- There is a demo out today! Can't wait to try it.
- The full game is out May 7th.
- I played through the 'Maiden' demo and got to meet Alcina Dimitrescu, the blood-drinking castle inhabitant. I'm of two minds about this demo. The graphics are of a similar style as RE7, going for realistic textures and shading. Like that game, this looks a little bit stylistically messy and incoherent. I has hoping for a larger jump in fidelity, but maybe I just got a jump in resolution. I was also disappointed with a big non-functional mirror on the PS5, which does make sense because your character doesn't actually have a body in this demo. What annoyed me more than anything was the footstep sounds, which are loud and annoying, because they don't correspond to anything visual on the screen. When you're playing a dynamic game with quiet sequences like this one, footsteps should almost disappear, especially for a first person game, where they don't correspond to anything visual.
- I preordered the game for 500 DKK.
- Next demo is out this sunday night.
- I played through the 30 minute time-limited demo, explored the tiny detailed village, fought some goofy looking werewolf dudes, and met a few of the villagers. The environment looks amazing, but the enemies are a bit silly.
- Martin and I played through the first part until the meeting with the witch. The opening of this game is very entertaining.
- I played alone for the first time. It wasn't as spooky the second time around, but I got to enjoy looking around the detailed artwork of the village and Castle Dimitrescu. I killed two of Lady Dimitrescu's daughters and in turn she cut my hand off. Which I then glued back on with a health potion.
- I reached the roof and killed some horrible flying things with my Sniper Rifle.
- Finally, I'm back to RE8. I sold everything 'Valuable' and not 'Combinable', which got me Lei (money) for upgrading 'Power' on my weapons and buying a magazine upgrade for my pistol. Lady D was right outside the save room, menacingly wandering around. The 3D audio works, and I usually have a pretty good sense of where she is. After some hide-and-seek, I managed to lure her out into the yard. Since Ethan is way faster than her, I could run around her and get to my destination.
- I love the idea of the ball puzzles, but I wish they were more fun to play. The camera is weird, and the ball tracks are a bit too simple.
- Got the That Sucked! trophy. - Lady D mutated into a horrible flying monster, which I unloaded all my ammo into, killing her with my final pistol round! I got a yellow flask, which apparently contains Ethan's baby's head. Very unsettling.
- Back to the village, I started combing through it for items. Walking around the super-detailed little area looking for stuff is oddly very satisfying. And the occasional werewolf encounter makes it even more fun.
- I went to the new area 'Potter's Field' and entered the spooky House Beneviento, which is full of dolls. I have no weapons here, and there is a wooden doll that seems to represent the corpse of Mia. I'm not even sure that it isn't her, and Ethan is under some spell to make it look like a doll.
- Oh God, there is a horrible monster baby! It's right out of Silent Hill, what a nightmare.
- Got the Got No Strings trophy. - At first I didn't understand the puzzle of finding the right doll. I thought I had to stare at the dolls with the shaking heads. That was a red herring, I just needed to find the doll in the white dress a couple of times. And that was the end of Donna Beneviento.
- I just realized that they removed the item box from this Resident Evil. Your suitcase is all you have. Is this the first one, after 25 years of item boxes? I like this simplification. Having to go to the item box with stuff and carefully making a loadout for the next run isn't my favourite part of Resident Evil.
- The enemies of the factory area remind me of Tetsuo the iron man. Very neat 1980's inspired design. The Sturm is a cyborg combination of a mangled human body and a propeller aircraft engine. His arms are cut off by the propeller.
- Mia was Mother Miranda and Rose was the resurrected Eveline (from RE7).
- Mother Miranda just ripped Ethan's heart out, Mortal Kombat-style!!
- Ethan is somehow alive again. He sees Eveline in a dream(?) and she tells him that he's been dead the whole time, replaced by mold.
- Completed the game on Standard difficulty. And now Ethan is blown up by a giant bomb, and Chris, Mia, and Rose are safe.
- Got the score 299225 in The Mercenaries: The Village.
- I started New Game Plus on Hardcore difficulty, but now I have an infinite ammo W870 TAC combat shotgun, which turns the game into a fun monster-blasting experience. Time to get revenge on those werewolves.
- I killed Lady Dimitrescu again.
- I played 5 hours of Resident Evil tonight...
- I played for 1.5 hours with 3D audio in headphones, which was a mistake, because I didn't record any sound. Newbie mistake.
- I did livestream it on YouTube, though, just for kicks, and that version does have audio. Maybe I can do something clever?
- Downloading live stream audio with
youtube-dl -f 140 URL - I fixed the video with the live streamed audio using ffmpeg.
- I was in the Cyborg Factory, and almost finished upgrading the M1851 Wolfsbane Magnum. I realized that I could maybe unlock infinite ammo for it, which would be ridiculous. After getting the barrel add-on in this area, I had what I needed for the full upgrade. I looked at the Extra Content Shop where I had 66000 CP. I needed 95000 CP for the upgrade, so I was missing 29000 CP. Looking through the Challenges, a few stood out: 'Butcher' - 12000 CP for killing only 7 more enemies, 'Pineapple Ace' - 13000 CP for killing only 1 more enemy with a grenade or pipe bomb. That's 25000, so I was missing 4000 CP. That was a bit more tricky - I looked at a few that required having a specific amount of Lei, ending in 7 or 1. As I understand, this is not possible before buying the Assault Rifle, which unlocks Rifle Ammo, which sells for 7 Lei. The Assault Rifle was 60000 CP, which would be a big setback. Another option was 'Survivalist', where I had to craft 38 more items, which was also a bit much. The final interesting one was 'Ability User' for 5000 CP, where I had to use 4 more abilities in Mercenaries. I started a new round of Mercenaries, played very aggressively, and picking abilities I wouldn't normally pick. After a few rounds, I had the Challenge, and I was ready to go.
- Having enough CP for the Infinite Ammo, I 1) sold my upgraded V61 for a big sum of money, 2) bought all upgrades for the M1851, 3) saved and exited the game in a separate slot, 4) went into the Extra Content and bought the Infinite Ammo, 5) loaded the previous save before selling the V61. Now I had the V61 *and* an infinite ammo Magnum, making the rest of the game ridiculous and fun.
- Completed the game on Hardcore difficulty.
- I started my third NG+ playthrough on 'Village of Shadows' difficulty. The infinite Magnum trivializes the whole thing.
- Got the Lucky Number 7 trophy. - I used the opportunity to get some challenges, including all the ones that require having a specific amount of money: 77777, 54321, and 52911 Lei, which required a bit of puzzling with selling and buying ammo. I also got 'Hooligan' for smashing all the windows in Castle Dimitrescu.
- I'm back to the Cyborg Factory, and soon ready to finish my third NG+ playthrough on the hardest difficulty. I want to try the S.T.A.K.E. magnum, it looks cool. That can be my next goal.
- I was in bed, not feeling well, but wanted to play something, so I connected the PS5 controller to my laptop and used PS Remote Play to play some Mercenaries. It works really well, except that HDR doesn't display correctly. Also, the tiny bit of lag it introduces makes first person shooting a bit too tricky.
- Completed the game on Village of Shadows difficulty.
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The company bought a PlayStation VR2, and I tried going through the setup process. The eye tracking was amazing to try for the first time. The calibration tool has little dots that you can look at to trigger sounds of different pitches. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was playing an instrument with my eyes, a fascinating experience. I played a bit of Resident Evil, it plays more or less like RE7 in VR. The 3D audio was very effective, I clearly heard the direction of the blinking light from the car. In the first house with the spooky werewolf sounds, I noticed another PSVR2 feature - the headset rumble, which was used very efficiently to anticipate a loud sound.
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I played through the tutorial and the early game until I reached Luiza's house. I'm not enjoying this enough to keep playing, and I think I know why: I've played this game and it's predecessor a lot at this point, and I'm not super excited to see the locations and encounters again. The other issue is that the early parts of this game has a lot of sequences where you're not just playing the game, but you're going through these crazy sequences that are not very interactive. I still want to see Castle Dimitrescu in VR, though.
2021-01-22
Maiden Demo2021-02-08
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