Capcom is up for sale

[Jonathan Ingram]

Folks cheering on Nintendo to buy Capcom need to come down to Earth and think for a second. Capcom has been following market trends and actively shifting their resources towards mobile development. Unless Nintendo wants to branch out into mobile as well, where is the incentive? The takeover would only make sense for a company that's interested in Capcom's ventures in mobile and social segments, because that's where the money is right now(now matter how much videogame enthusiasts would hate to admit it).

[Ed Oscuro]

Unless Nintendo wants to branch out into mobile as well

They do. Their concerns have more to do with maintaining the brand.

I don't see Capcom IPs really faring well under Nintendo. The home of white-on-black violence, face smashings, Poison, and King Arthur's boxers, at Nintendo? Don't see it. Maybe it'd be something for them to sacrifice to the gods of mobile / new media.

Also, Shiggy on VR.

[xorthen]

Resident Evil is ailing as a franchise. Capcom blew a tremendous amount of cash and good will on RE6, the biggest project in the company's history. It failed to match their projected CoD sales numbers, and turning a main numbered entry of the series into a straight TPS with few to no pretensions of survival horror caused many fans to lose most of their faith in RE. I still feel that it was a solid game with stellar combat mechanics (though often intruded upon by aggressive scripting and QTEs) under all the anti-hype, and considerably better than RE5. The quality shines through particularly well in Mercenaries.

Are you kidding me? Resident Duty 6 was garbage. Too much action, not enough confined isolated areas, abundance of ammo. No scary stuff except that weird monster with a drill arm. Lack of "Evil" enemies. Yeah, REmake was the direction RE should have gone.

[Hagane]

Capcom has been dead for a long time so I can't be sad.

[neorichieb1971]

Capcom are a company that want their loyalists to pay for their mistakes.

Even the trailers don't get me interested anymore. They went from something they were good at, to something that was supposedly nextgen.. Don't you just love it when nextgen brings out the lamest of products?

[LEGENOARYNINLIA]

...and create major problems for the fighting game community.

I don't see how Nintendo could do more damage than Capcom already has.

[Xan]

Ironically at this very moment I'm replaying RE4, for the 6th time or so (first time on the Wii). Sad news, but certainly nothing that couldn't have been forseen. The MML3 fiasco was already quite telling, and they haven't come out with any worthwile products for a long time.

[SuperGrafx]

At this point, Capcom is done. IF they're scooped up by another entity, then they'll continue to exist merely as a former shell of themselves. I don't see any positives to the situation -- it's not like they'll suddenly go back to being the old Capcom just because some new suitor buys them up.

[neorichieb1971]

I remember when every 3rd or 4th game I bought was Capcom.

Res evils, Dino Crisis, Street Fighters, Marvel vs games, retro packs amongst others. All in the PS1, Saturn and N64 era.

That carried through Dreamcast and even into the PS2 era. But when Xbox and Ps3 came out something weird happened, they joined the crowd.

[Mischief Maker]

I actually preferred the last DMC over any of the previous.

Why not just play God of War?

[BrianC]

I don't feel Capcom has fallen as much as Konami. While they are a shell of their former selves, they still have Phoenix Wright and Monster Hunter. Konami has done barely anything of note lately and also made some bad decisions in outsourcing.

I don't see Capcom IPs really faring well under Nintendo. The home of white-on-black violence, face smashings, Poison, and King Arthur's boxers, at Nintendo?

Nintendo did have Pokémon Black and White.

Nintendo is also known for Punch Out, which has plenty of face smashing, though in a more cartoony manner. Not to mention the Metroid series, where the main character often ends up in a bikini for some of the endings. There's also F-Zero, but Nintendo hasn't been doing much with it lately.

But yeah, I'm not sure how Capcom's IPs would fare since Nintendo's own games try to aim at all audiences. I could see Platinum doing justice to a few of Capcom's IPs, though.

[mastermx]

I brought the new Dmc in the steam sale. And whilst I haven't tried it yet, hard core Dmc fans have been very negative about the new Dmc. Not just the change to the character. But they have complained mostly about the combat mechanics and a lack of depth compared with the older dmcs. I've played a little bit of it, and it seems like fun, but I haven't invested the hours that the hard cores have to perfect their execution, so I can't say. I've always heard mixed opinions about it.

As for resident evil. It all went wrong in RE4. I don't know what's going on through their heads, but the messed it up so bad, that I don't even bother to check or even care for new resi games. The gamecube was the last home of the resi games. The remake and also zero were very good in my opinion. This is what happens when a company tries to pander to the casual crowd, they alienate the fans, and end up with a turd of a game on their hands. If they had made the new resi games as a separate IP. I may have actually liked them, but I feel offended that they would ruin the survival horror genre as they did, especially considering they helped create and refine it. It just makes you realise how central shinji mikami was to biohazard. I'm not surprised about the casual slant it took after he left, he was the heart and soul of the series.

And then you have Capcom alienating the megaman fans. I mean seriously WTF. They fucked it up so much that mighty no. 9 is technically the new megaman. It's almost as bad as how messed up square Enix got in the new generation.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is something that greedy corporations just don't get. I'm sick and tired of COD clones. Be unique goddam it.

EDIT: yeah monster hunter and phoenix Wright are very good. For mh, there is a cultural Japanese thing behind it. If there wasn't, then I bet they would have codded it. Also their fighting games are still solid. Though they tend to fuck it up with dlc(sfxt gems, and Marvel 3 being released incomplete till umvc3 came out.) I purchased the new Strider recently, so I can't comment on that yet, but it seems good.

[BrianC]

While the price point is debatable, I also found Capcom Arcade Cabinet to be good stuff. M2 does good work. While they aren't M2, I feel the Iron Galaxy stuff is solid, as well.

[antron]

I'll go in for $1k if anyone wants to do this.

Croudfund FTW! Seriously, is there a kickstarter yet? Or is this against FTC "rules"? This hydra needs more heads.

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

As for resident evil. It all went wrong in RE4. I don't know what's going on through their heads, but the messed it up so bad, that I don't even bother to check or even care for new resi games. [...] It just makes you realise how central shinji mikami was to biohazard. I'm not surprised about the casual slant it took after he left, he was the heart and soul of the series.

You know that Mikami directed Resident Evil 4, right?

[trap15]

That probably explains why it's actually a good game, whereas the later REs basically expanded on the difference introduced in RE4 and were worse off for it.

[Skykid]

if you don't like RE4, you don't like video games. it's a masterpiece.

[Ed Oscuro]

That probably explains why it's actually a good game, whereas the later REs basically expanded on the difference introduced in RE4 and were worse off for it.

Only one of the differences, well, going by RE6 anyways, which has everything time-compressed as hell. Hard to have any semblance of horror at that pace. And that's a shame, because the game is brimming with good to great set pieces, and areas that beg to be considered longer - but nope, you gotta rush off to the next area which might just be another nondescript chunk of button mashing.

I still gotta get with RE5 of course.

[eatdogs]

Nintendo is listening...

[trap15]

That probably explains why it's actually a good game, whereas the later REs basically expanded on the difference introduced in RE4 and were worse off for it.

Only one of the differences, well, going by RE6 anyways, which has everything time-compressed as hell.

What I meant (and I may still be poorly explaining it, as I've been drinking throughout the day), is that RE4 introduced more TPS mechanics that made the game "feel" better. But with RE5 and 6, they noticed "hey, RE4 sold better than 1-3, and it added TPS mechanics! the reason for the better sales must be the new mechanics!", so they doubled-down on that and pushed off the horror part. Makes sense from a marketing perspective, I guess, but it's very short-sighted and I don't think they really paid much attention if that was really the conclusion they reached... Maybe I'm just being silly

[President_Obama]

I actually preferred the last DMC over any of the previous.

Why not just play God of War?

I don't like God of War. I do like Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta and MGR and also RE4 - I enjoyed the shit out of that on GC.

Maybe if Capcom were sold, they could contract Platinum and Mikami and they wouldn't tell Capcom to fuck their ears.

[mastermx]

if you don't like RE4, you don't like video games. it's a masterpiece.

Actually I enjoyed it. But I don't consider it a resident evil game. Mikami was pressured by Capcom to make RE4 more action based due to resi zero not selling as much as they wanted.

My point is, that resident evil stopped being resident evil at 4.

[xorthen]

How can anybody defend Monster Hunter as a series? I played it for 1 hour on PSP and was bored as hell. I get more enjoyment playing Ragnarok Odyssey for crying out loud.

[BryanM]

Monster Hunter has some severe limitations, and they've made some really shitty fights in the early days, but in 2004 was revolutionary. An mmo of sorts with real combat. Where the game taking place in 3d space actually matters.

The game is nothing if not a stream of constant learning. Like mesmerizer shoot them ups. For complete newbs the value of the first game doesn't begin to open up (like a flower) until they can manage to slaughter their first Yian Kut-Ku in a few minutes without taking a single hit.

Yian Kut-Ku, you so cyoote and harmless.

[Pretas]

Two important points about Monster Hunter:

- The series has always been completely designed with co-op and teamwork in mind, and any attempts to add special concessions for single-player have fallen flat. If you're not playing co-op, you might as well not bother.

- MH Portable 2nd G/Freedom Unite was the last truly challenging game in the series, and arguably the best. Starting with Tri, the series has been much more forgiving and less rewarding. This is particularly true in 4, which lets you climb on monster backs in relative safety.

[iconoclast]

I wish Capcom would make single player less tedious in Monster Hunter. Instead of allowing the player to die 3 times (making it nearly impossible to fail anything but the hardest G-rank quests, since damage to the monster is permanent), they should just give you one life and severely reduce the monster's health. 15-20 minute long damage sponge fights become tiresome after a while, and the only way to speed that up without having overpowered weapons is to play co-op.

Aside from that, it's a great series. If you only put 1 hour into it then you've barely started hunting the weakest monsters. It takes some time to really get going.

[Jonathan Ingram]

15-20 minute long damage sponge fights become tiresome after a while, and the only way to speed that up without having overpowered weapons is to play co-op.

Monster Hunter co-op is good initially when you still haven't gotten the hang of the game's mechanics and may need other players to help carry you through the quests, but I'd argue that playing solo is the fastest and most efficient way to grind for monster parts. For starters, there are way too many random factors involved with co-op that you have no influence on. Like if the skill of the folks you teamed up with is such that you'll have to start the quest over and over again because they don't know how to roll through the monster's attacks and keep getting killed. Or if they spend too much time in the chat room between the quests making you wait for them to be done with their business(speaking from experience, most of MHFU and MHP3rd players on PS3 Ad-Hoc Party are guilty of this in one way or another). Or the fact that a monster's behavior is much easier to read when it is focused on you all the time.

Also, and I know that this may be subjective, the real Monster Hunter experience doesn't begin until it's just you and the monster. No co-op buddies, no felyne comrades - just you alone overcoming the incredible odds and felling beasts many times your size. That's where the real thrill and joy of Monster Hunter are.

[Wooph]

just you alone overcoming the incredible odds and felling beasts many times your size. That's where the real thrill and joy of Monster Hunter are.

This. That said coop is still a lot of fun, partly because people's skill levels are so varied. Monster Hunter is one of my favorite series of games. I wish the series would move off portables though. I'm tired of playing on a tiny screen with uncomfortable controls and putting up with a suboptimal online experience.

[d3vak]

They started a poll here, and guess who's winning...

[Ed Oscuro]

That probably explains why it's actually a good game, whereas the later REs basically expanded on the difference introduced in RE4 and were worse off for it.

Only one of the differences, well, going by RE6 anyways, which has everything time-compressed as hell.

What I meant (and I may still be poorly explaining it, as I've been drinking throughout the day), is that RE4 introduced more TPS mechanics that made the game "feel" better. But with RE5 and 6, they noticed "hey, RE4 sold better than 1-3, and it added TPS mechanics! the reason for the better sales must be the new mechanics!", so they doubled-down on that and pushed off the horror part. Makes sense from a marketing perspective, I guess, but it's very short-sighted and I don't think they really paid much attention if that was really the conclusion they reached... Maybe I'm just being silly

No need to second-guess yourself here; I realized that I was picking at a different thing than you are. Your analysis definitely makes sense, though I think that the third-person-shooter part is actually an umbrella for a variety of smaller compoents.

For example, expanding on what I referenced earlier: RE4 has its pacing down pretty well, and abandoning the pacing probably exacerbates RE6's apparent issues, or at least makes it feel too different. I haven't played RE5 yet, so I don't know if there's a real precedent in the series for the super-compressed pacing with little to no time (depending on the campaign) to just wander around. In this it often really does feel like any other Western-developed shooter, right down to the constant "WE MUST HURRY" chatter even though you can leave the game running forever with no problem. That shit breaks immersiveness for me, just a little, every time.

Likewise, I don't think it's that it's a TPS so much as that they tried to expand upon the QTE-heavy gameplay in RE4, which was a great idea, but apparently didn't notice that the result is hard to deal with. There are some Onimusha-like (or Onimusha-lite) freebies for technical players, like the counter button press flashes, but far too much of the gameplay still ends up being heavily restricted melee combat where your character ends up out of breath in seconds (never really understood the "you have enough ammo for everything" comments the game seems to attract; this is only true for some campaigns and even then it's very easy to run out of ammo - in practice, this means that you either do badly, or you end up defaulting to the usual "stun shot + melee combo" takedown, which is still boring when it's 75%+ of your combat).

The fast pace doesn't mesh especially well with the famous detail-heavy RE world, where tiny little metal ornaments can absorb your attention for long periods of time. The result of this bipolar nature is that there are too many weak areas, or places that have some interesting detail, or gameplay, or whatever, but it doesn't just all mesh together. Original RE games had far less going on, but it didn't feel off because our expectations were well managed. RE6 is kind of like a jenga tower - old ideals pulled out willy-nilly and awkwardly placed somewhere else.

Then there's the simple "point and laugh" spectacle factor of Leon "Card-Carrying Badass" Kennedy kicking limply because he used up more than five attacks. Oh noez! RE6 combat is still manageable but it feels more like you're juggling time in an MMO than playing with the typically indestructible RE cast.

When I forget about the stuff that other games in the series have done better, and take it on its own merits, it's okay - just in smaller doses.

It goes without saying that when this is a numbered entry in the series, and the sheer amount of resources dumped into it, it's very reasonable to expect it to have the feel down better. I don't particularly care if it is like the old school of REs, or more like a RE4, or something entirely different, but it needs to be better than RE6 was.

Finally, wtf, infinite well-dressed corpse hangings in Ada's chapter.