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The Legacy of Resident Evil 4 and the Remake || Resident Evil Month
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After their run ins with the dreaded podcast bots, a new organisation calling themselves the Brolly Corporation have emerged from the shadows seeking to destroy indie podcasts once and for all. It's up to Satsunami and the PodPack Collective to stop them by discussing the iconic gaming franchise Resident Evil! Welcome to Resident Evil Month!
In this episode, Satsunami is joined by Joey of the Game Club Pod to discuss one of the most iconic games of all time: Resident Evil 4! But how well does the remake hold up against it's 2005 predecessor? Why did Leon Kennedy's adventures have such an impact on the duo? And Satsunami did WHAT in Barcelona?! All of this and more in this amazing episode of Resident Evil Month!
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Transcript
Red Panda City Overrun
00:00:02
Speaker
October 3rd, 2025. It's a day I'll never forget. The podcaster inside me died that day, and that night, Red Panda City was overrun with bots, thanks to the bot weapons created by the Broly Corporation. Somehow, I made it out, but too many others...
00:00:21
Speaker
weren't so lucky. I was asked later to join a top secret podcast program. Not that I had a choice. I needed the lessons, the recordings, the punishing sessions. They nearly killed me. But at least they kept my mind off everything. If I could just forget what happened that night. The pain.
00:00:38
Speaker
Even for a second. This time, it can be different. It has
Escape to Rural Spain
00:00:42
Speaker
to. Sato, are you going monologue for this whole road trip? It's called brooding and it's an art.
00:00:48
Speaker
By the way, where the heck are we? I just thought it'd be best for us to get off the grid for a while. After that whole Red Panda City incident, Tim and Alex have been trying to find ways to help as well. And by help, do you mean playing copious amounts of Bilatro on Twitch? Look, the point is, they're getting the word out that there are still podcasters out there that are not under the thumb of the Broly Corporation.
00:01:08
Speaker
And in the meantime, Zatsu, I've hired us a very quaint Airbnb in a rural Spanish village. with No signals, no problem. Oh! Okay, to be fair, it does look pretty snazzy up here. Sorry, Joey. I guess I've just been on age since the Red Panther City incident.
00:01:23
Speaker
Hey look, there's even a friendly local to say hello to us. Do you think that's Spanish for Welcome to Resident Evil Month? Absolutely not. Go, go, go, go, go!
Introduction to Resident Evil Month
00:01:37
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Resident Evil Month. My name's Satsunami and joining me today is none other than one third of the Game Club pod.
00:01:50
Speaker
is Joey. Joey, welcome to Chatsunami. Thank you, Satsunami. It's my first foray here and it feels very cosy. It's nice to be here. No, it's great to have you on because i was literally just saying that before we came on to record tonight that, yeah, it's strange how I haven't had you or, i mean, i've had Alex on for Bioshock, but yeah he was very eager to talk about the Get Boys.
00:02:13
Speaker
ah Eager is how I'd describe Alex. Yeah, in the background, he is probably spitting out a cup of tea right now, going, the lion, the witch, and the sheer audacity of this red panda. Well, you know, that's okay. For a long time, I didn't even use his name on the podcast. I just called him the Northern Boy. So he puts up with a lot of stuff from us. And we love him for it. Please don't sue us, Alex. Please don't. A Red Panda lawyer cannot take any more lawsuits, okay?
00:02:41
Speaker
It's okay. He's signed contracts. We're watertight. Yeah. So he's not a contractor. Nah, that's fine. Or maybe he I don't know. I don't know how you run your podcast. I'm not sure we do either, to be honest with you. It's one of them. It just comes as it comes.
00:02:57
Speaker
And speaking of troubled developments yesterday...
Resident Evil 4 Remake Discussion
00:03:00
Speaker
Oh, what a segue. Sorry, I'm patting myself on the back if you could hear that. Yeah, thank you. today We are indeed jumping from last week where we discussed Resident Evil 2 and 3's remake with the fantastic look from the Howdy Beans podcast.
00:03:15
Speaker
And we are going into the Resident Evil 4 remake, or as we like to call it in Chatsunami, Rear. are So this is something i was saying to you as well, that if you put the acronym up, RE4, colon, R, it looks like you're a fan of something else. Don't add the colon. That makes it so much worse.
00:03:35
Speaker
How does it make it worse than leaving the colon out? Well, just know, but it's RIA with a colon. That makes it so much worse. Re-colon. R-colon. but Yeah, it was a very unfortunate acronym. You can say RE2R, you can say RE3R, but RE4R, yeah, you're liking Rear, apparently. RE4make. Yes, RE4make, that is the... Yeah, okay, no, sorry, the Red Panda lawyer was just telling me that is the appropriate term, so we're going to go with RE4make. I'm going to be honest, I am super excited to talk about this game because would you believe this is a game that actually inspired me to do Resident than Evil Month? Do you know, i would believe that because the original Resident Evil was the first Resident Evil I ever played, and it inspired me to play a lot of the other games in the series. So you've got that in the back pocket. Because that's the thing, I mentioned this in the very first episode as well, that my brother had a copy of the original one for the PlayStation, and I've still got the disc, I've still got the cover and everything. It's a fantastic memento for that time, but
00:04:41
Speaker
I never got to play it because I don't know if you're the same, but my parents were genuinely really strict about what I could and couldn't play when I was growing up. but So I wasn't allowed to play anything like that. I walked into to my brother playing Duke Nukem 64, I think. And my mum said, how could you let your brother watch such a violent game? And, you know, it's like nowadays you look at and you go, yeah, it's not the same. Come on. But back then, obviously, it was cutting edge games. And you think, oh dear, this isn't great. I was the same. I used to borrow Grand Theft Auto games and things like True Crime from my friend. And we had the TV and the PlayStation was in the back room of the house where my parents very rarely went. But if ever they were going in, I had to dive and hide the discs and the boxes from them so that they didn't know we were playing Grand Theft Auto when we shouldn't have been. So feel the pain.
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah, Grand Theft Auto was the infamous one of my friends had. Very irresponsible parents, right enough, but at the time you thought, no, I want to play Grand Theft Auto, and, you know, you couldn't at your own home, so you had to go to other kids' homes and be like, ooh, let's play Grand Theft Auto. But yeah, wasn't a game I really played growing up but it was one that I knew about because it was just one of those games that is so iconic that even if you hadn't played any of the games you knew what a Resident Evil game looked like if that made sense. You know it wasn't just like oh it's a zombie shooter game you know was its own thing you had the zombie dogs you had the Spencer Mansion you had i was gonna say Chris Redfield but you had his twisted face he didn't look like
00:06:12
Speaker
Chris Redfield on the cover. It's really
Resident Evil Series Humor
00:06:14
Speaker
weird. Yeah. And then they overcompensated. Again, I mentioned this in the first episode, they overcompensated because they said, all right, this cover doesn't look as if it shows it's a zombie game. Let's have the remake cover show Jill getting grappled by a zombie. It's like, yeah, that will show up. So we feel overcompensating on the other side of the spectrum here. If there's one thing Resident Evil as a series has never done well, it's subtlety.
00:06:39
Speaker
which we love it for. 110%. There is no subtlety in it. It's either zero or 100, you know. It's like there's no in between. There's no nuances. There's some, but you have to look for them. Otherwise, you get lines like the, you're pitiful, Whisker.
00:06:58
Speaker
Which, to this day, absolutely love that line from the original. I would argue that, and I'm sure we'll come on to it, the best worst line out of it any Resident Evil game is in Resident Evil 4. I would say it's more cheesy and poor than the Jill Sandwich line from the original Resident Evil 1.
00:07:15
Speaker
Right, I'm going to assume it's not the sexist line. Nope. It's not. I'll tell you what it is later. Oh, okay. Because it was a cut from the remake, which I was very sad about. Oh, is that when they do the jump down? Nope. Don't you worry, Sands of all. I'm teasing you now. Yeah, I think I might know what it is now, but I'll hold my tongue now for that. I have to say, I...
00:07:35
Speaker
Personally, and I'm curious to hear what your experience is, because I remember saying to the pod pack that I was planning this month after playing the remake. I absolutely fell in love with this. It was actually one of my friends who bought it for me because I had it on my, i think, Steam wishlist. It was Christmas time and my friend was like, oh, here's a Steam game. Oh, great, thanks. And I looked at it and thought, Resident Evil, I was grateful for it, but i thought, am I going to play this or am I just going to be terrified the whole time? And thought, you know suck it up, Satsu. You're big boy now. So I played it, loved it. I thought this is incredible. Honestly, I just, I couldn't believe how perfect it was. There's going to be a lot of gushing in this episode, but thought this is amazing. This is one of the best games I've ever played. I wouldn't go that far to say. Just everything fell into place. But in terms of the original one, the only memory I have of playing the original one was when I used to do Twitch streaming more prominently. the podcast and i remember for Halloween I said to my friend oh let's stream Resident Evil 4 because was the only one I had on the computer at the time and it was well before the
Joey's Love for Resident Evil 4
00:08:41
Speaker
remake came out in 2023 so said right okay I'm gonna load it Streamlabs would not pick it up on the It was just a nightmare and even when I got it to work the audio wouldn't sync up. It was just a nightmare so I had a really poor first impression let's just say. I don't know if it is better or worse than the time I played Dead Space 2 but my friend couldn't hear my audio. Shout out to Andrew, you know who you are. I was sitting there absolutely unawating myself, being like, ah, it's so terrifying. But he couldn't hear the audio, so he's just kind of kicking his feet in the background, being like, I saw a nice thing going to work today. it was a good time. Satsu, why are you screaming? I'm like, oh, it's terrifying. Makes me think of that Ralph Wiggum meme where he sat there and he's I'm in danger.
00:09:28
Speaker
That's what it was like. Oh, it was absolutely terrible. I shelved the original for a while. And have to say, while I haven't completed it, I did play through a little bit before we started. And by before we started, I mean a couple of weeks ago. I don't mean the night before or five minutes before I came on being like, hold on, I'm going to get to Salazar.
00:09:47
Speaker
so i played it and it still holds up in some ways the other ways obviously not but that's what the remakes were but what was your experience though because as i was saying when i brought this up to the pod pack you absolutely jumped on this there was just a dust cloud where you were and you're like yes are you before getting the end. Mine, if anyone else tries to take it, I will fight you. I love Resident Evil 4, the original. Like I said, the first Resident Evil game i ever played. It's the reason that I like horror games, which is funny because I don't think Resident Evil 4 is scary in the slightest. I think the remake ups the horror quite a lot. Mm. But the original is like watching... You know those B-movies that are so bad they're good? Yes.
00:10:31
Speaker
I feel like the campness, the cheesiness, how over-the-top the action sequences are in Resident Evil 4 eliminated any fear from it whatsoever. So I played Resident Evil 4 for the first time on the Wii, and you used the nunchucks to point and aim the guns. It made the tank controls slightly bearable, because I think otherwise i wouldn't have had as good a time of it. I understand why people really hate the tank controls, and for those of you who are listening who don't know what that means, it means when you're aiming your gun, you can't move. Your controls are solely focused on the aiming of the gun, and then when you want to move again, you have to stop and you can't fire your weapon.
00:11:08
Speaker
And Resident Evil stepped away from those tank controls, which I think is a fantastic choice. It sort of is a little bit of a staple of the identity of the original Resident Evil, but that's okay. You've got to evolve with the times and stuff, and I think the remake wouldn't be as fun with the tank
Remake's Style Debate
00:11:24
Speaker
controls. What I will say about Resident Evil 4, the original one, I feel like we have it slightly opposite to each other. So I much prefer 2005 version of Evil 4. Them fighting words.
00:11:39
Speaker
for a few reasons so i mentioned some cut content before i think we're going to talk about that in a little bit more specifically but there are a lot of areas in resident evil 4 remake where they've taken a flavor of the original resident evil and they've stuck in a much grittier dark environment and i feel like that's taken away some of the bombasticness of the original Resident Evil. So there was things like cable car rides where you are shooting the villagers from other cable cars before they jump onto yours and try and push you off in the original. There's a sequence where Ashley, who I'm sure will get a section in this episode all to herself,
00:12:22
Speaker
a hundred percent yep is driving like a tractor dump truck down the halls of a futuristic lab and the zombie villagers are trying to catch you and climb onto it and attack you i think that it reminds me a little bit of have you seen the austin powers movie where he's trying to turn around and he's just going back and forth in that the thing and he can't turn around because the vehicle's wedged in it the whole reminds me of that which is funny and then there's sequences with laser rooms which are inspired from Resident Evil 1 that they cut out and I feel like whilst Resident Evil 4 remake as a standalone product if you look at it objectively it's much better than Resident Evil 2005 Resident Evil 4 2005 there's loads of numbers going in there I feel like it maybe loses a little bit of soul in that and then leans much more towards the modern horror elements of Resident Evil. You know, I will agree with that, to be honest. I'm not just saying that to be polite because you're a guest here. to be like, yeah, I agree. I totally see what you mean, because in the old Resident Evil games, they had a distinctive cheesiness to them. Even with the 2005 version for this, Leon was definitely more of a cool guy, womanizer, what are you doing later, Hunnigan? You know, that kind of thing. yeah You had your solid snake moments where it's like, Colonel, how do I speak Spanish? LAUGHTER
00:13:50
Speaker
Leon, Leon, Leon! So you had that, as you said, that B-movie quality, that really cheesiness, and they really leaned into that, whereas I feel as if for the remake, they seem to be trying to have a somewhat consistency, see, with the tone between the remakes, like between two, which is absolutely terrifying, as I said last week but mr xx with X, with hearing those footsteps, they still traumatise me. until you realise that as a over six foot person myself, I probably stomp like Mr X when I walk. So, you know, am I looking at myself in the mirror? Is there a psychological condition there? Show off. Over six foot?
00:14:28
Speaker
Yeah, I'm the tallest red panda in my zoo, okay? What I'll say, Sanzu, about Resident Evil 2 and Mr X, I loved that remake. It was really good. But have you seen the mod where someone makes Mr X into Mr Blobby? I don't want to say that. I'll send it to you. It's really funny. That genuinely, that sounds like my nightmare.
00:14:48
Speaker
I'm not gonna lie, that is horrifying. I mean, I've seen people mod ghost face and things in, and they do that really horrible, I don't know if you've seen this, but it's like he peers around the door and everything before comes out. Oh not seen that. That is terrifying. I would just surrender my trousers there and then, you know. I know that's a horrible visual image, but you'll never come back, but trust me. I would be like, no, no, you know what? The Mr. Blobby one, he bursts through the door and he makes the Blobby, Blobby, Blobby sound. It's fantastic. It's really good. It's terrifying. It's Resident Evil. It's meant to be. But who do you play as? Noel Edmonds. Noel Redfield. I like it.
00:15:27
Speaker
The hair gets bigger at every save. oh no It's like Attack on Titan all over again. Yeah, that encapsulated, although, you know, there's a huge debate about how they kind of modernised it rather than going for the fixed camera angles, because I think that was supposed to be a thing for Resident Evil 2 Remake. Whereas for this one in particular, especially for the 2005 version, this is the one that revolutionized the series because even for, and this is a contentious issue in itself, but with Resident Evil Code Veronica, or Code Veronica X, depending on what you're playing it on, you still had the tank controls, you had the fixed camera angles and such, and it was more akin to what came before. But then when you got Resident Evil 4 in 2005, it became more action oriented and everything. And it just baffles me how many iterations this went through. And again, this isn't a test or anything, but do you know much about the development
Resident Evil 4 Development History
00:16:26
Speaker
of the original? So I was racking my brain before we started because we did Resident Evil 4, the original episode, but that was our fourth ever episode completely by accident.
00:16:37
Speaker
So it was about four, well, lots of fours, about four years ago, 2021, we would have done that. And I did loads of research. And all I can remember was that it was originally planned to be a PlayStation exclusive. And then they scrapped that in favor of making it a GameCube exclusive.
00:16:53
Speaker
And then it went through, i think it was six years of development hell. And the game was meant to be another game that's quite a famous series, but i can't for the life of me remember which one it was. Oh, I've got it written down. Oh, he's going to show me up here. yeah I did my homework. Yeah, you're completely right. Development started in 1999 and went through dramatic overhauls throughout the period. As you were saying, it was meant to be like a PlayStation 1 and then they moved to the GameCube because I think the lead producer for it, Mikami, he wanted to put it onto GameCube because... The PlayStation was starting to, especially the PlayStation 2, that was starting to move towards a more entertainment system, so you could play DVDs and things on it. I don't know how true that is, but there must be some degree of truth to it, that because the GameCube was more game-oriented, he was a part of the, well, I don't know if he personally was a part, because Capcom is a huge company, but there was an exclusive deal, I think it was called the Capcom 5, Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was basically five games from Capcom would exclusively at the time, because we know it's released for everything and everyone's toaster now. It's like a Black Mirror episode gone wrong, but Resident Evil 4 was developed for the GameCube at the time, and the first version of the game, and this is the one that always makes me laugh, it was directed by Hideki Kamiya, who apparently wanted to remove the fixed camera angles, first of all, so wanted to, you know, completely tear out what made it Resident Evil, make it a cool action game, dynamic camera angles, which I have to say, nothing really wrong with that and until he started adding all the supernatural stuff. But the bit that gets me the most, and no offence to people called Tony, but he wanted the protagonist to be called Tony. That's the bit that baffles me most. It's like, I'm having my Braveheart moment here. It's like, you may take our fixed camera angles. You may take our survival horror, but you'll never call him. Tony! Anyway, the series you were thinking of was Devil May Cry, which came out in 2001. That baffled me. Why Tony? No, sorry. I'll drop it.
00:19:04
Speaker
Before you move off of the Tony thing, it reminds me of there's a Final Fantasy that Dan from Gaming Views and Casting Views talks about, and the protagonist in it is called Clive. He just said he couldn't take it seriously for the whole thing. And I think it makes a big difference. Yes, 100%.
00:19:18
Speaker
ah hundred percent Tony does not sound like a secret agent sent to Spain to save the President's daughter. I mean, you could have Leon Kennedy, but you couldn't have Tony Kennedy or Clive Kennedy. What if it was Leon Tony Kennedy? Eh, well, yeah they would abbreviate that, because I don't even know what the S stands for. Leon S. Kennedy.
00:19:38
Speaker
What does the S stand for? i don't know. Simon steve leon steve kennedy leon clive i couldn't spell it right there is a furious president evil fan listening to this right now typing it's scott leon scott is it scott oh of course it's scott as a scott i should know that not as a name as a nashar you get the joke you get the joke i got the joke so apparently Finally after that, and this is where I get my notes out before we dive into the actual game we came here to talk about, of course, there was one called the Fog version, which again baffles me. So this is when development restarted and moved away from the Tony build of the game. think Leon Kennedy eventually became the protagonist again. They labelled it the Fog version due to the main villain being called Black Fog. This would be directed by someone called Hiroshi Shibata, and would have Leon fighting to survive in an umbrella category. castle while having a power in his left hand. Why his left hand, I don't know. But weirdly enough, would you believe this would eventually spawn the game Haunting Grounds? So not only was Resident Evil responsible for one game, it was responsible for two games. And these games, don't get me wrong, they are popular in their own rights, but the fact that they've got dedicated fan bases just says a lot that this game is just birthing out sub-series. Well, not sub-series, but you know what mean, just other games. left, right and centre. And then after that, you've got the Hookman slash hallucination version. Now this one would make me absolutely crap myself because this is terrible. I don't know if you've seen the video for this. I have. It looks really good actually. I think it looks great. Doesn't it? So... This was the one for anyone who doesn't know, it was a more paranormal take that would have Leon exploring haunted building where supernatural creatures such as haunted dolls, which would come back in Resident Evil Village, but that's Dan's purview in couple of weeks. So it'd be haunted dolls and the hook man, which would just jump out of a painting and try to kill you rather than Super Mario 64 where you're the killer.
00:21:42
Speaker
jumping into the paintings you know what you did mario but that's another story weirdly enough the game would also implement fixed camera angles and an over-the-shoulder angle for some reason when you were actually shooting your gun which was really weird but apparently the game was too resource intensive because they wanted a regular version of the castle or house you were in and then they wanted a night version which would just turn everything in blue and that took up most of the Gamecube's RAM so they said no and apparently the hallucination version of this game was inspired by the year 2000 horror film Lost Souls for whatever reason and again this would also see Leon go through characters Castle
GameCube and PS2 Adaptations
00:22:23
Speaker
Spencer. Why Spencer needs a castle? I don't know. But he has a castle and he meets a young girl, again, not Ashley, but a young girl who could control a bio weapon dog. The final version of the story would be written by Shinji Mikami, who did the first game as well. And think he did Resident Evil Zero, but could be wrong on that and he wrote it in three weeks due to time constraints and then he apparently moved away from the zombie angle which is something i'm really interested to hear what you think about this but he moved away because it was too formulaic after resident evil zero came he wanted to try something different so he decided to throw in the parasites the last plagas and then apparently as well and again this is something we'll touch on later it wouldn't be until the game was ported over to the
00:23:08
Speaker
PS2 that apparently they would include bonus modes like the mercenaries mode and also the Ada Wong-centric separate ways missions, which, again, really, really bizarre. This is something I was saying to you, the development for this particular, the remake, is boring in comparison.
00:23:26
Speaker
It's just like, oh yeah, the development began in 2018 with a company called M2. They wanted to make a faithful adaptation. Capcom said, you don't, which led them to go their separate ways. If you didn't laugh at that at home, what is wrong with you? No, I'm joking. That's a joke. Lego releases as a joke. But yeah, development would later be moved in-house by Capcom, who would bring on some of the old developers who worked in RE2R. Yeah, beyond that, as far as I know, did you see anything? Obviously there would be some issues with development, because that's just how game development goes nowadays, but did you see anything dramatic? Nothing at all dramatic, apart from the splitting of the original studio not doing this. I mean, I think the thing is, when you have a game like Resident Evil 4, which I think a lot of people still revere as their favourite in the Resident Evil series, you say, I'm going to modernise this and I'm going to make it in line with the Resident Evil 2 remake, which everyone liked as well.
00:24:25
Speaker
I don't see how you can not be onto a winner there, and I think Capcom saw a huge pile of money waiting for them at the end of the tunnel. It was smart to bring it in-house. I think it worked. I feel like they would have to do something majorly wrong and or stupid to mess this one up. Well, I mean, I think there was a lot of trepidation because of how poorly the third remake was received. And after playing it, as someone who never played the original, I thought for what it was, it was serviceable, it was a fun enough experience, but it felt very much like a massive expansion pack to the second game. You know, it felt more like additional content for that. I didn't hate the Resident Evil 3 remake. Yeah. was fine. I think Resident Evil 2 was excellent and that overshadowed Resident Evil 3. I feel like the hype was really built for Resi 3, but then I feel like Resi 1, 2, and 3 are their own thing. When you come to 4, it's so standalone anyway that I don't really feel you can draw a comparison to the original two besides the new over-the-shoulder system and the targeting system. Apart from basic stuff like that and the UI, it doesn't have a lot in common with the original 2, so this is so standalone. that i just I feel like, like I said, it would be really hard to mess it up. I actually feel, and I know you're going to talk about it in a few weeks, I feel like this game is, or the remake, sorry, is closest to Resident Evil Village. It was definitely a surprise going into Village because I played through 7 reluctantly and again, couple of weeks, Dan, I know you're playing through it right now. Yeah, played through 7, was terrified throughout, it was just a different experience. You get to 8,
00:26:03
Speaker
and then you're like, this is just Resident Evil 4 over again, but not as endearing. Why is there a wolf man trying to kill me? Oh, look, there's an eight-foot vampire lady. Yay! Let's not do all the spoilers for you, Resident Evil monkers. Yeah. People should listen to the rest of it as well.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's all you're getting. You've got too greedy, Pandalurians. You've got too greedy. But seeing that note, while we dive in, because I feel as if we've got a lot to say. Let's do it. So without any further ado, grab your eggs, grab your... Green herbs. Your green herbs. Your lechie, I suppose.
00:26:37
Speaker
I don't know. I didn't really look at the food. It was all mouldy, okay? Anyway, as I go to find something in my kitchen that's not mouldy, we'll be right back these messages. Welcome to Chatsunami, a Scottish variety podcast that discusses topics from gaming and films to anime and general interests.
00:26:55
Speaker
Join me, your host, Satsunami, as well as the rest of our Chatsunami team for our takes on these very important pop culture topics. Sir, it's clearly a trap. I accept your pain! That happens three times in the film. Every time that general goes, don't do this one thing, he goes, do you know what I'ma do? It's the exact thing. He does as well. She had the pointy teeth. What was that about? She looked like Bilbo when he wants the ring back.
00:27:21
Speaker
she turned them I just want the lightsaber one more time. Parasite says, no, you will get back into your office and work. No, says the man in Zoom. your Trousers are for the working man. You're bursting into your hotel room. Honey, we need to go.
00:27:38
Speaker
Leave the kids. You can milk an audition. Oh.
00:27:46
Speaker
That's the worst thing you've ever said on any of the episodes. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then you can check us out at our website, chattsunami.com, as well as all good podcast apps. As always, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated.
00:28:02
Speaker
Stay classy and have banana. This has been chattsunami. I'm sorry.
00:28:29
Speaker
Hey kids! Are you looking for a new favourite fortnightly video game review podcast? Then boy howdy have we got the show for you! We take a different game every two weeks and we review them just like a book club.
00:28:41
Speaker
You can find us on all good podcasting platforms. And some of the sketchy ones too.
00:28:49
Speaker
Simply search for the Game Club Podcast and join the club today.
00:28:56
Speaker
And we are back. Let's start off with probably the best place to start, and that, of course, is the story. And this is something that you brought up earlier, that, of course, you play as Leon Scott Kennedy. Nice. See? I do listen. Yeah, you play as Leon Kennedy, who is no longer the rookie cop from two. And you can tell a little bit of a difference between the characterisation. He's a lot more cool headed. He's a lot more rugged. He's like, oh, yeah, I don't care. He's doing backflips all over the place. Nobody asks him to do backflips. But here we are. But you start off and he has been sent to this village in Spain that has been overrun with... Well, you don't know that at the time, but you're trying to find the president's daughter. But you go to a Spanish village and everything isn't what it seems. And throughout the story, you get into wacky hijinks that would make Scooby-Doo blush. Well, Scooby-Doo had a gun, but yeah. What surprised me, actually, and it's something you brought up earlier about the differences between the OG and this one, was just... how horror-centric this leaned. And I mean, I was like, good lord, this is different. Because in the first one, you know, he does his speech that we riffed on at the beginning, the September whatever, and you're like, oh, Raccoon City got blown up. You he's leaning against the door. And I don't know if you've been in a moving car, but you don't put your head against the window because your whole head goes That's probably all he hears. His brain's a milkshake.
00:30:23
Speaker
But anyway, sorry for that image. So he's sitting there moaning to these police officers and they're like, oh, I can't believe it. Why are you out here? And he's like, it's complicated. I'm brooding. Whereas the remake starts off with these two poor lassies getting sacrificed by a cult. And then it has the absolutely fantastic intercuts of these flashback scenes from RE2, and then new ones where he's fighting against Krauser, who's his mentor, and we will get on to him later, but he's doing that, and I think it's just is such a powerful way to start the game, it's a very slow build-up. It was, I agree. And I think that that's one of the things that the remake did really well is flesh out the bit between two and four. It made it seem, because there's a scene in the flashbacks where the president is going, Leon, go and find my daughter.
00:31:13
Speaker
And it he seemed almost reluctant to do it, which makes me think that the Raccoon City incident maybe has shook Leon's faith in the government.
Horror Elements in the Remake
00:31:22
Speaker
but he goes along with it anyway, whereas in the original he's like, I have special training and that's all you hear.
00:31:28
Speaker
I've got special training, so I'm the one who gets the President's Door. I just, I really enjoyed that they built upon the world quite well. And this is something that they do throughout the remake, is they just build upon the lore, and they build upon it with the documents that you see lying around, with the visual storytelling as well. It doesn't just plop you in front of the house. You have to walk through this basically hell. You see the dead wolf, you see the traps, you're like, what the hell went here? The dead wolf is heartbreaking.
00:31:57
Speaker
It really is. In the original, sorry, that was my catchphrase for this episode, Sansu. In the original, at that very spot, there is a dog with its foot stuck in a bear trap. And if you decide to save it, it'll help you later on with one of the bosses. And this time, they killed it. Off the bat, they killed it. Well, they killed that one, but they didn't kill it later on, fortunately. But I have to say that threw me off because of all the things I didn't know about that. And I think, ironically enough, a lot of the fanbase were getting their pitchforks and torches. They were. On Forrest!
00:32:30
Speaker
ah the Throwing a pitchforks at the developers and it's like, no, no, the dog's alive! It's a different one, I swear! I was happy when I found the other one. I was like, oh, thank God, okay, the dog's safe. I mean, I don't know if you're the same. When you watch a film and it's like, oh, no, that person died. Oh, how awful.
00:32:45
Speaker
But then as soon as they kill Not the dogs! Yeah. The dog is like, no, you've gone too far. Turn that off right now. That's why I've never watched Marnie and It genuinely breaks you. Wouldn't it. Yeah, like watching the first five minutes of Up. no Don't do that to yourself. Play Resident Evil 4 instead. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But I just absolutely love how it builds the tension and it makes everything feel a lot more lived in. Yes.
00:33:07
Speaker
Because I feel as if the original, although it does fantastically for the time, there's a lot places you go in and they're just barren shacks. Yeah. How many barren shacks does a Spanish village need? They thought, what would go lovely? between our village and the main road. How about 15 sheds that we put one box in that's destroyed by a knife? Yeah, it's an initiative called the shark attack. Nice, well done. Thank you. I'm patting myself on the back for that. Well done. Yeah, it was weird the way they did that. I don't know why they did it. Well, do know why, but. Whereas in the remake, it's one house sets it all up, doesn't it? It's like a full house, and you go into it, and the first enemy you see, quite graphically, is trying to kill you, and gets marmalised by Leon. Back-footed, as it were.
00:33:54
Speaker
Yes. Keep that in mind, Pandalorians, because that will be a running theme in this game. He just decides to roundhouse kick everything that's not his friend. It's actually quite impressive, I'm not going to lie. I wish I was Leon Kennedy, but anyway... We all do.
00:34:08
Speaker
We all do. Yeah. Well, minus the haircut, but that's another thing. wouldn't mind. It's like the monkey paw wish. You can be Leon Kennedy, but you have to keep the hair. It's like... No!
00:34:19
Speaker
mean, the crippling alcoholism. I don't know about the hair. I don't know. Yeah, sorry. Jokes aside from that. You're completely right. He goes in, and then he has to run away from the other ones. And you feel sorry for the policemen that take you there, because they get absolutely brutalised as well. They One of them gets brutalised off screen and you only see their badge and then I think you find the body, but the second guy, that is horrible. They basically wicker man him. They just tie him to a stake and then they burn him, they crispify him. You're watching it and you're like, hmm, I'm beginning to think that that Jet 2 advert lied to me. I'm beginning to think I wasn't ready for this. There's no denying...
00:34:58
Speaker
I think this is my point about the remake. It really focuses on the horror elements much more than the original. Because although you see, I think it's basically the same deaths of the police officers in the original. But it's like GameCube, PlayStation 2 graphics. It's not burnt alive. I think he's already dead on a stake when you find him. The graphical upgrade is shown very much in the brutality of that poor man's death. Oh yeah, and they zoom in, they don't shy away from it. Because as I kind of joked about earlier, in the original one, they have these codex entries, you know, from Metal Gear Solid, where it's like, Leon will pop up on one side, and then it'll either be Hunnigan, or whoever he's talking to, Salazar, or Ashley, whatever.
00:35:40
Speaker
But in this, the way they do it is, there's this screen at the bottom that pops up, and it's the character talking, and even though they obviously can't see one another, it's still a really nice addition to it. Because at least you're involving the player without completely halting the game and being like, all right, you have to sit through this. Because you can still walk about and explore and whatnot. But compared to what it was before, where was like, Colonel, where am I in Spain? Why they speaking Latin American Spanish? Which actually, fun fact about that, at least for the original, I don't know if they fixed it for the remake. I'm not 100%, but any Spanish speakers out there, please, will be you reach out. But I shared this game with a friend who was Spanish themselves. And I was like, oh, cool. Did you know that in Resident Evil 4, these people were in a Spanish village? They speak Spanish. And they went, no, they're not Spanish. What do you mean? Well, they're speaking Spanish, you know, like On Forastero and everything. But they are not speaking Spain Spanish. Isn't it Mexican Spanish? Yeah, it's Latin American Spanish. I think it's Mexican, yeah. But it's something that, you know, if you're not overly familiar with the nuances of the language, you know, you wouldn't really overly notice. It's a bit like when people say, oh, I love the British accent. And you're like, explain.
00:36:53
Speaker
I feel like you and I, Satsura, are a prime example that the British accent is universal. There is only one British accent. We sound exactly the same. Exactly. i think people have been listening to this episode and being like, who's speaking right now? I don't know. Is it Joey speaking right now? I don't know. Is it Satsu? This is just a monologue episode. How strange.
00:37:12
Speaker
I love talking to myself. also This has been recorded entirely in my bathroom as a monologue. It's how I keep saying, ironically. Oh, jokes aside. Yeah, it's just quite a neat tidbit that thought, hmm, that's surprising. But then again, when you realise what they did in Resident Evil 5, they're not the most... I'm going to steer away from that. I'm going to let you cover that one, Satsu, because I like not being cancelled. Yes.
00:37:37
Speaker
next week we will need to be talking about resident evil 5 and 6 so stay tuned for that but yeah of course going back to the remake you've got your points that happen throughout the game especially the villager fight where you have to fight the wave of people coming at you with pitchforks throwing axes and whatnot at you and then the bell rings and then they all go to the church and he does the famous line of where's everyone going bingo i love how it starts because it pans out and resident evil 4 pops up in the screen you're like oh it's so cool that was one i was so pleased they didn't cut because leon is not stupid but he says some stupid things oh 100 where's everyone going bingo think think he's walking a really thin line between trying to be badass but he's just not getting there versus himbo a way where it's like oh he's just a meathead that's just stupid and he roundhouse kicks everything he's smart and he's got a lot of emotions and everything to deal with this particular situation but there's sometimes where you just watch him and you're like what's wrong with you man
00:38:41
Speaker
But there's some lines in this game when when you said that the writer of it wrote in three weeks, I was like, well, you know, that's kind of visible in some
Character Improvements in Remake
00:38:52
Speaker
places. Yeah, especially with his interactions with some people, and especially for a lot of other characters, because that was the thing that really annoyed me. And I don't know if this annoyed you. It's slightly controversial territory, but there was a lot of worries, of course, that this was going to be the same as the... three remake that they were going to cut loads of content and change characters they definitely change loads of characters and i personally think for the better for the most part because leon is less how to put this nicely he's less of a womanizing yeah mark alec whereas in the original he's like hey honey again what are you doing later oh look that bit i honestly had my head in my hand see the bit where he's talking to ada and ada goes away i think it's before you get to the island at the end of the game but he like goes away and he rolls his eyes and he goes woman or something like what
00:39:49
Speaker
Because this is something was saying to you before we started recording. When I played these games, I did the Benjamin Merton route. So I played the fourth game, and then I went back to two and three. And then it took me a while to get to six.
00:40:01
Speaker
then eventually I got to play six. But the thing about six is they keep Leon's characterization from the original four. so he's rolling his eyes going, oh, woman, am I right? And you're like...
00:40:15
Speaker
Oh, no. You're not good enough to keep doing this. Yeah, it's like, Leon, with that haircut, you can't pull off a woman, am I right? It's like, no, no, no, Leon, Leon, come here. How will you feel when they remake 6?
00:40:29
Speaker
Would you play it? I would out a morbid curiosity, but I doubt they ever will any time soon. I don't think they'll remake 5. Yeah, think the controversy is probably keeping them back from it because they're going for either, think Resident Evil Zero. Yeah, Zero I've seen. Or Code Veronica, which I'm going to be honest, and I've got a few friends who keep telling me, PlayCode Veronica is wonderful. And I'm sure it is, but the tank controls kill me. I'm sorry. Honestly, see, even if they had analogue controls, I genuinely, I wouldn't mind. I would play it, but I really struggle with the tank controls. I used to be fine years ago, but played so many games since. And I would have to sit down and have a rocky montage of me moving and...
00:41:15
Speaker
Trying to get used to it just before I got into it. So indefinitely, if it does get a remake, then I will. I hope it does. Code Veronica's really good. Outbreak's good as well. You should give Outbreak a go. Sorry, but we're here to talk about Resident Evil 4. Well, mean, it's tangentially, right? but yeah going back to that of course we've got leon kennedy we've also got another interesting character so this is something i was saying earlier about people being a bit worried about the changes and one of them is of course ashley graham who is the president's daughter slash damsel in distress slash crutch is what you're looking for Yes, essentially. And she was also voiced by the same voice actress who did Sandy Cheeks and SpongeBob. I mean, now that you've said it, it's all I'll be able to hear.
00:42:02
Speaker
Yep. For the original, I just want to point that out, not for the new one. Oh, okay. Okay. to say and obviously this is coming from someone who didn't have to struggle with the og ashley i really like the changes from what i've seen there was a lot of and again this is just weird people on the internet but people who were saying oh we hate the fact that they took out the ballistics joke so for anyone who doesn't know what i'm on about here Right, I know, I know, bear with me here, Joey.
00:42:30
Speaker
There is a joke, a terrible joke, where you meet a very dubious Spanish person called Luis Serra. Is it Luis or Luis? Luis Serra. So Luis Serra is, yeah, he's shady, but he's one of the best characters in this game, personally. Maybe, I don't know about the original, but definitely in the remake, they upped his game. yeah So in the original, he came across as quite sleazy. So he turned around to the president's daughter and he says, ah it's good to see that the president's daughter has some ballistics. And then they zoom right on their chest.
00:43:02
Speaker
Totally. I always think with that, and it's an awful line anyway. It feeds to that kind of terrible B movie. But you're right, Luis Serra in the original is mega greasy, sleazy, horrible bloke. He's still a little bit that in the new one, but I think they upgraded his character well. But Ashley, Ashley went from one of my least favorite companions in the original. Despite how much I love the game, she is the biggest hindrance you can imagine. And then in this one, she actually was quite useful. She was a good, well-coded, well-put-together, helpful companion, which I was really surprised at and really welcomed the change. What I would say is it's Ashley Graham in Resident Evil 4, do you know how old she's meant to be in this game? Well, in the remake, did they not say she was supposed to be in their early 20s or something? But in the original, it's much younger. So in both, she's meant to be 20 years old.
00:43:57
Speaker
And I feel like the original, you've hit the nail on the head. They played her much, much younger than 20. But I actually feel in this one, they played her a bit older than 20. And I think it was a good move. I feel like when they showed Ashley and they showed that she didn't look like a child, I didn't feel good about the stuff that was coming up from the original, like that line, which I'm glad didn't. But it made it a little bit less weird because she definitely was pitched as a child in the original and then terribly sexualized. Because the way she's designed and everything, and there's certain levels where you have to crawl through ducks, and you know, it's unfortunate angles that you think. I'm not comfortable if my mother walks in while I'm playing this. It's a zombie game, mother! I promise, I promise. No, don't take the disc. I'm sorry. Yeah, it is very inappropriate. You're right, because she's got the kind of baby face and the big ears and everything, and she looks quite cutesy, but cutesy in a very childish way, which, again, it feels uncomfortable when they're saying, oh, look at this girl. You're like that old terrible, terrible anime trope where it's like, it's okay because this character looks young, but they're a thousand years old or something. don't think is okay. 100% no.
00:45:16
Speaker
You should know that way. It's like, why you saying, oh, she's 20 years old, but she looks... And, you know, don't get me wrong, I know there's people out there who do look younger than their age and everything, but, I mean, it's a game. You have the control over that. It's not like you put her into a genetic processor and that's what came out. I'm going to skip right to the end of the game. Let me just say a spoiler warning. Now, they make it. They live. But... The game... ah Sorry, dude. The game ends with a jet ski sequence, which is bombastic and silly and stupid. And in the end of the remake, they rework Ashley's lines to say, well, when we get back, maybe I'll put in a word in and I can have you on my private detail, which implies I want to spend more time with you, which is fine. Whereas the original, I can't remember the exact wording, but she basically goes, well, should we sleep together before we get back to America? And I'm like, I don't know if this is how I wanted to end a Resident Evil game. Yeah. so they changed that. You know, I agree with you. I actually think there isn't any character besides one which they changed for the worst. I think they did an outstanding job updating every single character you meet apart from character. I think I know the one, or should I say the Wong? Nope. no i a
00:46:33
Speaker
I don't even think Ada Wong was bad update. Oh, interesting. I'll be interested to hear what one you're talking about here, because I thought you were referencing the controversy, but we will get on to that. I don't know if I know this controversy. trust me. I'll get on to that, but I'll finish my point about Ashley. This might sound really weird to say, but I really like her redesign in this game. You know, not because she looks older as well, but her fashion choice as well. That looks a bit more realistic. yeah You know, whereas the other one, it's like, oh, it's a short skirt and a tank top. And you're like, you went to Spain in this. Don't get me wrong, I was in Barcelona a couple weeks ago and it went from the hottest of the hot to, oh my god, it's this monsoon season. I was going to say, I bet you were glad you were wearing your tank top and your short skirt. I mean, it's true, the locals didn't appreciate it, but, you know, let's face it, the Catalonians, they just can't appreciate Scottish jeeps, okay?
00:47:31
Speaker
I bet you didn't expect to hear that in this episode. I absolutely did not, but I'm glad I heard it. ah For psychological help after this episode, reach out to a Red Panda lawyer. He's got help on standby. Yeah, don't think about Scottish cheeks any anyway. i'd say I thought her design was absolutely fantastic. And yeah, as I said, i thought her personality was great.
Luis Serra's Enhanced Character
00:47:54
Speaker
Same with Luis. He had very, I can't believe I'm saying this, Don Quixote vibes. You know, especially at the end where he's like, we have to save the princess and everything. He's like, oh, let's go. And then unfortunately something happened. I was actually really sad about that. I'm not going to lie. You know that is something that they change, don't you? Is it? Oh, yes.
00:48:13
Speaker
The person who kills him in a... Oh, sorry. I mean, maybe he gets killed by one person, but in the original, maybe he's killed by someone else in entirely. So who was So in the remake, as you know, he was killed by Krauser, but in the original, he's killed by Lord Sadler.
00:48:28
Speaker
Really? Yep, he is. So I'm going to tell you now, the redesign of Salazar is the worst thing about this game. Really? So is this the character you were talking about? It is the character I was talking about. So in the remake, they make Salazar like a tiny little ah horrible man that looks... I couldn't get it out of my head when I was playing it it. Looks like Margaret Thatcher. Fair, but... Tell me I'm wrong, Satsu. I mean, you're not not wrong.
00:48:52
Speaker
Ha! Looks like Margaret Thatcher. Whereas in the original, Salazar is like a child. He's like a man child that never grew up. And he looks like a child. It's really strange. I don't know whether they were trying to go for what they eventually went for in Resident Evil 4 Remake, but I hated the redesign. Salazar was stroppy, was everything that you would expect, like a spoiled prince who's just a horrible piece of work to be. Whereas in this one, I think they try to give him a bit of class and say, well, he's got this castle, so he must be a fancy man, even though pure evil.
00:49:28
Speaker
Do you know what he reminded me of? He looks like a Shrek character. Yes. Any Shrek character. it looks like Rumpelstiltskin. They do the focus on his decaying teeth in the scene where you meet him on the balcony. and I think that's what gives me the Thatcher vibes. But...
00:49:43
Speaker
It's like focusing on, oh, look how ugly this man is. Well, we know that you make all of your good guys good looking. We don't need you to go, this man has terrible teeth, so he must be an enemy. i just didn't like that. It was that whole thing I said at the start of Resident Evil, not knowing how to do subtlety. He wasn't subtle in the original. Like, don't get me wrong. They cut out a chase sequence with a 60-foot statue of Salazar across a bridge.
00:50:10
Speaker
But I just feel like the character was much more in keeping with what Salazar did in the original. Whereas this one, they did the Ashley age um age Salazar. But it didn't work like ah I really wanted it to. Yeah, I'll concede to that. Because it definitely felt more, at least in the original, it felt more like it was Peaks-esque. Yeah. Something that was very David Lynch-y in that, oh, it's a child, but they're the seat of power in this total horrible empire, as it were. I know it's not an empire, it's a village. But yeah, closed off and he's just surrounded by people who will say yes to him and so forth.
00:50:48
Speaker
It is quite interesting in that way. And I like in the remake how they develop his backstory, but in doing that, they have to make him a little bit more realistic. Yeah, definitely. And it's something that i have to say that they definitely went off the deep end when they got to village. And as I said, they had werewolf people they're like, oh no, the bioweapons. It's like, come on, man. It's like, it's not. Whereas with this, you could kind of say, oh, it's because of Las Blagas and he was infected by Sadler, who I keep getting them mixed up. Yeah, Sadler and Salazar. He infected him with the special variant of it, so he kept his intelligence, whereas all the other villagers who yell, and everything, they are the mindless zombies, quote unquote, even though they're not zombies, but, you know, parasites, whatever. They're as good as this. They might as well be, yeah. and one thing that I was furious at, and I genuinely don't realise this, is that you can kill Salazar with an egg.
00:51:45
Speaker
oh and i saw this when i was researching this yesterday it was amazing if you throw a normal egg it takes 50 of his health off and if you throw another egg it takes off the whole thing if you throw a golden egg at him that's that ah kills him entirely think ki now the reason behind that is in the lore i think it says he's allergic to eggs or something and again this is that corny resident evil that you're looking for is just fantastic life love in the original fight for him you don't have the opportunity to throw an egg at him because the merchant sells you a rocket launcher outside the boss room and i think it takes two hits with the rocket launcher it could be a really good fight but they absolutely trivialize it by giving you a rocket launcher outside of the room that's quite funny actually
00:52:29
Speaker
It was satisfying. It was the right end for Salazar. But I think Resident Evil 4 Remake did the fight much better because it was actually a fight. I was going to say, is this the line you were talking about the very beginning where he says the, no thanks, bro, and then he just shoots them?
00:52:44
Speaker
No, it's not, but that is a good one. So the line I was talking about the beginning beginning does relate to Salazar. He's on the codec with Salazar, and Salazar says, I've sent my right hand to come and get you. And Leon goes, you can remove your right hand?
00:53:03
Speaker
so but It's so good. Yeah, so bad, but it is good. Can we talk about the Merchant for a second? Of course, yeah. He is fin fantastic. I don't know why, but there's always that trope character of just wandering person in a game that shouldn't really be there, and that makes no sense why he's still alive, but he just appears, and you love him all the more for it I love his voice.
00:53:26
Speaker
What are you selling? what are you buying what are you buying good there's a big difference with the merchant here in the remake yeah you can kill the merchant in the original why you'd want to i'm not sure but you can do it you can throw eggs at this one though i mean he gets angry but you know that he's not salazar because he's not dead so one thing i actually found interesting and i was wondering doingning this i tend not to look too deep into these kind of things because you know it's like the mario oh why is the floating b blocks everywhere so yeah why is there no many rings there's a certain level of disbelief that you have to have and the merchant in this game is one of them but one of the things that I never realized until another reviewer brought it up was how apparently he has a blue light lantern which initially I was like alright cool he's got blue light lantern so what but later on you have a section where you have to play as Ashley and you're separated from Leon that terrified the hell out of me because I'm like I love you Ashley but you're not a fighter I'm sorry if you're a fighter but not in that way you don't have a gun So you've got this lamp that can freeze the last Plagueis virus, which I thought was a great sequence where you just shine it on them and they freeze and they armour and everything. that was so good the way they did it. So tense, wasn't it? It was really... That part of the game was difficult, which I didn't find with a lot of this game. I don't know how you found it, but... And sorry, we'll get onto the blue light in just a minute.
00:54:47
Speaker
But that part of the game took me so long because I just kept failing it. Yeah, I think I might have died once or twice, but I was using a walkthrough at that point because I was like, if I'm going to ruin another pair of trousers, I'll least want to know what I'm facing here.
00:55:01
Speaker
So, you know, I bravely braced my cheeks, my Scottish cheeks for that. my tartar miniskirt of course and i was like right okay what's gonna happen here the worst bit for me isn't so much the bit where you have to do the puzzle at the bottom and then you have to run but the bit that made to me absolutely you know what myself was when you're running up the stairs and it's that terminator 2 moment you know when sarah codder gets out and she's running for the lift and she sees arnold schwarzenegger for the first time and she's like no no and she's scrambling that was me i was like no no no
00:55:33
Speaker
And it's like, how the hell am I supposed to get by him? Because he's a beefy boy. It's like, oh, great. So yeah, you have to go down the stairs, lure him down, have him with the light. But yeah, that's exactly why the merchants don't get hit, because the Las Plagas virus parasite, whatever you want to call it, It doesn't work very well against this blue light, which I thought was very interesting. But again, you didn't need that explanation. know it's probably not the canon one. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. But it's just a nice wee detail. Yeah, definitely. I had no idea that that was even a theory. I like that a lot. And again, there's just so many small things that they didn't need to include. Because you've got all the optional bonus missions, which I think you've got in the OG one as well. The one thing I hated in the OG, and maybe I'm going to catch the ire of the RE community, I am so glad they took out the quick time events in the remake. It's just, I absolutely got jump scared, see, when I was playing through the original. And they threw a boulder at me, it's like, quick, press AB! And I'm like, what?!
00:56:33
Speaker
I think your standpoint in, was it last year you played this game? hey Yes. So I think that standpoint in 2024 is completely valid. But in 2005, quick time events weren't really a thing. And they were brand new to Resident Evil. It's one of the games that popped. the quick time event, which for better or worse, but I think at the time, yeah i remember the boulder scene and being like, oh my God, I'm part of the cut scene. I can determine that the outcome of this. And I think it's one of those things that retrospectively, probably not great. But in the remake, taking out, once again, the right choice, I think. Yeah, because David Cage hadn't thought yet to do Heavy Rain and Detroit Become Human and make that popular. What was the other bad one? Beyond Two Souls. Don't get me started. Heavy Rain. We played it for the podcast not that long ago and it seared into my brain. Ooh, it was a slog. Yeah, for any Pandalonians out there wondering how I would cope with Heavy if you go over to our Let's Play channel, Chatsu Plays, then you can see the full compilation, and it's like an hour long. Jason! Jason! Jason!
00:57:42
Speaker
Don't get me wrong, it is one of the funniest things I have ever done for content creation. I would wholeheartedly recommend anyone to watch it. We've got an episode, of course, on Heavy Rain, but that is, if you want to see me absolutely losing it and also admitting my love for Steve McQueen, trust me, if you watch it, you'll understand.
00:58:01
Speaker
It is a great playthrough. But yeah, that was the 2010s where they started trying to blur the lines between cinema and gaming, and it's like, no, no, no, no come on. Just keep gaming there, cinema there, have it every so often. But I totally agree with you. Definitely for 2005, it would have been relatively new. I remember quick time events being not contentious. It wasn't that serious. But there was definitely people going, oh, don't know about quick time events. But definitely now, yeah, I do think yeah that it was the right decision to take them out now. And if M2, the company who was developing this before, got their way, Jesus Christ, can you imagine? No, no. Absolutely not. But speaking of horrors, no, looking at
Controversy Over Ada Wong's Voice
00:58:43
Speaker
it. no. One character that we haven't discussed very much is, of course, Ada Wong, who, oh, this is going to be the controversial topic of the episode. I'm going to let you do this bit, Saz. Ada Wong is one of these characters that is a bit of a hot topic for Resident Evil, because on the one hand, she's portrayed as this femme fatale and, you know, very cool badass. She does all these cool flips and things. She's very capable. She's literally the opposite of Ashley in this game. They gave her a gun, they said go to town, she went to town. The only kind of minor downside for the original was the fact they put her in a chongsam, the traditional dress, and it's like, oh look, she's doing flips and heels and things, and you're like, eee, okay, there's a bit stench there of a kind of certain viewpoint for this particular character. You mean he's giving off her Resident Evil 5 vibes? Eee, just a tad, yeah. Maybe not as extreme, but... Yeah, I didn't pick that up when I played it. See, to be fair, I don't think when you're playing it as kids you would... Again, it's a retrospective thing that you look back on and you go, oh, that's a... At best, it's a stereotype and at worst, it's almost...
00:59:53
Speaker
like a fetishization of her being an Asian woman and oh she's in the trunks and look at that and don't get me wrong this is something that I always think about in Resident Evil because I'm not going to say oh she's very good looking they all are very good looking they basically took all the characters out of vogue or something and they're like oh great zombies and you're like, wait, what? But in the remake, they do redesign their outfit and everything. And while it is still quite impractical, it looks toned down, is what I'm trying to say. she still looks fashionable. Don't get me wrong, she's still running around in heels. And after the Barcelona incident, I never ran around in heels, but that's another thing.
01:00:27
Speaker
But anyway, my black ops in Burstown, apparently. For legal good reasons, this is all a joke, I swear. But the main controversy wasn't anything to do with that in this game. It wasn't to do with the Chong San being missing, because you can still get it as an unlockable outfit, although granted, they cover up our legs with tights and things, but...
01:00:47
Speaker
It's more to do with the voice actress. Have you heard about this? No. I'm actually really surprised at this. It was all over the internet, again, terminally online here. She was voiced by someone called Lully Gow, who is quite a good actress, and think was 2021 she was in the Welcome to Raccoon City film. Okay. But she was at the very end, post-credits scene, Welcome to the Avengers, Lesker, et cetera. She came out of the shadows, she was Ada Wong, she looked fantastic in the part and everything for the brief time she was there. So they decided to, instead of, and again, I don't know why, but they didn't carry over the voice actress from the Resident Evil 2 remake. Right. They decided to make it Lily Gow, which is absolutely fair and valid. But the issue people had with her was, and I don't know how you feel about her voice, but people thought that she was misguided. monotone in her delivery she wasn't as femme fatale-esque if you look at the 2005 version i'm curious to hear because you'll know about this more than me but in the 2005 version she was voiced by sally cahill i think her name is and she definitely gives off a more femme fatale oh don't think too hard stranger that's not how she sounds by the way i'm a scottish guy come
01:02:04
Speaker
I thought that was a soundbite from the game. Exactly. know. I and know. A voice of a chameleon. But that's why my voice acting career never took off. But anyway. I understand what you mean. I don't think I consciously noticed anything about Ada Wong's performance. But what I would say is I remember Ada in Resident Evil 2 really well. I remember her being a highlight in the game. I remember her in the original 2005 version. I don't really remember that much about the character. in this game i feel like she really took a bit of a bit part and that may well be because of the performance i'm not sure i can see where people were coming from because i wouldn't say it's monotone because i've heard her act and other things and she doesn't sound that bad but for this compared to the other ones because the other ones are very over the top like yeah yeah God, Leon. But as in this, it's like, don't think too hard, handsome.
01:03:01
Speaker
Flip away like Spider-Man or Spider-Wong away up as a crossover I don't want. Don't draw that, anyone. Don't draw that. Please do. Send it to at chattsunami on Twitter. X, sorry, X.
01:03:12
Speaker
Sorry, chat's in that me pod, please. Sorry, chat's in that me. Sorry, my bad. Look, if I'm going to get bad fan art, I'm going to get bad fan art on my page, okay? I can see why people think it's not as strong, especially with the DLC separate ways, which, don't get me wrong, absolutely love separate ways. i think it's fantastic. I think it's great that you actually get to play as Ada Wong and go through the game and get up to her shenanigans and see the game from her perspective. I don't know if this is to not eat, that's it. I haven't played Separate Ways. Terrible. I know, really bad, Phil. Someone who's saying Resident Evil 4 2005 is my favourite, one of my favourite games ever. Did you play the original o Separate Ways, though?
01:03:52
Speaker
I did. i don't know how it differs. Maybe that's why I don't care that much about Ada Wong in this one, because she's not in it that much. yeah she kind of just appears like spider-man again and then she disappears and don't get me wrong you do get the full either long experience as it were with separate ways which have to say really enjoy it but something that is actually quite interesting and it's something you'll probably know more about with the original game is there's a scene where you go into the laboratory and as leon you have to dive over these lasers that you cut you in half and I don't know if this was inspiration from the film or the film took inspiration from the game I genuinely don't know what came first the Salazar and the egg argument I don't know I'm not sure which was first you're talking about the original Resident Evil film yeah where the man gets diced by the lasers yeah I don't know what was first. It wouldn't surprise me if the game took inspiration from the film to to almost tie it in. Because what I'll say about this game is, well, I think I've already said it, it doesn't feel that much like a Resident Evil on the surface. But I guess they have to tie it together somehow. They don't do it for Leon's story in the main RE4 remake, but they do it for Ada's story. Do they?
01:05:05
Speaker
Interesting. So they add that and instead, and you have to fight the... can't remember what it's called. The Regenerators. No, not the Regenerators, but we will get on to them because they are terrifying as hell. They are. Gave me nightmares. These big naked blobs coming at you. But anyway, enough about my nighttime routine. In Barcelona, of course.
01:05:23
Speaker
The lowest building in Barcelona. don't know why. I apologize to all the Catalonians and people from Barcelona listening to you. What the hell are you talking about? Why are you apologizing? It's a treat. It's a treat for them. Sorry, lo siento. Agorella. Oh, etc. But yeah, you have to fight against a creature that can't be killed. There was that other creature that Leon fought and it looked like a xenomorph at times. I hated that thing.
01:05:50
Speaker
It's you had to freeze it in liquid nitrogen. Oh, yes. I cannot remember. That was Salazar's right hand. Well, he can keep his right hand. to Jesus Christ. That was the only time I think I felt genuine fear in that. Oh, yeah, i can shoot him. And I'm like, oh, no, I can't. Well, I can, but does diddly squat. I think that the regenerators are the horror piece in both the remake and the original. But what I'll say is as well, and not to jump about here, there is one boss from the original that I think if it was included in the remake, I would feel much stronger about the remake. And that is, I think it's called It.
01:06:29
Speaker
And you fight it in a suspended maze in a cave. Do you remember that one? No, I don't think I got to that It looks like part man, part octopus. It chases you through and you can't kill it, but you have to go through three different mazes and do puzzles as it chases and tries to kill you.
01:06:46
Speaker
That whole sequence was so exciting and so fun. And then in the remake, they tease it because you walk through the cavern with the chains hanging from the ceiling, but there ain't no it. Isn't anything there? It was like they know what they went, we know that you want to see this, but we're not going to show it to you.
01:07:02
Speaker
Is that at the lakeside? No, it's in the caverns. i mean It's quite far into the game. The lakeside boss is fantastic. See that whole sequence and that whole area? I was blown away because I didn't realise that you couldn't explore it in the original game, but in the remake, as you said, you've got the big, well, I don't want to call them Jaws, but you know I mean? The big fish. The big fish, yeah. You basically have to harpoon them like an Ishmael. I know it's not Ishmael, but you know what I mean. In Moby Dick, you have skewer him and be like, oh, now she blows! That's why I was yelling the entire time. I think that's why just gave up and swam away. He's like, no, no, no. You're not Captain Ahab. Get away. But after you do that, I can't remember if it's after or before. I think it's after. But you can sail on the boat around the lake and you can go to different locations. That is fantastic. I love that because you can explore the cave, see all of the different puzzles and things you can solve. It's there that you find a note that ties Luis, Luis Serrat, the village chief, Mendez. Oh, yeah. And you find out why he's stalking. Well, you sort of find out why he's stalking Luis. It's a note that says that Luis's grandfather went to chief Mendez and said, if I die, you know what must be done in relation to Luis.
01:08:15
Speaker
So you don't know if he was going to give him like a reassuring hug or tear his head off, but guess the latter. What of call me? What of call me? ah One of the things I thought was fantastic was you get to see where, you know, the hikers at the very beginning of the game, where they get sacrificed and you actually get to go to that area.
01:08:37
Speaker
And that is just such an interesting detail, you know, because they didn't have to add that in. Not at all. But you go there and then it's that, oh, shit moment. You're looking at them going, oh, my God, these are the hikers. These are the ones at the beginning. And you get to explore this area. You have to fight off everything. Again, this is a game that does reward you for exploration.
01:08:57
Speaker
You don't have to No, definitely. But I feel like what that area does, which it didn't in the original, is it gives gravitas to the Las Plagas cult. Because in the opening sequence, you see the hiker on the table and they raise a rusty axe and then it does that classic horror thing of a big thwack and blood dripping down the side
Early Cult Revelation
01:09:16
Speaker
of the table. None of that's in the original. You only find out that they're a cult when you get to Salazar's castle, which is halfway through the game. Whereas I think they really wanted to hammer that home in Resident Evil 4 Remake, that it's not just a village. There's much more going on here. And answer that question of what that is much, much sooner. I'm just laughing at the fact you were going through that village being like, hmm, there's something weird about these guys. It's not until you got to the castle, you were like, I think these guys were part of a cult.
Frustrating Church Puzzle
01:09:46
Speaker
Well, there's the church that's in the main village. Yeah. I always thought it was because they were late for bingo. They were just upset that they were late bingo. I mean, the church hall wasn't built for bingo these days, don't know.
01:09:58
Speaker
It's not. Although you had that terrible light puzzle. I don't know if you got annoyed at that. The one in the church where you have to use the stained glass windows to make a shape. Yeah. Oh, it's awful. Maybe it was just simplified for my big old monkey brain here, but it's when in Resident Evil 7 where you have to do the shadow shapes and everything and you felt as if the sense of achievement and maybe that is just the Resident Evil equivalent of like a child putting a circle through the circle.
01:10:27
Speaker
Being told, very good, well done, you did a good job. Whereas in this I was like, bloody colours, bloody green and blue and red. Would you have preferred it if it was the circle in the circle hall, but the square in the square hall. And therefore, Ashley gets released. Well done. You won the game. But anyway, enough about Resident Evil 3. Oof, yeah. For legal reasons, mean the remake and B, it's a joke, I'm sorry. Yeah, that was the only one that was kind of like, okay, this is very, very annoying. But there is honestly just such a wealth of content in this game. You could honestly explore it for hours and still not scratch the surface. I feel like we've missed a few things that I don't think we need to talk about. There is two things probably that I feel we do need to talk about, but we haven't yet in terms of in Resident
Chainsaw Enemies Mechanics
01:11:16
Speaker
Evil 4 Remake. And one is the chainsaw enemy. Oh, God, yeah. The famous, just a villager with a big chainsaw. You referenced them in the skit at the start, but there's something about the update to this game. In Resident Evil 4 2005, those chainsaw enemies were completely unblockable. You could kill them, but you had to empty like an army's worth of bullets into them. Whereas in the remake, you have a system where you can pull your knife out and block the chainsaw. How did you feel about that? as the person on the receiving end of the chainsaw i'm gonna be honest i was quite grateful i took loads of peril away i thought it actually reminds me of and again gonna get the higher of the community here but it reminds me of when before i go on i just want to say i completed resident evil 2 remake absolutely normally but then there was a
Explorability in Resident Evil 4 Remake
01:12:07
Speaker
sale and i didn't realize you could actually buy the unlimited weapons and things and it was like couple of pins you know wasn't extravagant and normally i wouldn't agree with that kind of practice but you know what i don't have as much time as i used to so i thought okay i'll pick up and see and it's completely optional you know you don't have to use the unlimited weapons and things but when you use the unlimited ammo weapons it robs the whole game of just any tension anything like that the only thing i will say encounter or parry to your argument on Please don't rev the chainsaw. It's the fact that they've got a durability meter for them so that if you use them too much then you can't really use it against them to parry which I think is a good trade-off at least as opposed to just having one knife that's invincible and then the rest of them are... Yeah, that's true. I've said it on my podcast. I've said it elsewhere.
01:13:00
Speaker
i really like challenging games and I feel like the Chainsaw Man is basically the biggest challenge in the early game because of their near invulnerability and because they are a one-hit kill, regardless of whether you can parry or not or try and parry it or not. But I just, I didn't like that. it could Because you imagine that happening. I mean, don't, because it's quite horrific. But if someone was to attack someone with a chainsaw, holding out a knife isn't going to do that much.
01:13:27
Speaker
No, it's just going to peel the knife down. And the face towards the chainsaw, which, you know, no one wants to see in real life. But in this fictional Spanish village, maybe I do want to see it. No, I don't. You know I mean? But I just thought that that was... A strange choice that no one was really asking
Bizarre Chainsaw Controller
01:13:43
Speaker
for.
01:13:43
Speaker
But the best thing about the chainsaw person is the chainsaw character in Resident Evil 4 gave birth to the most wonderfully awful controller you've ever seen for a video game. I was wondering long it would take before we... brought this up. I love that. You can buy that out of CEX, did you know? It doesn't surprise me. No one's using it to play games, let's just say that now. But my god, why would anyone think that that was a good idea? Yeah, so for anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about here, there is a controller for, think it is the GameCube, isn't it? It is, yeah. Yeah, and it is in the shape of well, essentially a mini chainsaw. But how you would control it is just really awkward. Go Google it just now you're listening to this episode. Go Google it because it is bizarre. It's surreal. It's weird. Why would you have this? I would put it up there, probably in the top one of worst controllers of all time. Looks quite cool, but practically would be absolutely useless.
01:14:44
Speaker
Here's a question for you. Would you rather play Resident Evil 4 with that controller or a Madcats controller? The Madcats. When we were little, we used to go to our cousin's house, and as the cousin, you never had the licensed controller. mean, if you talk to Tim, my younger brother and co-host the podcast, Tim lived on Madcats controllers. If he could play with one of these things, I'd be amazed. At least the Madcats is serviceable. I'm just thinking of that scene from Dark Knight Rises.
01:15:11
Speaker
You have the train saw, which are hilarious. I was molded in Mad Cat. Born in it. I didn't see an official controller until I was an adult. Oh, God. That's good. Tim is the Mad Cat Bane.
01:15:27
Speaker
He'll enjoy it when I explain that to him later. i mean, don't explain. Just text him and say, you are the mad cat's bane. you know what, Sasu? I'm going to do that right now. I mean, please keep... yeah Let's not wait for Tim to reply. Oh, and no, no. Of course not. Go ahead. Yeah, we'll get a live reaction later on. Or just screaming in the background. Today's his birthday, so he might find it like an insult, but...
01:15:47
Speaker
It's like the glove slap. How dare you? I very dare you. Speaking of enemies against the player, can we talk about some of the enemies that, course, pop up here? Because you've got your standard Las Plagas creatures,
Wesker's Overpowered Abilities
01:16:00
Speaker
as it were. You've got the ones that pop out of the skull if you don't kill them fast enough. And, you know, it's like the kind of worm thing that instantly I learned that the hard way when I was playing the Mercenaries mode. Although what I will say is see if you want a really easy time, play as Wesker. Once you unlock Wesker, he has got this parry that he just uses his hands. And it is so hard to describe how bloody OP this is. But he literally, he just runs up, slaps them, and then it's like... You can use a Fury mode or something like that where you get special ability, so it depends on each character. For Wesker, it's just teleport and beat the ever-loving you-know-what out of each person and reach. It is amazing, but it's horrifying. You're like, oh my god, no wonder you survived till five. This is ridiculous. ridiculous. The second you throw Wesker into anything Resident Evil, he's, uh, boy, he's gonna be OP, isn't i he? Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, his fan base is OP. They are very thirsty. They certainly are. They worked up a thirst that not even Wesker can quench. That's how unreachable he is. But anyway, all those horrible fanfics I read for this aside, that's next week's episode, haha. Nah, not joking. For the other ones, you've got such a variety of creatures, which I absolutely love. You've got the Garadors who are... Oh, my God. I hated them. You the ones who have the big hedge cutting equipment, essentially, and they're blinds. They remind me a lot of, you know, the berserkers in Gears of War? Yes, I know what you mean. Because they're blinds and they won't attack you unless they hear noise. They gave me my only jump scare in the original playthrough because when you first find them, he's strapped to the wall like he's dead. yeah And then he just jumps out and, oh my god, I, well, to borrow a phrase, Satsu, I definitely needed new trousers after that one. i mean, no wonder. The design is terrifying. They are absolutely just nightmare bait. I mean, don't get me wrong, the Regenerators are definitely the kings of it. Because the thing with the Regenerators, as the name suggests, is you can shoot them a million times, they won't really die. you just have to keep shooting them. But it's later on you get the infrared scope that you can see where the parasite is located in their body, and that's the areas you have to target. Whereas the Garradors, they're less cunning, I suppose, or less threatening, because you've got the Iron Maiden, which comes later on, which is just a regenerator, but is a spiky boy that loves Sonic the Hedgehog. horrible they are vile yeah don't get me wrong the name is so damn cool but at the same time it's like it's so damn cool but i don't want to be in the room with you go away at the same time for the garadors they are just terrifying but i am made a bit of an oopsie daisy so there's a scene where you fall through the floor and everything and you have to make your way through the dungeon area and you have to open the door but there are chains that are lingering in front of the wheel and So what I was trying to do was I was trying to lure one side, open the door without killing him, but kept alerting him and I kept doing it. So I was like, how is everybody else doing that? So I'm like, how do you do this? Everyone was killing him.
01:19:05
Speaker
so That made it hell of a lot easier. was like, oh, so what you're saying is I just wasted half an hour trying to do this the peaceful way, when in the words of Untitled Goose Game, peace was never an option. Peace was never an option. Just a really quick one back on Tim. He has responded. And the segue here is that Tim is in the top 100 of speedrunners for Untitled Goose Game. Thought you'd like that. Really? He once was offered, and I believe briefly joined an eSports team because of his Untitled Goose Game speedrun. So I said to Tim, you're a Madcats bane. And he said, the what, the what now? And I said, ah, you think Madcats is your ally? You were merely adopted by the Madcats. No, you were born into it, molded by it. You didn't see the licensed controller until you were already a man.
01:19:51
Speaker
By then, it was nothing to you but controlling. And he just said, what is happening? but Yeah, I'll let you explain after this episode. episode I think that's fair. But yeah, I mean, I don't think it's a surprise that an enemy is de easier to deal with when they're dead. so Yeah, yeah. An enemy's dead when you shoot them. It's like, oh, course. The circle goes in the circle. Yeah.
01:20:15
Speaker
Just going back to the regenerators, it's their creepy face. It's like the Resident Evil 1 cover, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I mean, it looks like someone closed their eyes and then tried to draw a zombie. It's so dead behind the eyes and just squishy and following you. I think it's really, is it the uncanny valley? Where your brain says this is meant to look like a person but isn't. Yeah. I think it's that that really creeps me out about. But they do become quite trivial once you get that infrared scope. Yeah, once you do that, it's nothing. One of the enemy types that hate with a passion, and i don't know, maybe this has just been getting bad flashbacks Age of Empires, but see those red priests that give you migraines and they shake of the screen and everything, and oh, they tick me off some
Annoying Red Priests
01:21:00
Speaker
mothle.
01:21:00
Speaker
as I was genuinely like, where are you? i swear to end it again. I didn't say it like, where are you? oh i was going to make that joke. Well done. I'm glad we're on the same wavelength. Where are you Very good. To be honest, you should hear me play a Resident Evil game. It does not match the tone at all.
01:21:20
Speaker
and like Let's do this. I'm sure nothing will go wrong. Where are you, magic man? I'm going to no scope you to death. I was so sick of them because even these wee minions are going, oh, my head hurts. It's like, how do you think I feel? It's targeted at me.
01:21:34
Speaker
and You're not special. Stop making it about you. yeah Oh, we kidnapped the president's daughter. We, wee we, we. Yeah, they were annoying, but I have to say the enemies in this game overall are great. The trolls are flipping great enemies. Oh, the um El Gigantes. El Gigante. Yeah. I probably offended someone there. sorry. We failed our duo, of course.
01:22:00
Speaker
I'm sorry. I mean, yes, definitely. The bird is after us. The El Gigantes are such fun enemies. And the first one that you come across is really difficult as a boss, but really fun. But then that room, you know, where you go in and it's like a lava floor and there's two of them there. And you're like, oh, my God, I'm in danger.
01:22:19
Speaker
I had one of those moments where team up with Luis and this was so good. He's like, oh, I'll throw things to you and everything. I'm like, I need more than that. Come on. Apparently, though, something I didn't realise there's different ways in that room to dispatch of them. Luis will throw dynamite things to you and throw things on them. But you dispatch of them before he has a chance, he'll be like, oh, okay, can go in the mood. And I thought... That is like a really cool small detail. Although, the one thing about El Gigante is, are they not meant to be children or something?
El Gigante Lore Speculation
01:22:54
Speaker
Or is that a lore thing I'm totally making up? I haven't heard that. I mean, for the purposes of this podcast...
01:23:00
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. They're meant to be children. It's part of the law. Right, okay. Totally not Googling this. So they're actually children who have been transformed by the Las Plagas parasite, leading to extreme accelerated growth. You can say that again. Extreme accelerated growth. Big boys. Yeah, I mean, broccoli, who dat? What? Las Plagas is my friend now. mean, I doubt Nestle, well, then again, Nestle probably would swoop in and be like, it's safe for children. Las Plagas-o's. Come on, honey, eat your Las Plagas. You'll grow up big and strong. Very big and strong. If it wiggles, it means it's good for you. Oh no. Am I making this up, by the way? Or, horrifying thing aside, am I making this up or were there bugs in this? Remember when you do the cool Donkey Kong-esque car mission when you're in the mines and you've got nothing, do you? Yes! It's like...
01:23:55
Speaker
Was that a donkey dog? Yes, yes, yes, there was. Giant bugs. Yeah. I thought I was making that up there, and I'm like, no, no, no, I'm sure. Because obviously in five and six, for some weird reason,
Krauser's Betrayal Impact
01:24:04
Speaker
they kept them. Yeah, they were in that whole area in the mines, and you were wasting your bullets if you tried to get them with your bullets.
01:24:12
Speaker
The best thing to do was get up close and personal and give them a good old poking with knife. The old London method. The old acupuncture method, of course. Yeah, they were a pain in the backside. Because, I mean, that, of course, leads on to Krauser, who... Because that's the scene where you go through and you have the very nice bromance moment with Louise and he's like, let's save the princess and everything. And I'm like, Louise, I love You are amazing. You are my bro to the end. And I was, I'm not even joking yet, I was genuinely upset when Krauser came out of nowhere and stabbed him. I'm like,
01:24:42
Speaker
oh it's okay it's just below your heart it's just over your heart i don't know if you remember this at the time but you remember how people when the call of duty fandom tried to pretend that ghost uh spoilers for the original model warfare 2 here but i mean it's an old game come on you know the scene where you get betrayed and ghost gets shot in the head and people were trying to justify and be like, it's okay, the bullet didn't go through the brain. It's fine. He wasn't really burned alive and they were trying to make all these excuses. i must have missed that. Oh, was so funny. But I can understand. I can see it happening. Yeah, but because he was so popular, I don't know how he wore a palakalava with a skull over there. It's cool, but it's so stupid. But yeah, that's how I felt, essentially, with Louise when he got stabbed. It's like, it's just a lot of blood in the heart. It's fine. It's a flesh wound. It'll be okay. It'll be okay. And I was genuinely upset when, you know, you had to break the news to Ashley, because I think between that point and getting to Ashley and you had to explain to her, it was quite long enough that you nearly forgot about it. And then all of a sudden it's like, what happened to Louise? And I'm like...
01:25:47
Speaker
You don't want to know. It's still raw. It still hurts, Ashley. Yeah. It was so sad. And, you know, it doesn't help when Ashley turns around and says, it For Luis. And I'm like, Oh, you're setting me off here, Ashley.
01:25:59
Speaker
God damn it. But yeah, Krauser, he just seems like, again, I know I kept saying that with, like, the codec and things. Oh, it's Metal Gear. or Ha ha. He feels like something out of a Metal Gear game, and I don't know how to explain it. It's just like an aesthetic. Again, I'm glad they took out the quick time events and everything, and obviously at the time that would have been revolutionary, etc. But I'm glad they took out of here and they made it a proper boss fight. But at the same time, I was half expecting Leon to yell, LIQUID!
01:26:30
Speaker
to just yell, snake! And you know, they've just spotted one another. Yeah, I remember the knife fight in the original being, once again, quite trivial because of the quick time event. It wasn't a difficult thing because you just had to do the quick time event, back him into a corner so he literally couldn't move anywhere, and then slash him with the knife until he died. Whereas this one, I feel like the boss fight was the whole area rather than just the fight with Krauser. The whole area was quite challenging, I thought, but...
01:26:59
Speaker
Krauser himself, I know what you mean. do you know what he reminds me of? Did you play Metal Gear Rising? What, you mean Senator Armstrong? Senator Armstrong is what Krauser reminds me of. And I don't think I've put two and two together until you said he's like something straight out of Metal Gear Solid. Yeah, no, he's definitely Senator Armstrong-esque.
01:27:19
Speaker
You hear the kind of Scooby-Doo reveal when you go into his tent and he's like, Ah, I kidnapped the president's daughter. I intended I was on her detail when in reality I wasn't. You're a weird, weird man, Chris. I mean, you're staying in Salazar's castle, of course. That's weird in itself. I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for this pesky Kennedy. If it wasn't for that pesky knife. Actually, speaking of knives briefly, that is actually something quite interesting. And again, it links back to that idea of consistency, which I love about these new remakes, that they're trying to keep it more overarching, and I hope they do that for future games.
01:27:55
Speaker
But one of the things that I didn't realise was the the knife that you use in the game, and granted you replace it just as easily, but it's the same knife that I think it's Marvin gives you. Oh, really? Yeah, the police officer in RE2 Remake, he gives you the knife and he's like, you're see anybody kill them right away if there's zombies etc etc and yeah he uses a knife from that and he also has a gun that has kendo on it and kendo is someone said that and i could totally be misremembering this because obviously it can't be the same shop because you don't get a gun in that shop i don't think but it's like his brother or something Kendo's brother, you get a gun, a handgun from him that says Kendo on the side. And I love that small attention to detail that, again, they didn't have to add it, but for consistency and something that is really good about his characterisation, that he's a man that, as much as we joked about it at the very beginning, he is a man who is so severely depressed. He has thought about ending it all several times, according to the backstory. Yeah. He is an alcoholic. He is just down in his luck and his emotions. He just can't handle it. But he keeps going into these dangerous situations just to distract himself from that.
01:29:05
Speaker
And he keeps these mementos of his past on his person. And I think that is just such a tiny but fantastic detail that they've brought into the remakes. It is really cool. I'm sure maybe they did something similar for the original one. But again, it's kind of hard to tell when Leon's just yelling and rolling his eyes going, but women, am I right? I know there's more to him. I feel someone's going to say, oh, there's more to him, so you're being a bit facetious. And I'm being facetious, but he seems to be more cheesy action hero in the original. Yeah, definitely. But I think your point of those small details that you don't really need to pick up on, but they are in there. I think all that demonstrates is that developers understood the source material and cared about the source material. I feel like there's so many instances where remakes and reboots and not so much remasters because they're just skins, but you find that people see, oh, they've got dollar signs in the eyes and they don't really care that much about what they're making. But I don't think that's the case with the three Resident Evil remakes of the modern era. I'm not including Resident Evil 1 within that.
Capcom's Attention to Detail
01:30:09
Speaker
Not because I think it's not done very, very well. I think it is. But it's so different to 2, 3 and 4. I just I'm lumping them together for no other reason than they're lumpable together. But I just i feel like the whole game oozes like someone really cared about what they were putting out here. which in a triple-A title these days, it's not always prevalent.
01:30:29
Speaker
I mean, I couldn't have said it better myself, to be honest. You're completely right in that regard. It's weird because, again, the second remake, fantastic 10 out of 10 game. The remake for the third game, very controversial for the old fans, and you can see why people don't like it. Even as someone who hasn't played the original, I can see why they'd be annoyed they didn't put in things like the clock tower or know the nemesis fights and things it doesn't have the same impact because can't remember if i told you this i said to look last week but there was a particular moment that killed the terror for me in the third remake where you know in two when you first meet mr x and he's just horrible he's unstoppable you get the stomping boots and then he's a terrifying force of nature and you can shoot him till the cows come home zombie guy
Criticism of Resident Evil 3 Remake
01:31:17
Speaker
of course but you can shoot him till the cows come home and he does take a knee and he catches his breath but that doesn't kill him that just the delays the inevitable so you have to run away and such now the first time i did that to nemesis in the third game i was like oh i'm gonna shoot him i'm gonna see what happens and i kid you not he popped out a chest from his chest he popped out like a gacha machine and that just immediately killed it i was like all right okay so he's the boss but he's not really a stalker enemy you have a couple of predetermined cut scenes where you run away from him there's only one direction you can go anyway you just have to be fast enough but it just it wasn't as terrifying which again is something that the fans of the original say that and the third one that just pops out of nowhere he's more of a stalking enemy he's something that you do not mess with unless you have the resources to mess with them whereas in the other one that's that you could just shoot them. I feel like the difference between 3 and 4, I mean, not the difference, but the difference between the issue of cutting content is for 3, they seem to have cut content that was, one, far more revered than what they cut in 4. I know I moaned about it the start and things like the cable car, but in 3, cutting key fights with Nemesis...
01:32:32
Speaker
It's called Resident Evil 3 Nemesis. That is what you're there to play and there to sit is your fight with Nemesis. And they took a lot of that out. Now, the Watchtower is contentious because it's quite well liked.
01:32:44
Speaker
But if they just cut back and kept all of the fights with Nemesis around it, it might be more forgivable. So I hadn't played 3 before I did the remake. have since. three just felt really short to me i think that was the problem with it they cut loads of it and it became like an eight hour game whereas resident evil 4 the first time i played it through the remake took me 16 hours and that wasn't dilly-dallying around and exploring everywhere that was getting through it you said it before that there's so much content here and there's loads of enemies there's loads of boss fights there's interesting characters interesting stories and different into We'll be right back.
01:33:27
Speaker
there's salazar we haven't even mentioned lord sadler two hours into this recording i know you're going to cut it down a bit so' be less than that but we've been talking for about two hours we've not mentioned the main and entire and nest of the game That is something that really surprised me, that Sadler was characterised as a con man, apparently, in the original. As far as I've been told, to that he didn't really believe as much in the last Plagas, but he was more than happy to reap the benefits. He was the leader of this literal cult. Whereas in the new one, although in the old one you had a couple of run-ins with him, you didn't really have run-ins with him until... relatively the end because there's a scene where you go to get him but he uses his mind control parasite powers to freeze you and Ashley and he forces Ashley to fire on you and that is a really tense scene that is a great scene but you know that builds up the tension before you actually get to fight him and it's weird because I think and I could be wrong here but I'm sure you have to fight him as Ada in separate ways, or at least you have to the delay him. He doesn't turn into his massive, gigantic, whoa, kind of form.
01:34:34
Speaker
That's a scientific term, whoa. But yes, he's just like an utter monster as a human and as a parasite, a literal parasite. Initially you think, okay, who's going to be the main stalking villain? And initially that's Mendes, who is the priest a very bad priest can i just say of the village like you can't kill him until you get to the designated boss fight and everything you have to run away from him both as era and as leon and you have to fight him as leon and he turns into this weird attack on titan-esque type you know he's just like a skeleton with a head he's like
Saddler's Increased Presence
01:35:07
Speaker
oh look at me praise me to god it's like no no no let's just end You dispatch all of them in a big burning shed, essentially. In the barn, yeah. In the barn, yeah. And then that's up you end up moving on with your day, and there's not really much of a fanfare after that. Because you do get other villains that are relatively tough, as we said. The Garridors, the Irrigandis, the Regenerators, Iron Maidens, you know, they all come in between. But there is such a build-up to Saddler, who is just sitting on top of this misery, isn't he? He is. So you're right, he appears a lot more in the game itself than the original.
01:35:42
Speaker
I don't know if it was intentional that they cut as much as... Well, obviously it was intentional that they cut as much as they did out, but I don't know if it gave it more of a, well, he's the big boss that doesn't come out and deal with small problems like Leon throughout the game. But I don't know. i feel like his mutant last Plagueis end boss fight thing was quite cool. But there was more formidable enemies in the game. I don't know. I mean, the final boss, I actually thought...
01:36:07
Speaker
was relatively easy for that. And that was a bit of a shame because Mendes is the perfect example. His fight in that burning barn is really difficult because you're having to dodge when he's throwing those flaming poles at you, the shards of the barn that's burning down around you. All this time he's swinging around the rafters because he's got these mutant arms. whereas sadler it's like is it on an oil rig or am i making that up it's a platform above the ocean sort of thing yeah it's like the docks and everything yeah you're right because it is above the ocean that is a fair point though because even if you look at salazar if you're going for a no egg run he is quite difficult like me like a true gamer clearly not hiding my shame my chickens they have left me but anyway
01:36:51
Speaker
Anyway, my trauma aside, even Salazar, he was quite tough to defeat. And even that, well, Sadler's right-hand man or right-hand creature. Yeah, the xenomorph. Yeah, the xenomorph. It was absolutely pain in the backside. You I saw an edit, and I could be wrong. I'm sure this is modded. It has to be modded in. But I think somebody edited it. So it's like whenever you try to shoot him and he avoids it, and then he shakes his finger at you. And I was like...
01:37:18
Speaker
Resident Evil was that crazy that I'm sitting there going, is that someone they've just put in? I think that's an edit. I wish it was real, but it's gotta be an edit. Because it looks exactly the same as Wesker when you shoot him and he avoids the bullets and then he shakes his finger. Trust me, he gave me my fair share of jump scares on that. But, you know, it's like, is it or is Resident Evil that crazy that somehow gaslit me in? I did not remember that. But yeah, you're completely right. All of the other ones, they are so difficult. Even in separate ways, you fight, I can't remember the name of it, but it's a creature that, ironically enough, it's probably loosely based on the ideas they had for, you know, the fog version of the OG one with the black fog and everything. Yeah. have a similar idea where Ada fights this particular person and they emit like a gas and everything and if you breathe it in you get all these hallucinations and they duplicate themselves like a Dragon Ball villain or something. It's really cool and it's very unsettling it's terrifying but yeah you have that that's even more difficult I would say and even the guys with shields and things and the bloody people who fire those cannons god damn honestly the amount of times I'm minding my own business and it's like Cannonball! And then I'll be like, i hate you. I hate you so much.
01:38:36
Speaker
That gave me a feeling of the squeaky voice teen in The Simpsons when you shout Cannonball there. Cannonball! The game would be improved if that was the case. Mr. Sandler, it happened again!
01:38:49
Speaker
This is like the episode of A Thousand Voices, Satsang. so impressive. My time in Barcelona did not tell my voices, apparently. I listen back to this going, what the hell did I do? No, you're completely right for Sadler. He's quite...
01:39:05
Speaker
And letdown, and I have to say, this isn't limited to RE4 remake or this RE game in general. I feel as if a lot of the RE games, although they're big and bombastic, the last villains are always a bit of a letdown. You know, it's like with the RE2 remake, and I hate that one so much, where have to fight Birkin for the 50th time. Yeah. But then you have to fight Mr. Rex for the 50th time if you play the B scenario. For three, you fight Nemesis. Nemesis on the left. yeah but nemesis is a big blob and you're like oh great we're fighting a big blob so there's not really anything substantial even for the final game and this might draw the hire but hey we've gone this far i didn't really think the tyrant was anything to write home about i think at the time and the fact it's the first tyrant that yeah sure absolutely terrifying but after that But it's a running theme throughout Resident Evil constantly. that The final, I was going to say quarter. Quarter's maybe a bit harsh. Maybe the final sixth of the games are generally the weakest part. So if you think about 7, for example, the final boss in 7 is dreadful.
01:40:15
Speaker
Big blob, yeah. The final boss in 8. Big
Unsatisfying Final Bosses
01:40:18
Speaker
blob. But I didn't even finish it. Really? i didn't I thought it was so bad I didn't even finish it. Wow. the final boss in this. I don't think it's bad for the same reasons. I think the problem is that Sadler's too easy. You're so overpowered by this point that he just becomes a bit of ah a roadblock before the wonderful jet ski sequence, which even saying it out loud makes you think, oh, isn't Resident Evil 4 excellent? I've always thought Resident Evil games start so strong, but end quite on a bit of a limp. I mean, it's the curse of a Resident Evil game, isn't it? As soon as you get to the laboratory section, you're like, oh yeah no, here we go. And it's the same with us, you know, you get to the big amber and you're like, oh great, here's the war. I mean, it's the same with a village, you get to, well, not a laboratory as such, but, well, kind of laboratory, like a research centre, and that has all got a lot of Metal Gear references, but trust me, we'll save that for the next time.
01:41:09
Speaker
For seven, you're right, you go down to the basement of it. Well, not basement, but like this cave system. And oh, right, okay, here we go. Here's the umbrella connection with six.
01:41:20
Speaker
Yeah, umbrella, or not umbrella, but be Neo Umbrella for that one. For five, yeah, you go down to the basement, you go to the lab. It's the same for all of them. As soon as you get to the lab, it's kind of a rite of passage. You're like, okay, this is when the game It's not going to be bad, it's going to dip a little bit in quality. You're going to get an explosive ending, but it's probably not the ending that you hope it's going to be. And that is just such a shame. Again, I don't think it's a bad ending. What I will say very irritating, is if you play separate ways, the way they do the last scene, it's still Leon that fights Adler, but you run up to Ashley, and Ashley's like, Leon needs your help!
01:42:00
Speaker
Go, go, go. And you're like, right, okay, you have to get from point A to point B and do your Spider-man across the road. And that's perfectly fine. You go flip, flip, flip. But then you realise there's all these people in between you that you have to dispatch. And you're like, two minutes is easy. And then by the end of it, you're drawn wicking, going, get out, my boy!
01:42:18
Speaker
Go, go, go, go! Shooting each of them, you're like, go, go! Just bolting through them. I have no time for you. Go away. so you go and then you throw the rpg which is just so dangerous don't throw rpg why would you throw an rpg i don't get it but she throws the rpg blam end of game essentially you blow them up that's how all games end they blow up the creature and that's the only way they'll die i think your perspective on it is fair and probably much more reasonable than my ending with a limp if it was any other game than resident evil it would be a fine ending i think that's the problem though that for a game like the remake and even the original it sets such a high standard and even day we're still feeling the effects of it people were so excited for this and they were also so nervous in case they messed it up essentially well i remember when they first dropped the trailer i don't remember where they dropped it but i had four people send me the trailer because they knew how much i enjoyed it And I think when you have multiple people from multiple friendship groups doing something like that, I feel like it shows that I loved the original game enough to talk about it with loads of different people and tell people they should play it.
01:43:29
Speaker
And just, yeah, I was nervous for this game, but I really think it delivered. I don't think it was ever going to reach the heights of the original for me. But I think in terms of a remake, you know, it brought in to 2025, sorry, standards, i should say, because that's when it came out It was right. They did the right thing with this game and they did it all very well and kept what they needed to faithful and didn't keep what they needed faithful faithful where it would benefit the game of themselves.
01:43:54
Speaker
Well done Capcom. Because I think the great thing about it is unlike the OG ones which I know as of this episode they released them for the playoffs. PlayStation Store I wanna say, the actual OG ones, and you can also buy them on GOG. Hopefully they haven't renamed themselves by the time this comes out. So you can play it on PC and you can play it on there, but overall they used to be quite difficult to actually obtain you know and especially going back and replaying that kind of system and I know a lot of people are very defensive and rightfully so because one of my favourite games obviously not to the same degree but one of my favourite games is of course Sonic Adventure but
01:44:35
Speaker
I feel like if you had someone playing the modern Sonic games and then they went back to that and they're like, oh god, the camera's terrible, oh this is bad, the graphics are bad, the voice acting's awful, and you're like, yeah, but that's part of the charm, but as well, it's a game I grew up with so I don't mind it, and I know a lot of people don't mind the tank controls and things purely because they grew up with that, and I grew up with tank controls as well, but going backwards...
01:44:58
Speaker
I feel as if it's a lot more difficult to go back to games like that than the original Resident Evil 4. Because let's face it, the original Resident Evil 4 is still playable. I mean, I played it. I had a blast playing through it. I didn't complete it, granted, but from what I played, there are is certainly a lot of dated elements. And that is a shame, but again, as a game of that time, I can't begrudge a game for that. No, of course not. I feel as if that's more accessible is what I'm trying to say in a very long-winded way, compared to going back and having to play the remake of it, the remake of the first game and so on and so forth. Maybe it's not exactly the same point, but For the podcast recently, we played World of Warcraft and Tim and Alex spent hours upon hours playing this game when it first came out and I'd never played it before. So my first foray into World of Warcraft was 2025. And I was like, what is this? This feels so like a product of its era. It just doesn't work for me now. Whereas Tim and Alex saw it and remembered the time that they had with it when it was new and shiny and with their friends and all the quests that they did. And I feel like nostalgia goggles do exactly that. So when you said Code Veronica and you can't get on board with the tank controls, for example,
01:46:15
Speaker
Well, the tank controls don't bother me because I see them as shiny and part of my experience playing a game that I absolutely loved at the time. So if your first journey into Resident Evil 4 was the remake, I wouldn't expect you to go back to 4 original, the 2005 version, and think this is great because it is clunky. It is a bit laborious to get to point A to point B while shooting people. There are really awkward scenes of quick time events.
01:46:42
Speaker
There are incredibly outdated voice lines. lines but in 2005 when joey was playing it then that was great if i was to play resident evil 4 the original now i would still think of my time playing it on the wii even if i was playing it on pc because that was the time when i played it to death and loved the game so you know when you say that you played resident evil 4 and felt like it was one of the best games you've ever played as you did at the start of the episode It doesn't matter to me that it wasn't the version that I fell in love with because I'm just pleased that Capcom have released a product that invokes that emotion within you for something that is the same source material and the same material as something I fell in love with 20 years ago now. So i just think that's a really lovely thing, even if it's set in Resident Evil, which is not a lovely universe.
01:47:32
Speaker
because this is something that I brought up in the very first episodes of the month where i was trying to think of what made the first remake so special. And you know, the first game, I went into the background about why people loved it, etc. And the thing that struck me about it was how Capcom had somehow managed to blend not only the classic elements of the old game, what made it so good, but also add a modern twist.
01:47:59
Speaker
So essentially, they had this marriage of classic elements with modernity, and they managed to do it in such a damn good way that I think is one of the best games of the series. But it's not one I would probably go back and replay as much as I would this game, because I feel as if, and again, monkey brain, circle hole, etc. But I feel as if this game is a lot more accessible in terms of modern controls.
01:48:26
Speaker
And I feel as if there's definitely going to be opinions that people will say no the original's the best or oh the new one's the best i think whatever version you choose it is as long as you're happy playing it and the fact that i mean myself included here but the fact that so many people will got into this franchise properly because of the remakes can only be a good thing for the future of the franchise because i'm going to be honest if you had people gatekeeping saying, we don't want a remake of the first one, or, oh, we don't want a remake of any. Can you imagine not having any remakes by now? Well, no, I can't. And I can't imagine, to be honest, if you had people gatekeeping the franchise and and having that attitude, I don't feel like Resident Evil would have survived because 4 was a bit of a desperate attempt to revive the series, as I understand it.
01:49:17
Speaker
It was really stale, and there were some games released between... ah can't remember which one and four, which sold incredibly poorly. And then they carried on with five, six, seven and village. While they were doing that, they were bringing people back to the old game and saying, look how excellent this is. And look at the way that we can modernize this and look at the way that we can make this accessible. To the point where you look at Resident Evil 9 and it looks like it could be, in its presentation, it could be one of these remakes.
01:49:48
Speaker
I think what I'm saying in a roundabout way is exactly what you did. I don't care which Resident Evil is your favourite. don't care if you like the old or the new. i just I'm glad that you like Resident Evil. And that's how I felt when you said, I'm doing Resident Evil month. Because I know that you played Resident Evil 4 and I know from your Twitter that you enjoyed it. And it means a lot to me, this game, in terms of what I class as, i don't know if there's a better way to say, like a gaming journey. Because whilst I always liked video games, Resident Evil 4 was one of the first ones that really made me just stop and go, my God, this is amazing. And I'm just really glad to hear that you had the same experience as I did 20 years later.
01:50:26
Speaker
As a kind of closing point, though, I was so surprised at how much I enjoyed this game. It's pretty much how a lot of these theme months come to pass for Tracendami. It was the same with Mass Effect Month, where Dan and Mary from the Podpat Collective were like, oh yeah, you should play it. And I hadn't played it in years. I was like, oh, I don't know. And then...
01:50:48
Speaker
when I saw the Legendary day Edition was out, which again, maybe not a remake, but a remaster of the series, I was like, you know what, okay, it's there, it's free, I'll play on Game Pass, I'll see how I get on. I absolutely we fell in love with it, I fell in love with the characters, with the story. There was a lot of elements, and again, you can listen to the full thoughts on that one. Fantastic month, by the way, but it made me realise that this is a game series that I was completely missing out on growing up. I played the first game and then that was it i just heard that the second game was apparently good and the third game was awful so i just never got into it until then and then because my friends were encouraging me i thought okay i'll play it and then that's how the theme month came about same with bioshock i thought you know what maybe it's time to play bioshock properly rather than just playing infinite much to alex's dismay and you know i played it loved the series so i thought you know what it deserves its own month so that was two months ago if you want to listen to those episodes but it was the same as well for resident evil month because resident evil month is a month that i have been completely building up to for ages i've been saying oh we can't wait for resident evil month are you guys interested in doing this again as i said you were the first to say put my name down for resident evil for you didn't hesitate it was interesting to see how you guys were reacting but also how the wider community were reacting to a newcomer coming in saying oh yeah i want to play the new games i want to be cool it was honestly just such a fantastic experience and touching
Vast Explorability Praised
01:52:18
Speaker
briefly on something you said that you spent about 16 17 hours on this game i was the same i spent so long in this game and i genuinely couldn't believe it that was an overly
01:52:29
Speaker
exploring areas, although I did explore. And the game does encourage you, because, you know, as I said, in the lake, you've got the boat ride that you can go to different places. You've got the maze and the castle. You've got the dungeons in the castle. You've got the village itself you can explore. You get to see Salazar's crib. so yeah You get that really cool scene at the very end with the island, although the prison island was a bit of a slog. Although from what i heard, it's not as much of a slog As the original? No, the original, I think the Prison Island is probably another third as long. By then you've run out of steam. Yeah, no, I've heard that, which is a shame. But mean, you get a lot of challenges that you try to sneak through. Again, Metal Gear-esque. I swear to God, I don't think this is Metal Gear ever. Yeah.
01:53:13
Speaker
You know, you have to sneak through the island and then, of course, if you get caught, the guy in the pig mask comes out and he's like, you have to try and take him down, pain in the backside. I think I just gunned my way through the entire thing because i was just sick of it. I was sick of just being spotted because my hairline was in view. I'm like, oh, goddammit, okay. Las Plagas doesn't have that haircut. It's like, oh, goddammit. But you have that scene at the end with the bombastic helicopter slipping down. and Yeah. That was cool. I was sad that he died as well. I was like, oh, man.
01:53:42
Speaker
in such a shame not like lewis though oh no lewis he was honestly heartbreaking because i just loved that and i loved his wee tidbit of using that line if you got a smoke apparently as i closed he would figure out who was working with them if he said oh you got a light or you got a smoke depending on whether or not they were they tell them the right thing etc honestly between the characters between the gameplay between the absolutely visually beautiful graphic like graphics the graphics are amazing i mean happi played this on the steam deck and even i was blown away i was like geez this is so good and you know i'd spend hours a night playing it and i just i was maybe not addicted but i was just i was so happy to play it and It was so good, even at the very end when you do that jet ski bit the end, and then the song Bullet or the Blade plays. I love that song so much so that it's part of my playlist when I'm driving the car. Nice. You have to drive and you look out the window very solemnly and you're like, October 2025.
01:54:42
Speaker
but That was the day I died as a podcaster, etc. I just absolutely love that song. It was one of those games, and there's been a couple of games like this in the past, and I don't know if you're the same, where you get to the credits, you put down the controller, and you just listen. You just listen to the credits, you listen to the song. That was the cherry on top of this game. It was just perfect to
Horror and Gameplay Balance Appeal
01:55:02
Speaker
me.
01:55:02
Speaker
And I loved it, and it was so good that it genuinely... I'm not a horror guy, by the way. I've got a compilation on YouTube of me playing Outlast. and half of it is just me screaming. One bit, actually, I do yell at them in Spanish. I don't know why. That was my fear. That was my coping mechanism. I was like, no soy man's up shore, please. or ra Overall, I am not a big fan of horror games because either I feel they're like too grotesque or they just don't land for me. But for Resident Evil, it hit that sweet spot that it made me want to explore the series further. It made me want to go back to the remakes for one, two and three, and then eventually go on to five to eight. But without this game, there wouldn't be Resident Evil month. So I know Capcom probably doesn't care less than they if they are listening to us. They're just like, yeah, nah, doesn't matter. In fact, they're probably saying he did what in Marshall, wouldn't they? That horror aside, yeah, without this game, honestly, I wouldn't be a Resident Evil fan. And i just absolutely love how people are finding this series based on the remakes. What i don't agree with, and I swear to God, this is last point, but what i don't agree with is people who use the remakes to criticise the older games.
01:56:17
Speaker
You know, to be like, oh, those ones have got tank controls, so therefore they're not worth it. I have a difficult time getting into Code Veronica because of the controls, but I don't think it's a bad game so far from what I've played of it. I played a little bit at the beginning, but... It's just it's really hard getting into it. But again, I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily. Games are products of their time. Exactly. So I think if you're using a modern game to beat the stick of an old game, it doesn't tally. You don't look back at games on the and NAS and go, well, they're not in 4K. You're judging the modern components of hardware and limitations with that hardware on a system that isn't able to display it in the way that you have become accustomed to.
01:57:00
Speaker
Just don't listen to those people sat saying, They're not worth your time. Also called Twitter users, but that's another story. They're not worth your time either, unless they're proud members of the Podpack Collective. Very is true, which you can find at Podpack Collect on Twitter
Resident Evil 4 Remake Recommendation
01:57:13
Speaker
slash X. Honestly, on that note, I feel as if that's the perfect place to leave off and just say, if you haven't played this game and you don't mind the spoilers, I would, even with the spoilers, I would wholeheartedly recommend playing this game. You will get jump scares, especially with the regenerators. Although what I will say is I did laugh at that TikTok.
01:57:32
Speaker
where it was you know that scene where you have to run away from the regenerator but you have to crank the lever to get over the bridge but ashley gets stolen by someone if you don't shoot them fast enough but there was a thing where it was like leon came over and he was trying to shoot the guy who was carrying her away and he zoomed out of his sniper and there was just this regenerator watching with him and he just kind of looked like damn bro that's rough That's your day job? yeah Very good. It was so, so funny. But yeah, that's honestly all I can say to finish off. This is a fantastic game.
01:58:07
Speaker
And if you are looking to get into the Resident Evil series, personally, I would say between Resident Evil 2 remake or 4. Well, actually, sorry, there's three games. I'm being selfish here. If you want the old school feel, definitely go for RE1 remake because it's a fantastic remake. ah If you want the modern feeling one, definitely go for 2 or 4, I would say. 4. Go for 4. Well, you won't be as scared with 4. That's all I'll say. I guess the only reason you wouldn't start with 4 is 4 is the best of the series, I think. If you want true, authentic Resident Evil, go for the Resident Evil 1 remake. If you want modern, true horror feel, go for 2.
01:58:46
Speaker
If you want fun, go for 4. And if you want no clock tibbers whatsoever, go for 3. That's solid advice. I mean, that's a very specific advice, but I'm sure there's one person out there going, finally, it's a Resident Evil game without without a clock tibber. review I can listen to.
01:59:04
Speaker
IGN, see if you're listening. Hit me up after this. but but honestly on that note joey thank you so much for not only being so eager to come on for this episode because genuinely when i said to the pod pack oh i'm gonna do resident evil one i'm gonna be honest i didn't expect many people to be like oh i want to come on for this and such because horror games are quite a specialized genre of gaming the either you love them or you play them to get the thrill of a jump scare so I kind of thought oh I don't know if many people want to do it Dan unfortunately he volunteered for 7 and 8 my very good friend Adam next week he'll be joining us we played 5 together and we'll be reviewing 5 and 6 of course last week Luke did 2 and 3 so yeah honestly I mean a huge thank you to all of you but you especially for being the first one in there going I want 4 I don't care if i have to beat up done. I want four. Go away, Alex. Four. I'm going to do it. So are you doing two and three as a single episode, five and six as a single episode, seven and eight as a single episode? Yep. I mean, that shows how good four is, surely. Four gets his own episode.
02:00:12
Speaker
There's just so much to talk about. I mean, by the time this is cut down, it'll probably be two hours-ish, maybe under, maybe over. I don't know, because usually I say, oh, we're 30 minutes in, ha ha ha, but then it's like at the 20-minute mark of I'm going to curse my humor for saying this. Always the case, but I feel as if, as I said, this is the game that kicked off Resident Evil month, and honestly, it deserved its own episode. so Nice. Well, when you do Silent Hill month, hit me up.
02:00:40
Speaker
Oh, Jesus. Ironically enough, I did say this in the first episode, I do not have the console to play it, nor do I have the, well, the sanity to play it either. Silent Hill 2, 3, Homecoming are all on PC.
02:00:54
Speaker
Is 3 on PC? I think so, yeah. Would you believe that the only one I have in my Steam library is Silent Hill Homecoming? That is very sad for you. Silent Hill Homecoming so Bad. Yes. Do you know, I was watching a review of it. It's someone that i've had on the podcast before, the fantastic YouTuber Mert KK. She actually plays a lot of Silent Hill on Twitch and things, or she used to. i think by the time this episode comes out, she's probably going, nah,
02:01:22
Speaker
i can't be bothered with that but she does amazing retrospectives of certain horror games and one of them of course was silent hell homecoming and you you're watching through it and you're just like this is just getting worse and worse and it's like hey it's me i'm in the military here here's my pipe boom yeah that's silent hell homecoming oh yeah and something something maybe comes a pyramid head at the end and one of the end is it's like that's so goddamn stupid you know What it's like, you know in The Grudge, or is it The Grudge or The Ring? Probably interchangeable, where it's the lassie that crawls out the TV in there from the ring, yeah. So what I have to do to become the ring lady, as it were, is just put on a black wig, and then at the very end of that is like, I have become the ring lady, the viewer of VHS tapes, you know? You're like, no, that's dumb.
02:02:08
Speaker
I have become the eldritch horror. It's like, why? Why would you? No, don't get it. But again, you're right. It's a contentious game for obvious, obvious reasons. That was a horror game that they wanted more action oriented. Of all the horror games to make action oriented, at least with Resident Evil, it set a precedent in the first games. Yeah. Why would you want that in Silent Hill? I don't get it.
02:02:31
Speaker
I'm with you. I'm with you. ah You're right, one and three aren't available on PC. Yeah, Silent Hill is one of those series that is not as accessible, which is a shame because Resident Evil, at least they pulled their finger out and for the most part. yeah Most of it's now accessible in some way or the other. I'll need to get a PlayStation 5, I think. or I don't know if my PC would run the second game, to be honest. I have it. I think if you want to run it at full settings, it might melt a lot of PCs, but it still looks very good at medium settings like I have.
02:03:01
Speaker
I don't know if even the Steam Deck would run it, but I've not heard good things. Oh, really? I mean, it's like that whole, oh, what pixels? James. I know, it's unsupported on the Steam Deck. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, I don't think it was well optimised initially. I don't know if they've fixed it, but... Yeah, one day, one day i will go to Silent Hill and that'll be terrifying. I really want to review the movie sometime. We did the second movie on our series, cutscenes. It is rough.
02:03:29
Speaker
Oh yeah, I've watched it. you know, would you believe i watched the first film and I watched the second one in preparation for a review and the person I was doing it with backed out. That's cruel. I wasn't mad, I was just disappointed. There's a new film coming out called Welcome to Silent Hill, and it's based on Silent Hill 2, and it looks horrible. at look Yeah, the CGI just looks horrific. you See, that's the thing about it. Before we finish up, slightly going back to Resident Evil, but that was one of the things that impressed me in that Welcome to Raccoon City film. Although, don't get me wrong, but it was a terrible film, I don't understand the script or anything that they got into but it definitely got the looks and aesthetics down for the most part. The costumes looked good, the sets looked incredible, genuinely. Although some of the casting choices you looked at and went, hmm, really, that's Leon Kennedy? Right. Yeah, it wasn't great. But anyway, big yeah, it seems to be a bit of a curse for these horror adaptations. And I've not got high hopes, is what I'm saying. Unlike the rest of Resident Evil month, which, of course, as I said, next week we will be joined by the one and only Sinner Sandwich himself, Adam.
02:04:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's going to be a long topic as well. It's going to be a long, long episode. But as I said, Joey, thank you so, so much for joining me tonight. And before we wrap up, where can these amazing Pandalorians listening at home find your content? Well, thank you, Satsu. If you want more of me, but also more of Alex, who you heard in Bioshock, monk Tim, who's never been here. I know. We need to get on board.
02:05:04
Speaker
And we have Pete and Sky, who run our Biased Anime podcast, which is fantastic. Really great episodes. And I'm not even on them, so I can't be biased. but you can find everything we do on the feed. If you search game club podcast, we do game reviews, bit like a book club. We do thanks. I hate it where we convince each other to play the game genres that we hate in the hope to make everyone change their mind. We do cut scenes, which is all about video game movies. And we do two blokes from blighty, which is Tim and I catching up every single week and have a guest spot with people like Dominic Littlewood from cowboy builders. so yeah, I don't know if you can actually say the Dominic Littlewood bit because it's Tim doing a bad impression.
02:05:47
Speaker
You know, he's there. So that's Game Club Podcast on all platforms. I was going to say cowboy impressionist right there. Well done. You're on fire, Satsu. Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's the post-Comic-Con fumes.
02:05:59
Speaker
If you want to check out more episodes from ourselves, as well as more guest appearances from the lovely Game Club Pod, who I don't think have had my back since I said, you know what's a great game? Mars Attacks 2. Well, Destroy All Humans 2, but yeah. Oh, Destroy All Humans, yeah, same thing. We'll have you back.
02:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, well, I feel as if I kind of sullied my reputation after that. Which I don't blame you. After playing that, i again, that was a game that I went back to it and I'm like, oh, they've remastered it. It's really cool. And then, yeah, replayed it myself and i'm like, wow, this did not age well at all.
02:06:32
Speaker
but But yeah, if you'd like to listen to collaborations from ourselves as well as further episodes of Resident Evil Month, then indeed you can check us out on our website, chatsanami.com, as well as all good podcast apps. I also want to thank our amazing Pandalorian patrons, Robotic Battle Toaster, Ghosty, and Cryptic 1991. Thank you so, so much for supporting the show. But if you would like access to exclusive episodes, early access commentary tracks well as what truly went on in Barcelona then you can check us out at our Patreon page patreon.com forward slash chat tsunami for legal reasons that last one is a joke I swear to god as I said before this podcast is a proud member of the Podpack Collective. For more information check us out on Twitter slash X page Podpack Collect, as well as Instagram, which we don't really use as much, but yeah, we're over at Podpack Collect over there, or Podpack Collective. Just look for the Thistle slash microphone symbol. It's such a good design. Seriously, go check it out. As I said, next week we will indeed be joined by the sinner sandwich himself, Adam, to discuss Resident Evil 5 and 6. But until next time, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, do you want to finish it off, Joey? Stay hydrated.