trivard676
Before you point it out, we know that The 3rd Birthday is a Parasite Eve game – we reviewed it. It’s been eleven years since the Parasite Eve 2 was released and fans were hoping that The 3rd Birthday was going to live up to the massive shoes it had to fill. We knew it wouldn’t, as no game really ever can live up to the hype that surrounds it. Yet we always hold out hope that the next game will be better. So we look to the future and wonder…will Parasite Eve ever return to its roots?
Although, the Babel does kind of look like roots to a tree…
While Parasite Eve had some strong survival-horror elements in it, the series’ focus on survival horror really stepped up in Parasite Eve 2. Instead of the safety of an active-time bar (ATB), battles took place in real time, while only some elements retained their RPG roots. So Parasite Eve 2 changed the mold a bit. But we liked the way it was changing! Hell, it was more survival-horror, would you expect us ‘not’ to have liked it?
The game did have a heavy focus on guns n’ ammo, but there was a variety of magics thrown in via the use of Parasitic Energy. All of this was told in a manner that (to our young minds) made sense.
Dryfield (the setting for much of PE2) gave us an overall feeling of isolation, dread and fear. Dryfield was abandoned – there was nobody else around…sure, there was Douglas and Flint, but seriously? They were on the other side of the map. The enemies here were sick and twisted, and could easily overpower you. Ammunition was scarce; health and various MP restores even moreso. They didn’t just leave it lying around in “Restore Points,” either – you had to hunt in closets and freezers for that shit. You could get lost in a maze of locked doors, enemies and puzzles. It was survival-horror heaven.
This man appears to have been killed by some sort of caterpillar.
Okay, so perhaps this is a bad example.
So what the hell happened in The 3rd Birthday? As we stated in our review, T3B done away with all of the elements that made the game survival-horror at all. Like Resident Evil 5, the game was more action than anything. Furthermore, it strayed so far away from the storyline that it’s hard to draw connections back to the original source material.
We’d be sad too. In fact, we kind of are.
The issue for this could partly be because Square Enix does not own full rights to the series. Due to the fact that the game series is actually based off of the original best-selling novel of the same name, there’s a copyright issue. Square Enix is in the process of renewing the copyright, but these things take time. This would be why the game is called “The 3rd Birthday” and not “Parasite Eve 3.”
As a result, it would appear that the mysterious non-appearances of anything that has anything to do with mitochondria, MIST, or NMCs makes sense. But it doesn’t do jack for the continuity of the series as a whole.
But will Square Enix ever get those rights back and give Parasite Eve the proper addition it deserves? We can only hope, right? In the mean time, Parasite Eve is available on PSN, and Parasite Eve 2 is on its way to North American and European markets.
–jeeves86
Source: Project Coe
