Triple Click
Hosted by Jason Schreier and Kirk Hamilton
Maddy, Jason and Kirk return to Raccoon City for a no-spoilers-barred discussion of Resident Evil Requiem.
4,552 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
I'm Maddy Myers.
I'm Jason Schreier.
And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and welcome back to the Raccoon City Police Department.
Yay!
It has been anxiously awaiting us. Not a lot has happened here in the last 20-odd years, and there's a lot to talk about. We, of course, are here to talk about Resident Evil: Requiem, Resident Evil 9, to those who prefer to use numbers, a really cool game that the three of us finished, and talked about in the main feed, but now we're going to talk with full spoilers. Just before we do that, though, a thank you to everyone listening to this. Thank you for being Maximum Fun members. Thank you for supporting our show.
Yeah.
We really appreciate you, and it is a wonderful thing that we get to make Triple Click every week and make these bonus episodes every month. So yeah, here we go. Resident Evil: Requiem. We've all beaten it. There's a lot to talk about. It's gonna be fun. We are definitely gonna get into spoilers, so just a fair warning, of course, you're gonna hear some spoilers. But let's just talk, kind of, big-picture impressions. Now that we've played the whole game and everyone's finished it, I'm very curious what you all thought. Maddie, how about you kick us off?
Can I just start with a quick thing? I just want to say, before we even start
You don't sound... That's not Maddie. That is Jason who started talking.
I'll allow it. I'll allow it.
Thank you for the permission. I just have to say that, like, it is so perfect that you, Kirk, made us play Resident Evil 2 a few years ago, because if we hadn't played that, like, this game would not have hit in nearly the same way. It's, like, so serenipitous
We gotta shout it out.
that it happened to go that way.
That really worked out.
The luck of that. I like specifically Resident Evil 2 Remake, because even just playing Resident Evil 2 wouldn't have done the trick. So, yeah, it's incredible that we did that. Feeling very lucky.
Yeah. It's like if they had not canceled the Perfect Dark game. There are a few other games where we've played games because of someone winning a bet, where we then would be very, like, thankful to our past selves for it.
That's true.
This was definitely one. I agree with that. I was glad to have replayed it.
That's a bittersweet one. If only they had done the Perfect Dark remake, and then we could all refer to that time there was an alien in the Perfect Dark game I made you guys play. Who knows if that guy would've come back? Anyway, what did I think of Resident Evil: Requiem? I really enjoyed it. I thought it was fun. I- I am not a person who's been playing a ton of the latter day Resident Evils, although I am familiar with the original original ones because they're slower and less scary. But in the modern era, as people may remember from me playing RE2 Remake, these games scare me a lot. And so this one, I was really glad I played it. I appreciated the balance between the gray sections and the Leon sections
because the Leon sections are very much not scary. And we're definitely going to get into some of the action hero, cool guy parts of the game, which is predominantly the second half of the game, which we didn't previously talk about. That stuff is all just like almost Gears of War-esque, corny levels of fun superhero stuff that I really enjoyed playing, super goofy. Not sure I could summarize the plot, so I'm also excited to talk to the two of you about
I can, believe it or not.
What each character's motivation was because I did spend the ending going, huh? But, but I did have a great time leading all the way up to that. And yeah, just really glad I played it, even though there were definitely some moments that I thought the game was super scary. I think they were worth it and we can talk about what those were too, as we get to them.
Nice. Jason, how about you? Some broad impressions of Resident Evil Requiem?
Yeah, I really liked it. Um, it is very clearly two games smashed together. And I would say that overall, I enjoyed the first half much more than the second, but I did not enjoy the second part, even if the, some of the Raccoon City sections were a little too drawn out. But one thing I do appreciate in both that first part and then also in the arc center at the end of the game is I do appreciate getting the experience of being grace and being spooked out and like having to use all your energy, all your resources just to take out one zombie and then doing the same section as Leon and just blowing through everything. It's a fun little perspective shift that I think is a, is a cool way to play around with gameplay.
Really enjoyed it overall. Um, just, there's a lot to like about this game, I would say. And it's also incredibly well-designed, the level design in this game. The way that just kind of like, uh, you'll never be backtracking, but you will revisit the same areas in all sorts of different ways. You'll go through a tunnel here that leads you just to the right spot where you can see just out of reach exactly where you need to go. It's just very, um, theme park in, I think, a very positive way. It guides you along with just the right amount of invisible hand. And, and I know I like, not all games should do that, but for a game like this, it works really well.
Yeah, I felt pretty similarly. Jason and I liked the second half a lot and had a lot of fun. It wasn't the heights of the first half for me, you know, the, for me, that arc, that Resident Evil arc of sort of exploring a very dangerous space and gradually getting more powerful and gradually clearing it out, but only with kind of hard-won, uh, resourcefulness. And then finally, you know, solving that final door puzzle and moving on. Like, I love that. And, um, I actually really do like, like, these combat scenarios they come up with, which is when Leon gets to the Raccoon City outskirts, it becomes more like Gears of War, I think is a great description, Matty. Honestly, I mentioned this in the main feed, but I just played through two-thirds of Resident Evil 4 Remake
and then went back and like, kept playing a new game plus. I got really into that game. It was so fun. And this whole, that whole Leon section is like, very much an echo of Resident Evil 4. They've remixed a lot of the combat encounters and playing through Resident Evil 4, granted, I was playing the remake, but I was just struck over and over again by how much Gears of War owes to Resident Evil 4 specifically, like so much. There are these bosses that can only hear you, just even the way Leon moves, the whole feeling of kind of- Reduced mobility, tactical decision making, the kind of slow grenades. Just everything is very slow, but also enemies are pretty slow. So you have more time than you think to react. I really like that headspace and like it even more now.
I went back actually and played a little bit of this Raccoon City outskirts part after having played a bunch of Resident Evil 4. And I was like, oh, man, I love this now. I feel at home. This is so cool. So I like it even more now, maybe than I did, but I enjoyed it plenty when I played it.
Don't forget Kirk, though, the Resident Evil 4 remake does not have the tank controls of the original Resident Evil 4, which really I think would make you feel much less like it's inspired Gears of War. Cause when you play that game, you can't move and shoot at the same time, which is a very clunky feeling. You should try, if you want a real like thought, fun, just an experiment, you should try getting a copy of the original game and checking that out, cause it's a little whack, I would say.
I have played it actually. I played the original, the first few hours.
No, I mean since, well, recently, like, have you played it recently?
Yeah, oh, yeah. And, um, and actually, and I'm playing, I just started playing Resident Evil 1 as well, which is, has, you know, tank controls. And actually, it's not just the tank controls. What you're talking about right is the, you freeze when you aim, which is kind of the particular.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't that, isn't that the same thing? Like tank controls, meaning you can, you move and then you can't, you can't attack at the same time.
Tank controls is like the way that you drive a tank. I guess to actually explain this, the way that you drive a tank is like a relative, it's a like, or I guess a non relative way of aiming and steering. And tank controls are that you move relative, I think, not to the camera, but to the character.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.
So it's actually very confusing. And then they've changed that. So in like the version of Resident Evil 1 that I'm playing, you can have an alternate control style that is not tank controls and is relative to the character, I think, or the other way around, relative to the camera.
Yeah, you're right.
So it's the two things. Relative to the character, not the camera, whatever. People know what we're talking about, or it doesn't matter.
No, I was, I was mistaken. It's the two things. It's the one is the tank controls. The other is you cannot move while shooting and both of those combined just make for a clunky feeling, I think.
I, I think that that's true, though I would, I would say, I mean, I've, I've thought about this a lot, actually. I'm aware of that and have considered it. The huge difference is that in Gears of War, you are constantly under fire and are actually locked in place in cover. So Gears of War 1 in particular is actually fairly similar to Resident Evil 4 original, because most of the time that you're shooting, you are stuck in place. And that and breaking out of cover is kind of like similar to moving in Resident Evil 4 originally, where it's a pretty fraught thing to do and you don't do it all the time. So it is a kind of a more stop and start experience. So playing Gears of War and thinking about it, it really is clear that Cliff Lassensky and the rest of the people at Epic like loved Resident Evil 4 and were definitely influenced by it.
I also think that part of why tank controls and then eventually kind of the version of you can only move when you're not shooting in RE 4 that you described actually contribute to the stress and horror of the game. If you're me in any case, where you start feeling like, well, I can't even move right now, like the zombie is coming towards me, but I do need to shoot at it, but I also have maybe one bullet or two bullets. So is it more valuable that I move? And having to make those decisions while also feeling like you're incredibly slow is part of what makes the original Resident Evils so effective. And at times, Gears of War so effective, not that we're talking about that today, but I do also love those games as we know.
And they can also have horror elements and they do, and they're pretty effective.
Yeah, I think they've really got Leon's type of action gameplay down to a science at this point. And I love, that's the reason I can't get too grumpy about the extended Raccoon City part for anything that I might not love about it, particularly the look of it. It just kind of looks, Russ Frustick described it as looking like Army of Two, which I thought was pretty perfect.
Talk about, talk about Gears of War era.
Yes, that being for people who don't know, a 2000s era Xbox 360 game. It was very much a pinnacle of the brown era of, at the time, next gen gaming where everything was brown. And it was just kind of a bombed out city, which is what you're doing. I can't get too mad at it just because they've got it so dialed in. And then RE 4 Remake, this is the same way. The feeling of fluidity where there's always a little bit more time than you think. The enemies are kind of slowly coming toward you, but you're kind of aware of where they all are. There's an ability to reload and then because I've kind of learned how to play them, you know, I'm a total leg shooter now. You want to shoot the enemy in the leg and then do the roundhouse kick or the suplex. And then you can learn how to crowd control and clear them out.
It's so much fun and so kind of, I don't know, almost like a vampire survivors feeling where it's this fluid management of a crowd and it just, they're constantly redesigning the scenario, you know? Oh, you're being shot at by mortars. So like you can't stay in one place for too long. Or when you hear the mortars incoming, you need to get into cover. Oh, there's a guy with a chainsaw, you know, but you've got to kill the chainsaw guy. But once you kill him, the chainsaw is spinning around, but if you can get to it in time, then you can use it. And so on, there are all these different scenarios that they come up with. I just love it all so much.
Sometimes you'll stab someone with a chainsaw and they'll pull it out of their own body and then just go after you with it. Which is incredible.
The animations are, especially when the guy picks it up and then he goes flying along the ground with it. And it really, in an unpredictable way. Playing through RE4 Remake, there is this, this monster that you fight. I don't know if either of you got there, but I'm sure it's in the original. I can tell you. It's this kind of, it's like a test bioweapon that is impossible to kill or very, very hard to kill. And at first you'd have no idea how to kill it. Like you blow its arm off and it just regrows. And eventually you can use a scope, like a thermal scope to see its three hearts. And then you shoot the three hearts and if you can shoot them all within a short period of time, it'll die. But like if you shoot its legs out, it like slithers along the ground toward you. It has all these super cool animations, especially in the remake.
The like slithering chainsaw guy kind of reminded me of that and I'm like, the first time that happened, I was like, ah. What the fuck?
Yeah, like you're getting punished for shooting somebody in the leg finally. I feel like that's such a go to thing in a Resident Evil game that they need to eventually have a more difficult enemy that can get around that, or shooting it in the leg actually disadvantages you in some way. We talked about this in the main feed episode, but just the overarching theme of the zombies being smarter in this game, I think is really effective. And in the part of the game that we're describing right now, there are these soldiers who are extremely well outfitted, like these kind of spec ops guys who are zombies now. And that's part of why you have to worry about mortar fire and machine guns and automatic weapons and all these things that the ordinary workaday zombie wouldn't have access to. And
I thought that was pretty fun and also weird to have to, I don't, I don't know if that's like something the other Kurt can tell us, if the other Latter Day Resident Evils have kind of contended with this concept of like a very high level soldier being a zombie, but still having the wherewithal to fight you in a way that is kind of not, not horror scary, but, but a different type of a challenge.
It reminds me of some things in RE4, in that the villagers that you're fighting, you know, they have bombs, they work different kinds of weapons, and there are a lot of tactical considerations. What it really reminded me of actually was Half-Life, uh, Half-Life 2.
The enemy that was called the Zombine, a Zombine soldier, which is a Combine soldier who has become headcrabbed and then will kind of run at you and explode a lot of the time, or you have to kind of manage them. They even look kind of similar, those, I guess they were operatives for the, the connections, right? They were kind of bad soldiers or were they BSAA soldiers? I can't remember.
I don't know.
The soldiers who've become zombies, the zombie soldiers. I love that they just kind of shoot their guns.
Kind of at you, but also at random.
Yeah, they're not that smart.
Also, by the way, super striking and weird that in this game, you don't just fight zombie soldiers, you also fight real human soldiers, which I don't remember any other Resident Evil game. I mean, you kill humans. That was pretty crazy, too.
Yeah, I guess we could just talk about that, that too. Um, that, well, I guess enemy types in the second half. Let's, we'll make that the sort of topic that we're covering here. Yeah, that is pretty funny. I think that revealed that the- This combat system is not really designed for fighting enemies who are just shooting at you. Like, it just doesn't really work to, you know, you're in these to explain to people. I guess everyone listening to this has probably played it, but if not, you're in these kind of enclosed spaces with columns. And then as like, it's a sort of a spec ops team, whatever, comes in in the dark. And you, the only way to kind of get them is you aim and you go around the corner and you just have to shoot really fast. There's a lot of healing items dropped because you're just gonna get shot.
And I at least didn't really find tactically that I quite knew what to do because it just doesn't feel like the combat system is designed for that kind of fighting.
Well, that room also has some smoke canisters that you can use to try to sneak up on them. I think that's what you're meant to do. But yeah, I mean, it's just unusual because, and it's weird that Leon just doesn't, is not phased at all by killing humans.
He's just like trying to kill some real people that are sick.
He's such a hardened soldier at this point that he's just like, yeah, I'll kill anything. I don't care. Well, that just happens.
By that point, he's so close to death that it's like, nothing matters to him anymore.
I'm kind, yeah.
I guess.
I'm okay with him not like reckoning with the morality of what he's doing.
Do we need that? I don't know. That might be fine.
I would need more quips, need more one-liners. Oh, well, I just killed some humans. That just happened.
Sorry for your kids.
Wild.
He has like really dark clips.
Oh, hope you weren't a dad.
Or no worse, he's just like, that was somebody's son.
But like, couldn't you say that of all the zombies as well? And that's like, kind of the, the weight of the ending that we can get to when we talk about it is like this idea that, oh, what if everyone could have been saved? I mean, I, I feel like this is like a constant tension with Resident Evil games to me is that they're so incredibly silly and high-octane. And like, that's the tone, that then anytime they try to do something that's actually serious, I tend to also find it comical. Because I'm just like, okay, but like, none of this actually feels real to me at all. So what are we doing here? So Leon's one-liners always feel fine.
That's okay. I think it can play around with like quote unquote, serious ideas without while still being super campy like it's still when
Yeah, that's the charm.
Talking about saving the world and Spencer regretting his actions and Elpis and all that other crap. It's not, I don't know. I don't know how seriously you're meant to take it when Leon is just being like.
It's very Metal Gear. I think especially when you're fighting soldiers. I was like, this really feels like Metal Gear. This feels like Snake in Metal Gear four, fighting soldiers to try to save the world.
There's even, I mean, we have to talk about Zeno who I just don't understand.
We're kind of jumping around here. Let's let, let me say one final thought about these, this soldier section, and then I'm actually going to rewind us a little bit.
Okay, sure.
Through this story. Um, that, that final fight, I think is actually very funny where you fight against a guy who for all appears to me to be Hunk, which are the two of you familiar with Hunk? Or do you know who Hunk is?
Yes.
Jason shaking his head. This was, I kind of had to remind myself. I saw him and I'm like, oh, wait, I think I know who this is. Hunk is a guy who worked for Umbrella. And then it would appear eventually was hired by the connections who are the evil organization behind everything. He is a guy who looks like that, which is to say he is just a dude in a SWAT team outfit and a gas mask, which like.
Are you, wait, are you talking about the commander fight that like elite soldier you fight? Okay.
With the gas mask on. It's kind of the culmination of you killing all the regular human guys.
Yeah. For, yes, there's a guy who shows up for anyone who doesn't remember this or wants a reminder. He is one more SWAT team guy who comes in and he says, Leon Kennedy, basically like, I've been waiting for this or I've heard so much about you. And then you have this fight that is for people who have recently played Resident Evil four, very much a mechanical echo of the Crowser fight in meta, in Resident Evil four. So in, in RE four, you do fight a dude. You fight, um, Crowser. I can't remember his rank, but he's like a military leader who led Leon when Leon was like working with the military for a while. In the, uh, kind of earlier, like around the year 2001 or something like that. And you like went on this mission to South America and killed a whole bunch of people.
And he's, he kind of trained Leon and he's the reason that Leon is now like a super soldier, like more than just a cop. He's like this total badass who knows all these moves. So Crowser, you fight him and it's really similar where it's like a knife fight, but you're kind of shooting at each other. It's a much longer and more involved fight in RE four, same kind of idea. So this guy in Requiem is Hunk. And Hunk is a character that you play as in, for example, in Resident Evil 2. There's a really fun mode in Resident Evil 2 Remake that's called something like No Escape or something like that, where you're Hunk. Hunk has just like brutally kind of abandoned his teammate because he's like an Umbrella operative and he has to fight his way out through the entire facility, starting at the where you end Resident Evil 2 Remake and like fight all the way up and out of
the police department and out onto the street in a like limited amount of time. It's really fun and you play as Hunk in a variety of other sort of extra segments, like extra features, but they are all like canon. They're all in the story and Hunk is like an asshole. He's not a good guy at all. He really sort of sucks, but you always play as him and he works for Umbrella. He works for whoever the bad guys are. So the idea for me anyways, I read that as being Hunk after all this time, kind of following in the aftermath of Leon's adventures is like, oh man, here he is. It's Leon and then you fight him and Leon kills him.
Pretty quickly.
Yeah. He, for the record, he is also in the original, original Resident Evil 2. So like he's from all the way in 1998. I just looked that up to check because I was pretty sure that was the case and I'm right. He is, he's like old, old and he's always looked that way. He's always had the gas mask and he's always been like, is he really on your side? Kind of a character and-
Really kind of clearly isn't. Like you play as him, but he just is not like-
But yeah, he's a bad guy.
Yeah. He fights for these horrible corporations and is like on their payroll, killing people. All right. So let's rewind a little bit and let's actually go back to the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center because I want to go back to that part of the game. We talked about this more in the main feed episode, but now we can kind of just fully talk about everything that happens in it. And I kind of want to talk about it more in part because I've been listening to some other folks talk about this game. The guys on Nextlander in particular talked about it and they talked pretty openly about how they played and I didn't actually realize how many different ways you can play through this part of the game.
Ooh, interesting.
I'm a little curious, how did the two of you get through the area? Like just in terms of how many zombies?
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