Friendly Fire Show 206: Not all remakes or remasters are created equally

It's time for Steve to talk Resident Evil...

Another week, another show — welcome to Friendly Fire Show 206 with Stevivor staffers Ben Salter and Steve Wright!

Here’s what was discussed:

Welcome

• (0:00) Show and tell – Ben’s splurging arrived, and he’s gone retro

As Dusk Falls

• (10:00) We’ve both played it, and it’s yet another great subscription game.
• Read Ben’s review here!

Let’s talk remakes, remasters and value. There’s a sliding scale.

• (25:00) The Last of Us Part 1 is $125 and seems to be a visual remake. It’s flaming the console wars, but let’s look at the scale of remasters/remakes.
• Mass Effect LE included 3 games + DLC, with some minor gameplay updates/balancing and a visual upgrade for $100. Pretty strong bar. (Similar last-gen were Halo: MCC, Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection and Crash Trilogy). This is what we now use the term remaster for, generally.
• Gears of War Ultimate really blurred the line last-gen between remaster/remake.
• On the other side, we have full visual and gameplay remakes.
  • FF7, entirely reimagined and modernised but became 3 games.
  • Zelda: Link’s Awakening. A full remake, but still plays a lot like the GameBoy game.
  • Resident Evil 2 in the middle. Totally remade as a modern game with some changes, but still close to it.
  • Fair to say this style of remake is our favourite and most worthwhile?
• Considering all that, what do we make of the third version of The Last of Us in 9 years, not really touching gameplay, and actually increasing the price from $100 to $125?

Related topic: What do we think of outsourcing remakes?

• Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic has been delayed

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