Democracies and Dynasties

Americans just reelected Barack Obama for President of the United States of America. While I'm not a fan of Obama, the American people have spoken. It's going to be an interesting four years ahead.

Speaking of elections, if only ours were even half as exciting or interesting as the U.S. elections. It's not very exciting when it's the same familiar names running nor as interesting when we don't even talk about issues as Americans do. Nevertheless, with the Philippine Senate elections coming up in May of next year, a certain topic, that seems just as often recurring as the candidates themselves, has once again surfaced. The topic of "political dynasties".

It's funny that our constitution, as trite and verbose as it is, contains a section in article two that states quite bluntly that: "The State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law." (Article 2, Section 26)

 

I'm sure the problem is obvious by just reading the article. Political dynasties are prohibited by law once they are defined by law. As of this writing, Congress has yet to pass any law defining political dynasties. It's mind-boggling how our lawmakers can rush a poorly crafted cybercrime law and railroad an impeachment complaint for a Chief Justice and yet ignore an article that has been needing a law since 1987. The problem is that political dynasties infest the political landscape of the Philippines and its stupid to expect the members of these dynasties to pass a law that would undermine the nice racket they have going on.

 

What is a political dynasty?

 

A dynasty is a succession of rulers that belong to the same family. When one mentions the word "dynasty", what often comes to mind are the kings, queens and emperors of old. I think its redundant to call a dynasty "political" since we are talking of rulers and its necessarily implied.

 

What a political dynasty, in the Philippines at least, seems to mean is when public offices are occupied by members of the same family. It could be the same office occupied by family members successively. It could mean a political unit like a province with many offices that are held mostly by members of the same family. It could mean anything until we officially define it but the common thread going through this tangled web is the idea of officials, using their advantageous position and influence, to get their family members elected or appointed to positions of power. After all, article twenty six is about equal opportunities. Which is why political dynasties are seen as an evil; the reasoning being that the family of the powerful have an advantage over regular Juans who want to run for office.

 

Its disturbing how the admirable Filipino trait of "close family ties" could be turned on it's head and corrupted.

Skyfall

I saw the new James Bond movie today. It was pretty good.

So yeah.

Oppa Gangster Style

Just recently, some Koreans in Lapu-Lapu City were almost killed in a shooting allegedly masterminded by another Korean. The motive was said to be gambling debts amounting in the millions. Weeks ago, some other Koreans were busted operating illegal internet gambling rings. Many other incidents have happened in the past of Koreans misbehaving.

 

Now, I've heard people complain about those no-good Koreans. It's easy to think of them as ingrates who come here to cause trouble but are otherwise behaved in their home country.

 

Well, that's a little unfair to the Koreans who come here for good reasons like tourism or business. A better thing to do is to ask ourselves why our cities seem to be attracting the seedier types of foreign visitors. When a person travels to another country, they are usually behaved since it's only natural to be cautious in a new environent. However, recent events have shown that the criminal elements of tourists have become more brazen.

 

Instead of blaming Koreans, we should be worried about ourselves instead, specifically our society. Why is this allowed to happen in the first place? Because they think they can get away with it. With our corrupt officials, lax law enforcement, anemic justice system and an endless supply of poor people to use and abuse, this place might look like a land of opportunity for an enterprising mob boss. Hmm, I wonder if PLDT has a computer package deal for a businessman interested in putting up an illegal online sex/gambling internet cafe...

 

Face it, they fit right in.

Simcity 3000 - Magic City

Resident Evil 4: Un Forastero! (Part 2)

I guess this is where my pathetic RE series ends. I tried to get my hands on RE5 but I don't want that Windows Live bullcrap, not since Bioshock 2. RE6 is out of reach for the moment but it's good that the last one is about RE4, a truly good game that I had fun playing.

So Leon get's sent to an undisclosed part of Europe because the intel suggests that the President's daughter might be there. You know that Leon has gone up a few levels in experience since RE2 and is some sort of badass because why else would the U.S. send just one guy instead of, I dunno, Navy SEALS?

Fun Fact: While I'm no linguist, several articles claim that the "Spaniards" in RE4 speak in an incorrect Mexican accent. I hope I'm wrong.

Leon stumbles into a quaint little Pueblo where the ambushed police officer who escorted him before is being roasted over a large fire. The town is batshit crazy and as Leon discovers, the people are cannibals. By the way, the sign outside calls the village, "Pueblo". It seems the pueblo is named "Pueblo" as if it's the only "Pueblo" in the world. The church bell rings and the villagers run off. This is a hint that there's extra spooky cult stuff going on.

Leon runs into a guy named Luis. To my utmost annoyance, Leon mispronounces his name as "Lewis" instead of the Spanish pronunciation. Luis is a researcher of sorts. All the villagers are infected with mind control parasites. Who he works for and what he's doing there is not ellaborated further until later but he's just there for Leon's and the plot's convenience. Seriously, Luis is keeping the RE tradition of having NPCs appear just to move the game along, then promptly die when they've outlived their purpose. Fortunately, it's not yet that time. They get captured and Leon gets injected with the "Las Plagas" parasite, which is the "in" thing with the bioweapons crowd. Naturally, they manage to escape.

Fed up with wasting time, Leon goes back to his mission of rescuing Ashley. He defeats a lake monster but collapses in a nearby lake house from fatigue and having a large parasite injected into his neck.

Fun Fact: If you stand at the dock and shoot the lake a few times before the boss battle, "Del Lago" will pop up and kill you. I nearly pissed myself when I tried this.

Leon obtains a key to open the church where Ashley's being held. He also fights a giant along the way because why not? He tries to escape with Ashley but they run into the big bad himself, Osmund Saddler, the leader of the "Los Illuminados" cult. Wait, Osmund? They named the main villain Osmund? Anyway, Saddler makes light of the situation and just cracks jokes about how there's parasites in both their bodies. They escape from him and meet up with Luis at a small cabin. Thus begins the "cabin siege" battle of the game and this was easily one of the best if not the best part of the game.

After the battle, Leon and Luis needlessly separate. Leon's discovers his escape helicopter has been shot down. Leon has no choice but to move forward but I always found it strange that Leon seemed to go deeper and deeper into enemy territory where he and Ashley blundered into increasingly dangerous circumstances. I mean, wouldn't you rather go to a safer direction or stay put rather than make your way to a creepy looking castle infested with cultists? Leon goes for the castle anyway. He beats the village chief, Bitores Mendez, and uses his eye to get past a completely out-of-place retinal scanner that blocks the passage into the castle

As if the bullshit wasn't enough, Leon runs into the castellan, Ramon Salazar, who's a Spanish midget Napoleon. The conversations between Leon and Salazar are comedy gold. While the voice acting is alright, the dialogue is just nice and stupid.

Ashley coughs up blood and fucking runs off by herself. She gets her dumb ass captured. Leon meanwhile, meets Ada Wong, the only woman he ever loved... and they split up. Leon goes through more bullshit, fighting off tentacle dogs and invisible giant mantis things. He solves a few puzzles too because you got to have puzzles or else this won't seem like an RE game. He eventually rescues her and Luis shows up with some meds and a sample of the dominant mind-control parasite. Luis got it! You know what that means?

After Saddler impales Luis with his boner, he runs off with the sample. Leon angrily vows to avenge the death of his friend Lewis. Just to summarize, the game goes for a stretch at this point. Leon kills everyone in his path, including that little dick, Salazar. Leon runs into some guy named Jack Krauser, who's this red beret wearing muscled badass knife nut. I honestly do not know who Jack Krauser is or why they stuffed him into this game. He just seems like an enigmatic character and by enigmatic, I don't mean "interesting" enigmatic but "why-should-I-care?" enigmatic. Leon hints they have a history together but we may never know. Literally nothing is elaborated on.

Fun Fact: The giant statue sequence is the craziest thing in this entire game. A giant statue of Salazar is being built underground. This statue is several stories tall and can MOVE. It chases Leon over a narrow bridge. What were they smoking when they came up with this!? Note also that the giant statue bit where you pull levers is similar to a level in God Hand, another Capcom game. A lot of things in RE4 remind me of God Hand actually.

Leon takes the fight to the Los Illuminados' top secret pirate island base. Is the Spanish government totally oblivious? It seems cultists have taken over the countryside, a large fucking castle and a whole island. Saddler's plan was to use Ashley to get to the President but Leon put's a stop to that. They manage to get a cure and chopper evac. Mike the chopper pilot is the second best character in RE next to HUNK. He's the only chopper pilot who lasts more than a fifteen seconds in the sky before being shot down; an RE record! Remember that chopper pilot in RE2? How about in RE3? Oh, that's right, they were all chumps who can't hold a candle to Mike. Mike even manages to take a lot of bastards with him before eventually getting gunned down. Resident Evil hates chopper pilots. Rest in peace Mike, you lovable bastard.

Chopper evac ain't an option so it's time for a final boss fight. As if the developers were checking boxes on a list, the self-destruct sequence activates. Leon manages to defeat the mutated Saddler thanks to Ada dropping a rocket launcher. It's a reference to RE2, GET IT!? Leon and Ashley escape on a conveniently placed jet-ski. In a scene that reminds me of the awkwardness between Snake and Otacon's ending in Metal Gear Solid, Leon and Ashley drift for a while on the sparkling blue ocean. The President's underage daughter then asks Leon if he'd be available for some "overtime". Disgusting.

Well that's it for now.

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.