Capcom quietly entered the golden age

At the beginning of the previous generation of consoles, Japanese game publishers tended to hire Western developers to make new parts of their products. It’s not just Capcom that did it – Konami followed this strategy (Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and many Silent Hill games). Similar to Square Enix (Front Mission Evolved). In March 2007, when that generation was just beginning, Capcom shut down Clover Studio – the studio that made the blockbuster Okami and less famous work, God Hand. The remaining number of employees returns to the publisher’s development team. Several members of Clover founded Platinum, best known for the game Bayonetta.

While these two are not really related, it does spark the fact that their games are developed by the West. Capcom contracts their biggest series with different developers, and the results are mixed: Operation Racoon City (Slant Six Games) is so bad that it doesn’t deserve to be compared to the legacy of Resident Evil 2. The tediousness of Lost Planet 3 (Spark Unlimited) killed the series. GRIN’s Bionic Commando and Ninja Theory’s DmC, though more positive, weren’t enough for a sequel. Dark Void and Remember Me, two new titles, didn’t make a breakthrough either.

As for Capcom’s internal team, it seems that Resident Evil has lost its essence with part 6. In contrast, Street Fighter 4 (co-developed by Dimps) has become an extremely important modern fighting game and success. Dragon’s Dogma is an attempt to create something new, while the Phoenix Wright series of lawyer games also resonates.

Last week, we had Devil May Cry 5, which shows Capcom is slowly recovering. We can say the previous ‘golden age’ of Capcom was the PS2 generation, headed by Resident Evil 4. That time also brought many favorite titles: DMC1 and 3, Viewtiful Joe, Onimusha 2, God Hand, Okami, Resident Evil 1 Remake and Resident Evil 4 mentioned above.

Revive classic masterpieces

Capcom is slowly rebuilding its image: Devil May Cry 5 and Resident Evil 2 Remake are what they need to bounce back – these are worthy parts of series over 10 years old. Resident Evil 2 Remake is proof that the series should return to the survival horror genre, after the success of RE4, instead of continuing to dive into the third-person shooter genre. DMC5, is the follow-up to an 11-year-old game that succeeds in the hack-and-slash genre.

Monster Hunter: World, Capcom’s best-selling title of all time, helps prolong this long-lived series on Nintendo, and pave the way to other platforms – the game was so successful that Monster Hunter: World is getting an open version. extensively later this year. In the Resident Evil series, the first-person perspective of season 7 clearly lost its hotness after the opening few chapters, but it shows that RE can adapt to the modern horror genre, using jump-scare tricks. The first is cheap.

Capcom’s fighting games haven’t had much success yet. Several Steam reviews of Street Fighter V are complaining about the in-game economy and in-game transactions – the game currently has 52% positive reviews at the time of this writing. Meanwhile, Marvel Vs Capcom Infinite was not as successful as its predecessor. Umbrella Corp of the RE series is also a ‘bomb’ released less than 3 years ago. Capcom Vancouver also closed down last year.

However, PS2’s golden age was not always glorious – Devil May Cry 2 was considered a failure of the Series, Chaos Legion was a disaster, Dino Crisis 3 erroneously took place in space and killed series. Meanwhile, Capcom Five on the GameCube could not revive the console.

Another interesting point is that Capcom is gradually restoring old games to Steam. Onimusha can now be played on PC without the need for an emulator. Okami, Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Resident Evil games on GameCube, Dead Rising and the latest Phoenix Wright are all cheap.

A publisher is an organization made up of many people. But from the outside, we can feel how a Capcom game is different from Ubisoft and EA’s. DMC5 and Resident Evil 2 do not disappoint gamers – they refresh long-standing series.

Whatever Capcom’s next plan is, it looks like it’s rediscovered the formula to get people hooked on games.

According to PCgamer