Something Is Wrong With Resident Evil 9

0:00 Resident Evil 9 has been getting a lot of praise. I've seen people calling it Game of the Year, even a masterpiece. And to be fair, I do think it's a good game, possibly even a top 5 Resident Evil title. But while playing through it, I kept running into moments where things felt a little strange. Some encounters felt oddly balanced and certain sections just didn't create the tension you would normally expect from a Resident Evil game. And a few design choices just, to me, didn't seem to make much sense. At first I assumed these were just small issues, but the more I played the more I started noticing a pattern. And the first place that pattern really showed up was the difficulty modes. After finishing the game on standard, I decided to replay it on insane difficulty. And suddenly a lot of those strange moments started

0:47 to make more sense. Enemy encounters felt more deliberate, resource pressure actually created tension, and areas that felt trivial before suddenly became much more interesting to play through. So before we get into the rest of the game's design, let's start there. Because the difference between standard and insane difficulty reveals something really interesting about how Resident Evil 9 is built. So first, let's look at this room where you encounter the Singer enemy for the first time. At first glance, the differences in this room between Standard and Insane difficulty

1:32 seem pretty small. On Standard mode, the zombie in the black suit is just standing off to the left, but on Insane mode, he's actually patrolling over on the right side of the room. Now, the player's objective here is to go through the door on the right. So on Standard difficulty, this is basically a braindead stroll The zombie isn't really in your way, and it's very easy to just walk past him and continue. On Insane difficulty, it's a little more dangerous. It's still not a huge obstacle, but if you're careless, he can definitely grab you and fuck you up. And interestingly, if enemies in this room aggro and then reset on Standard, that same black suit zombie will actually start patrolling the right side, just like he does on Insane mode. Which honestly makes me

2:21 wonder why they didn't just have him patrolling there by default. But the really interesting difference here isn't the zombie placement. It's the weapon placement. On standard, you find your first handgun basically right before you get up to this room. But on insane mode, that handgun isn't in the dining room anymore. It's actually found way later on inside the east wing. which means when you arrive in this room, on insane difficulty, you have no weapon. But if you know the room layout, you might remember that Grace's personal handgun is sitting over there by the bar. So first, think about how this could possibly play out on standard difficulty. Player walks in, sees this scary singer enemy and

3:09 thinks, okay, what the fuck, this crazy singing bitch needs to die. They already have a handgun and enough ammo to deal with her, So kiting the Singer backwards is pretty easy. Once she's dead, sneaking past these two zombies to reach the bar area is also pretty easy. And if you remember earlier, I said how on standard difficulty, these enemies, if they're aggroed and then they're reset, the black suit zombie will begin patrolling to

3:57 the right side of the room, away from the bar, making it even easier to get over there. So the player grabs Grace's handgun and now they are carrying two almost identical pistols within the span of like, what, five, maybe ten minutes? From a design perspective, that is really bizarre. So it's not really hard to obtain both weapons and the second one doesn't meaningfully change the situation at all. But on insane mode, the exact same room plays out very differently. When you entered the area, you don't have a weapon. So instead of just shooting the singer, you actually have to sneak through the room and reach the bar without being noticed. And suddenly the encounter becomes much more tense. I'm sure there are a few ways to reach the bar, maybe using like glass bottles or something, but this is how I did it. And to

4:44 me, this is way more tense and way more scary than just kiting the singer backwards and shooting her. And even when you finally reach the bar and pick up Grace's handgun, you still don't have enough ammunition to simply kill everything. You might not even have enough ammo here to kill a single enemy. So now you've got a new problem. You now have to sneak back past the same enemies you just avoided, except now the white

5:31 shirt zombie is awake and he's moving around as well. And to me, this room, this entire design of the enemies and their placement, It just makes a lot more sense on Insane Difficulty, not to mention the player finds the handgun here when they actually need it and the encounter becomes a tense stealth puzzle rather than a quick shooting gallery. So anyways, the player leaves the room and continues down the hall into this office. This room is important because you need two items from here. The first is the Unicorn Trinket box which contains the red blood jewel and the second is solving the Sun, Moon, and Star puzzle to get one of the quartz pieces. On standard, the trinket box is just sitting right near the entrance when you walk into the room, so you can immediately grab it and leave. If you want the pencil to solve the puzzle, which is over here next to the zombie in the back

6:20 of the room, you can deal with that later if you want. You don't actually have to interact with the enemy at all right now. And on standard, if you want, you can easily just shoot him and kill him, or use a knife to kill him. You have a few options. Wait, what is this? What exactly is this zombie doing here? Hmm. But on Insane difficulty, the trinket box is actually placed behind the zombie. So now to progress the game, you're gonna have to deal with him. And this is where the layout of this area suddenly starts to make a lot more sense. Right before entering the office, you have this area here, it's some open space, and on standard, this space feels kind of pointless. There's a note you can read, but otherwise it's

7:08 just empty and it really serves no purpose. But on Insane, you won't have the ammo to deal with this zombie. So instead you have to kite him around the room, use the hallway space to avoid him, grab the items you need, and get out. And this also makes the female zombie at the end of the hall much more interesting because now you're not just dealing with one enemy. You're trying to maneuver around two of them while still getting the items you need. Suddenly the space matters a whole lot more. And you're using the hallway, the doorways, the room layout to create distance and avoid getting grabbed. Which with the threat of two zombies chasing you in this area, it's just a lot more fun. It's a lot scarier. And to me it makes a lot more sense. And I think they imagined on standard difficulty

7:54 this area would be used to kite the lady zombie at the end back into it and... You would have to use the area to loop her, but to be honest, you have more than enough ammo to deal with her easily. So the player really never gets to experience what the real design of this area should have been like. Like on Insane, the whole sequence feels tense and very deliberate. But on Standard, most of that tension just disappears. I mean, you grab the trinket box immediately, avoid the zombie entirely if you want, and move on. So instead of interacting with the level design, you're mostly just walking through it. Now to be clear, I'm not saying the encounter is bad on standard difficulty. I'm definitely not saying insane mode should be the default experience. That would be well insane. What I am saying

8:43 is that insane mode reveals the intention behind a lot of these encounters and it forces the player to actually engage with the space instead of simply walking through it. On standard difficulty, the player usually has enough resources that they can just clear the room and move on. The tension never really has a chance to develop. But on Insane, the player often doesn't have the ammo to do that. So instead of brute forcing the encounter, you're forced to use the environment, you're forced to kite enemies or sneak around them, you have to use the layout of the room to avoid getting eaten, and suddenly the design of the space actually matters. So after you open the trinket box, you get the red blood jewel, which means the player's next stop is this door right here. Inside the room is where you get the east

9:33 wing key cards. On standard, the zombie line on the floor here is completely inactive. You can just walk up and grab the key card. And later on in the game, I believe he wakes up when you later return to this room. But on insane, he wakes up immediately when you first come into the room. Like, he's not that dangerous on his own. The room has a big table in the middle, so you can just kite him around it pretty easily. But the important thing here is not what's happening inside the room. It's what's happening right outside the room. Because you've got the chef enemy patrolling the hallway with a giant cleaver. So if you're not paying attention...

10:22 you might do exactly what I just did right here. You grab the key card, turn to run out of the room to escape the zombie and run directly into the chef waiting in the hallway. And he will absolutely ruin your day. It's a small moment, but it's just another example of how insane mode suddenly forces you to think about the space around the encounter, not just think about the enemy that's right in front of you. So next let's look at these light switch zombies. These enemies hate when the lights are turned on and they will actively move to shut the switches off. There are two of them in the clinic, one in the west wing and one in the east wing. The first one you encounter is in the west wing and on standard you can mostly just run past him. And even if he grabs you it's not really a huge deal. So a lot of players probably just

11:09 push through this hallway without really thinking about it. But when I replayed this section on Insane I realized this enemy is actually a small little puzzle. And it's possible most players realize this and it's something I just missed on my first playthrough here, but I think a lot of players probably just run past him or they'll flip the one light switch and he'll walk over and then they'll try to get by him there. However, you're meant to use the light switches to manipulate where he moves and you turn the switch on, he goes to shut it off, then you're actually supposed to use the far switch to pull him away from the doorway so you can safely get past him. I'm sure everybody noticed the first light switch that you can use, but I'm not so sure every player immediately notices the far light switch, but it's a simple mechanic, but suddenly the design makes a lot more sense on

11:54 Insane, because if he grabs you and you don't have a knife or defensive item, like he can easily kill you and eat you. So Insane mode forces you to really see this design. Instead of just sprinting through the hallway, you're interacting with the environment and using the room layout to control the enemy. Now, the light switch zombie in the east wing is even more interesting. On standard, most players probably figured out pretty quickly that you can flip the light switch here, pull him towards it, and just walk past him. But on insane, the situation becomes a little bit more complicated. Right before this hallway, you go through the examination room. On standard, this room acts as a kind of

12:42 tutorial. You pick up the hemolytic injector and use it to blow up the zombie doctor. It introduces the item and shows you how it works, and I think that's actually really good game design. But on Insane, you don't get the injector and you can't craft one yet. So now you have to run past the surgeon zombie and his patient, which means he's still alive and now he's chasing you and his patient is chasing you. And at first you can reset him easily by running straight into the blood lab. Then you can sneak past the light zombie by pulling him towards the switch like normal, but the problem comes when you need to come back through here. If you run past the surgeon again, he's gonna chase you and suddenly you're dealing with multiple enemies in this tight hallway because you're gonna be running straight at the light switch zombie. And since you'll likely want to return to the blood lab

13:28 multiple times, eventually you need to figure out how to solve that problem. Now of course you have options. You could spend ammo to kill the light switch zombie, But on Insane difficulty, you usually want to save ammo for situations where you have no other choice. So what I ended up doing here was getting Chunk to spawn, luring the zombie directly into this fat fox patrol route, and letting Chunk's fat just crush the zombie to death. And moments like that are really fun. Of course, you can do the same thing on standard difficulty too here, but the difference is that on standard, The encounter rarely forces you to think about space in this kind of way. On Insane, the enemies and the layout combine to create a small puzzle you have to figure out. One moment in the clinic really reminded me of what the

14:17 original Resident Evil games felt like when I was a kid. Back then, you would open a door, walk into the room, and just immediately think, no, there's no way I can get through this. Too many enemies, not enough ammo, no obvious solution to how I'm going to do this. Fuck. for a long time Resident Evil games haven't really given me that feeling anymore, but on an insane difficulty, this game did. At one point I needed to get into the conference room to grab the corrosive acid. The problem was that the room has three doctor zombies and a singer inside, and I barely had any ammo left, so kiting the doctor zombies backwards wasn't really an option, because once the singer screams it can also trigger chunk, and he'll block the hallway behind you and you're just fucked.

15:17 So I realized I couldn't just brute force the encounter. I needed a plan. So first I decided to deal with Chunk ahead of time so he couldn't trap me later. I used the unbreakable knife to slowly kill him in this doorway. Then I opened the waiting room closet to grab the pantry key, which also has one single Requiem bullet inside it that you can loot. So now I have the pantry key. I go over to the pantry, which has some ammo inside it, as well as a bunch of infected blood I can use for crafting. And on Insane, there's actually three zombies inside the pantry. So I already have like no ammo. So the idea was, I open up the pantry and I line up all three zombies for a single Requiem headshot, killing all three. Well, that didn't go exactly as planned. The third

16:02 zombie is positioned in a way that it doesn't really let you line up all three. But I managed to take two of them down with one shot and finish the last with my pistol. Jesus. After that I finally got enough resources to safely get the acid from the conference room, and I had taken care of the chunk problem, and the whole situation only worked because I stopped thinking about the game as a shooter and started thinking about

16:48 it like a survival puzzle. So Insane Mode really changed how I saw the clinic. It forced me to interact with the level design in a way that Standard just never really did. But difficulty and the design of the clinic is only one part of Resident Evil 9. because once you start looking at the rest of the game, the environments, the pacing, a lot of the story moments, you start to notice a lot of strange little decisions. So, let's start at the top. The introduction of the game is pretty straightforward, nothing too crazy here. One thing I noticed right away during Grace's intro is how similar it feels to the opening of Resident Evil 7. And I'm sure most players noticed this too. You walk into the

17:34 nasty kitchen, there's rotting food in the fridge. You got a pot that you can interact with that's full of bugs. The audio design is almost identical. Honestly, the only thing missing here is a dead crow in the microwave. When I first played this section, my reaction was basically, okay, this is a little too much like Resident Evil 7. Felt like Capcom was just reusing the same kind of setup again. But the more I thought about it, I realized there might actually be a reason for this. In Resident Evil 7, Ethan watches the ghost hunters explore the house on the videotape, and then he has to walk through the exact same place himself after seeing what happened to them. Grace is doing something very similar here. She watched her mom die in this hotel, and now she's being forced to walk through the same place again, retracing the exact same steps of that traumatic event. And I actually think this idea

18:24 works really well here. Like the creepy photos of Grace and her mom on the bed, and then the phone rings just like it did on that night her mom died, and the atmosphere of the hotel. It all just does a really good job of setting up the game's theme of characters being forced to revisit their past nightmares. And that's when it clicked for me. The opening doesn't just feel like Resident Evil 7 because Capcom is just reusing an idea. It feels like Resident Evil 7 because the game isn't just making the characters relive their past trauma, it's also making the player relive it. And sure enough, throughout the game the player, not just the characters, are in a

19:13 way reliving past Resident Evil events. There are all kinds of callbacks to earlier Resident Evil moments, places, enemies, events, even entire locations. tied to the series past, and I'm sure at least a couple of these have traumatized past players. And it's like the game is constantly pulling both the characters and the player back into memories of previous Resident Evil nightmares, which is a really cool idea in itself. So Grace's intro is pretty straightforward. There is a moment here I actually really liked, like when you turn the light on in this long hallway. There's that shape at the far end of the hall. From a distance, it looks like really unsettling. It's like, what the fuck is that? For a moment, you're really not sure what you are looking at. But as you get closer, you realize it's just a horse statue. But it's a small

20:01 trick, but it's a great example of how lighting and distance can create just unease and tension. And I think it does a really good job of messing with players' heads. Also... Dark horse imagery and unicorn imagery is used a lot in Resident Evil games going all the way back to the original game. So it's always nice to see a horse used in this kind of way. Now Leon's intro section, it's a bit strange to me. First off, we get this weird fucking cutscene. Help me! You okay? What are you doing? Like she tries to kiss this guy before biting his nose off. Like why did

20:47 she try to kiss him? I don't know. Like clearly they don't know each other. She says, help me. And he's like, what the fuck lady? Then she kisses him and then bites his nose off. Like, is the kiss actually needed here? What exactly is the point of that? I mean, I don't, I've never seen somebody get infected with a virus and resident evil and then immediately try to kiss somebody. I mean, it looks like it's pretty painful when you're turning into a zombie. And I don't know, it just doesn't really make sense to me at all. Like, why didn't the zombie cop try to kiss Grace earlier? Like, it doesn't make sense. I don't know, it's just fucking weird. It's not a big deal at all, it's just really weird to think about. Also in Leon's section, something kind of cool, is you can jump up on the cars here, and there's really no reason to, but it is kind

21:35 of cool seeing all the zombies swarm around you. It makes me think at some point... They had planned for this section to be bigger, or a section like this to be in the game at some point where you would need to climb up on cars or something. The zombies have unique climbing up animations on the cars and I don't know, just looks really cool. Once Leon arrives in the clinic, there's some weird shit going on here too. First off, there are just dead bodies everywhere in the lobby. Like I know this is a Resident Evil research lab, but uh, like I think it would be hard to get new patients when the lobby is just full of dead bodies. So not really a big deal or anything, it's just a little odd. And in this section, I

22:23 guess I'd still consider this clinic section the intro of the game, they're introduced to like the blood in Goron violence and uh, it's pretty fucking badass. The blood particles, fuck they look good. always great to see after the combat just the aftermath of the carnage like this is violent and it looks amazing one other thing is that on insane difficulty when you kill a zombie with a chainsaw the chainsaw will keep going forward pulling the

23:08 zombie corpse along behind it and usually it's moving right at you it's really cool and it's kind of scary in the moment but it's also really funny in a dark humor way i don't know if this happens on standard i haven't seen it happen so i believe it's only on Insane? Either way, it's a cool little detail. Also, like, isn't it weird this doctor has a chainsaw? Especially since the outbreak apparently has just started. Like, why does he have a chainsaw? Where did he get it? Doctors don't really just have access to chainsaws. That's not a common tool used in medical procedures. So it's just a little odd.

23:56 So moving on, as grace, you first enter the main clinic area. Technically, the graphics here are incredible. The entities, the lighting, the materials, everything just looks fantastic. The art direction is strong and the level of the environmental detail is genuinely impressive. But the clinic also highlights something I felt throughout parts of Resident Evil 9. It isn't very memorable. And this is the paradox I have with this game. While it looks fantastic technically, and on paper it seems like I should really love this area because it is a mix of the two main styles Resident Evil is known for. That Neo-Victorian, old antique look, and also the sterile research lab style. And I really, really, really want to love this, but the truth is

24:41 I don't. I don't dislike it, but it just doesn't really do it for me. And I'm thinking that many players might feel the same way. it was really hard to figure out just why exactly and it's a multitude of reasons and they are all very subtle so just to be clear i'm not hating on this game i really enjoyed it however there are some issues with it so starting with this clinic and because the clinic functions as a shorter lived hub it never develops quite the same spatial identity as classic resident evil locations you first walk into the main hall it looks like it's going to be that kind of space it's clearly framed as the central area of the building you've got the stairways multiple wings branching off and a safe room nearby structurally it resembles the kind of hub resident evil games usually

25:31 build progression around and to the game's credit the clinic does do some of that you do revisit a lot of sections new pathways and areas open up Over time, new enemies like the blister heads appear, and that does give it that classic Resident Evil feeling of old spaces becoming more dangerous over time. So this is not a case of the game completely failing to build a Resident Evil style location. The issue for me is that even with those elements in place, the clinic still feels strangely sterile. Part of that comes from the story context. The outbreak is essentially happening in real time. Leon arrives, everything is chill. The nurse is like, sup Mr. Kennedy, how's it going? Then a few moments later she's like, oh my god, we have to

26:17 leave. Things spiral out of control like almost immediately. And suddenly, I guess, everyone is somehow infected. I think it's implied that once Leon is seen on the cameras when he arrives that somehow, someway, something is triggered to infect the entire staff. Because of that, the environment never builds the same sense of history or desperation that defined places like the Spencer Mansion or the Raccoon City Police Department. Those locations felt like places where people had already fought to survive or something really bad had already taken place. You could feel the aftermath in the environment itself. The clinic, by comparison, feels more like a place where the disaster has only just begun. Which is clearly intentional. I'm not saying, oh boohoo, it's not the same as the RPD.

27:05 No, this is a clear design choice. And it makes sense in the game world too. But this kind of design comes with a trade-off. The main hall looks great, but there is very little environmental storytelling happening here. There's like no strong sense of a desperate last stand or no memorable visual drama. There's no real feeling that the space itself has a story to tell yet. So even though the clinic as a whole does have some classic Resident Evil structure, the central area in particular never reaches the same level of identity or memorability as Resident Evil's most iconic hub spaces. And for me, when I first entered this area, one of my immediate thoughts was, this feels temporary. Which of course it is temporary, but I'm not

27:53 so sure that's really what the designers want players to be thinking when first stepping into this area. Compare that to... the RPD main hall. That space creates curiosity immediately. There's vertical mystery. You got locked doors everywhere. You have visible goals and a much stronger sense that the building is going to define the experience. The clinic hub, by comparison, it's a lot more restrained. And while that keeps the pace moving, it also makes the space less memorable. To be honest, in the environment here, there really isn't a whole lot going on. Which maybe Capcom's intention was to go for some sort of unsettling horror through sterile emptiness or something, but intention doesn't guarantee effectiveness. And design-wise, it's all very simple.

28:41 The space feels more like a well-made opening location than a truly unforgettable hub. And I mean, something feeling like it's well-made is not a bad thing, obviously. But is this area what I would describe as a masterpiece of game design? No. No, I don't think it is. Additionally, and I think this is really important when comparing modern Resident Evil levels to the classic ones, is that, for example, the Spencer Mansion and the RPD aren't just locations. They function like giant mechanical puzzle systems. The whole building behaves like a machine you slowly unlock and reconfigure. You aren't just exploring rooms and finding key items, you are activating mechanisms that alter the architecture of the building. It always gave me the feeling that these locations themselves were like a giant puzzle.

29:28 As you progress through the game, unlocking and solving puzzles, you are sort of solving a puzzle within a puzzle. It's a very elegant design. And this particular design is absent from Resident Evil 9's clinic. And that to me makes it feel a little less magical. And I'm not saying every single Resident Evil game needs levels that function like the Spencer Mansion, or they need to have giant hidden mechanical objects built into the environments. If that was the case for every game, then it would get really old really quick. But for me, it still feels like this whole area needs something else from an environmental perspective, something interesting or surprising that isn't just old antique sterile clinic. Also in the clinic, there is this section where you have to carry Emily to solve the Braille puzzle. Naturally, this raises an important question. Can you feed

30:17 Emily to Chunk? Unfortunately, no, you cannot. It's a bummer man. The underground section of the game is fairly straightforward, but there's one moment here I really liked, this whole processing area puzzle. It's a really nice piece of design. Inside the small side room you can find this sign on the wall. The sign actually shows you exactly how the puzzle works. It tells you that on the other side of the pit there's a valve you can turn to drain the water. And it even foreshadows what's about to happen. In the

31:03 top right it says, it is dangerous to enter the tank after drainage. Yeah, that's for sure. So the sign itself is already doing a really good job communicating the idea of the puzzle, but then for some reason the game also throws this giant UI message on the screen that literally says, a floor plan of the processing area, turning the valve hand well on the opposite side will drain the pool. And at that point I'm just thinking like, why? The sign already told me that. I mean look, it says that in the top left too, like, this is actually a perfect example of my love-hate relationship with this game, because the environmental design here is good. The sign already communicates the puzzle to the player, but the game still throws a giant UI message on the screen explaining the exact same thing, and moments like this just keep reminding me of those meme videos of like if The Legend of Zelda

31:50 was designed like a modern game where it's just Link in a dungeon and every puzzle and every element is just being overly explained to the player. It really is immersion breaking for me when I see stuff like this. And this is just one example, but there's a lot of times throughout this game where little things like this happen where it's just like the main character Grace will say, oh, I gotta go check on Emily now. And it's just like, shut the fuck up. And it's just really annoying and it's, I don't know, it's one of those modern game design things that really needs to die. But yeah, this whole processing area, when the machine turns on, man, it looks fucking wicked.

33:27 That is badass. There is some really good use of audio in this game and one example is here when you just escape an encounter with the girl monster and then you hear her moving above you. Here, take a listen. Very cool and very creepy. Makes you think she's about to just come down at any moment. And overall, this game did a really good job with the environmental audio. and sound design is one of the most important parts of a horror game. A lot of the tension in the horror in Resident Evil actually comes from the audio. And if you're an indie game developer like me, then you already know, time is one of the biggest constraints in development, and sound design can easily eat up hours.

34:15 Whether you are recording your own sounds from scratch or just searching through folders and subfolders of your own audio files, finding the right audio file for the job is a time-consuming nightmare. However, there is a solution. The guys at Epic Stock Media, which is a professional sound design company that produces game-ready sound libraries used across games, films, and media, recently they've launched something called the Cloud Vault. And the Cloud Vault is a godsend. It's basically their entire sound library accessible online. You can search for exactly what you need, footsteps, creature sounds, impacts, whatever you want. and instantly preview the individual track and download it. I've actually contributed sound effects to some of their packs myself and having the entire library searchable like this just saves a massive

35:05 amount of time. Let's test it out, let's see. Let's try searching for zombie, screaming, death, brutal, and gore. I like those keywords. And look at that, look at all these sounds from a bunch of different packs. I mean, awesome. So if you need sound effects for games, film, or any other media, quit wasting time, head on over to EpicStockMedia.com, check out their cloud vault, cause this thing is badass. Also, Resident Evil 9 has by far the best sounding gunshot sounds of any Resident Evil game, hands down. There have been a few games recently, like um, god, Resident Evil 3 Remake was one of them where the gunshot audio was, quite frankly, dogshit. And uh, but this game.

35:55 Knocks it out of the park with the weapon audio. Every weapon sounds badass and really thick and juicy. So after the underground area, you come back into the clinic and you solve the puzzle to open the door and you come out into this courtyard area. And holy shit, this area looks amazing. is one of my favorite places in the entire game graphics wise. The environment here is extremely detailed but the lighting and the materials and the foliage and the architecture it all just looks really good and it has that Resident Evil 1 vibe to it. Because of how detailed this area is and how the space is designed it really makes me wonder if this might have originally been planned to be a much larger section of the game because the amount of detail here is kind of crazy for how quickly you move

36:42 through it. It almost feels like the remains of a bigger idea that was condensed down during development. And that's a shame because areas like this are where Resident Evil games usually shine. The classic games were really good at giving the player those eerie outdoor spaces that broke up the interior sections and gave the world a stronger sense of just being a place. Here though the courtyard is sadly almost over as soon as it begins.

37:38 From the courtyard you head into this underground lab section which immediately reminded me of Heisenberg's factory from Resident Evil 8. And there's this giant red tank in the center of the room that looks really cool. I assume it's some sort of virus cultivation chamber or some shit. And visually it is impressive. But I'll be honest, I'm not really a fan of this style of lab design. It has this sort of steampunk industrial aesthetic with all these rounded metal structures and huge curved machines. To me it just starts to look a little goofy, kinda cartoony. It's the same vibe Resident Evil 8 had in its later sections and just like the courtyard earlier, this area also feels strangely compressed. You move through it extremely quickly and it almost feels

38:24 disconnected from the pacing of the rest of the game. I mean, there is this cool self-destruction sequence where everything starts collapsing and like the blood water from the tank is all flowing at you and filling up. It's really fucking sick, but at the end of the day, it's really just a scripted set piece. You're mostly just running forward while the game does the rest. So, Grace escapes with a dying Emily. And Emily dies and mutates into a giant creature, which to me, this is awesome. Like, it's pretty fucked up, and it... just shows you how shitty the bad guys are, like they did this to this poor little girl, and it shows actual consequences. I mean, a child dies and mutates into a horrible creature. And also, if the player didn't realize it by now, the monster that's been chasing them throughout the

39:11 game is the same girl that must have been in the cell next to Emily. So it's like a little story twist, and it's really cool. But then Leon puts the monster down, and Grace is all like, I wanted to save her!

40:04 Okay, I mean she just mutated into a fucking 20-foot monstrosity. Like, there's no saving her now. Poor Grace experiencing her first bioweapon transformation of someone she cared about. Like, yeah, it sucks, but like, this is the world you live in. Up to this point, the scene works really well. Emily mutates into the giant creature. Leon is forced to kill it. Grace is devastated because she believes Emily could have been saved. It's a tragic moment. Except, apparently, she can be saved. at the end of the game elpis somehow magically restores emily back to normal which

40:53 completely undercuts the entire tragedy that just happened i mean if emily could actually be saved and leon killing the creature wasn't a heartbreaking necessity it's just pointless and the explanation the game gives us for this is extremely vague i mean you know we get this brief moment at the end where emily is shown inside the creature during the ending sequence but it's never really explained how any of this shit works like. And like, I'm a pretty big Resident Evil nerd. I was under the impression that once someone mutates into a full blown B.O.W. like that, there is no going back. The only example I can really think of that come to mind is like Resident Evil 5 when that one guy on the boat mutates into a giant water creature, but somehow his human form is still somewhat intact at the end when he's

41:40 about to die. And maybe the Simmons from Resident Evil 6 kind of? But that's kinda different. Typically when someone mutates into a full monster like this and they have lost like all control or sense of self and intelligence. Like I think until now that is the point of no return. I mean the entire horror of these transformations is that the person is gone and all that's left is some sort of mindless creature. But apparently not in this case. I don't know. I think it's fucking stupid to be honest. So anyway, Grace is all sad because she thinks Emily is dead and she just walks off and decides to join up with the bad guys, which is really bizarre. I mean, she's an FBI agent, but I guess the

42:26 plot needs her to, so she does. I mean, it's just hard to believe an FBI agent would willingly join the bad guys, especially after everything she has just witnessed. I mean, it's their fault that Emily turned into the creature. So like, I don't know. The plot just starts getting a little weird really quickly around this time. Next we head on over to Raccoon City. Once again this area is technically impressive. The graphics are really good, everything looks amazing. The constant grey color palette does grow

43:12 a bit tiresome and monotonous after a while, but it's whatever, not that big of a deal. The whole area is clearly very well crafted. However, this section of the game was probably my least favorite part, and it's really frustrating because it's not that the level is bad. It was fun to play and every encounter in space is clearly thought out and designed well, and the reason it just feels so frustrating to me instead of just being like mediocre or something is because The ingredients are correct. It's not like the game doesn't understand survival horror design or action horror design, because clearly it does. But as a player, this level ends up sending really mixed signals. Like, the level communicates one thing, but the pacing communicates another. You know, there's a larger environment, central save area, shortcuts that loop back into earlier areas, optional

44:02 paths with cool rewards. On paper, this is exactly the kind of structure that allows a level to breathe. But the pacing of the objectives and the way each encounter is staged like these little action set pieces, it keeps pushing the player from one objective to the next, instead of encouraging them to like slowly unravel the space. The level is built like a survival horror space, but it's populated with action style encounters.

45:42 encounters are fun and are designed well so it's not like this is a terrible thing it's just a design choice they went with when making the game i guess what i'm saying is my issue with it is structurally it feels like a place you should slowly explore but moment to moment it plays more like a sequence of events so the level has the shape of a classic resident evil environment but never really fully settles into that slower exploration rhythm and honestly both the clinic and raccoon city these sections felt really compressed. There are good ideas in both, but the density of the objectives, the encounters, and the scripted moments, and the fucking cutscenes is so high that the player rarely gets a chance to simply exist in the space. Instead of exploring the environment and letting tension build, the game

46:29 just keeps feeding the player the next gameplay beat. And then the motorcycle section, like, this was kinda dumb. I mean, you don't really do anything. It's basically just one long cutscene or on-the-rails fight. The fight with Victor at the end is really anticlimactic, too. I remember, maybe it was over a year ago now, there was, like, these leaks that came out about Resident Evil 9, about how the game would take place in some sort of open world, ruined Raccoon City, and you would have to use a motorcycle to get around as Leon. And that only seemed really interesting to me, but it looks like those leaks were pretty far off. I mean, they got... The fact that there'd be a motorcycle in the game right, I guess. But this is why you can't ever really believe leaks. Cause fuck, this motorcycle section is just really fucking lame. I mean, it's just a simple on the rail shooter pretty

47:18 much. Nothing really special about it. Returning to the RPD was cool. There's some nice fan service here, but it also keeps the theme of the characters and the player having to relive past nightmares. But speaking of cutscenes, you get a cool cutscene when you open the door, which is fine. But then it's like you take 10 steps into the station and get hit with another fucking cutscene like Jesus Christ this game loves cutscenes. But I did really like the area right after this with the plant creatures. I thought that was really cool and being able to one shot them by parrying them feels great. It's easy to do but it's one of those things where it feels so good. I'm glad they didn't make it harder or make it so it took multiple parries or something like that. It's one of those trade-offs where it just feels so fucking good to one shot them. I'm glad they left it how

48:05 it is. The plant boss fight itself is okay, it looks great, but combat in this game is a little stiff. Having to move like side to side to avoid the tentacle smash is a little awkward. It's not like a big deal or anything. I mean, I like this section. And what about this fucking door right here? Resident Evil games have always been the king of door opening animations. And yeah, this might be some nerdy shit, but this door... looks amazing, and its animation is fucking badass like, yeah, this is what I'm talking about.

49:24 what you expect from the final section of a Resident Evil game. You know, you got your sterile corridors, weird experiments, it's got that pharmacy vibe, and it's, you know, the last stretch of combat encounters before the finale. It works well enough, but there's nothing really new here. By this point, the game is leaning pretty heavily on familiar Resident Evil ideas. Once again, a lot of the enemy placement made sense on insane mode rather than standard mode. For example, this area right here. This is just one small example too, but So you've got the override key and you're going back to use it. And on stander mode, you run into this licker here. He's just kind of chilling on the wall right in front of you. So yeah, you just walk by him. It's whatever.

50:18 On insane mode though, it actually made it a little puzzle to get by him. I mean, it's not hard or anything. But you actually have to use some of your brain to get around him, which in my opinion makes it more interesting and a lot more fun.

51:12 There are other moments like that in the Umbrella Lab, but for the most part, the differences are not too drastic. So after playing through the game a few times now, I came away with some pretty mixed feelings. There's a lot here that I really do like, and some of the encounter design is really clever, the environments are like super detailed and it looks great, and when it's at its best it does capture some of that classic Resident Evil good good. But at the same time, the game also feels really fucking strange. I mean, every main section of the game just feels like it's super compressed. Some puzzles get explained even when the environment already communicates the solution. I mean, shit, the bulldozer on Insane difficulty, you're supposed to shoot the engine after you kill the driver, and if you don't do it, like...

52:18 game just fucking tells you on the death screen what to do like really like why I don't know it's just fucking weird that's what I mean when I say things are a little strange it's shit like this like what the fuck and then you have the story which a lot of the story just undermines its own emotional moments and it's a game full of really strong ideas, but also some oddly conflicting design decisions. Which is why I think Resident Evil 9 ends up being something a little unusual. It's not the masterpiece some people are calling it, but it's still a really good Resident Evil game, and honestly, if the next game can build on the ideas

53:05 that worked here while fixing some of these strange design choices, the series could be in a really good place. This has been David with Consternation Evolved.