10/13/2020

When information was hard to come by, it was easy to agree on a common set of facts. Now in this age of  social media, it seems everyone has flown of the handle. There's so much information - too much information. No matter how outlandish one's viewpoint, there's always a set of "facts" to support it and online forums to find other true believers.

Compounding this problem of a deluge of contradicting information is the incompetence or complete absence of any leader or authority that can corral the masses. Experts get it wrong all the time. Institutions fail. Everyone has his own agenda and trust is at an all time low. 

How crazy can things get? I don't know. I always assumed that there's a maximum amount of discord/idiocy that society can sustain. It seems that there's no limit and this state of affairs putters on despite itself. 

This pandemic has revealed that when it comes to having a unified response, there will always be people who think they know what's best for themselves and to hell with the rest. But maybe that's just the way it's got to be. Blame liberal democracy. No modern democratic government has the stomach to go full authoritarian. In the end you can only do what you can.

MMFF 2015-2016

Every year, the country holds the Metro Manila Film Festival. It's that time of year when the regular Hollywood-made garbage is removed from theaters (except IMAX for some reason) to make room for the locally-made garbage. The problem of Philippine films being unable to compete with foreign ones isn't such a problem when you remove the latter altogether. If you can't beat the competition, just kill them! It is the election season after all, so get into the spirit!

I'll be honest, I don't watch any of it. The last MMFF film I saw was Enteng Kabisote way back in 2004 and I think it bore a hole in my brain because I can't remember any of it. I feel somewhat obligated to watch at least one film so that I can bullshit and say I "support the local artists" whenever one of them "Pinoy pride!" spouting autistics roll around.

What's on offer this..er, last year? You have the usual romcoms: All You Need is Pag-Ibig, My Bebe Love: #KilligPaMore and #WalangForever. What the hell is with the hashtags? Seems gauche. Romcoms aren't my cup of tea anyway. I can't relate at all with the saccharine stories about boy meets girl and if the universe is as unkind as I believe it to be, probably never will. Ironically, romcoms have the opposite effect on me; instead of the warm-and-fuzzies, they only drive me deeper into depression and thoughts of experimenting with cocaine. These types of films are more vehicles for the current popular celebrity power couples. Since I don't read the tabloids, I'll probably miss out on the in material.

#?

Horror! That's a staple. At first, I thought Buy Now, Die Later was a horror flick by the title but apparently, I was mistaken. It's a comedy-psychological-horror-thriller. They couldn't decide? Sounds bad. The audience oscillating between laughter, suspense and shock might kill them. Next, we have the unimaginatively titled, Haunted Mansion. It's not good to judge a book by its cover but come on, that's the best title they could come up with? It's like naming an action movie, "Car Chase". Lastly, we have Nilalang, which is a Philippine-Japanese horror thing. Filipinos love half-breeds things or persons with mixed cultural heritage, so it has the advantage of foreign flavor. There's some kind of controversy regarding Nilalang being pulled out of theaters but whatever.

Seriously?

The last film to mention is the presumed "heavy-hitter" film. Let me tell you of my people. Filipinos are emotional and are addicted to catharsis. Happiness and fear explain a lot of the entries but there will always be some directors who want to be taken seriously. See, majority of the films are frivolous affairs; sweet candies to be quickly consumed. So if you wanna go serious, you wanna go heavy and by heavy, I mean stuff people don't want to deal with. Hate, anger, betrayal, justice, crime, good and evil, that sort of thing.

So here comes the lone drama, Honor thy Father, a film about people who lie to each another. From what I gather, the film is remorselessly pessimistic and offers a bleak view of humanity in general as nothing but a collection of predators who feed off one another and won't hesitate to lie, cheat and steal and damn anyone who gets in their way. Sounds delightful. I guess the choice is clear.

We need to go deeper.

MMFF is almost over so maybe I should step on and in it.

More BS from BS

Today, El Presidente gave a press conference to address the outrage over the "pork barrel scam". Actually, it's not entirely correct to call it a press conference since he didn't deign to allow hard questions. Anyway, he said the words he should have said years ago; "Panahon na po upang i-abolish ang PDAF. (It's time to abolish the pork barrel)."

Except not really.

In an amazing moment of blunt political doublespeak, Dear Leader then went on about how a "new mechanism" is needed to address the needs of the people. Jesus Christ, this man still DOES NOT GET IT. 

A "new system" to allow lawmakers to fund their projects? Hey, here's a novel idea; How about we let the lawmakers focus on studying and crafting laws like they're supposed to and just send that pork money in the general budget. I'm sure the Department of Public Works and Highways can make better use of that money like say, drainage for floodwater? Just a suggestion.

The problem here is that El Presidente seems to miss the problem entirely. He sees the pork barrel system as perfectly alright and the problem is just  the misuse of the money. He made a statement that the PDAF could be used for "good or evil" and all we need are better guidelines. His simplistic way of thinking fails to dig deeper to the root of the problem; that the pork barrel IS the problem. It's unnecessary, it's prone to corruption and only enforces the patronage system of politics where we have to beg for scraps from the tongressmen and representathieves.

Let me tell you a story.

The Rains of Every Year

by ThatGuy

You live in a house. It's a bit crowded  and smelly but it's a charming old house that's quite beautiful and you call it home. However, there's a large gaping hole in the roof. When the rains come, the rainwater just pours into your living room and ruins all the furniture and appliances, not to mention soak everyone. Tired of being drenched day in and day out, you all chip in to hire the only carpenter in town.

The next day, a balding carpenter in glasses and yellow overalls arrives. He looks a bit stupid and arrived later than scheduled but he assures you he knows what he's doing. He takes a look at the hole and scratches his head.

"You know..." He starts. "This hole isn't really all that bad. On sunny days, it provides free natural lighting. It can be a good thing or a bad thing." He grins.

"Yeah, but we're living in a country that rains often! We can't just sit here waiting to see if the sky decides to rain or not. I'd rather have it fixed!" You say.

"Well..." He begins again in a condescending tone you steadily begin to hate. "What you really need is a better system to deal with the problem. You should check the weather bulletin to see if it's going to rain or not. If it rains, you and your family should just leave. Alternatively, we could just move all your living room furniture into the kitchen. It'll be like a New York studio apartment!".

"Well, can't I just have it fixed? I'd rather have it fixed." You say as it becomes increasingly clear there was no getting through to him.

"Fixing a hole this big is just too much work." He sighs. 

"If you're not going to fix this, me and my family are going to rally in front of your company's main office this Monday!"

"Oh no, don't do that!" He says with a look of panic on his face. "I'll get on it right away!"

You and your family leave for the mall for a few hours while the carpenter does his work. When you arrive, what you see leaves you speechless. "There, it's fixed." the carpenter says proudly. You are amazed to see an array of pots, pails and basins placed on strategic locations to "guide" the rainwater and keep it "regulated". All the furniture are covered with large tarps which you pray are at least waterproof.

"Here are some yellow raincoats for you to wear too for when it rains! I made them myself." He smiles with glee as he hands your youngest with his very own branded yellow raincoat. He hands you the bill.

"That will be about ten billion pesos, Sir!"

Oink! Oink!

So the scandal this month is the pork barrel scam. What happened? I thought corruption was gone! Listening to our President, I thought we had turned a new leaf and the sick man of Asia was on the straight and narrow path to rehab!

Oink! Oink!

But it seems there's no curing (no pun intended) the sick man's addiction...to pork. I don't blame our senators. After all, we are really a pork loving people. Look at all the lechon and chicharon we consume despite the health warnings. It seems Filipinos (or is it "Pilipinos" now?) can't stop bad habits like eating too much pork or electing thieves into office. Unfortunately, unlike a typical roast pig served at a town fiesta, the only ones getting fed nowadays are not the townspeople but the vultures and crocodiles in Congress.

As much as I'd like to explain a little bit about the origins of the Philippine Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or"the pork barrel", let's skip that for now. Just think of it as the President's "stash". This stash is allocated in the budget and is worth about 25 billion pesos this year; 200 million for each senatong and 70 million for each representathief.

How it works is that the lawbreaker lawmaker would send a request to Committee,  then through the Senate President or Speaker (presumably collecting grease on the way while they're at it) and then finally to the Department of Budget and Mismanagement or the DBM.  The DBM then releases the sweet, sweet, golden-crispy pork to the implementing agency identified by the lawmaker which is usually a Non Government Organization.

Even those with no cynical bone in their body can see the potential problems with this. The DBM doesn't bother to follow up if the NGOs are on the level apparently. There's very little guidelines as to what kind of "projects" the lawmakers are allowed to fund except that it has to be in their district. Basically, the entire thing hinges on the honesty and good faith of our lawmakers. That's kind of like asking the fox to guard the henhouse.

I call it the President's stash because this "pork barrel" has been the method by which the executive, via the DBM, exerts control over legislators. Think of it this way; the President is the sugar daddy and the lawmakers are the hoes, get it? Lawmakers who fall in the Presidents disfavor, refuse to toe the line or refuse to repeat the mantra that our President is the best ever, can find their funds "unreleased". It's a well known fact that the Arroyos, the President's enemies, don't receive a centavo of the pork barrel. Who knows? Maybe their requests got lost in the shuffle, maybe the department is too busy or maybe their papers got "misplaced". You know how bureaucracies are... bureaucracies with a lot of discretion and next to no oversight.

Which brings us now, to the present scandal. The circus is in town! Step right in and don't worry, you already bought a ticket!

Once upon a time there was a guy named Benhur who worked as an assistant of Janet Napoles, who appears to be the worst boss ever because she allegedly kidnapped and illegally detained him. He filed a case in the Department of Justice against her but it was dismissed. Frustrated, he decided to get even by going to the NBI and spilling the beans on Janet. You see, Janet  as it turns out, is at the center - the very black heart of the Pork Barrel Scam. She allegedly orchestrated the scam by providing fake NGOs for lawmakers to endorse, then she would take the cash for herself after giving the lawmakers their share of the booty.

I'm disappointed that it sounds a tad simplistic but think about this for a minute. This whole thing blew wide open because some guy was pissed and not because of some police investigation or government oversight. It may as well have been an accident.

As expected, the scandal was big news and inspired overly dramatic posts on Facebook and inane "tweets" from the twits on Twitter. An arrest warrant was issued for Napoles on the illegal detention charge but she had miraculously vanished into thin air. It was as if she knew ahead of time the warrant would be issued. It was as if someone on the inside tipped her off. It was as if our government was corrupt at every single level and we know that simply can't be true because our President said so.

So the hunt is on for Napoles, who could be hiding in any of the many large houses she owns; including the upper and lower houses of Congress. Always hide in the last place they expect! Hey, maybe they should ask Lacson for advice on where she may be hiding. He's the expert on hiding like a coward. 

Speaking of cowardice, the noticeable lack of interest and effort by the lawmakers in pursuing this case is palpable. Weren't these the same jokers who ranted and raved and impeached a Chief Justice for not revealing certain things in his statement of assets and liabilities? The hypocrisy is so much that I actually feel physically ill just thinking about it. These same jokers who put on their little robes to play Justice make the former Chief Justice's "crime" look like small potatoes.

Our Honorable Senators

And what of our President? Why, nothing AS USUAL. He seems content to pontificate and ramble as he usually does. No need to even promise he'll do anything about it because we know he won't. His tough talk of fighting corruption rings hollow now, but it always had to people like me who don't drink the yellow Kool-Aid. Today on the radio, he and his lackeys told the press that they just simply needed to "make the system better". Right... like in the same way that the gas chambers in Auschwitz weren't wrong you see, they just needed to "make the system better". Get rid of it. The pork barrel is like shit to flies. Get rid of it you morons. And AS USUAL, the President went to the old stand-by and blamed his predecessor because it all allegedly started then. No, Mister President, your mother's administration came up with the pork barrel. Go whine on her grave.

Even the church is in on it. Nobody is clean in this disaster. Janet loaned out her house in Makati for the favored priests who would attend to her, pray for her and even give her private prayer sessions with the statue of the Black Nazarene. Yes, the very same Black Nazarene that MILLIONS crawl all over each other just to touch and she gets a private session. Even Manny Pacquiao with his billions has to get in line in Quiapo. Not even the Virgin Mary herself has that privilege. What, you gonna try to  bribe God too?

Lining Up is for Losers

Right now Manila is in its third day of flooding. Oh, if only we had the money to build a drainage system! Oh, if only we had say, ten billion pesos that wasn't squirreled away by corrupt legislators, we could have built public works to avert this catastrophe! Oh, we are the gates of hell! Oh, scratch that, we're the River Styx!

And this little piggy went "wee! wee! wee!" all the way to her twenty-eight mansions.

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 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?

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 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.

Vox

Sometimes I wish I had a golden voice. I've always wanted to use my voice in doing things like reading or dubbing over. I learned somewhere that one must learn to modulate the voice, that is, to speak in a low tone and control it from there. I need to train myself to speak more clearly and with a lower tone.

It's worth a try.

Entry For August 28

Well, not much happened this week aside from some people being killed. People in Hong Kong are really mad. I can't blame them. The Chinese are probably used to seeing bumbling officials punished harshly and would like to see the same here. Too bad.

Next week, it's back to school for me. I'm not worried about stressing out again. What I'm worried about is getting my exam papers back. I think I did well but maybe only relatively. The friends I've talked to aren't expecting much. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for this particular teacher who makes it a point to remind us how much we suck and how we're letting all our families down while giving the papers back. It could be the teacher's way of motivating students but then again, that's uncharacteristically optimistic of me.

My aunt just arrived from the United States today. I remember a long time ago, my aunt would bring me to an old arcade in Ayala Mall called Glicos. That arcade was huge. It composed of three floors if I remember right. My aunt would buy me small bag of tokens to play with. I stayed in her apartment when I visited the States. We watched movies in a nearby theater at night then had ice cream. She's a fun and nice person to be around.

Disclaimer: I love all my aunts equally.