Honorable Mention: Capcom
If you have ever wondered what it takes for the publisher behind some of the greatest and most successful horror franchises of all time to foster a community of disapproval and resentment where they once had appreciation and gratitude, the answer is about five years.
The issue isn’t that Capcom stopped making good games, it’s that they no longer make consistently good horror games.
There’s a lot of people out there who see Resident Evil 4 as the beginning of the end. I don’t. RE4 was and still very much is a stellar horror game. The real issue lies with what would follow.
I enjoyed the time I spent with Resident Evil 5, even if it dropped the two words that had defined the series up to that point. Survival horror wasn’t doing great back then and the driving force at Capcom, along with every other company like it, is to make money. Capcom saw RE5 become their biggest-selling Resident Evil to date, and they pursued it like most other publishers would.
That being said, what I can’t understand is the wildly inconsistent sequels we’ve been getting. Resident Evil used to be a beacon of hope and horror, the good kind, for horror fans. Now we have games like Operation Raccoon City, The Mercenaries 3D, Resident Evil 6 and a handful of half-assed “HD” ports that are watering down this series.
Capcom has shown signs of wanting to make up for all this, and Resident Evil HD is a solid start, but there’s a lot more to be done. Hopefully they won’t continue to disappoint, because I’d like to have Resident Evil reign supreme again, thankyouverymuch.
