The horrific Resident Evil playthrough, part twelve

Resident Evil 7′s one hell of a franchise recreation. We previously had a few signs that Capcom was dialing the series away from action and back to the realm of horror with Revelations 2, but RE7 almost seems like it’s from another series entirely in its initial moments. Thanks to the photo-like nature of the new RE Engine, where the faces of actors are scanned in and used for models, everyone looks so real, with nary an anime-twinged mug in sight. The first-person perspective is immediately more visceral and reminiscent of the indie horror games like Outlast that gained popularity as Resident Evil nosedived into the realm of action for most of the 2000s and 2010s, and the first hour of the game, which sees protagonist Ethan Winters exploring an abandoned house in search of his missing wife, is so tense and features such nerve-wracking sound design that it made me feel scared in a way that no other game in this series, aside from RE1, has accomplished. I actually had to stop playing for a few minutes, removed my headphones and put everything on speaker with subtitles to slightly decrease immersion. (I also played a few minutes of the Zootopia soundtrack to calm my nerves. Shh, don’t tell anyone.)

After a certain garage fight, the tension pervading Resident Evil 7 does fade somewhat, and a familiar rhythm develops. Guide Ethan through the hallways of this massive house, avoid the frightening Bakers - who are right out of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie - use typewriters (sorry, tape recorders) to save your progress, collect various doodads and solve puzzles to open doors, swap a shotgun with a broken shotgun in order to smuggle a powerful weapon out of a booby-trapped room, enlist the aid of Zoe Baker (the only normal person in the whole family) to make it out alive, survive, survive, survive. Slowly, facts about the mansion and its mutating basement creatures known as Molded become unveiled via journal entries lying around the house, and if all of this sounds to you like a modern envisioning of the formula that Resident Evil 1 developed, then you’d be correct. Heck, forget RE1 - this game takes the ideas that freakin’ Sweet Home originated, bringing them into the modern era with lots of blood-soaked graphical wizardry. If there’s a holy trifecta of “haunted house-based horror games” out there, it would look something like this: Sweet Home, Resident Evil 1, Resident Evil 7.

I didn’t expect to enjoy this game as much as I did. In fact, I approached it with a certain amount of trepidation, since first-person games have traditionally made me dizzy in the past, and everything about RE7 initially seems divorced from the wondrous (and often wacky) tale of bioterror that we’ve been following for so many entries. The Bakers are a freaky family from Louisiana who might be serial killers, but they seem to be small fry in a world of giant pharmaceutical companies that unleash city-crushing bio attacks. Main star Ethan Winters is a bland white dude with no relation to the BSAA, and his Wiki entry even states that he’s a systems engineer from LA, which sure sounds drab when you compare it to, I dunno, Leon Kennedy, who works with the Secret Service and suplexes cultists in his spare time.

But in its eleventh hour, Resident Evil 7 starts dropping revelation upon revelation, and it quickly becomes clear that despite first impressions, this very much is a game tied to the series’ complex lore, arguably moreso than fan favorite RE4. More specifically, RE7 is a quieter story that looks at bioterror on a micro level rather than the macro, globe-spanning adventures of RE6. The Bakers aren’t the evil body-collectors that they first appear to be, since they’ve been manipulated by a human bioweapon named Eveline who has an unnatural obsession with family. Ethan was intentionally designed to be a bland everyman to ease players into the first-person perspective and to provide a juxtaposition with the highly trained soldiers and survivors who have come to define the franchise - including Chris Redfield, who makes a much-appreciated cameo in the finale and serves as the star in one of RE7′s DLC epilogues. And the Bakers’ mansion was selected as the setting not only to throwback to Sweet Home and RE1, but to show us how the threat of bioterror can infect a seemingly friendly area full of Southern Hospitality, warping its inhabitants and creating a nightmare that’s all the more shocking because of how intimate it is.

In short, Resident Evil 7 is not only a game that I breathlessly completed over the course of two days, playing for ten hours straight on day two. It’s an excellent revitalization that offers the most in-depth examination yet on how bioterror might affect the “normal folks” of the RE universe, and it also brings the series full circle. We started out in a spooky house surrounded by unseen monsters that would make our hearts jump when we heard their grotesque moans echoing down dark corridors. Twelve games later, we’re back where we began - only this time with a new sheen of paint, over twenty years of experience and one hell of an appreciation for how this franchise has come to define and reinvent survival horror over the decades. 

All screenshots taken by me. For more, check out this Twitter thread showing my step-by-step progress through the game.

The horrific Resident Evil playthrough, part eleven

The first Resident Evil: Revelations was a competent gaiden that was limited by its Nintendo 3DS roots and kinda overshadowed by the over-the-top action of RE4 and RE5, the games that immediately preceded it. In contrast, Revelations 2 is also a competent gaiden, but it has no handheld limitations and feels like a confident breath of fresh air, possibly because it was released after RE6, a game whose antics were not just over-the-top - they were jump-the-zombie-shark level. 

Revelations 2 is smaller in scope, and while it takes place at about the same time as RE6 and even hints at that game’s China bioweapon crisis in its ending, it’s much more of a return to the slower, deliberate style of exploration, puzzle solving and ammunition conservation that permeated the earlier Resident Evils. I can actually close my eyes and imagine a demake of this game for the PS1, and Revelations 2 also seems engineered to deliver fan service to everyone who’s been a lover of this series since the beginning, or newbies playing everything through all at once like me. Claire Redfield, who we haven’t seen since Code: Veronica, is back and working for Terra Save, an organization that provides humanitarian relief for bioweapons incidents, and she’s joined by Moira, the daughter of none other than Barry Burton, who we haven’t seen since friggin’ RE1. Rounding up the cast of “three ladies and a Barry” is Natalia, a mysterious little girl who’s being manipulated by Alex Wesker, who quite literally is a She-Wesker just as bad as her brother. Everyone gets stuck on a former Soviet Union island, there’s a new variant of the T-Virus floating around turning the island’s residents into creepy mutations called the “Afflicted,” and the game is full of long jaunts through the wilderness and some mild survival elements that seem to have been inspired by The Last of Us.

Survival bits aren’t the only thing that Revelations 2 seems to have channeled from The Last of Us - there’s also a strong theme of family infused into the game, and one of the major subplots involves Moira, who injured her baby sister in a gun incident and grew distant from her father because of it, learning to overcome her fear of firearms and subsequently become close with her dad again. And while I initially assumed that she was just going to be another one of those sarcastic tomboy types who resemble the Life is Strange girl and seem to be infiltrating games these days, she emerged as one of the absolute standout characters and a worthy successor to the Burton name. Speaking of Barry, his presence is so damn good because he is so damn good. You can really feel his desire to put everything on the line to rescue his daughter, and then there’s his eagerness to protect Natalia as well once he meets her. Also, just look at his re-design. Parker Luciani in Revelations 1 might have been a solid dad for Jill Valentine, but Barry Burton is the ORIGINAL Resident Evil pops, and he’s back and better ‘n ever!

I mentioned that this game borrows some stuff from The Last of Us. It also seems to have taken inspiration from the Batman: Arkham games, since Natalia straight up has Detective Vision, or at least a sixth sense that lets her “see” enemies through walls. Thanks to this addition, Revelations 2 has lots of stealth sections, and unlike the god awful attempt at stealth in RE6, sneaking around is actually decent here, and helps to re-emphasize the fact that this is a game where you’re the prey, not the predator, and you need to take care to stay alive. It’s the return of survival horror as opposed to survival action, in other words, and I’d go so far as to say that Revelations 2 is the first game in the series with an over-the-shoulder viewpoint that actually feels like a careful translation of the fixed camera angle gameplay that made up Resident Evils 1 to Zero. The first Revelations did come close at times, true, but even that game felt the need to toss in shoot ‘em up Time Crisis-style sequences into the mix. No such moments here!

This doesn’t mean that everything is sunshine and roses, though. Revelations 2′s pacing can be slow at times, the DLC episodes are meh, and the game divides its good and bad endings up into an odd Quicktime event in the middle of the third chapter which is interesting, but not exactly well designed since it requires players to think somewhat out of the box, locking them into the bad ending if they do exactly what’s indicated on screen. But most of what’s here is high quality, and as a whole, Revelations 2 feels like Capcom doing some course correcting after the mixed reception that RE6 got. While I haven’t started Resident Evil 7 yet, it seems that the “return to horror” direction that title emphasized originally started here, and the upcoming remake of Resident Evil 2 also seems to share similarities with Revelations 2, only with a much, much higher budget. As the series continues into the 2020s and re-assesses its identity, I’d wager that Revelations 2 will provide a bigger blueprint for future games than we might expect, which is why despite a few flaws, I’m willing to call it my second favorite over-the-shoulder Resident Evil after RE4. 

All screenshots taken by me. For more, check out this Twitter thread showing my step-by-step progress through the game.

The deductive point ‘n click escapades of a forgotten southern belle 

Adventure games of the point ‘n click variety are a genre that tend to feature female protagonists more often than others. Why this is the case, I’m not entirely sure - it might have something to do with the stereotype that women are more patient, more willing to read and perhaps better at solving puzzles than men. Or, perhaps legendary adventure game designer Roberta Williams’ influence still holds strong, at least on a subconscious level in the minds of designers, over the genre that she helped nourish in the 80s and 90s, and the heroines of today’s games are merely following in the footsteps of fine women that preceded them, like Rosella of Daventry in King’s Quest IV. 

Whatever the reason, despite there being quite a few point ‘n clickers popping up these days with engaging female protagonists (Kathy Rain is one that I played early this year and enjoyed), there’s a 1920s southern belle who probably deserved a long-lasting series but only got two games which are somewhat overlooked these days. Her name is Laura Bow, and she served as the protagonist of two Sierra titles that were released in 1989 and 1992 - The Colonel’s Bequest and The Dagger of Amon Ra. 

Laura seems to have been specifically patterned after famous silent film actress Clara Bow, but at her heart she’s more like a slightly older version of Nancy Drew, and her two games embody Nancy’s fine tradition of mystery solving. The Colonel’s Bequest takes place on a private island in the bayous of New Orleans as Laura accompanies a friend and fellow Tulane University student for a weekend getaway at the manor of her uncle, Colonel Dijon. The old man is bequeathing his fortune to relatives and has invited a motley assortment of characters right out of an Agatha Christie paperback - the drunk aunt, the conceited Hollywood starlet, the perverted doctor who seems to have a thing for betting on the ponies - and a la Clue, bodies start piling up as the relatives presumably begin offing themselves in order to get Dijon’s fortune first. 

I mentioned Roberta Williams previously, and The Colonel’s Bequest was actually designed by her as one of those rare side projects that didn’t feature the words “King’s” and “Quest” in the title. (Hm, I suppose it’s called The Colonel’s Bequest, so scratch that.) It’s always hard to tell how much Roberta was involved in non-King’s Quest projects - The Dagger of Amon Ra, for instance, was directed by Bruce Balfour despite featuring her name on the box - but I’d wager that she intended The Colonel’s Bequest to be a spiritual remake of her very first adventure game (and indeed, the first graphical adventure game ever), Mystery House. Mystery House featured a similar murder plot, and The Colonel’s Bequest takes this concept and evolves it, offering a unique structure where there aren’t really any puzzles to solve but instead “scenes” to witness. The entire game is structured like a play - there’s even a cast curtain call in the beginning - and Laura is encouraged to spend as much time as possible talking with the potential murder suspects and finding unique ways to eavesdrop on them. 

The game’s manual makes a huge deal about this emphasis on observing the story and slowly figuring out the links between characters in an effort to deduce the killer, and we can look at Johnny L. Wilson’s 1990 review of the game in Computer Gaming World as an example of how this approach was seen as admirable, fresh and also a bit risky at the time. Don’t let the fact that there aren’t many puzzles fool you into thinking that The Colonel’s Bequest is easy, though - it’s just as tough as Sierra’s other adventures with just as many nonsensical ways to die, and the unique structure where certain events and conversations are “timed” (indicated on screen by a clock) means that sometimes you’ll be wandering around aimlessly searching for the next thing to do, or possibly miss out on vital bits of info because you weren’t at the right place at the right time. It’s a little like The Last Express, only less refined. 

Luckily, the game’s great atmosphere makes up for any shortcomings that its boldly unorthodox but occasionally clunky design creates. This is one of the best 16 color titles that Sierra produced with their SC10 engine, and the soundtrack is packed with jazzy songs influenced by the Roaring Twenties with just enough sense to know when to be quiet as well. As you navigate Laura across the silent grounds of the mansion in the dead of night, wondering where the killer might be, it’s very possible to get shaken by the sound of lightning bursting in the background, and I can certainly imagine young players in 1989 jumping out of their skin when they encountered such moments.

Laura’s next outing, The Dagger of Amon Ra, trades the dark island setting for the Egyptology craze of the 20s, and loses a little bit in the process but makes up for it with 256 colors, rotoscoped animations (which are darn smooth but cause character sprites to be a bit muddy, unfortunately) and an even catchier selection of jazz tunes, including an amusing vocal track called “The Archaeologist Song.” Oh, and the CD version is a “talkie” game, with performances that range from kinda terrible (Sierra was still having their employees voice these games at the time instead of hiring actors) to excellent (Laura’s got a cute southern accent and the narrator’s voice is heavenly).  

The plot revolves around the titular Dagger of Amon Ra, an Egyptian artifact that’s been stolen from a New York City museum. Laura, now a fresh grad from Tulane and in the middle of her first journalism assignment at an NYC paper, has to navigate the mean streets of Manhattan, infiltrate a speakeasy and chat with a mildly racist caricature of a Chinese laundromat owner before getting into the museum, where she once again encounters a wide cast of characters, from the stuck up British twat who removed the dagger from Egypt to the nutty countess, who is possibly engaged in some mild robbery efforts around the museum when nobody’s looking. People start dying pretty soon (and their death scenes are grand - check out this poor SOB who got decapitated and stuck with a Perodactyl beak) and while the beginning section of the game outside of the museum is more like a traditional point ‘n click affair, once you’re locked inside the building after the first murder, everything becomes reminiscent of The Colonel’s Bequest. You’ve got to meander about, hope you bumble upon the right conversations and try your best to piece together clues before the murderer suddenly starts chasing you during the game’s second-to-last chapter. 

The Dagger of Amon Ra kind of stumbles in its execution of this form of gameplay more than its predecessor, because all the chapters of museum exploration feel terribly disjointed even more than walking around Colonel Dijon’s mansion did. Also, the character motivations are unclear, which is a problem in a mystery game - especially one where the entire final chapter actually involves Laura being quizzed by the coroner in an annoying game of 20 Questions as to the identity and motives of the killer! If you slip up once during this finale, you’ll get the bad ending, which involves the killer finding Laura’s apartment and GUNNING HER IN HER SLEEP, jinkies. And even if you succeed and get the good ending, which sees Laura writing her first award-winning expose on the theft and hooking up with putzy love interest Steve Dorian, it’s still quite impossible to discern the killer’s motives and why he went about his nefarious deeds, because The Dagger of Amon Ra just…doesn’t explain things. I’m not the only one who had trouble figuring it out - The Adventure Gamer blog wrote up a fantastic series of posts about this game and came to the same confused reaction as I did. 

Both Laura Bow adventures come from an older time where it was common to take notes as you went through a game, so perhaps my puzzlement at The Dagger of Amon Ra’s ending is due to my lack of pencil and paper by my side as I played. I did use walkthroughs for both games, though, and if you do end up checking them out (they’re available on GOG), I’d recommend doing the same. You probably still won’t be able to figure out why whatshisname stole that dagger, but despite their flaws, the Laura Bow games really are worth experiencing. Laura’s a likeable lead (just look at this adorable expression on her face as she stumbles upon the museum’s French skank engaged in hanky panky with the janitor) and she does a fine job of showing off the spirit of the 20s, an underrepresented period in the pantheon of electronic gaming. 

Laura never got a third game, and as far as mystery franchises go, Sierra soon passed the torch to the Gabriel Knight series, which apparently takes place in the same universe, since Gabriel visits Tulane in Sins of the Fathers and hears word of a lecture being given by “Laura Bow Dorian” - a hint that Laura married Steve Dorian and lived happily ever after! I’m glad that Ms. Bow got a nice ending even if we couldn’t see it in game form, and I’m sure that if she were a real person, she would be pleased to see spiritual successors of sorts like the aforementioned Kathy Rain following in her footsteps today. 

This is perhaps a good place to mention The Crimson Diamond, an upcoming indie game in the works by Canadian illustrator Julia Minamata. I recently played through the demo and am eagerly awaiting the full release - it’s almost like a direct sequel of The Colonel’s Bequest with an alternate universe version of Laura. Rest assured, Ms. Bow - even if your adventures aren’t as remembered these days as they should be, the example you set of the enterprising female gumshoe is alive, well and in good hands!

All box art and screenshots from Mobygames. 

The horrific Resident Evil playthrough, part ten

Resident Evil 6 is the big one that I was anticipating when I started this series playthrough in March. It’s the one that seems to have split the fanbase like no other, the one that some folks love and others abhor, and the one that took Resident Evil so far into the realm of explosions on top of zombies on top of exploding zombies that the franchise had no choice but to dial the entire thing back in Resident Evil 7 in order to give everyone’s minds a break before those exploded too. There is, in fact, a particular sort of enemy in this game that represents it well - called the Whopper, it’s a giant Fat Albert-looking thing that charges at you in a truly grotesque example of fun character design. It’s a bioweapon to be reckoned with, and when you see one coming your way, all you can say is “OH SHIT” as you try to blast its head apart before it barrages you into a wall.

RE6 is a whopper of a game. It’s chock full of so many different gameplay styles, so many plot threads, so many bits and pieces barely holding together at the seams in a mad effort to appease all sectors of the fan base - the people who preferred Resident Evil when it was eerie and quiet, the fans who fell in love with the series when Resident Evil 4 introduced an emphasis on action and the shippers who just love the characters and want to see them press the trigger of a Magnum at the same time and let loose with a bullet that will send the remains of a hulking Serbian mutation go stumbling backwards into the flames of a burning wind tunnel. 

The only way to properly assess RE6 in the midst of all this madness is to look at its four campaigns one-by-one, which took me 33 hours in total to complete, a staggering number for this series. 

Leon’s campaign - Everyone’s favorite Resident Evil protagonist who is still rocking Leonardo DiCaprio 90s hair (even though he’s aging in real-time and is apparently in his late 30s now) is BACK in this campaign, which seems to be the one that the game wants you to play first. It’s a rollicking adventure which I personally thought was the best of the bunch, though I wouldn’t blame you if you found Chris’ campaign better. I think I was won over by the fan service, since Leon’s opening chapter immediately channels Resident Evil 2 by forcing you to escape Tall Oaks, an American metropolitan area that’s essentially Raccoon City 2.0. Zombies will be lurching at you from the darkness like the old games, you’ve gotta run through subway cars just like in RE2 and RE3, and the whole vibe actually approaches scary at a few moments, which is something that the rest of this game has absolutely no time for. Partnered with Leon is Helena, a new character who’s also a US government agent but frankly kind of boring, and the pair quickly find themselves wrapped up in a conspiracy engineered by a politician named Derek Simmons. To figure out the extent of his conspiracy, you’ve gotta play Ada’s campaign (all the characters’ stories intersect at various points, which is one of this game’s best ideas), but let’s just say that Leon’s party ends in a wild rush to a made-up Chinese city named Lanshiang - which, from the POV of someone who lived in Hong Kong for six years, is clearly HK under another name. Half of Lanshiang gets blown up, Simmons transforms into what looks like a T-Rex and then a giant insect kaiju, and the general tone is deliciously batshit, though if you don’t like batshit then your mileage will vary. Leon gets music that I like to call “Funky Zombie Porno Breakbeats” for his ending theme, and I feel like this phrase can summarize the tone of the entire Resident Evil franchise perfectly. 

Chris’ campaign - If Leon’s adventure was the cheesy-but-occasionally-spooky “LET’S TAKE THESE ZOMBIES TO SUPLEX CITY, CHUMS” vibe of Resident Evil 4 on acid, then Chris’ campaign is the “MILITARY ESPIONAGE ACTION AGAINST BIOWEAPONS, BRUH” vibe of Resident Evil 5 on acid. It begins with Chris suffering from a bout of PTSD after losing a contingent of his men in a made-up country that’s supposed to be Serbia, then moves to Lanshiang after ace sniper Piers recruits Chris for one last mission. Instead of zombies, you fight mostly J’avo, a breed of terrorists using viruses to give themselves horrific limbs, and everything resembles a Call of Duty or SOCOM game, with Chris hearing instructions from his squad leader through his headpiece, ducking behind cover to shoot J’avos apart and generally being a weathered, grumpy soldier. The main theme of Chris’ campaign is actually removed from the overarching tale involving Simmons, and the focus is instead on the quieter, MANLY subplot about how all these years of fighting monstrosities has worn Mr. Redfield down. He needs to learn how to be a soldier once more, and Piers - a guy who I was initially suspicious of because he’s a pretty boy with nicely groomed hair, and those sorts are usually lame in Japanese video games - comes through as one of the most likable additions to Resident Evil lore in a long time to offer Chris much-needed support. The entire campaign might actually be better if played as Piers instead of Chris, especially due to a touching ending scene which is probably the one moment where the game’s plot transcends crazy horror action and enters the realm of something actually thought-provoking. Chris’ campaign, in general, is also where RE6 seems the most focused and confident, though the cover shooting mechanics are clunky when compared to titles that actually specialize in cover shooting, like Gears of War. Chris also doesn’t have Funky Zombie Porno Breakbeats for his ending music, so Leon gets a tiny point ahead of him in my book, but not by much. 

Jake’s campaign - I’ve read a few reviews that call this campaign the “experimental” one, and…yeaaaaah, it is. Jake, who’s the son of former Resident Evil baddie Albert Wesker, was presumably designed to serve as a bold new protagonist for future games, but he’s kind of an emo douchebag, so I played through the entirety of his missions as his partner Sherry Birkin. Sherry’s the little girl from Resident Evil 2 all grown up, which I think is genius, because she serves as a tangible example of this franchise’s progression over the years. You could probably show her picture to anyone unfamiliar with Resident Evil and be like, “That’s a formerly 10-year-old side character from the second game grown up into a secret agent” and get a response of "Woah, cool,” so yeah, I like Sherry a lot. In fact, her presence made this whole campaign tolerable, because Jake is an edgelord and his missions run the confused gamut from shoot ‘em up sections to weird exploration bits that seem to want to channel the spirit of the old games but don’t succeed. Then there are the stealth and chase sequences against Ustanak, the “hulking Serbian mutation” that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. This fellow was clearly created to remind Resident Evil veterans of Mr. X and Nemesis from RE2 and RE3, but while those guys would break down walls and pop outta nowhere to put a lump in your throat, Ustanak’s every impending arrival is advertised from a mile away, to the point where he’s not really frightening - just redundant. And the stealth bits against him seem like B-tier ripoffs of sequences in Metal Gear Solid, because RE6′s engine is really not engineered for sneakiness. At one point, Sherry and Jake have to hide in garbage dumpsters as Ustanak sniffs around, and that serves as an accurate representation of what large portions of their campaign are. These two kiddies do get a cheesy love ballad for their ending song, though, because the game really wants you to ship ‘em. Sherry, ya deserve better. 

Ada’s campaign - As messy as Jake’s campaign is, however, it’s nothing compared to Ada’s, which was originally an unlockable extra in the original release of RE6 and designed to tie up loose story threads. It does do that, though the resulting plot - where Simmons got so obsessed with Ada Wong that he whipped up an entirely new virus to re-create her and then lost track of it - is pretty meh, though it could perhaps be an intriguing exploration of the depths of male entitlement in the hands of a better writer. Aside from these pieces of so-so story, Ada’s adventure offers aggravation in the form of bad level design and a truly horrid slew of Quicktime Events and wretched stealth sections, which, once again, this game just doesn’t do well. It opens with her investigating a sub filled with guards that she’s encouraged to sneak past, except you can’t really sneak in RE6 and eventually they all notice and decide to gangbang you, and then the sub floods and there’s dizzying shaky cam everywhere that made me feel sick. You’re given a minimal amount of seconds to succeed on the Quicktime Events to escape the rising floodwaters, and I felt like I was playing a game of Dragon’s Lair, where you need to press right or left immediately or risk seeing yourself die over and over again. That sums up the frustration of Ada’s campaign, which also made me realize one important thing - I really don’t find Ada Wong to be much of an interesting character. She’s little more than a walking femme fatale trope, and even people who insist on shipping her with Leon will probably have to admit that those two’s “relationship,” if you can even call it that, is little more than quick winks and five minute interactions that have amounted to nothing over the span of nearly twenty years. The pair of them get ONE good scene on a bridge in this game, but that’s it, and honestly, their cornball kiss near the end of RE2 is still a more genuine character interaction. Oh yeah, and on the topic of ending music, since I seem to be coming back to that a lot in this post, Ada gets generic filler tunes for her credit roll. How appropriate. 

As you can see in the impressions above, in its own special way, Resident Evil 6 has something for everyone, ranging from a quality tale about battle-hardened men shooting biomutations to terrible levels that feel like they came out of a 2005 PS2 game that was quickly relegated to the bargain bin at Gamestop. Reviews were all over the place when this sucker came out, and still are today, with just as many people insisting that this game is the shit as there are people emphasizing that it is shit. My verdict? It’s BOTH, with some truly excellent parts and some truly abhorrent ones. It could have done with some trimming, for sure, and at the end of the day, Leon’s and Chris’ campaigns feel like the only real important ones here. A streamlined and likely better-received version of Resident Evil 6 would’ve only focused on those two guys - since one pivotal scene where the pair meet for a few minutes, briefly scuffle and POINT THEIR GUNS AT EACH OTHER YEAAA FAN SERVICE - seems to have been written first. That would’ve given Resident Evil 6 a better balance, with Leon’s missions possibly focusing on old school survival horror and pulp while Chris’ missions would lean hard on the military action stuff. 

But we didn’t get that. Instead, what we got is a shambling whopper of a game - at times as unwieldy and ridiculous as the enemy bearing the same name, at other times just as satisfying as a real-life beef whopper. Resident Evil 6 is both good and bad, the video game equivalent of an excessive and expensive comic book crossover, and shit, I think I’ve just written the most about it than any of its predecessors.

That, at the very least, has to count for something.

All screenshots taken by me. For more, check out this Twitter thread showing my step-by-step progress through the game.

Animated bloody tears, part two

The second season of the Castlevania Netflix series was released a few days ago (you can read my thoughts on season one here) and after watching all eight episodes yesterday, I can say that I am very, very satisfied. As a Castlevania fan for the last 20 years, this is probably as good a television adaption of the source material (originating from a 10+ years old Warren Ellis script!) that we could’ve hoped to get, and in many ways, Castlevania Netflix surpasses its source material by delving into the subtleties of the battle between Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, Alucard and Dracula in ways that the games never were able to. 

The expanded episode count this season really gives the showrunners a chance to explore Dracula’s previously unseen court of vampires and the intricacies of his war on humanity, for instance. The writers pull from a source that I didn’t think they’d touch - Curse of Darkness, a PS2 semi-sequel to Castlevania III that is usually viewed as one of the forgettable 3D entries in the series - and bring us versions of devil forgemasters Hector and Isaac that are far more interesting than their relatively simplistic in-game equivalents. Hector is less of the hero that he was in Curse of Darkness and more of a naive man whose tendency to only care about his work lets him be easily manipulated by Carmilla, a female vampire who served as mid-boss fodder in the games but has been elevated here into a full-on coup plotter in Dracula’s court who curses the indecisive “man-children” around her. Isaac, who has thus far only been known for having the worst design in the entire Castlevania series, has been changed into a Moor whose loyalty to Dracula is inspired by a warped sense of love, devotion and hatred for a world that sold him into slavery, making him a million times more engaging than his original depiction, which could basically be boiled down to “annoyingly Goth” and “crazy.” 

The main trio of Belmont, Belnades and half-vampire Tepes receive better characterization than the first season’s measly four episodes could offer as well. The storied legacy of Trevor’s famous family gets much attention, especially as a large portion of this season sees our heroes in the ancestral Belmont library researching a way to access Dracula’s castle. (There’s a picture of Leon Belmont visible as they enter, lovingly re-interpreted from Ayami Kojima’s Lament of Innocence artwork in an example of the best possible fanservice - of which this show has a lot of.) The relationship between Sypha and Trevor that later leads to marriage, children and the Belmont clan being imbued with magical abilities receives the most development it has ever gotten, and Alucard, while initially seeming aloof and distant like his strong-silent-pretty-boy personality in Symphony of the Night, receives some of the most touching scenes as he ruminates upon his mixed heritage and disturbing mission to commit patricide. The final battle between Alucard and Dracula, where we finally see the consequences of a mad father trying to destroy his son, is something I’ve wanted to see Castlevania tackle for years, and none of the games have been able to do so - with the possible exception of the flawed Lords of Shadow sub-series, which I admittedly like more than most people but agree is full of missed potential.

And then there’s Dracula himself. I’ve been reading message board analyses, and one of the refrains echoed by many viewers is how the show succeeds at making Dracula into a relatable antagonist, which is something none of the games were ever skilled enough to pull off, though Lords of Shadow did come close. Here, he’s a far cry from the power-hungry final boss sitting in a chair drinking a glass of blood at the last level after the Clock Tower - he’s a tired old man who’s so deeply depressed after the demise of his wife that all he knows how to do is subconsciously commit the world’s most elongated suicide attempt by waging war against humankind. Like Black Panther’s Killmonger, another recent memorable villain in popular media, Netflix Castlevania’s Dracula is now receiving his very own “DRACULA DID NOTHING WRONG” memes, and depending on how you view the events of the series, you may very well agree with that statement. 

Any complaints that I have with season two are small when compared to my appreciation for what the showrunners managed to pull off. It can be a slow burn occasionally reminiscent of an episode of House of Cards at times, with way more scenes of vampires sitting around politicking than you would expect from an animated feature. (Though, as someone who’s recently been learning how to play the tabletop RPG Vampire: The Masquerade, which has an entire social combat mechanic where the vampires literally talk each other into submission, perhaps this was appropriate.) I would’ve also liked to see a scene or two actually showing us Alucard’s childhood interactions with his father - there’s a hint of this in the final episode, but unfortunately nothing concrete. 

Aside from those nitpicks, however, Castlevania is undoubtedly the best videogame-to-screen adaption ever. This admittedly isn’t a high bar to pass, but judging by the number of non-Castlevania fans who are exploring the games for the first time thanks to the majesty of the show, it’s safe to say that the folks who made this get why this long-running franchise has resonated with people over the years. There’s one particular scene in episode seven that everyone is talking about - where Trevor, Sypha and Alucard storm Dracula’s castle and finally, we hear a true Castlevania tune cascade in. You can view it here and here, and Bloody Tears sounds magical as whips, spells and swords fly through a horde of enemies. This series is a certain flavor of dark magic as well. I highly, highly recommend it.

All screencaps taken by yours truly.