STACK #187 May 2020

GAMING REVIEWS

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FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

GENRE: ACTION RPG

PLATFORM: PS4

MULTIPLAYER: NO

The most legendary game in the hallowed Final Fantasy series makes a comeback 23 years later, reimagined as a visually sumptuous cinematic adventure. When Square Enix started teasing the idea of remaking Final Fantasy VII for modern hardware, fans started getting excited and, after years of development, it’s

finally here. While this new imagining of the game covers many of the same scenarios and story beats of the original, everything here is shiny and new. The original game’s story has been broken up into three parts for this remake – everything is bigger, better, prettier and more epic than its source material. The story centres around the city of Midgar, as moody mercenary Cloud Strife joins eco-warriors Avalanche to blow up a Mako reactor owned by the evil mega- corporation Shinra. The explosion goes a little too well, and chaos ensues in the

EVERYONE’S A WINNER FF7R is generous to new players, with the default ‘Normal’ mode soon offering some pretty brutal challenges. Many Final Fantasy players are here for the story, though, and Square Enix knows that. The ‘Easy’ difficulty is perfect for them, still delivering the feel and experience of the flashy, crunchy combat without throwing up anywhere near the number of roadblocks.

city as Cloud and his companions try to escape the clutches of Shinra, save some friends and, eventually, try to escape the city. Despite only covering a third of the overall story of the

original game, players can look forward to a playtime of around 30 to 40 hours – there’s a lot of expanded story going on here compared to the original release. Combat is flashy, chaotic and well-designed, with the player mainly battling as Cloud but able to either switch to, or give orders to, the other members of the team. Final Fantasy VII Remake is a treat for fans, a world of surprises and indulgences for newcomers, and one of the most strikingly beautiful games you’ll play this generation. It’s a stunning achievement in every way. AH

RESIDENT EVIL 3

GENRE: SURVIVAL HORROR

PLATFORM: PS4, XBOX ONE

MULTIPLAYER: YES

Last year’s remake of Resident Evil 2 proved two things. Firstly, if you’re willing to put the work into rebuilding it, a remake can be one of the best games of the year and secondly, the original Resident Evil games remain fertile ground for completely new interpretations. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (the game’s original 1999 title) is basically an escape story, following

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE! As a bonus, Capcom has included a standalone multiplayer game with Resident Evil 3 , entitled Resident Evil Resistance . This pits four survivor players against a ‘mastermind’ player, who uses traps and enemies to stop the survivors from escaping a map.

STARS member Jill Valentine as she fights block by block, sewer by sewer to survive the zombie hordes and corporate malfeasance of Raccoon City on the eve of its destruction. A lot of this remake’s work was done by the recreation of RE2 . The games play virtually identically – zombies still shuffle and sway with an unnerving randomness, and guns feel largely similar as you use them to put the hordes back where they belong. Players methodically navigate through the remains of Raccoon

City, collecting healing items and new weapons as they go. There’s much less of a focus on puzzle solving here, with the majority of roadblocksovercomeeither through a liberal use of bullets, or by d igging through the environment for a particular item. So, what’s actually diff erent? Well, the opening, for one, is spectacular. A frantic phone call implores the player to “Get out! Now! Run!” just before the original game ’s namesake – the Nemesis – crashes through the wall of Jill Valentine ’s Raccoon City apartment, starting off the game with one of its many chase sequences. The cinematic,bombasticnature of Resident Evil 3 is perhaps its best asset, as creeping tentatively down the hallways of the Raccoon City Police Departmentis replacedwith the bombed out and aflame streets of the city itself. NK

80 MAY 2020

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