  If you're like many who joined the ACNH (Animal Crossing: New Horizons) chain since Covid forced much of the world into lockdown, you've probably been eager for any news regarding gameplay or features after already logging hundreds of hours on the latest Switch iteration. I'd never played any of the previous AC games before, and I have to admit that when I first started NH (mostly out of sheer curiosity because the majority of my coworkers at the time were raving about it) I confessed in confusion to my boyfriend that I really didn't get the point. Coming from a primarily MMO/RPG, turn-based strategy and platformer background, I really didn't understand the point of shaking trees, dealing with Mr. Nook or collecting items which serve mostly as decorative rather than interactive. And alas, here I am, millions of bells in debt and keen to finish master planning my basement. Sometime earlier this year, a data mining leak hinted at upcoming releases for the latest edition in the AC franchise, most of which we've seen come to fruition, including swimming, diving and growing vegetables (the first of course being pumpkins for the Halloween season). As Thanksgiving approaches, we expect to receive a visit from Franklin for the Harvest Festival event on November 26th. Data miners and villager dialogue referencing other past, beloved AC characters have also predicted an appearance by Mayor Tortimer as well as objects tied to cooking like a ladle and fork (presumably for the Harvest Festival) and the appearance of other vegetables like potatoes, tomatoes and carrots, as well as the possible return of Brewster's famous café. When exactly these updates will occur between now and Christmas isn't precisely known, but as usual Nintendo gives us some nuggets to look forward to and reasons to keep your island tidy. 
Unlike the Bunny Day event, in which Zipper T. Bunny frightened more players than Jack the King of Halloween, October 31st offered more of a variety of activities, from DIY pumpkin crafting and selecting a costume to hoarding candy, learning emotions like scare and haunt and trick or treating - and you do get tricked! But we'll get into that more in a sec. If you weren't able to play on Halloween and aren't opposed to time traveling within the game, I suggest going back a few days prior to the actual event to start collecting candy from Nook's Cranny. Timmy and Tommy only allow you to buy one candy per day, and you will need quite a few pieces to trade for lollipops in order to receive all the bonus items from Jack. For several days leading up to Halloween, you can also find a new assortment of costumes and accessories available at The Able Sisters, whether you want to be a furry animal, steampunk assassin, mage, imp, samurai, meathead, or whatever. I went traditional as a ghastly mage (with imp wings, of course). The October update also features new skin tone and eye color choices to customize your spooky look. No surprise to fans, Resident Evil VII comes out tomorrow. Stephen Sharp gives us his first impressions, genuinely positive, on why you should renew faith in the series and play the latest addition.  Resident Evil 7 Demo: The Storm Before the Storm
By Stephen Sharp Okay, so we’ve all played the Resident Evil 7 Demo aptly subtitled “Beginning Hour”, right? No? Alright, that’s fine. Go download it and play it right now. I’ll wait. … I’m pretty sure your mind is doing something like this right now: “Wait— what? Was that—? Did I just get scared from a Resident Evil game again? Was that a Resident Evil game? How did they—?” It’s okay, buddy. I had the same reaction. Yes. That is a standalone demo (or “teaser” if you’re into the whole brevity thing) for RE7: Biohazard scheduled to release January 24, 2017. And I, for one, cannot be more excited. Comparisons to P.T. are hard to shake. They both start off with your character waking up on the floor disoriented and walking through a house. They are both set in first person. They both give you extremely limited interaction with your surroundings as a puzzle unfolds around you. But that’s pretty much where the comparisons end. Before I move on, I’m going to give you a brief history of my love/hate relationship with the Resident Evil series, because I know you totally want to hear about it. My first RE experience was RE2 on PS1. It was also the first zombie game I ever played AND my introduction to survival horror. It’s a bit dated now, but I dare anyone who played that as a young teen to not recall the opening. The flaming cars. Surrounded by zombies. Only a couple rounds left in your pistol. Injured. Your only choice: move forward or die. Utter terror. I do have a couple confessions to make. I never finished Nemesis and I still have yet to play the original. I know, I know, but I didn’t own a PS1 as a kid and I had to borrow one to play RE2 (my adorable parents thought I was playing Final Fantasy), so just stick with me for a moment. I’m often asked what my favorite game of all time is, and even though there are plenty near and dear to me, I always have to answer that it is unequivocally Resident Evil 4. I annoyed the shit out of my roommates when that game came out. I had to use my friend’s Gamecube (and TV) to play it the first two times. Then, when it came out on PS2, I bought it again and played through it a third time, much to everyone’s chagrin. I felt bad for about two seconds until I inserted the disc, cracked open a beer, and felt the world fade away (because I was an asshole roomie). I fucking LOVE that game! The suspense, the tactical action, the never-ending-edge-of-your-seat of “I’m about to fucking die!” Damn, that’s a great game. The controls are a little outdated now, but hell, what an experience. It helped re-define what a horror game could be. Then RE5 came out…. Continuous co-op? So… The fear of being alone and only being able to get through this horror yourself is out the window? Alright…. It was fun, but not really horror…. Oh, hey! RE6 has Leon back, his campaign is legit, and actual zombies again! Cool! This should be scary! …. Oh… action co-op game… Like the last one…. Except with bigger explosions? What is this series anymore? Then a diamond in the rough came out called Resident Evil: Revelations on 3DS. It was a return to form. At least it felt like the game developers wanted to scare you again instead of throwing more and more action at you just because they could. SO, now that I got that all out of the way, what’s up with RE7? Especially that demo. It’s fucking awesome is what it is! If you don’t know, there are multiple endings and multiple paths you can take through the house. All you have to do is open one drawer or open one door to change the whole experience. And this is just the demo! If you’re brave and savvy enough to figure it out (or you know, just google it), go down in the basement. Enjoy yourself. Have a few laughs. Or, you know, get the shit scared out of you like I did. My wife was in the other room laughing at me during this section because I had my headphones on and all she could hear was me screaming, “HOLY FUCK! HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?!?!” Good times. I’d tell you what I was screaming at, but I don’t spoil. Now here’s the end all question: Is it a Resident Evil experience? Hell yes it is, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. The limited inventory is there. The going back and forth to find a key to exit an area. The sparse weaponry (yes, there is some if you can figure it out, or again, google it). The feeling of doom. Creepy atmosphere. Creatures and people out to kill you for no reason at all. In the main game I bet you’ll eventually find a lab with Wesker in it trying on some new sunglasses in the mirror asking himself, “Do these frame my face correctly? How exactly do I see in the dark with these on?” Anyway, in my opinion, I believe the franchise is back on track. Going back to just scaring the bejesus out of you is the right direction. Did they rip off Silent Hills/P.T. by doing first person? Maybe, but game director, Koshi Nakanishi specifically spoke out about that saying that first person was their intention from the beginning. But whatever we end up getting, whether it’s just a haunted house or a bizarre forty hour RPG drama with horror elements, I’m down. If the demo is any indication of the final product, then it’s about to be pee pee city real soon (if you don’t get that zombie-related reference, then get out). For more graphics, see our post: How Dead Space 3 Ruined Survival Horror. By Stephen Sharp So you loved the original Dead Space, right? It was a fantastic back-to-form survival horror set in an amazingly inspired setting that borrowed heavily from two of the greatest horror films ever made, (Alien and John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing, in case you were wondering). You play as Isaac Clarke which is a very clever name-combination from science fiction authors Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. The game centers around the idea that a group of Unitologists have found a “Marker” that will eventually give humans immortality if they just succumb to the said alien artifact. This all leads to a fantastic gameplay experience where you must survive not only the people that have gone mad, but the unfortunate souls that have been transformed into terrible beasts called Necromorphs which have swords for hands and knives for tails. You must navigate back and forth through the infected spaceship USG Ishimura fighting off these terrifying demons while upgrading your weapons and armor. It mixes RPG elements with perfectly executed action and suspense set to a screeching soundtrack that will make you go insane. It scared the shit out of me. Even the creator of the game, Glen Schofield, told the press that he wanted to make, "the most terrifying game we could”. They did. I remember not being able to play it for more than an hour at a time from the sheer terror of it all. I’d have to turn the game off, throw back a couple vodkas, then find myself crying to sleep watching re-runs of The Office to cleanse my mind. It also boasted one of the most creative arsenals I’ve seen in a game. The Plasma Cutter simply turning to the side quickly made it my favorite weapon, and it was the first one you got! In fact, one of the only bragging rights I’ve ever had is that I finished the game with just that. Really cool stuff. Dead Space 2 was a bit different. You still had the ability to upgrade your weapons and armor, but the gameplay was much more linear. Which wasn’t a bad thing. Instead of having to go back to a room where you just KNEW something was going to try to murder you, it was much more of a, “Hey, keep continuing this way until we scare the crap out of you again”. But it still worked. I was completely on edge the entire time, looking everywhere for more ammo. Watching the lights on Isaac’s back slowly fade from bright teal to red still raises the hair on the back of my neck, not to mention that that is one of the most genius health systems ever created. It was a haunted house where you had no choice but to move forward. It had new creatures (really, fuck those Stalkers), and awesome set pieces that didn’t feel like set pieces because you were still in survival mode. Remember that time on that train that ended up with you hanging upside down shooting enemies at an inverse Y-Axis from what you already set up controller-wise? Yeah. Terrifying, entertaining shit. Also, the opening is completely fucked up. Isaac is experiencing a complete mental breakdown from the events of the first Dead Space, which has him in a straightjacket talking to a therapist and THEN his worst fears become realized when he is attacked by a Necromorph and he immediately becomes the only sane person on The Sprawl (the space station where the game takes place in case you haven’t played it). Hell, the first ten minutes has you in a straightjacket just running from the fucking things until you meet the first person that’s already gone insane. It’s actually brilliant storytelling. I finished Dead Space 2 feeling horrified, accomplished, but above all happy. The aesthetic was a bit different. It evolved slightly into more of a shooter than your average survival horror, but it still managed to scare me over and over and never held my hand. It was a brilliant balance done by brilliant game makers. So what in the hell happened with Dead Space 3?! Answer: Way too much. Remember those RPG elements I mentioned before that helped enrich the experience? Well, apparently the developers of Dead Space 3 decided to over-blow that whole system and make a survival horror game confusing as hell. “Hey, let’s have everyone create their own weapon!” “Hey, you wanted to focus on the survival and the horror? Too bad, this game is just gonna be a big action set piece after the next! And we’re gonna make the enemies larger! That’s right, you’re playing Uncharted, Resident Evil and Skyrim all at the same time! Sounds weird??? Well, it is! Fuck you!” “You know all that suspense that was created in the first two that made them so enjoyable? You know, like, when you didn’t know what was gonna happen around the next corner? Well, instead of that, we’re just gonna show you everything and then throw, that’s right, ANOTHER action set piece at you!” Now look, I didn’t hate Dead Space 3. In fact, I did really enjoy it. It was gorgeous and ambitious, but it wasn’t a Dead Space game. It wasn’t a survival horror game, and the audience noticed. The sales were so shitty that Dead Space 4 was cancelled. This, after a couple spinoffs and even an anime! It was a lucrative franchise, and Dead Space 3 killed it. Why? Because it was no longer survival horror. It was “Pick up a gun and shoot. Then modify that gun for twenty minutes then get killed two seconds later because you didn’t build that gun correctly and now you’re fucked. Now go back to your last save and build it correctly or not at all, because the Plasma Cutter always works better anyway.” Sorry, I get a little worked up about this game, because it IS fun. But that’s the thing. Dead Space isn’t really supposed to be fun. I know that sounds strange, but hear me out. NO SURVIVAL HORROR GAME IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN. You’re supposed to be horrified. You’re supposed to be scared the entire time. It’s thrilling, but it’s not fun. Remember that first time you went to a carnival and rode an obnoxiously large and dangerous ride run by someone you wouldn’t even allow to watch over your fish for a day? Remember the gears you could see sticking out that were so rusted that you just knew they were about to fall apart? The blood that littered the floorboards? Okay, the blood stuff didn’t really happen, but it was pretty goddamn scary right? Because you didn’t know what was gonna happen. “Is this the day I die?” you thought. “Who’s gonna feed my fish?” Then the ride starts and you’re scared shitless. It’s only after the ride is done, when you get off safely, that you laugh, and realize, “Hey, NOW I’m having fun!” Because you survived a terrifying ordeal. Now, thrill-seekers might say otherwise (the cliff jumpers, sky divers and to a lesser extent, the parkour weirdos), but to your average joe, you’re gonna get your thrills and terrors from games and movies. So when a series you’ve relied on to give you those scares from the safety of your sofa just makes a Gears of War clone instead of staying true to its roots, then it all just gets ruined. Now, the reason I say this game ruined survival horror is because it came out in 2013. Only three years ago. When was the last survival horror game you remember coming out? I guess you could argue Outlast, but the only thing you had to scavenge for in that was batteries, plus it was extremely linear. And let’s be clear, I’m talking about SURVIVAL horror, not just horror games. I’m talking, you’re down to your last shot and gotta make a fight or flight decision. The Enemy Within was an okay game, but I still wouldn’t describe it as survival horror. It was horror action. So pretty much Dead Space 3 ruined a lot of things for survival horror fans. I’m hoping that Resident Evil 7 resurrects the genre again. I played the demo and it frightened me, so if they can keep up that mood and scavenging scenario the entire time, maybe the genre has hope. But let’s be real, we’re all just wishing Silent Hills didn’t get cancelled. |
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