Reviews

Truly no one else makes games like ACE team. This game is unique and weird with so much charm to it. You set out knowing very little and just learn along the way. I was immediately thinking about the old 2000 pc game, Evolva when playing this, where you evolve and mutate your characters depending on the actions you repeat and DNA you absorb. In this game you suck up creatures, minerals and flora and some can be ingested to mutate certain attributes such as a balloon body to float or a chemical mixing body to combine items into deadly projectiles. The only downside to this game is how little information there is. You do learn along the way through the story and just by experience but some sections can be obtuse at times. Thankfully you can save pretty much whenever you want to make mistakes more bearable. At some point about half way through the game I got the ability to fill out a mutation tree. Interacting with a certain shrine gave me a section on this tree to give specific resources to that allows you to unlock and use a mutation at will. I'm pretty sure I visited every shrine I could and yet by the end of the game I hadn't filled out that tree. It really seemed like something that should've been unlocked earlier. There are also some resources that are biome specific so if you miss them you won't get them until much later. Just some odd design decisions. Near the end the game also just cranks up the difficulty with the advanced enemy spawns. I didn't have much trouble as I was pretty leveled and had a full family but it was still surprising to see the random jump. I did run into one escape the cylinder section that I could not get past on normal. Idk how much procedural generation there is in terms of terrain but no matter what I did I could not outrun it. Even after bumping it down to low cylinder aggression I just barely got through.

Another great entry in RE series. The recent work Capcom has done is incredible and this one has a good blend of the action from RE4 and the survival horror of RE7. The sections with Grace feature some very tense moments and navigation that I would put up there with Amnesia the Bunker. Like the Bunker, once you figure out some of the enemy AI it's less scary and you can predict things better. On the top difficulty however there are a few surprises waiting for you. The game looks great, some good creature designs and details. Great sound design to really keep you immersed and tense. I think the gameplay overall is very good. I do hate that they mapped the heal to the shoulder button on console as universally that is the quick melee and numerous times accidentally used a syringe. I also found Grace to be too slow. Obviously she shouldn't be a sprinter but jogging when a 9 ft monster is chasing you is pretty lame. I disliked her a lot in the beginning of the game. Her constant stuttering and nervousness as an FBI agent is insane and her breath shuddering while walking around the care center got really old. I understand they want to convey that she is a regular person put into extreme circumstances but I found it cheap in a way to use the stuttering like that. This is in complete contrast to her character overall though. With all that you'd think she was a wimp and would just fumble around and die a lot, while she isn't the strongest and doesn't decapitate enemies like Leon, she really hold her own and is very resourceful and quick witted throughout the game. There really didn't seem to be a character arc where she became like that either, she just did it so it makes that initial conveyance of her character very strange to me. Leon's section is actually less interesting in comparison. There isn't much of the traditional puzzle and backtracking gameplay of the original RE games but rather much more action heavy. I do think it breaks up the pacing in a good way to give you a break from the tension of Grace's segments. Leon is also a great character as always and much more lighthearted with one liners throughout his segments. They do a great job with setting this among the recent games story line and teasing a possible direction it could go in next. Once again they have a nailed a formula for replaying the game that is just so satisfying. Beating the game normally and then working through some of the challenges to get infinite ammo so you can get through some of the harder modes and challenges. Very good blend of challenge and enjoyment.