I know that Resident Evil games have a tendency to trade out their gothic or otherwise more classical horror in favor of modern sci-fi terror in their final acts. I wonder if this always accompanies a downgrade in the sense of atmosphere.
I'd known that getting to the island in RE4, which is basically a combination laboratory and military base, was known as a step down for the game, and I must sadly report that this is not wrong: we leave the moldering village and gothic castle in favor of a kind of generic island military base, more the kind of setting for a James Bond mission.
It's not that things aren't scary: this is where we encounter the Regeneradors, and even worse, later on, the ones that transform into Iron Maidens. These are monsters that have multiple parasites inside that can only be seen with a vision-limiting thermal scope and can only be hit with weapons that can penetrate flesh. These guys feel of a piece with the horrors dreamt up by the Umbrella Corporation, and while one is involved in among the most frustratingly difficult parts of the game, where you need to protect Ashley from Ganados coming in to take her away from behind a barred barrier while also fighting off one of these Regenerador/Iron Maiden combos. Initially, I was struggling because I was so low on supplies, so I wound up backtracking all the way to the Merchant, sold my magnum (which I was basically never using) and got a bit more ammo and armor, and even then, I wasn't able to put enough damage into the Iron Maiden's head-parasite and wound up killing it just by having Ashley release her hold on wheel that was holding up a bridge that it was standing on. This was only possible because the Ganados coming after her are evidently finite in number, so I was able to dodge the Regenerador long enough to take out the four or so Genados and then just ran back to her. I imagine I missed out on a gem or something for killing it conventionally.
But while these creatures are truly terrifying, much of the action on the island is just that - action. And the difficulty actually ramps up - I actually died more to the final Krauser fight far more than I have at any point in the game, and the giant race across the island has you fighting an absurd number of Ganados that then requires the game to give you tons of ammo, and it doesn't really feel like survival horror.
Weirdly, I actually think survival horror works best when it's honestly not that difficult - it works best when there's tension, and bursts of action-movie violence aren't really about tension as much as spectacle.
Comparing it with the, you know, other two survival horror games that I've played, I'm thinking about how Alan Wake II and Silent Hill 2 handle their final acts:
Backing up: I think ending a horror story is always difficult. Stephen King, a true master of the genre, doesn't always have the most satisfying conclusions. The creeping dread is really fun to establish early on, and drama typically works best with rising tension, stakes, and action. But what does that escalation look like?
In Silent Hill 2, the final "dungeon" is not all that dissimilar to the rest of the game, but the growing sense of dread is what is growing as James gets closer to his damning realization. But I think one of the ways in which you sense that it's different than before is that, unlike the Apartments or the Hospital, the Hotel starts off looking normal, even nice, but progress through it reveals more and more the state of disrepair and ruin that it's in. But unlike the stark transition into the otherworld, there's this terrible implication that the nice lie of it is the Otherworld, and when the truth is shown to us, the hotel's state of utter ruin becomes bare to see - not as the hellish, rust-filled night world, but as a bleak bright morning light on ashes and pain.
Alan Wake II does give us a giant spectacle with the Dark Ocean Summoning sequence, but as cathartic as it is (though I also found it kind of difficult, and thus not quite the hell-yeah moment that it was maybe meant to be) it's also undercut when we find out that it didn't work, or at least didn't work the way we thought it would. The final challenges are instead the surreal Eternal Deerfest, Saga's Dark Place Mind Place, and another chase with the Dark Presence now in the form of Alex Casey.
In both cases, the tone and overall feel of the genre is of a piece with the rest of the game.
With some exceptions (like the lab where we first encounter the Regeneradors) RE4's Island just kind of doesn't feel like the same game anymore.
I'm still eager to get to the end. I, sadly, think I screwed up the final Merchant request (meaning I failed to complete this one, as well as one I failed to find in the village) by going through a one-way door out of the room with the last blue cult emblem. I can't think of any major characters to deal with other than Sadler (though I feel like Ramon Salazar had a weird insectoid brute that worked for him that I don't think I ever fought).
Still, I'll say that I think the Village and Castle parts of the game were impeccable.
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