Lens of Actions and Interactions

Most Actions the player takes can be separated into two distinct categories combat and traversal. When it comes to the design of these categories it’s clear that much more time went into making one of them as fun and well designed as possible and saw the other one as something not worth as much attention. The only part of this game that you can argue doesn’t hold up to today’s standards is the movement. It’s not bad per se, but it’s tank controls and camera that can only pan 90º left or right before snapping back to the center feel somewhat clunky nowadays to use without the level of easy control that modern game protagonists possess. The movement does feel responsive and once you get used to it and it can be quite easy to use, but it never manages to feel like more than a supplementary mechanic that allows the player to get from one combat encounter to another. But that’s where the Action comes in.

Capcom Production Studio 4 obviously worked incredibly hard on making the combat interactions as fun and impactful as they could be, even if they didn’t put anywhere near the same level of effort into their team name. You can’t move and aim at the same time so when you are trying to aim your shot just right you have an obvious time limit, so making those perfect shots feels even more enjoyable. What makes the aiming even more interesting is how enemy models have different weak points that will stagger them in different ways which can lead to different melee attacks once staggered, making you choose between taking the time to aim just right or just trying to hit them if you don’t have any time. Also, it’s worth saying how fun those melee attacks are as a reward for careful shooting with such flashy moves and excellent sound design making those few moments when you can press the contextual melee button on the enemy as impactful and enjoyable as possible. Thanks to the amazing combat design, the game makes sure you take advantage of every single type of combat interaction since your ammo is always running low, you often feel forced to use every tool you have at your disposal to get through each encounter. Even the flash grenade which felt useless at first and I never interacted with, had a secret purpose I found much later into the game, that being that is could instantly kill all nearby plagas enemies, turning an item I previously never used into my secret weapon that I would save for when I was feeling too overwhelmed by the hordes. Overall, though the navigation interactions can feel clunky and take a while to get the hang of, the combat interactions are top tier action design, making every combat interaction as fun and tense as it can be.