Glorious Gameplay Unveiling (Metal Gear and Resident Evil)

July 28th, 2007

The past 5 days have been excellent for those PS3 owners out there as the first gameplay footage has been revealed for arguably the two most anticipated titles for the system. That is Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resident Evil 5.

What, more Resident Evil 5?! I hear you pout. Well, it seems like Capcom has been extremely generous(once again). They where so kind to even include some nice high res. shots. Now I’m not going to do a complete analysis of this new RE trailer(it’s actually an extended version of the MS press conference) as there is only a few things to point out.

What you can’t miss:

Resident Evil 5 Extended Trailer
Resident Evil 5 Extended Trailer HD
Resident Evil 5 Screenshots

Metal Gear Solid 4 Demonstration
Metal Gear Solid 4 Demonstration HD
Metal Gear Solid 4 Screenshots
Metal Gear Solid Online
Metal Gear Solid Mobile

Resident Evil Analysis

Firstly a lovely panning scene over a large part of the village is shown which gives us quite a bit more perspective of the introductory environment. Shortly after we see the strange man(guy who gets infected with the virus, in case you forgot ;)) being eyed down by one of the villagers.

In the scene with the two blokes chatting away we notice that there is some sort of scarring around the green shirt guy’s right eye. In the crowd scene, we the villagers throwing rocks at the person hung upside down(Chris?). This was difficult to decipher in the previous trailer.

Chris then says the following lines:

“Casualties continue to mount, for the long years I’ve struggled”

“More and More I find myself wondering if its all worth fighting for”

“Who knows?”

He is obviously referring to his fight against the Umbrella corporation/Wesker/The Viruses. Also admire the buffness of Chris, he looks like his in an entirely different league compared to Leon.

Two quick points that I previously brought up are clarified after his speech, firstly this is Chris Redfield and secondly he has the headset. The villagers all disappear after Chris is overwhelmed by the bright light. Mysterious. This could be part of a possible gameplay mechanic or just highlighting the hot/cold or light/dark mechanics that where previous talked about?

Chris then enters the warehouse where we see the previous snippets of the ‘strange man’s evolution all grouped together. It doesn’t look as though he has changed much from his previous self. Perhaps the virus is just ‘possesive’ like the plague in RE4(don’t worry the similarities don’t stop there). We are thrown into an orgy of gameplay clips which look remarkably similar to that of RE4. Although we do notice two new additions; that Chris gets rugby tackled by a villager and he can dodge a horizontal slice by ducking.

resident evil 5 town

The trailer then repeats the clip of the announcer talking thru the megaphone, we have better definition of the guard to his right. It looks like it has no eyeballs….ewww. We hear him call “see for these creatures” or so it sounds. Its quite hard to tell if he is speaking english or a native local language. I’d go with the local language, although the next part up ahead can contradict my hypothesis.

The proceeding gameplay clip shows Chris shooting a villager in the leg who then rolls to the floor. The other villagers are throwing axes at him(Resident Evil 4 alert!). Just as Leon does/did we see Chris elbowing an attacking villager trying to grab him from behind. The lead villager running out from the shed then calls “free them”. Could he be referring to the guard with no eyeballs with the giant flyswat?

This is followed by Chris equipped with a shotgun and some awfully similar vertical slashing action from a villager.

The next interesting part is the dank room where Chris is totally surrounded by villagers. I’ll get to why this is so important later. We then see Chris with a fast firing rifle, another standard weapon for the game. Afterwards Chris pushes a villager and then fists him in the face, it looks like a context sensitive action to me.

More speech:

“If there’s one thing I’ll do, I have a job to do and I’m gonna see it through”

One key part right at the end of the trailer is the quick scene with the girl in the water tank, this is obviously the girl that … was talking about from the previous interview, get a good look as she’ll be playing an important part in the game.

Round up

There is a consistent theme with this trailer that provides some insight to how the developers are trying to redirect the RE series back to its roots while using the RE4 gameplay model. Producer Jun Takeuchi stated this a while back. The theme is being overwhelmed by enemies, we saw this throughout the trailer. This element of a non stop frenzy ensure that you are fighting for your survival(hence survival horror). The enemies also move faster than zombies or gandos which adds to this point.

Metal Gear Solid 4

What a way to celebrate MGS’ 20th B-day then announce a slew of new franchise games and show the first gameplay footage of MGS4; the final game in the series. Well…make that in the timeline. 🙂 Kojima showed off a full 15 minute gameplay demonstration of the new title which was very impressive.

metal gear online gameplay

We got to see how Snake’s new suit works with the environment, some new weapons, hiding places and just how awesome this game looks. The one thing that I couldn’t stop thinking about throughout the trailer was how equipped Snake was. You can do almost anything with Snake; throw grenades while climbing ladders, roll on your back, front while shooting in 1st or 3rd person perspective and then there is the new suit. It seems that Konami has tweaked Snake into the ultimate stealth warrior.

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