Resident Evil 4: Un Forastero! (Part 1)

It's time to talk about the only game I liked on the damned Gamecube, Resident Evil 4! Giving what is technically the sixth game in the main series a "4" on the title is not insignificant. It's Capcom assuring us that this is indeed a Resident Evil game despite the radical departure from formula. It's like telling us that this is what the franchise is now and that there's no turning back. We should all just accept that the old and slow "survival horror" schtick is long dead and that this new "action horror" stuff is the way to go. This is what Resident Evil is now and will be for  years to come.

Leon's epilogue in RE3 mentions that he was made an offer by the U.S. government. We never knew what this mysterious offer was or whether it was a good or bad thing. Well, it turns out it was just for a freaking job. Leon went from a rookie cop with reddish-brown hair to a blonde agent of the U.S. tasked with protecting the President and his family. Is Leon Secret Service now? It's not mentioned in game. Leon is just "some kind of badass" now so let's get that pansy rookie cop image out of our heads.

The daughter of the President of the most powerful nation on Earth has been kidnapped. How this actually managed to happen isn't explained. The U.S. responds by sending just a single man, Leon, into an undisclosed nation in Europe that speaks Spanish and uses Pesetas as currency.

When I first played RE4 on the Gamecube, I was amazed on how different it was from previous RE games. I had just played the remake and zero at that time. It was new and it was fresh. Right away the player is given an over-the-shoulder view of Leon as the player controls him. There's manual aiming now with a laser pointer guiding the player and Leon's shots. This makes the game more intense as it's about as in-your-face as an RE game could get barring the first-person shooter spinoffs. The character still moves about in tank-like controls but the manual aiming and the shoulder view makes it all work somehow. Leon interacts with the environment with a simple press of a button. There's also a button that allows you to draw out your knife for quick stabs if you want to conserve ammo. Some enemies can be dispatched by using special attacks available when they're stunned which rewards carefully aimed shots to the head or vital areas. Bosses also require special actions like rapidly tapping a button when their weak spot is exposed. All in all, the combat in this game was pretty sweet and well executed.

Ammo is no longer a finite resource. Sure, you get them at fixed locations but the enemies drop extra ammo pretty regularly. You'd have to be pretty bad at games if you ever find yourself short of bullets. A new feature, which is probably my favorite, is the merchant. Ever so often, a merchant will appear at certain points of the game to sell you weapons and weapon upgrades in exchange for the pesetas and treasures you come across. He speaks in a gruff voice and refers to you as "Stranguh". Who the merchant is or why he's aiding you is never explained. He's just there. Hell, he's everywhere. He'll turn up in caves, prisons, bottomless pits and so on. It's never explained how he got there or why he knew Leon would even turn up there eventually. Just buy your gear and sell your crap. You can kill the merchant but then he'll just inexplicably turn up later with no hard feelings. You can't loot his corpse though so killing him doesn't do anything but give you a tremendous disadvantage. He's like what HUNK would be if he didn't become a mercenary and just stuck to business school.

Backtracking is kept to a minimum in this game. You return to some areas after dark but it's a linear adventure for the most part. I find that this is actually a good thing as the focus is more on action. Keeping on moving forward to the next objective fits this game. A tedium and monotony of wandering around a mansion/police station just wouldn't fit now would it? The puzzles in this game are simple and often consists of putting special shaped thing into a special shaped hole or pulling some lever or something. The objects themselves aren't hard to find.

I wasn't excited about everything in this game. At some point when the player manages to rescue Ashley, the President's daughter, he'll come across what is considered one of the banes on video games; the dreaded escort mission. At first you would probably think, "Man, this is going to suck donkey balls." But the game mercifully allows you to just hide Ashley in a dumpster while you clear the room of bad guys. Seriously. At the times when there are no convenient dumpsters to toss her in, Ashley is surprisingly adept at dodging enemy attacks. She sticks close enough to you that she doesn't get left behind or forces the player to slow down. On the rare occasion when an enemy mook gets close to her, he'll just attempt to capture her by carrying her away. This is a lot better than her getting killed or getting an instant game over because at least you still have a chance to shoot the kidnapper before she's taken to another room. She gets taken to another room and that's game over right there. What I'm saying is that the escort portions of the game were well thought out and managed to avoid being too frustrating. There's nothing quite as aggravating as losing a game by having a character you can't directly control die through it's own programmed behavior.

While RE4 was widely lauded as the best thing since chocolate sundaes, and rightly so, I did find one aspect of the game bad. Players of RE4 might not agree with me but I thought that the "quick-time events" in the games cutscenes were complete bullshit. While playing the game, sometimes a small movie plays called a cutscene. These are typically used to move the story along or to tell the player about what he has to do or what important thing just happened. RE4 somehow thought it was a good idea to allow the possibility of the player dying during a cutscene.The way it happens is that the screen will flash showing a button the player has to press. If he doesn't press the button, he dies. Game over.

But the good news is that RE4 had a totally badass Mercenaries minigame that managed to top RE3. Have a look at this video showing the combat system and the awesome minigame. It has HUNK in it!

Look, I know the game is really focused on action but come on. The reason I don't like it is because it's cheap. You're just given a few seconds to react or else you die. Compare this to say. fighting monsters with one-hit kill abilities like Dr.Salvador. At least you're given fair warning like his chainsaw noise. At least you're given a chance to evade him. At least you're given a chance to use your weapons to actually fight him. But no, in a cutscene, you're reduced to just just pressing a damn button to live no matter how many bosses you've killed or what awesome weapons you bought from your pal, the Merchant. There's just no sport in it. It's cheap.

In summation, RE4 was a breath of fresh air to a stale series. The gameplay was more action orient with over-the-shoulder camera and  aimed shots.The combat was excellent and felt very fluid and natural. Many of it's features were well thought out.

I still think the QTE feature was cheap though.

Resident Evil 0: Rebecca Tries Not To Be Useless

At this point, the whole Resident Evil thing was running out of ideas. I mean, they already obliterated the damn city and gone to the Antarctic. How can we use the fifth installment to take the series into a whole new direction? Wait! Better idea; let's do a prequel instead and we'll have dumbass Rebecca and some completely new guy we never heard of as our characters.

The narrator sounds really bored but he sums the game up pretty nicely. In this game we cover the important events before Resident Evil and the origins of Umbrella and the T-virus. I don't like this idea because I don't find it necessary at all. Who cares about Umbrella's history or the T-virus for that matter? We know the city is already obliterated. Do we really need to go back and make up a bunch of complicated crap? I don't like to sound so negative but the story in RE0 is so bizarre. It involves leeches, creepy old men and rabid monkeys.

As we see in the intro, we finally discover the reason why Bravo team crashed. They had "engine failure". Why? Don't ask. That's as good as it gets. It's also an amazing coincidence that the Bravo team crashed near two important areas namely: the train car and the group dead soldiers. They crashed into the plot and I pity them.

Resident Evil: 0 was a Gamecube release in 2002. It was the last RE to use the old style of fixed angles and tanky third-person controls. The main gimmick of the game is that you control two characters: Rebecca Chambers and Billy Coen. They can travel together sometimes and then split up to do some puzzles. Billy's the more competent fighter and can take many hits. Rebecca can solve puzzles and shit that's too complicated for a meathead like Billy and fit through small spaces he can't. You know, it's the typical mild sexism you find in video games. Billy is strong enough to push boxes but since he's a man, he's obviously too stupid do the "smart" stuff. I know Rebecca's a chemist but poor Billy can't even mix basic healing herbs; a skill that literally every RE character ever made has.

There are also no item boxes. You take or drop items at locations. This ties in to the puzzle system it has with two characters exploring different areas. I guess it would be too easy if it used the magic teleporting item boxes the other games had. The graphics are also very nice and continues the style of the RE remake also on the Gamecube. This is a real pretty RE game.

The story takes place in an abandoned train car called The Ecliptic Express. It seems the Bravo team stumbled upon a ruined army car, discover that a highly dangerous felon had escaped and decided that splitting up would be a good idea. Rebecca ends up in the train car and meets Billy. At first, Rebecca doesn't trust a guy who was recently institutionalized and may have committed twenty three murders. But after the poop hits the fan and the Bravo Team members bite the dust, they team up to fight monsters.

Fun Fact: Billy's tattoo appears to spell out "Mother Love".

One annoying thing I must mention is the leech zombies. These guys have rubbery arms that attack considerable distances and make life hell for the player. They take quite a bit of ammo to take down. The best weapon to use against them are molotov cocktails since the leeches are weak against fire. You encounter them often and they even have their own scary music. It's annoying.

Billy saves Rebecca from the leeches and even manages to fight off a giant scorpion that just appeared from nowhere. The train suddenly moves and it all seems suspicious. There a creepy guy in white who has his own creepy choir music. The train leads to a secret Umbrella facility... my, what a coincidence.

The underground facility is a training center for the evil scientists of tomorrow.  The facility is full of zombies now. You learn that the facility was once headed by a man named James Marcus, who resembles the first leech zombie Rebecca fought against. Oh, and Wesker and William Birkin are here too! Rebecca and Billy don't know it but Wesker and William are watching them through security monitors. I always suspected Wesker and William were gay. The man in white appears in front of the camera and tells them that he's gonna get 'em because he wants revenge.

Look, if it's the bizarre story you want, here's the summary. In the facility it's discovered that Billy killed a bunch of starving Africans based on false information and he totally didn't mean to machine gun them down with brutal efficiency. 

Fun Fact: Umbrella mercs are usually composed of wanted men like Billy who are given a "second chance". No need to guess where that military transport was headed.

They discover that that James Marcus, Ozwell E. Spencer and Edward Ashford, discovered the first virus, aptly called the Progenitor virus. Combined with the Ebola virus, it created a strain that, caused stuff to mutate but be sensitive to light. When Ashford died, Spencer and Marcus decided to abandon his plans to create regenerative medicines for disabled people to make bio-weapons instead. Wow, what assholes. They used leech DNA and made the T-virus.

Fun Fact: The hunters in RE are revealed to have come from the facility in Zero.

Billy fights a giant bat, is attacked by a mutant monkey (yeah, really) and becomes lost inside an underground laboratory. While searching for him, Rebecca meets up with her commander Enrico Marini, fights a released Tyrant and stumbles onto Billy. They fight the Tyrant together and eventually meet big bad Marcus. Marcus, as it turns out, was behind the outbreak on the train and in the Arklay mansion. William and Birkin didn't even know what happened. Thanks to some experiments, he is leeches now. That's the only way I can describe it. He is made of leeches who hold all his memories and consciousness or whatever, and Rebecca and Billy want to get the fudge out of there.

He becomes "The Queen Leech" final boss and in true RE tradition, a self-destruct sequence is initiated by William. Rebecca and Billy make it out alive despite all hardships and adversity. Rebecca is so grateful to Billy, the felon, that she never mentions him to Chris, the police or anyone else for that matter. In fact, the whole incident in the facility wasn't revealed by her either. Maybe Rebecca had amnesia or something from huffing too many green herbs. Billy is never mentioned again and Rebecca transforms into a useless piece of crap later when RE takes place.

 

What is it with crap one-liners and magnums? Hey, Queenie! You want STARS? Feast on this! Why would Billy call the boss "Queenie"? Did he know it was called "Queen Leech"? That's some fourth wall bullcrap right there.

Thankfully, at this point, we are done with the T and G virus shenanigans.

Resident Evil CODE: Veronica: Twincest Wincest

It's the fourth installment of the RE series and they dropped the number!


The game stars Claire Redfield. You remember her don't you? She's still looking for her brother Chris. You know, I find it hard to believe Chris wouldn't get in touch with her instead. Anyway, it seems Claire took some lessons in John Woo gunfighting because I don't remember her being that badass back in 2. She gets her dumb ass captured in Umbrella's Paris facility and they ship her to Rockfort Island, wherever the hell that is.

To be honest, this is the Resident Evil game that I missed. I didn't own a Dreamcast and I got my PS2 late and missed this. Nevertheless, I took the time to watch playthrough videos on YouTube. Right away I noticed something weird about the game's background. RECV, as it turns out, uses 3D backgrounds instead of the pre-rendered stuff in the games prior. The advantage of this is that the background can change in real time. The background can react to changes of lighting for example or other gameplay effects like background damage. I didn't notice though. The camera angles are still either fixed in position or on a fixed angle.

They kept the 180 degree turn and drum barrels from 3 but left out the Live Selection feature and ammo crafting. There's no dodging either. Despite seeming like a step backwards, there are new features like dual wielding pistols wherein they lock onto two targets and you can now use green herbs right away instead of picking them. So yeah, it's kind of lame but it's not terrible.

There's a minigame called Battle Game wherein you choose different characters and fight through rooms of enemies to battle a character specific boss. Yeah, no. This minigame can't compare to Mad Jackal from 3. It's just my opinion based on what I've seen.

The story of RECV is the weirdest ever. So Claire gets captured by this guard named Rodrigo Raval. While on Rockfort Island, an air raid conveniently wipes out the population and releases a T-virus outbreak. Rodrigo let's Claire out because he's the only Umbrella employee with a conscience. Claire tries to escape but runs into a young man named Steve Burnside.

Oh boy, let me tell you about Steve. I knew he was going to be the fanservice character and love interest for Claire and all but I didn't know he was this obnoxious. The second I saw him, I hated him already. It doesn't help that he has the most atrocious voice acting I have ever heard. At least the voice acting in RE1 had a campy charm to it but Steve's voice is like a pencil being shoved into my ear.


Anyway, Steve tells Claire to shove off since She'd only "slow him down". In an island full of monsters, this idiot refuses to stick together because he has trust issues. Whatever. It's strange though how Claire and Steve are wearing civilian attire while the prisoner zombies are wearing uniforms. Claire eventually manages to find a computer to send a message out to Leon to tell Chris where she is. If she knew Leon and Leon knew where Chris was, why'd she go out and get herself captured looking for Chris? While sending the message, Steve throws a tantrum and says Chris won't come because people will just let you down. Jesus Christ, what an annoying, angsty piece of shit.

Claire and Steve find a spooky mansion at the other side of the island that is inhabited by the island's insane commander, Alfred Ashford. Claire solves a bunch of puzzles while Steve wanders off to be a useless asshole. Alfred is an insane man wearing an old tin soldier-type military uniform. He tries to kill Claire several times but has such terrible aim, he might as well be blind. His voice acting is just as bad as Steve's. Here's a clip of Alfred setting a trap for Claire.


Steve rescues her. They become friends but Steve can't get over his issues etcetera. You know how this goes. After playing Alfred and his twin sister Alexia's little games, they escape on a plane but the plane only goes to the Umbrella base in the Antarctic. Steve manages to wound Alfred. It's at this point that it's revealed that Alfred "really likes" his sister Alexia and that Alexia froze herself to do some kind of experiment. Alfred was crossdressing as his sister the whole damn time. I swear, this is some crazy shit. Alfred dies but Alexia wakes up and she has super powers. Shit. Claire and Steve are now trapped.

The Ashford twins are the children of Alexander Ashford, one of the founders of Umbrella. He's their "father" insofar as he created them from the DNA of the Ashford matriarch, Veronica, and his own. The twins were too crazy and killed him. Alexia was some kind of super genius who graduated college at ten and was obsessed with the T-Veronica virus. Whatever. The less backstory we go into, the better.

Meanwhile, Chris arrives in Rockfort after receiving the message. He's still wearing his STARS uniform for some reason despite being in hiding. He encounters his old pal, Wesker who just happened to be there! Talk of Wesker's death had been grossly exaggerated. Worse, he has super strength and speed now. Wesker really has come along hasn't he? He's gone from a cop in a small garbage town to an asshole with superpowers. His sunglasses were just hiding his mutant glowing eyes of doom. Does this mean Wesker had superpowers in RE1? Maybe not but still...


Wesker's agenda is Alexia and her research. Chris just wants to save his sister. He goes to Antartica on the trail. I'm surprised that Claire, Steve and Chris last quite a while in those clothes with the freezing temperatures. Steve turns into a monster and dies. Good. While being a monster, Steve gains his consciousness and saves Claire. He dies as himself and confesses his love. Moving on...

Chris manages to defeat the mutant Alexia with a conveniently placed "Linear Launcher" or in other words, a freaking plasma rifle. Long story short, they escape from Alexia and Wesker and they can put this whole "incest with your twin" thing in the past. Wesker gets a sample of whatever the hell he went there for. He's all about samples.

I should play this game...or on second thought, maybe not.

Resident Evil 3: I'll Give You Stars!

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is the action packed third installment in the RE series. You play as Jill Valentine as she makes her "last escape" from the monster infested Raccoon City at the height of the T-virus outbreak. All this while being hounded by a deadly new enemy.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis main gimmick is that there's this big, bad mofo who spends the entire game hunting STARS members (you) down. His (or its?) name is Nemesis and he isn't your average slow moving "Tyrant" monster. Oh no. He runs; way faster than you can. He deals a ton of damage and that's even when he's not using his rocket launcher. That's right, he can fire rockets at you. If that isn't enough, he appears frequently, often in narrow corridors and at the worst possible times. When you hear a bowel-evacuatingly terrible growl or a raspy "STARS!", start running.

There's also this feature called "Live Selection Mode" where at certain points in the game, you are presented with two different courses of action. For example, when first encountering Nemesis, you can either fight the monster(lol) or run into the police station. Failing to choose can sometimes lead to a third option. The story progresses differently depending on the choices. Some parts of the story are also altered depending on which locations you visit first. This prevents the game from seeming too mind-numbingly linear.

There are also many little features that streamline the RE playstyle. Jill can now turn 180 degrees immediately by pressing DOWN+X. This is a godsend. Before, characters had to very slowly and awkwardly turn sideways then back before they can run from the freaking monster lizard that can decapitate you in one blow! Also, Jill can dodge attacks by pressing aim at the right moment before a monster's attack connects. Truth be told, I've never been able to master this technique but during the times when it worked, it was awesome. I remember dodging one of Nemesis' rockets completely by accident. Proper dodging can help minimize the damage Jill takes because she can't take much.

You can also craft your own ammunition by mixing gunpowder and using a reloading tool. Of course, making ammo in real life isn't as easy as mixing "powder AA" and "powder B" to create magical "enhanced" shotgun shells or any of the convoluted formulas in the game, but it was a nice feature to have. There's nothing like having all the magnum ammo you need just by being smart about it. This is the first RE game that makes use of the environment to harm your foes. Granted, it was often just a simple, stereotypical red explosive barrel but you take what you can get. There was also minor item randomization but it just made things inconvenient rather than hard.

Lastly, it had a sweet minigame called, "The Mercenaries- Operation: Mad Jackal" which sounded badass. You play as three mercenary characters, who actually appeared in game, and fight through the city to reach a finish location. You have a time limit and you can earn more time by killing enemies fast. It was loads of fun. The improvements on the gameplay were very good and I think I played three the most out of all the Playstation RE games. Now we get to the story.

As you can hear from the opening movie, Jill laments the fact that nobody took her story about zombies and man-eating plants in a mansion in the middle of nowhere seriously. To be fair, Umbrella suppressed all the information. Umbrella is behind everything and can do anything they want. We should just accept this at this point.

Jill knows what's going to happen so she readies herself to make her bold "last escape" out of town. In the game, Jill is a badass survivor but she certainly doesn't look like one.

What the hell is she wearing? That skimpy outfit offers no protection whatsoever. Even the lowliest zombie can claw and bite Jill's exposed neck with no problem. It also doesn't appear to offer any protection against the elements. It can get pretty cold running around the dead city with no shelter, heat or electricity. She's not carrying any bags or containers and appears to have no supplies to last her for a few days. I understand the need for fanservice but come on, make a little sense. At least she's wearing boots and not combat stilettos or some stupid shit like that.

So Jill's making her way through the alleyways right? Guess who she runs into. She runs into Brad Vickers, everyone's favorite dirty coward from the first game. What a coincidence! She follows him into a bar and rescues him from a zombie. Jill stupidly whines about how nobody's doing anything to stop this. Brad tells Jill that they're both going to die because "it's" coming for them. Jill asks Brad what the hell he's talking about. Because Brad is generally an unhelpful piece of crap, he only responds with a cryptic "You'll see." and remarks how "it's" after STARS members and that there's no escape. What a downer. Oh, and Brad runs off all alone into the zombie infested city instead of sticking together. What a dumbass.



After mucking around a bit, Jill needs her lockpicks. She is the master of unlocking you know. She left them in the police station so she makes her way there. Then this happens.

Fun Fact: RE3 takes place hours before RE2 and not after.



Nemesis appears and gives Brad what was long coming to him. The first Live Selection happens here. I chose to run into the station like a pansy the first time. There's no way I'm fighting Nemesis with a measly handful of shotgun rounds and a pea shooter.

Fun Fact: If you go for the secret key in RE2, you fight zombie Brad in front of the station. It all makes sense now!

While in the station, she gets a transmission from an Umbrella merc named Carlos. Later on, Jill finds many Umbrella merc corpses lying around the city. They're all part of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Service. What are they doing there? I dunno but I'm sure they're there to rescue the children and spread love and peace and have no hidden motives whatsoever. Jill meets Carlos in a restaurant. Carlos is an awkward, Hispanic, wannabe-suave guy who tells Jill that the totally pure and honest Umbrella Corporation sent them there to rescue civilians. Somehow, Jill isn't convinced. Look out! Nemesis attacks! Seriously, it's tiring to mention how many times Nemesis appears to ambush you so just assume Nemesis attacks Jill in between paragraphs.

Jill runs around the city some more and solves a bunch of puzzles like putting gems into sockets to enter City Hall and whatever. Raccoon City is full of puzzles it seems. Even their gas stations have puzzles. Not once does Jill enter a bathroom in this game.

Fun Fact: The game hints that Mayor Michael Warren made deals with Umbrella to help build the city's infrastructure. This sort of explains why there seems to be a hidden lab behind every damn thing.

Jill meets up with what's left of Carlos' unit; a wounded Russian badass named Mikhail and their Russian commanding officer named Nicholai. They're all hiding out in a cable car. Nicholai asks Jill how she managed to survive despite her ridiculous outfit. Jill responds that she's "no ordinary civvie" and that she's a STARS member. Who writes this dialogue? Anyway, the cable car is broke and needs spare parts so you're off on a damn fetch quest. Oh, and nobody goes with you. Apparently nobody sticks together in this game.

After getting all the parts, the cable car is ready to go. The cable car leads to the clock tower which is the evac point for Carlos' team. However, like a bad case of Gonorrhea, Nemesis turns up again to derail(ba dum tsh) their plans. Mikhail, a man who's almost as badass as HUNK(almost), decides to go out guns blazing. He sacrifices himself to let the others escape. What a bro.



Jill makes it to the clock tower with Carlos. They think Nicholai is dead by the way. They need to turn on the lights to signal the chopper so you gotta solve more puzzles to do that. Didn't anybody have the sense to bring flares? Anyway, they signal the chopper and the funniest scene in the game happens.



The first time I saw this I laughed my ass off. The music sounded so happy! Take a look at Jill's face as the chopper explodes! Watch her clasp her head in despair then look at Nemesis putting on his best trolling face!

Fun Fact: Whenever any character in RE says "It's finally over!" or any variation of that phrase, nine times out of ten it isn't.

Jill fights off Nemesis but gets infected with the T-virus for the first time despite battling monsters for two whole games. She is unconscious for two days and it's up to Carlos to save her. How Jill managed to not turn into a zombie for two days is awfully convenient. I guess the virus does whatever the plot requires. The hospital that is conveniently nearby might have a solution so Carlos heads there. We take control of Carlos at this point.

Carlos runs into Nicholai in the hospital doing some suspicious shit like killing another UBCS member. Nicholai mentions that he is part of "The Supervisors" and aims his gun at Carlos. The dying UBCS member pulls the pin off his grenade to spite Nicholai and Carlos uses this to escape. He wanders around the hospital for a bit and somehow stumbles on to instructions on how create a T-virus vaccine. How convenient. How a dumbass like Carlos ever managed to find a cure for Jill I'll never know.

Fun Fact: Vaccines don't cure diseases but merely prevents them. The T-virus vaccine also shares the characteristic of the virus by doing what the plot demands.

Carlos gives Jill the vaccine and it takes effect immediately! Jill wakes up and Carlos is so glad, he forgot his Hispanic accent. Carlos warns Jill about Nicholai and then...runs off by himself to "take care of some things".

Blah, blah, blah, skip, skip ,skip. Jill fights a giant grave worm. Blah, blah, blah. She follows Nicholai and wanders into an abandoned factory where the ending conveniently takes place. Umbrella is covering it's tracks and the clues lead to the abandoned factory. It's a secret laboratory! Jill blunders into a trash room and has to fight Nemesis. She manages to melt Nemesis with acid and the game pretends that this is the last time you'll see of him.

Suddenly, the communications tower detects incoming missiles. The Government is gonna burn Raccoon City to the ground. Nicholai escapes on a helicopter while twirling his mustache. Jill desperately scans radio frequencies for help when a familiar voice calls out to her. She's got chopper evac now and she needs to get to the scrapyard. However, there's one last obstacle in her path. Nemesis' melted corpse descends for one last showdown. Conveniently, there a large FREAKING RAIL GUN in the room which you can use to defeat him. Neat!



Fun Fact: The rail gun called "Paracelsus' Sword" was an experimental device developed by the U.S. government to fight bioweapons. How it ended up there in a room full of dead soldiers and tyrants is never explained. They should have named it "Deus Ex Machina".

After a million hits from a rail gun, Jill takes out a magnum and unloads on poor Nemesis. She gives a stupid one liner, "STARS? I'll give you stars!" and finishes him off. They escape on a helicopter piloted by, if the special ending is to be believed, BARRY BURTON. They escape and Raccoon City is wiped off the face of the Earth.

The game features multiple epilogues on different characters for story purposes. It's not clear if Nicholai officially survived but I'd like to believe he did.

I guess that closes the book on Raccoon City. With Raccoon City gone, I guess the series is over.

I mean, it's not like they can move the story to Spain or something, right?

Somehow... I'm Still Alive

Resident Evil 2: Worst First Day Ever

Resident Evil 2 was released in 1998 and takes place two months after the mansion incident of the first game. The outbreak has now spread into the city and mutants run amok. The remaining STARS members, it's explained, tried to tell people the truth but apparently, absolutely nobody believed them. Our story begins when a young rookie cop on his first day, Leon S. Kennedy and a young biker chick, Claire Redfield, drive into town only to find that zombies have taken over.

Fun Fact: According to later games, Raccoon City was under military blockade and quarantine so it's a mystery how our heroes were able to casually drive into town and how helicopters flew in and out like it was nothing.



Leon and Claire bump into each other. Given the circumstances, they head towards the police station, where coincidentally, the whole plot takes place. They thought they'd be safe. Wrong. The police station had been completely overrun and worse, had no bathrooms.

The basic mechanics of the game are the same as the first. You run around solving puzzles and killing monsters that get in your way. Ammunition isn't as scarce as before but still, it's a bad idea to waste it. Apparently, whoever redesigned the police station must have been some kind of nutcase. Doors are locked according to playing card suits so you need the heart key or club key or what have you. You gotta put the unicorn medal in the thing, put the chess plugs into the thingie to turn on the generator and all sorts of bullshit. Even when it's not about the puzzle,s the layout makes no sense. Why are the prisoner holding cells so close to the damn armory and parking lot? It would also seem that seventy percent of all floor space are just freaking hallways.

Fun Fact: According to the later games, the police station used to be a museum but really, that's no excuse.

RE2 makes use of what the creator's called a "zapping system". Just like the first, the player can choose weather to play as Leon or Claire. This is called playthrough A and is just about the same for both characters. However, after you finished with your first run, you could play the other character you didn't pick and run playthrough B where you play "the other side" and the story changes dramatically with the choices you made in A affecting the playthrough of B. It sounds good but the choices made in A don't really impact B to a large degree. It did add replayability to the game with the player wanting to play a Leon A Claire B or Claire A Leon B run.

RE2 also featured minigames! There was "The 4th Survivor" where you played as the mercenary "HUNK", who is quite possibly the most badass character in Resident Evil ever, as he battles through the sewers to the police station roof for chopper evac. There was "Tofu Survivor" where you played as... a literal block of tofu, Tofu who is quite possibly the most ridiculous character in Resident Evil ever, as he/she? battles through the sewers to the police station roof for chopper evac.

There was also "Extreme Battle Mode" where you played as various characters including those of the previous game and had to fight through a set map with difficult monster layouts and limited ammo.

HUNK is my favorite character in Resident Evil. In game, he's already a badass having survived the virus outbreak and countless other horrors in the Umbrella Lab. He's called "Mr.Death" because he's the fucking master of death and always comes back from any mission alive no matter how dangerous. HUNK is just his code name and his real identity is unknown. What does HUNK mean? I dunno but I think it might be "Hero Ubermensch Non-Killable". I'm glad Capcom haven't ruined him yet in the sequels.

The story flows differently depending on what character you chose and what playthrough you're doing but here's the summary. Leon and Claire are trapped in the police station and are looking for a way out. Leon meets Ada, a suspicious, sultry and sexy woman dressed in red who may or may not be an ally while Claire meets Sherry, a useless little girl who drops a plot trinket. Then this happens!



A bunch of Umbrella Corp. mercenaries crash through the laboratory of some Umbrella scientist named William Birkin and demand he hand over the "G-Virus". It didn't go so well. (But HUNK escaped with the goods naturally)Why Umbrella would need to send a team to their own laboratory to attack one of their own employees isn't explained. Maybe William didn't want to share. Whatever, he's a monster now and he then proceeds to kill all the characters no longer important to the plot.

It turns out, Umbrella is behind literally EVERYTHING. The psychopath, rapist Police Chief, Brian Irons, who operated a goddamn torture chamber under his office, had been bribed by Umbrella to cover up the STARS investigation. William kills him before Irons can kill the player because Irons already gave his exposition and serves no more purpose to the story. Also the player runs into a news reporter in the holding cells named Ben or something. William kills him because who cares? I wonder how a lumbering mutant like William jumps around the police station without even once running into the character.

Fun Fact: The outbreak in Raccoon City was a T-virus outbreak. The G-virus doesn't appear to have any way of spreading except a direct injection of the pure stuff. The rats in the sewer aren't really important.

Stuff happens which is mostly pointless filler. Sherry is William's daughter who has a G-virus sample hidden in her pendant. Ada is a spy sent by shadowy figure to obtain a G-virus sample. Ada takes Sherry's pendant but Annette, Williams wife, fights her for it and shoots her. Leon saves Ada by taking a bullet for her. Ada treats his wound because she's a spy with a heart of gold after all. (Awwww!) Later on, she sacrifices her life for Leon (or did she?) but not before confessing her love for him despite only knowing him for less than an hour. And that's pretty much Leon's story. Meanwhile, in Claire's story, William impregnates his daughter.

Wait, what!?

Don't worry there's no pedophilia. He just injects her with an embryo a la Alien. It's not shown exactly HOW he did it but just in case the player starts thinking about the unfortunate implications, the game inexplicably throws a giant crocodile boss to distract us. Later on, we meet Annette again who was wounded by her rampaging husband. She tells us how to cure Sherry and Claire manages to cure the little girl of everything except the horrible psychological trauma of being impregnated by your own mutant father.

After Sherry gets cured and Ada's sacrifices her life, all plot threads are tied together for now. Both characters meet up at a conveniently located escape train. Hey! You know what that means!? It's time for a final boss battle complete with self-destruct sequence countdown! A final fight ensues against the now severely mutated William and our heroes are on the ropes. Suddenly, in Leon's scenario at least, an Ada-shaped shadowy figure drops a rocket launcher from the rafters. Ka-boom! William is dead, they escape, let's wrap this up and go home.

Fun Fact: Written on Claire's vest is "Made in Heaven", a reference to Queen. Leon's outfit bears a resemblance to Peter and Roger's outfits in Dawn of the Dead.

The important part is that Leon, Claire, Sherry, Ada and HUNK survive. Ada and HUNK both escape with a G-virus sample. There's also a high chance Tofu made it out alive as well.

To it's credit, the voice acting in this game is much better than the first but that's not saying much.

Resident Evil 1.5?

Resident Evil was a success and success means a sequel. Capcom, being Capcom, re-released an improved version of Resident Evil instead and called Resident Evil: Director's Cut. The game had an extra disc in it which contained the prototype of Resident Evil 2. This early beta was called Resident Evil 1.5.

The finished product however, differed vastly from 1.5. Resident Evil 2. For example, 2 had Claire Redfield as a protagonist instead of Elza Walker from 1.5. The other differences from the finished product were that the whole G-Virus thing with William Birkin wasn't mentioned in 1.5, Elza and Leon didn't cross paths, The police chief wasn't as asshole and other story differences.

However, both games did take place in the Raccoon City Police Station. The police station in 1.5 however, looked radically different. It looked like how a modern police station should look and not like the creepy, museum-like, puzzle-filled, nonsensically large design 2 had with even less bathrooms.

Fun Fact: The doomed gun shop owner and the doomed policeman in RE2 were originally supporting characters who might have lived.

Anyway, I thought that 1.5 might be worth mentioning because it's fun to think of what could have been. Apparently, the bigwigs thought that the story in 1.5 was too "conclusive" and wanted an open ended bullshit story so they could milk..er make a huge franchise. Oh boy, that turned out swell didn't it?

Thanks to Youtube, footage from this little curiosity in RE lore exists!

Resident Evil: It Begins

Let's go back to the beginning; to where it all began. In 1996, Capcom released a little game called Resident Evil. It was a charming game that took place in mansion full of puzzles and mysteries and zombies that wanted to eat your flesh. This game alone started what would be the golden age of "survival horror" games. Games such as Silent Hill, Clock Tower 2 and Parasite Eve. Horror games existed prior to Resident Evil, but it was this game that really popularized it.

Fun Fact: The game was originally titled Biohazard, but was changed because that name was copyrighted by some stupid metal band in North America.


This classic intro summarizes the basic plotline of RE. In a sleepy town in the American Midwest, a series of murders prompts S.T.A.R.S. to send the Bravo team to investigate. STARS stands for Special Tactics And Rescue Service. Why a supposedly small town would need two teams of this highly specialized police unit, I don't know. Bravo team goes missing so the Alpha team goes out to look for them. They get attacked by monsters in the forest and hide out in the mansion where by sheer coincidence, the entire plot takes place.

Words cannot describe how much I love this intro movie. It holds a special place in my heart. I know it's the edited English version but that's all we had. The B-movie charm, the low budget crap, the terrible acting and nonsensical situations really get me. Ever notice how Wesker is wearing his sunglasses at night? Why did the helicopter abandon them? The official explanation is that Brad "Chickenheart" Vickers, the pilot, was a coward. Really? You'd think they'd keep notorious cowards, who are given nicknames that they are cowards, from joining a special police unit. Why the Bravo team crashed so close to the mansion or why they crashed at all is never explained in the game at all and seems to be just plot convenience. "Joseph!" "No! Don't go!" Man, I love this shit.

Fun Fact: In the English version, they edited out a lot of the violence and made it black and white. Also censored was the scene of Chris smoking a cigarette because smoking is a bad influence for kids to have in their bloody, violent, zombie-killing game.

In the game, you get to choose between two characters: Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine. Each character differs in stats like health and items. The story flows differently too. Chris is partnered with Rebecca from the Bravo Team while Jill has Barry for backup. The story flows more or less the same in the big picture. If I may, I'd like to share an in-joke RE fans have. Characters in the original RE seem too overqualified to be where they are. Take Chris for example. His official bio states that he's a fighter pilot and marksman for the U.S. Air Force but "retired" after conflict with his superiors at the age of 23. Seems a little too young don't you think? Oh, and Jill is ex-Delta Force apparently. I don't think women can serve in the Delta Force. Rebecca really takes the cake however, graduating from college at 18 and being an expert in Chemistry and Medicine. How she ended up in the ass-end of nowhere in America puzzles me.

Fun Fact: Delta Force recruits must, in fact, be male.

Much of the game involves you solving puzzles in a mansion with only one bathroom. You get the keys, push the statues etc. All the while fighting zombies with limited supplies. This is what the "survival horror" genre boils down to basically. It's better than it sounds.

Anyway, the main gist of the plot was that the mansion was a secret laboratory where the Umbrella Corporation was making bio-weapons. The bio-weapons being those mutant creatures you encounter. Zombies, zombie dogs, zombie sharks, zombie plants, zombie crows and hunters. The big reveal in the end is that Wesker was a bad guy all along and blackmailed Barry to help him. Wesker unveils the ultimate bio-weapon in Umbrella's arsenal which is a massive creature called the Tyrant.

The Tyrant betrays its master and kills Wesker. (Or did it!?) We fight the thing but there's nothing a few magnum rounds or acid grenades can't fix. We defeat it but not before Wesker, or dumbass accident-prone Rebecca, activate the self-destruct sequence. We run to the roof and signal Brad, who was circling the forest all this time, with a flare. What, did that helicopter have infinite fuel?

But no! The Tyrant bursts on to the rooftop with renewed strength an vigor and out hero is on the ropes. With time almost running out, Brad finally does something useful with his life and drops a rocket launcher onto the helipad. Are rocket launchers issued to the police force? Whatever. We slay the beast and then establish the long running RE tradition of escaping on a helicopter. In the canon ending, Brad, Chris, Jill, Barry and Rebecca all make it out somehow. Don't ask how they all simultaneously escaped because they just did OK? They escape with the truth but will anyone believe them?

So that's RE. In 2002, Capcom released a gore-geous remake of RE on the Gamecube. It had realistic graphics and kept the gameplay more or less the same. Ironically, it had much better voice acting despite having no real actors on screen like the original. The puzzles were reworked to mess with our heads but overall, the REmake was a glorious tribute to the original. The REmake did tweak the plot a little by adding an entirely unnecessary "Lisa Trevor" subplot but I don't want to get to deep into that. Just remember the simple story of the original because that's as understandable as it's going to get.

Fun Fact: If you believe the novelizations, Raccoon City is in Pennsylvania which is not exactly the Midwest. Most consider the novelizations as pieces of crap though.

Before we leave, It must be mentioned that Resident Evil has the reputation for having probably the worst voice acting in the history of video games. If you would just blare a vuvuzela everytime a character speaks, it would actually be better voice acting. And now, without further ado, behold. House of the Dead cant hold a candle to this shit.


The best.

Resident Evil Movie

So another Resident Evil movie is coming out. Yay.

Honestly, the me of ten years ago would have been excited at the thought of a Resident Evil movie. But now, I don't know. I loved Resident Evil games and "Survival Horror" games in general. I actually followed the RE storyline back then. I like games with good stories in them and I use "good" very liberally with RE.

As time went on though the storyline of RE became so incomprehensible, convoluted and downright stupid, it makes my head hurt. It used to be so simple and not simple in a brilliant sort of way. No, it was simple in a mental deficiency sort of way.

I think I know what I'm going to write about the next few days.

Guild Wars 2: Impressions and Observations

Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG developed by ArenaNet. It launched last August 28th to a lot of hype. It's unique in that it has no monthly subscription fee just like the first Guild Wars. I can't really offer a comprehensive review since I've yet to reach end-game content. As of this moment, I'm still level 29. I've enjoyed levelling in my own pace without feeling like I have to get tons done because I paid for game time. Instead, I'd like to give my observations about it so far.

Character Creation

There are five races in GW2 namely; the Asura, Charr, Humans, Norn and Sylvari. Asura are the short, highly advanced, mischievous but clever race. Charr are the huge, feline-like warrior race who really love war and making war and warring war. Humans are... humans. Norn are like humans but taller; vikings basically. The Sylvari are plant people born into the world from this mother tree and share experience and knowledge through the "dream" before birth.

The customization in this game is great. The ability to create your appearance was really well done. You can change the dimensions of your face as well as the color scheme of your clothing which will apply to all clothing you subsequently wear. The best part is choosing your backstory. For example, I created an Asura Engineer. You choose which college you belong, your previous teacher and so on. These choices figure in to your personal quest.

Questing
The main quest in the game is your personal story. Your personal story leads you deeper into the world so you can encounter world quests. The personal story actually progresses faster than the player. If you're level 14, your personal quest may suddenly need you to be 17 so you are "encouraged" to gain experience through world questing.

The world questing heavily emphasizes exploration. The maps are huge with quest hubs spread out all over. In addition, there are "points of interests" to explore. My favorite part are the "vistas". If you click on a vista, the camera pans out to the environment giving you really "breathtaking" views on say, a waterfall or a lush forest. If you're the type of player who doesn't give a shit, I guess this won't sound so appealing but getting all the vistas and points of interests offer good experience points and map completion which gives even more experience points.

Another thing is that there are many world events that appear on your map from time to time which anyone can jump in and participate. Your contribution determines how much points you get. It's a nice mechanic to bring players together.

The quests themselves are pretty standard. Kill this, fetch that. If you've played any MMO game before, it gets tedious. At least it's smooth.

Combat
The strange thing sbout combat in this game is that your main abilities (Num Key 1 to 4) are determined by the weapon you wield. Since i'm an engineer, I get the choice between rifles or pistols. Equipping either changes what abilities you get. For example, I can shoot a net with a rifle to snare enemies but with a pistol, I get poison darts instead.

The number 6 key is a healing ability. This is true for all players. Different classes have different healing abilities.

Keys 7 to 9 are class abilities. As an engineer, I can place turrets, bombs and such. As a game mechanic for engineers, I can equip different kits to change my basic 1-5 weapon abilities so weapons aren't such an extreme limitation to an engineer as it first appears.

Lastly, buttons F1 to F4 are abilities that can be used anytime and determined by the abilities chosen for keys 6 to 9. For example, if I chose a healing turret as my heal, the F1 key allows me to cast a healing spray anytime I want with or without a turret. If I chose a healing elixir as my heal, the F1 key allows me to throw a healing elixir to allies at long distances.

Also, everyone can dodge but pressing a movement key twice. I guess this compensates the game not having your standard "tank, healer and dps" dungeon set up.

Skills
There are no skill trees in GW2. There's a trait panel that allows you to put points in them. For example, as an engineer, my traits are Explosives, Alchemy and Invention. If you put points into any of these, you get stat bonuses and a special bonus. Putting five points in explosives allows you to drop bombs every time you dodge.

Honestly, I'm not so sure about the trait system yet.

Professions
I've ignored professions so far. I've just been focused on levelling and exploration.

Problems
I seem to have frame rate issues. The game is demanding on PCs made worse by many players running around the screen spamming abilities.

One big problem though is that the trading post always seems to be down. Having no auction house this late from launch seems like a big mistake. You'd think a modern MMO wouldn't have this problem since a functioning auction house is vital to the game economy. There are also numerous connection issues. I frequently get disconnected by the server.

Final Thoughts
I can't give a real verdict on this game since I'm not fully levelled. So far, however, I can say this is a pretty standard MMO. I'm not saying it's crappy, I'm just saying that it's on the high end of normal. It's good for something free. Of course, this could change once I get into dungeons and such.