to the table, later evolving into another trope of the industry: the "cult classic". Shenmue of course is an obvious example.

Ive missed a lot of this generation. Coming in recently though I'm surprised to see a lot of love for these "cult classics". We're seeing re-releases of games like Okami and Rez (& Shenmue), the revival of series like MonsterBoy, Torment and Beyond Good & Evil (& Shenmue) and even Yakuza and Earth Defense Force are in the Playstation Hits line in the West. I think this is great, and probably a case of a critical mass of hardcore gamers that has been building up since the 90s, which now represents big business and can justify the investment.

However... where are the hidden gems of this generation? I see a lot of indie games but these have a tendency to look and feel quite similar between themselves as they adhere strongly to the "retro-inspired" trope. I haven't been able to otherwise identify too many, especially made in Japan games, and my "shopping list" right now has only two: Polybius and Dangerous Golf (none of which are japanese of course). I would definitely add Hollow Knight to that list as well, which I already have. Which others can you recommend? What am I missing?

For me those kind of games are on the Vita and 3DS.

Games like Lost Dimension for fans of hybrid RPGs (mixture of SRPG and Action, with a retro-futuristic art style), Mercenaries Saga Trilogy (also on Switch) if you're into SRPGs like Tactics Ogre/FFT, Soul Hackers if you like cyberpunk JRPGs, Azure Gunvolt if you like side scrolling action, Grand Kingdom (which is also on PS4) if you like board games, SRPGs and tactical action combat.

There's also what Bethesda have been putting out like The Evil Within 1 & 2 (which are different attempts of creating modern survival horror), Prey and Dishonored 2 which all have cult audiences and are fantastic games in their own right.

Then there's the recently released Vampyr which is building up a cult fanbase. Looks really good to me.

Knowing you since you're into Japanese adventure games like me, I can see you maybe liking the upcoming Jake Hunter game for the 3DS, Ghost of the Dusk, which has a gritty Japanese art style and is out at the end of August.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmCiisn0WbA

Plus there was also that game from former members of Cing released not too long ago which I need to play, Chase: Cold Case Investigations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI_h4W7Y_pY

or