<Old Stuff>

By far the most popular things on my old site were all of the Resident Evil game maps that I made. My Resident Evil 1 Directors Cut maps were made in August 2011, which was a few months before I started doing my original computer gaming blog, and therefore they were never included in it.

It makes sense that they are the first things I bring back as part of my <Old Stuff> series of blog entries.

I got the Director's Cut of the original Resident Evil for the PS1 back in the 90s, but back then I only got to the underground section, and never actually finished the game. For some reason in mid 2011, I made up my mind that I was finally gonna get through it. And not only that, I was gonna make some detailed maps as I went on the adventure.
I started with Jill in normal mode, as that's what I tried way back then...

These maps were used by JPTR when making their Resident Evil mod for Skyrim called "The Evil Mansion", which can be found on Nexusmods and Steam Workshop. You should check it out. It looks freakin' awesome.

After going through Jill's normal mission, I decided to go through the Chris advanced mission, just for shits and giggles. Though it was more challenging (yes I'm talking to you, Hunters!) I much prefer this mode as it forces you to go to a lot of the parts of the mansion you could just skip passed during normal mode.

Now, I've never really been tempted at all to play over-the-shoulder style Resident Evil games, but all the hype surrounding the remade Resident Evil 2 got me wondering. I grabbed a very cheap copy of Resident Evil 4 from ebay, as it is widely considered to be the best of that type.
As it is an XP game, I first installed it on my old XP laptop, but couldn't get any more than 15 frames per second. Thinking it may be something to do with mobile graphics, I dusted off my old XP tower that has been in storage since the mid 2000s, and tried to play it on that instead. First I had to sort out a very noisy graphics card fan, which needed some much needed oil, before I could even stand to give power to the old monstrosity.
Unfortunately, after installing, I was again faced with a very clunky and slow game that just sat at 15 FPS. I ended up having to install it on my current computer, and luckily it seems to work ok. However, I'm unhappy that it doesn't have mouse controls, and the mouse control patch I downloaded doesn't seem to work, so I'll have to use a joypad. Sigh.
I've only run around a bit at the start of the game, and I'm not sure if I'll get around to this any time soon, but at least I know it will be playable.

And then we tried one that I bought a while ago, System Shock 2, that I was really looking forward to getting into, mainly because it can be played 3-player co-op, and I thought me, Scoob and JIK could give it a go. In the end, I got tired of waiting for all of us to be available, so me and Scoob tried a 2-player game. I think I'd built it up in my head far too much, and was greatly disappointed. This thing was all kinds of clunky, especially the HUD and inventory. The combat and controls were also slow and frustrating, and we had no real idea what was going on. I went in expecting an interesting FPS horror game, and got psychic monkeys shooting energy balls at us. Hmmph.

It's been nearly twenty years since I first played the 7th Guest with my mate Dave on my very first PC. Hours and hours we sat there, putting up with the annoying doll maker Stauf and his bizarre house of horrors, bashing our heads against the screen in a vain attempt to get through all the puzzles. Somehow we got up into the attic, and on to the last puzzle, which we could not finish. I don't think we could even figure out what we were supposed to do to complete it, and the game went unfinished for nearly two decades.

A little while back, we started playing it again, but it was on Dave's iPad version and we didn't get very far. This did however reignite the desire in me to finally see this damn thing completed, so I booted up my GOG version at last.

I'm still kind of hazy on the whole plot of this game. You seem to play as the spirit of a little kid who broke into Stauf's mansion years ago only to be hunted by the six guests who were staying there, as Stauf has promised them all their desires should you be delivered to him. You go through the building solving Stauf's puzzles, and witnessing ghostly flashbacks showing what happened in the past as all the other guests began to turn on each other.
By the end of it, it seems that your puzzle solving skills as a spirit in present day somehow save the kid when he was alive years and years ago.
I think. I could be wrong.

Well, I guess a rock solid plot wasn't what people were looking for when this originally came out in the early 90s. I think people were more interested in the freakishly weird mood of the game, and its technical aspects. It's considered to be quite revolutionary due to its cut scenes, 3D exploration and its CD-ROM release, and a lot of people on GOG are still giving it good scores. For me, despite enjoying it years ago, I would now struggle to recommend it to anyone that's not played it before. In fairness, it barely even deserves to be called a game, as it's just an array of puzzles, some that are very similar to each other, with very cheesy story bits in between.

Whatever I think of it hardly matters now. It's done, and gone, and I'll never have to think of it again...