There have always been many nonsensical, borderline idiotic things about the Resident Evil series. No one says it better than this guy does in his April 2000 review of Code Veronica for Game Revolution. His big problem? The game's puzzles.
"It's not that you can't solve the puzzles (some are so brainless, a
zombie wouldn't even eat them), it's that they make no sense. Why is it that
when I put the 'piano roll' into the player-piano does the bottom half of a
slot machine open up to reveal the 'silver key'? Who set that up that system?
It just makes the game feel less real." [Read the whole thing here.]
When Evan Narcisse and I sat down with Resident Evil 5's creative director Jun Takeuchi in Las Vegas a few months back, there was more than a little tension in the room. [Here's why.] During the interview I tried to change the subject in the name of lightening the mood. One of my peeves with Resident Evil 4, and with 5, is the tedious smashing of wooden boxes/barrels/crates. To make matters worse, instead of putting a boring little pile of gold inside the boxes, Takeuchi and his team occasionally hide an exotic snake inside. This is the videogame equivalent of giving someone an exploding cigar. I decided to try to get to the bottom of it.
Jones: [To Takeuchi] All the wooden boxes in the game...
Who is it exactly that is leaving these wooden boxes around?
Takeuchi: [Silence. He smiles and takes a sip of coffee.]
Jones: Why is there sometimes a snake
inside the box? And, beyond that, why is it that when you shoot the snake an egg always comes out?
Takeuchi/Translator: That’s actually
a very difficult question. It’s the same thing as “Why does Mario
get big when he eats mushrooms?” Who can say?
[More silence. More coffee sipping.]
See, this is the kind of stuff that makes CG the "60 Minutes" of videogames.
