If It Aint Broken, Remake It!
I’m not too keen about remakes. I might play them. Heck, I might even enjoy them. But there’s something nasty about the term “remake”. I imagine the term was coined by someone who often told people what “good effort” they made through eyes that squinted “You’re doing it wrong!” So they took a fist to your plasticine model, or whatever it was, and remade it. I further imagine this said someone is somewhat related to the forum trolls who like to quote other forum user’s text, retype it and then display it with the word “Fixed” or “Fix’d” or “Fux0rd”. Hideous.
How unhappy do you have to be with life so that you consider remaking something? Worse still, how unhappy do you have to be with life so that you remake something someone else made? I know many remakes tend to look prettier, but are they made for the right reasons? Are there even any right reasons? And most importantly, is the soul still intact? In an attempt to answers these questions, I am going to pinpoint the remaking activities of two publishers which have been churning out survival horrors over the past few years: Capcom and Konami.
Capcom are no strangers to remakes. In 2002, the original Resident Evil was remade for the Nintendo Gamecube. Perhaps it could be argued a remake was inevitable. There were elements of the original Resident Evil which did not make it into the original’s sequel and beyond; the FMV cutscenes played by real actors, for example. Therefore the Gamecube version was to enjoy a Resident Evil that would instead feature 100% computer graphics, which included the cutscenes. Oh, and a thinner Barry Burton. (But with no less “Woof”, if you know what I mean…) And although this version boasted numerous extras, none of it could hide the storyline, which still went with special agents hiding out in a mansion and eventually finding an underground lab.
Been there, done that. But the strange thing is people are going there and doing it again. Resident Evil remake was a hit and requests for a remake of Resident Evil 2 and 3 have since followed.
Capcom are currently promoting the forthcoming Darkside Chronicles, a sequel to the Wii’s Umbrella Chronicles from last year. Darkside Chronicles is said to feature events from Resident Evil 2 and Code Veronica. Or in other words, the stuff they didn’t include in Umbrella Chronicles. Maybe they didn’t have the time to mash the entire series together. Or maybe the notion is why have one product, when you can have two? Whatever it is, as I watch a mostly off screen Claire and Leon gunning their way through Racoon Police Department, I’m struggling to come to a decision over whether what I am seeing is a remake or a recycle. Memories of Umbrella Chronicles using scenery from Outbreak of all games to fulfil the Resident Evil 3 segments seemed extremely lazy at the time. But hey this is only an on-rails shooter, right? Who cares if it ain’t canon? As for “remake” vs. “recycle”, perhaps there’s little difference between the two.
When it comes to the Silent Hill series, publisher Konami, on the other hand, appear to be strangers to remakes… for now. Silent Hill had always been the “psychological” alternative in survival horror games and was easily Resident Evil’s biggest rival. With each instalment, it seemed Team Silent, the original Silent Hill creators, were happy to experiment with the genre. Before Silent Hill 2’s release, no one could have predicted how popular and well loved it was to be in the years to follow. A game, perhaps ironically, about a guy looking for his dead wife, and yet comes across a sexier and tempting look-a-like, or “remake”. This experimental nature perhaps ended badly with Silent Hill 4, when they decided to turn an extent of the gameplay into first person as well as restrict general weapon use to melee only. Moves like these were brave, but would ultimately have Team Silent bow out at a then all-time low.
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