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noddytheornithopod · 3 years

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Today on Danganronpa S... oh, the discourse lightning rod.

Chihiro

Seriously if anyone tries to start discourse here when I just wanna chronicle these events, may I kindly ask you to shut the hell up and leave me alone.

Chihiro begins the camp by saying it could finally be a chance to be their true self.

Sonia and Shirokuma think Chihiro did an amazing job programming everything, which naturally flusters them causes them to respond humbly. Sonia then thinks about how without everyone around her in Novoselic, she’d just be a normal person, she’s only considered an Ultimate BECAUSE of her relation to other people. Sonia actually struggles to imagine herself without her kingdom amazingly, knowing about how she often wishes she had a normal life. Chihiro also struggles imagining being anything other than a programmer. Shirokuma then wonders what changes leave a person the same vs making them become a new person.

Chihiro is looking at tech at a shop, and Jataro asks why they wouldn’t know about it if they’re the one who made the world. Chihiro is humble of course, but Jataro is kinda jealous. Chihiro suggests Jataro could make his own place, which inspires him. Jataro while saying no adults allowed says maybe Chihiro could get a pass and see what he makes (even tho he said he makes disturbing stuff lol, Chihiro didn’t comment on that) cuz they’re, but Chihiro is kinda caught off guard cuz of insecurities about being weak, and insists they are one.

Mondo has a bit of gender confusion, even knowing Chihiro’s secret, probably cuz of the androgynous swimsuit design. Chihiro says it’s fine and they chose the look themselves. Mondo then mentions the camp could be a good chance for Chihiro to basically come out. Chihiro wants to, but is still afraid to, Mondo even mentions that Tenko would lose it if Chihiro was out as male. Chihiro even says they’ll apologise to her once they’ll tell everyone. Mondo understandably thinks Tenko is too hard on guys and thinks SHE should apologise if Chihiro admits their secret, and someone will probably snap at her one day. Chihiro says they hope it isn’t Mondo, and Mondo compares her to an annoying dog, lol. Chihiro ultimately decides they should try and come out despite their fear, and Chihiro even says Mondo’s training helped their confidence in who they are a bit. Chihiro starts thinking about how to approach it, then... Masaru? Masaru is all “OMG GIRL AND BOY IN BATH TOGETHER, HOW SCANDALOUS” and runs off to tell on them, and Mondo’s naturally pissed that Masaru’s gonna fuck things up. Chihiro apologises as Masaru leaves. Gosh, you gotta feel for Chihiro. I legit love how supportive Mondo is tho, I love we have this more caring side to him that’s supporting Chihiro. Also, fuck Masaru for promoting heteronormativity. :v

Hajime and Chihiro are talking about the workings of the Neo World, and Leon is like “nerds”. Leon is more interested in what he can do here, and is surprised at how normal it is besides the Monobeasts. Chihiro feels bad, but Leon says it’s not their fault. Hajime wonders what Monokuma even is, and Chihiro and Leon mention how they were always there and they just got used to them being around. Hajime wonders why they’d try to hinder students if they’re Hope’s Peak creations, and Chihiro wishes they could get a look at Monokuma’s programming, though that’s easier said than done. Leon is then all “shit guys cut the chatter we gotta eat” and is embarrassed that even he got into the conversation, lol.

Chihiro and Kirumi are up late working. Alter Ego comes up, and Kirumi finds it pretty impressive, which embarrasses Chihiro. Kirumi then mentions how important AI is and because of that Chihiro’s gonna be really important for the world, which embarrasses them even more. As poor Chihiro is getting more and more flustered, Kirumi says she’s willing to help anytime. Chihiro thanks her, but isn’t sure if that was the right thing to say. Thinking about it, knowing about how Kirumi is, I think she could actually be a safe person to admit their secret to, because Kirumi would definitely do anything she can to support them, or keep it secret if it’s just her.

Chihiro wonders about creating an AI specifically designed to be kind, and goes to Monomi for reference. Monomi is happy to help!

Chihiro wonders if normal people would even care about AIs, but Hiroko is there to help. She mentions even just having them around as some to talk to could be nice, and Chihiro feels inspired to continue on Alter Ego.

Chihiro asks Korekiyo if AIs would come into their research if they keep growing a larger place in humanity. Korekiyo is actually already quite interested, and mentions Alter Ego... specifically mentioning that the AI could emulate the personality of someone deceased. Even besides his own personal interests, he thinks it could change how we interact with death. Chihiro wonders what their work could do for Kiyo, and they continue to chat more, Kiyo being interested in how Chihiro sees things. Okay, this is an unexpected friendship I’m digging. Also, let’s be real... the whole controversy about Korekiyo’s relationship with his sister aside... maybe this could actually help him, maybe even get him to stop killing people if he has a way to help process this trauma if his more properly.

Kazuichi is saying if he can see how Keebo is built, he might be able to let him float so he can swim. Chihiro even says they’ll make a backup of his AI system. Keebo is nervous tho, saying he feels awkward if it isn’t Professor Idabashi or Miu tinker with him even if he trusts these two enough (Kiiruma shippers, you have food). Chihiro then says it definitely takes courage to expose oneself to others... very fitting. Kazuichi insists there’s a way they could do it though, even saying there’s ways to make metal float, even saying Keebo could become the first swimming robot... which tempts Keebo. Chihiro says change can only come if you want it. Unfortunately, Kaz says he’d probably have to completely remodel Keebo, which means this is a pass.

Fuyuhiko seems to be thinking about working out, and Chihiro catches him. Chihiro is scouting locations for training themselves, and Fuyu is naturally surprised. Chihiro is similarly surprised about Fuyu. He’s also curious cuz Chihiro’s talent doesn’t even require physical strength, and Chihiro replies saying they thought it was natural to want to get stronger, and that they hope to get closer to their ideal self. Fuyuhiko then mentions his own insecurities, feeling like he’s weaker than the people who serve him. Fuyu then feels embarrassed admitting these things, but Chihiro assures him it’s fine. Legit surprised I didn’t think about these two interacting, because now the parallels in what they struggle with in regards to masculinity are now impossible to unsee.

Chihiro goes to Nekomaru for advice! Nekomaru can actually tell Chihiro has changed since starting at HP, citing things like posture and the way they walk showing more confidence and less shy computer nerd hunched over all day (I feel called out lol). Nekomaru says muscles aren’t everything, and Chihiro does feel encouraged by Nekomaru’s words. Chihiro also wants to see if he has anything for Mondo (even as Nekomaru says he’s noticed he’s even buffer now), and Nekomaru is willing to help.

Chihiro admires Sakura being buff. Sakura recognises the compliment, but then she ends up implying about how people have underestimated her because of her gender. Chihiro laments they also find it unfortunate that people judge and make assumptions because of gender. Sakura continues to pursue things even when there’s naysayers just to prove them wrong. Interesting, very different issues, yet also very similar in other ways.

Chihiro with Mondo again! And... Tenko? Hoo boy. Chihiro already seems nervous, and Tenko’s yet again saying shit about how it sucks they have to share the ocean with degenerate males. Mondo is tired of Tenko’s shit... provoking her even more. Mondo... actually stops and decides it’s not worth wasting his time with her. According to Mondo, Tenko provokes him a lot, actually? He apologises, but Chihiro actually feels pretty bad because they hate seeing people say shit about Mondo, as well as the guilt of feeling like they’re lying to Tenko. Chihiro gets along with Tenko and is really afraid of her finding out the truth. Mondo thinks they shouldn’t worry about her, but that’s easier said than done of course. Tenko interrupts, because of course she does. Tenko is naturally concerned about Chihiro, but she’s so rooted in her prejudices she basically assumes Mondo was making them talk to him. Chihiro actually speaks up, saying Mondo is their friend. Tenko just says he probably made her say that... gosh, how dense is this poor girl? And then... Chihiro actually gets pissed off for a moment. Tenko is surprised, and Chihiro says despite her prejudices, she shouldn’t talk like that. But then... Chihiro says if she doesn’t like “us”, them and Mondo should just leave. They do, and Tenko is confused... only to just conclude that they’re a tomboy, and seems happy for them? Well, that was a massive crisis nearly averted. I was on the edge of my seat this entire interaction, and honestly I even was starting to tear up, because I think Tenko with her gender essentalism is tragically forcing similar problems onto Chihiro as the people who bullied them did. Tenko has the best of intentions of course, but assuming males all have to be a certain way and that specifically is a harmful version of masculinity funnily enough is just recreating these expectations of toxic masculinity, IMO.

Oh, a scene with Taka! He apparently did a mime show for the festival. Chihiro isn’t sure why they did things irrelevant to their talents, but at least it was fun.

Ryoma is in the distance alone, but says it’s fine for Chihiro to sit beside him. They then talk about how the Monokubs are doing nice things for them at this moment (well, besides those side stories I assume :V).

Hey, it’s Makoto! He’s at the beach because apparently some of the boys are planning on a barbecue. Chihiro is willing to join in, and they just chill for a bit as they watch the fireworks show.

Whoa, bonfire time, and Chihiro... actually comes out to their class. Chihiro thanks Mondo, but Mondo assures them that they’re strong and THAT’S why they could do it. Mondo always treated Chihiro like they were capable, and that really helped their courage. Mondo then says they should actually be the one thanking Chihiro, but puts that aside cuz it’s their moment. I wonder if he was going to say Chihiro helped him be a kinder, more sensitive person? Also Chihiro calls Mondo their best friend. :’)

Chihiro wonders if Kyoko figured it out... she says she had suspicions, but actually nothing concrete to confirm them? Chihiro asks what hunch she got, and Kyoko says it was their demeanour around the other boys, and that they’d be more hesitant being around the girls. She thought Chihiro may have just been shy, but she couldn’t help but find her comfort around boys to mean something. She found it odd to her that a girl would behave like that (Kyoko look I know you were raised with very strict gender boundaries but come on lol). Chihiro mentions some activities they just couldn’t do around girls, and worries they now seem like a creep. Kyoko assures them it’s not like that, and is just happy to finally understand what all this meant. Chihiro actually seems to feel less hesitant talking to others now, I assume that includes the girls too.

Mukuro is staring at Chihiro, claiming it’s just wondering how Chihiro has their face even without makeup. Chihiro apologises naturally, but Mukuro actually says they should be even more bold. Mukuro contrasts their personalities, and Chihiro says if they WERE a girl and were like “Junko”, they’d be fearless. Mukuro then offers Chihiro advice on how to look, maybe even makeovers, and Chihiro is down (not sure if it’s about continuing to look feminine or making a new masculine look, it’s nice either way tho). It’s never said, but especially with the prompt line, it’s clear Mukuro’s mind is actually at Chihiro being able to admit such a big secret about themselves, maybe wishing she could have the courage to do the same and be herself, too.

Reminiscing about the future... starting with how lavish HP is, and Fuyuhiko saying that they could probably polish a turd into a talent. :v Keebo boasts that living alongside him probably helped Chihiro’s studies, and even if Fuyu says it’s egotistical, Chihiro says beings like him and the Monokubs definitely helped. Keebo is really flattered... but isn’t sure how to feel about being grouped with the Kubs. Chihiro is optimistic about the potential of AI and how it and humans can be friends, and thanks him. Wow, Keebo is... really flustered. Even Fuyu is impressed, and wonders if robots could have souls, as Keebo is about to comment Chihiro enthusiastically responds, lol. They seem unsure, but are still optimistic and positive either way. Chihiro also seems to recognise Idabashi, and Keebo is happy to introduce them. Even Fuyuhiko offers to help... by dealing with anyone who steals or sabotages their work, lol.

Scene with Leon from before but now with Kamukura. Izuru laments that Monokuma basically was able to sabotage things from the inside despite everything being accounted for outside. Chihiro apologises, and Kamukura thinks about how even friends could betray you. Izuru then accuses of Leon avoiding to think, to which he just says he kinda is freaked out by him sometimes. Chihiro wonders if they’re too trusting and believe in everyone, Leon says not to worry tho. Chihiro actually thanks them both, appreciating Izuru’s bluntness and deciding that pure trust isn’t always ideal for friendship.

We end with Chihiro happy to have friends and hopes this virtual world can serve as a thanks to them.

#drs spoilers #danganronpa spoilers #danganronpa s #ultimate summer camp

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strangeandforlornbooks · 4 years

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best books with morally ambiguous narrators!

all y’all’s problematic faves and villains! :) also included are third person narrators but in books with morally ambiguous leads/themes

Sci-fi

Scythe by Neal Shusterman: in a future free from pain, disease, and war, people can live forever. ‘scythes’ are given the power to decide who lives and who dies to preserve the balance. sad and kinda gives of hunger games vibes, if you like that.

Neuromancer by William Gibson: basically invented the cyberpunk genre. strange and removed protagonists. (a team of computer hackers have to face off against an evil AI). you kind of dislike everyone and suddenly you’re crying over them. one of those trippy sci-fi classics.

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut: very beautiful and very very sad (same author as slaughterhouse five). the richest man in america has to face a martian invasion. more about free will and bad people doing good things than a plot that makes any kind of sense.

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick: set in an alternate universe where the germans and japanese won world war two. not really like the tv show at all- it’s not an action story, and there’s not really the hope to somehow fix the world that drives a lot of dystopia stories. instead its about how people survive and connect to one another in a hopeless society.

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow: a supercomputer convinces the leaders of the world to keep the peace for hundreds of years by taking their children hostage and obliterating any city that disobeys. what happens to the hostage protagonists when war seems inevitable? lots of morally fraught decisions and characters slowly losing their identity. (plus a fun lesbian romance)

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson: a brilliant mathematician and a dedicated marine fight to keep the ultra secret in world war two. fifty years later, a tech company discovers what remains of their story. one of the most memorable sequences in the book is a japanese soldier slowly becoming disillusioned with his nation and horrified by the war even as he continues to fight.

Blade Runner by Philip K. Dick: another one of those sci-fi classics that’s not at all like the movie. there is a bounty hunter for robots, though, as well as a weird religion that probably is referencing catholicism and a decaying society with a shortage of pets. kind of a trip.

Wilder Girls by Rory Power: girls trapped in a boarding school on an isolated island must face a creeping rot that affects the animals and plants on the island as well as their own bodies. the protagonists will do anything to survive and keep each other safe. very tense (and bonus lesbian romance whoo)

The Fifth Season by N K Jemisin: three women are gifted with the ability to control the earth’s energy in a world where those who can do so are forced into hiding or slavery. some veryyyy dark choices here but lots of strong female characters.

Historical Fiction

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters: two victorian lesbians fall in love as they plot to betray each other in horrific ways. lots of plot twists, plucky thieves, gothic settings, and a great romance.

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiwicz: a powerful roman soldier in the time of Nero plots to kidnap a young woman after he falls in love with her, only to learn more about the mysterious christian religion she follows. very melodramatic but some terrific prose.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: a blind girl in France and a brilliant German boy recruited by the military struggle through the chaos of the second world war. ends with a bang (iykyk.) very sad, reads like poetry.

Boxers by Gene Luen Yang: graphic novel reveals the story of a young boy fighting in the boxer rebellion in early twentieth century china. the sequel, saints, is also excellent. beautifully and sympathetically shows the protagonist’s descent into evil- the reader really understands each step along the way.

Fantasy

Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake: three triplets separated at birth, each with their own magical powers, have to fight to the death to gain the throne. lots of fun honestly

Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo: everyone in these books is highly problematic but you love them all anyway. a ragtag game of criminals plan a heist on a magical fortress. some terrific tragic back stories, repressed feelings, and revenge schemes.

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King: idk how to describe these frankly but if you can put up with King’s appalling writing of female characters they’re pretty interesting. fantasy epic about saving the world/universe, sort of. cowboys and prophecies and overlapping dimensions and drug addicts galore.

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud: lots of fun! a twelve year old decides to summon a demon for his cute lil revenge scheme. sarcastic demon narrator. lighthearted until s*** gets real suddenly.

Elegy and Swansong by Vale Aida: fantasy epic with machiavellian lesbians and enemies to lovers to enemies to ??? to lovers. charming and exciting and lovely characters.

The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen: an orphan boy must compete with a few others for the chance to impersonate a dead prince. really dark but very tense and exciting and good twists.

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu: fantasy epic. heroes overthrow an evil empire and then struggle as the revolution dissolves into warring factions. interesting world building and three dimensional characters, even if they only have a small part.

Circe by Madeline Miller: the story behind the witch who turns men into pigs in the odyssey. madeline miller really said, i just used my classics degree to write a beautiful gay love story and now im going to write a powerful feminist retelling because i can. queen. an amazing and satisfying book that kills me a lil bit because of the two lines referencing the song of achilles.

Heartless by Marissa Meyer: the tragic backstory for the queen of hearts in alice in wonderland. a little predictable but very fun with a compelling protagonist

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George RR Martin: ok I know we all hate GRRM and rightfully so but admittedly these books do have some great characters and great scenes. they deserve better than GRRM though. also he will probably never finish the books anyway....

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket: not really fantasy but not really anything else either. plucky, intelligent, and kind children fight off evil plots for thirteen books until suddenly you realize the world is not nearly as black and white as you thought.

Classics

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: gothic romance!! a new wife is curious about the mysterious death of her predecessor in a creepy old house in the British countryside...good twists and lovely prose.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles: not really morally ambiguous but one awful decision suddenly has awful consequences and certain people are haunted by guilt forever.... really really really beautiful and really really really sad. boys in a boarding school grow up together under the shadow of world war two.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: while imperial russia slowly decays a beautiful young woman begins a destructive affair. a long book. very russian. the ending is incredibly tense and well written.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding: I think you know the plot to this one. the prose is better than you remember and the last scene is always exciting.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie: one by one, the guests on an island are slowly picked off. one of Christie’s darkest mysteries- no happy ending here! very tense and great twists.

Contemporary

The Secret History by Donna Tartt: inspired the whole dark academia aesthetic. college students get a little too into ancient greece and it does not end very well. lovely prose but I found the characters unlikable.

Honorable Mentions

The Dublin Saga by Edward Rutherford: has literally a billion protagonists, but some of them are morally ambiguous ig? follows a few families stories’ from the 400s ad to irish independence in the 20s. beautifully captures the weight and movement of irish history.

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer: how morally ambiguous can you be if you’re, like, eleven? a lot if you’re a criminal genius who wants to kidnap a fairy for your evil-ish plan apparently!

Redemption by Leon Uris: literally my favorite novel ever. the sequel to Trinity but can stand alone. various irish families struggle through the horrors of world war one. the hero isn’t really morally ambiguous, but the main theme of the novel is extremely bad people suddenly questioning their choices and eventually redeeming themselves. sweeping themes of love, screwed up families, redemption, and patriotism.

The Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolo by Dorothy Dunnett: heroes redeem themselves/try to get rich/try to save their country in early renaissance Europe. if I actually knew what happened in these books I'm sure it would be morally ambiguous but its too confusing for me. in each book you spend at least a third convinced the protagonist is evil, though. lots of exciting sword fights, tragic romances, plot twists, and kicking english butt.

Bonus: Protagonist is less morally ambiguous and more very screwed up and sad all the time

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt: you know this one bc its quoted in all those quote compilations. basically the story of how one horrible event traumatizes a young man and how he develops a connection to a painting. really really really good.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: hard to describe but strange... not an action novel or a dystopia really but sort of along those lines. very hopeless.

#book recs #morally ambiguous protagonists #dark academia #book recommendations #mine

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killscreencinema · 5 years

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Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

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Every time I think I’ve officially retired my PSP, I discover I game that is exclusive to the console that PULLS me back in.

Valkyria Chronicles II, developed by Sega for the PSP in 2010, certainly pulled me back in and then some. The game takes place a couple years after the first, with the country of Gallia in the midst of a civil war which erupted after the revelation that the Gallian ruler, Arch-Duchess Cordelia, is a Darcsen. The Darcsens are a race of people with dark-blue hair, which history wrongly vilifies for the destruction of the world thousands of years ago until the godlike Valkyrur defeated them. While the civil war rages, a young man named Avon enrolls into Lanseal, Gallia’s most prestigious military school, to follow in the footsteps of his heroic brother Leon and hopefully uncover the secrets surrounding his death. However, the curriculum barely begins before Avon and his class of cadets are drafted into real military engagements.

That’s where you come in!

The game plays exactly like the first, with missions split between an overhead tactical map showing you the positions of your troops in relation to enemies and 3rd-person turned based action sequences where you move your troops into position before attacking the enemy. You have a finite amount of Command Points to use up before it’s the enemies turn to retaliate, which you can use to move/attack or to issue “Orders” that can increase defense/offense, give you a more thorough area reconnaissance of the map, or even call-in an artillery strike against the enemy.

After each battle, you return to Lanseal to level up your troops, develop new weapons, or just interact with your squadmates in little character vignettes that eventually lead to special missions that can increase your relationship to that soldier as well as awaken new “Potentials” in them. Potentials are battlefield statuses that are specific in each character and can be triggered while in action, with sometimes good effects, like automatic ammo or health refills, and sometimes bad effects, like one called “Stage Fright”, which causes your character to suddenly lose all Action Points while you’re in the middle of moving. Sometimes your characters are racist pricks, and will refuse to assist a comrade because they’re a Darcsen. However, if you spend the time to complete these character missions, they learn the error of their ways and a more helpful Potential replaces their racism.

Speaking of characters, the story of Valkryia Chronicles II is actually very decent and I enjoyed it more than the first game’s more generic plot. I’m a sucker for stories like this where a group of misfits in an academy setting are forced to overcome their differences to slowly bond in order to survive the war that is slowly encroaching on their doorstep. I mean you’ve got the heightened drama of being in high school, plus the life and death stakes of war! It’s why the Harry Potter books are so good! It also helps that the characters are so well defined, all with interesting quirks and backgrounds that set them apart from each other. If you take the time to watch the little skits in between missions, some of which are genuinely kind of funny, you begin to get attached to these characters.

Which makes it kind of a shame that the game “nerfs” the usual perma-death consequences typical in turned-based tactical games like this, and was in fact part of the first game. In the original Valkyria Chronicles, when a teammate falls in battle, you have a certain amount of time to extract them from battle before they die for good. These types of stakes really get you invested in the welfare of your squad, because you don’t want to lose your favorite sniper or that funny weird scout whose dialogue makes you laugh during every cut scene. In this game, though, there is no perma-death - if your squad mate expires on the battlefield, they are simply hospitalized and are unplayable for a brief period of time until they are discharged. I get that having characters drop dead during a tightly scripted narrative like this would have been a pain in the ass for the developers to factor in. Not to mention it would suck for the player, since you can’t simply just pluck a new sniper from an infinite pool of rookies to replace your fallen one, which could eventually result in a soft game over if you get far into the game but don’t have enough classmates left to have a reasonable chance of winning a mission. So I get why perma-death wasn’t brought over into this game, but I still missed the ominous cloud of it lingering over every battle, keeping me from being too reckless with my soldier’s lives.

My only other complaint is the computer AI can be rather... capricious. It vacillates between rock stupid to shrewdly opportunistic, which I can only assume levels out more if I played the game on a harder difficulty. The computer also has the unfair disadvantage of playing with one arm tied behind its back, so to speak, in that it can only use an action point for one character per turn (with the exception of Valkyrurs and boss characters). So for example, there have been many moments when an enemy scout made it within a few feet of my basecamp before its action points ran out, and would have won the battle had the computer been able to select that unit again to close the rest of the distance, but it couldn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I was GREATLY relieved not to lose, but this feels a little like playing chess with a patronizing opponent who could have checkmated you several moves back but wanted to give you a chance. Fuck that shit - I want to win because I’m good enough to win, not because my opponent was stymied in some way.

This is a very minor complaint, though, as the game is plenty challenging, and I racked up enough game overs where I threw my PSP once or twice.

With bright, crisp graphics and a excellent soundtrack to round out the experience, Valkyria Chronicles II was well worth dusting off the PSP for. The game can be pretty pricey, but if you can snag it for its retail value or cheaper, it’s absolutely worth it, especially if you’re a fan of the first game or of this genre of games in general.

#valkyria chronicles #psp #sony #rpg #turned based #tactical #video games #portable #retro #retrogaming #anime #sega

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pixelgrotto · 6 years

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The horrific Resident Evil playthrough, interlude three

I just finished watching all of the Resident Evil movies I could get my hands on. When I told people I was doing this as the last part of my great year-long playthrough, they all let out groans and said something along the lines of, “Ugh, don’t you wanna end on a good note?” Undaunted by these words and fueled by my ability to tolerate crappy cinema, I moved forward, courageously making it through nine of these suckers...which, to be fair, ranged from surprisingly enjoyable to just as terrible as everyone warned me about.

Before I begin, it’s important to note that we’re dealing with two separate film series here. There’s director Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil Hollywood films, which are the ones that most people know about. Then there are three Japanese-made CG movies that are canon and co-exist alongside the stories of the games. The Anderson movies are...mostly ass. The Japanese ones are okay.

Let us start with the ass first.

Resident Evil - The first RE film came out in 2002, which means that what little CG it has is laughably dated and it’s refreshingly small-scale when compared to its sequels. The movie’s a fan fiction remix of some themes from Resident Evil 1, except with none of the characters from the games present. Instead, we have Paul W.S. Anderson’s wife Milla Jovovich taking center stage as Alice, the former head of Umbrella security in a secret base called the Hive that goes to hell when some dude tries to steal viruses. The entirety of the action takes place in the Hive, and we get a surprisingly tiny number of monsters, with just your garden variety zombies, a few Cerberus and a single Licker showing up. Even though she does run up a wall and kick a Cerberus in the face, Alice is at her most realistic here (she turns into a dual wielding mutant with the ability to make the camera go into slow-motion whenever she wants in all the other films), there’s a nifty laser grid scene that all the sequels keep referencing when they want you to feel nostalgic, and the Hive’s sentient AI, the Red Queen, is compelling enough that Capcom eventually stuck her in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. Aside from this movie being full of British actors who do REALLY awful American accents, sounding like they all have mouths full of sausages, Paul W.S. Anderson’s first take on Resident Evil is probably the most watchable one he made.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse - Okay, this one is watchable too, but in more of a popcorn-munching “lol, this shit is dumb” way. It steals the general plot of Resident Evils 2 and 3, with Raccoon City getting infected, but ups the cheese by a hundred. Alice is now a thirteen-year-old boy’s version of a BADAZZ woman, with lots of guns and a bare midriff, and she teams up with Jill Valentine, who resembles her game self in looks but not exactly in personality. Together, they’ve gotta escape Raccoon City along with Carlos Oliveira, who is possibly the only character from the games who is done a great service in these Anderson movies, which make him much more likable even if they couldn’t find an actual Hispanic actor to portray him and had to settle for an Israeli instead. Oh, and Nemesis shows up, because one of the dudes from the first movie who accompanied Alice into the Hive gets experimented on and turned into what honestly looks like someone’s Halloween costume. The writers commit a cardinal sin at the end of the flick by humanizing him, having him suddenly remember his TRUE SELF and help the good guys, but aside from that screw-up I admit that I had a goofy grin on my face throughout several parts of this movie. After Nemesis blows up the Raccoon City station and murmurs his one line of dialogue- “STARRRRRSSSS” - I even kinda felt like clapping. So yeah, Apocalpyse is idiotic fun.

Resident Evil: Extinction - Here’s where the movies stop being mildly entertaining and become varying degrees of either “meh” or just plain bad. Extinction’s biggest problem is that it makes the weird decision of having the entire PLANET be wiped nearly completely clean by Umbrella’s virus, giving the franchise the most generic setting imaginable for a zombie flick - a post-apocalyptic world. And even though this film features Claire Redfield and actually has Alice fight a Tyrant that looks the part, I feel that by turning the environment into Mad Max the filmmakers missed the entire point of the franchise. Resident Evil isn’t really about a “what if” scenario with mankind dying and zombies taking over the world. Instead, it’s about how humanity manages to cope in a time where zombies are used by corporations for terrorism purposes - hence the franchise’s “bio-organic weapon” catch-phrase for its creatures. It’s about how brave people live on in an era that just happens to feature biopunk monsters as a deadly fact of life. It’s about the evil that resides within a world that is pretty shitty, but hasn’t completely gone to shit. By turning the whole planet into the same ol’ zombie playground that we see in most popular fiction starring these workman-like horror tropes, Extinction - which probably thought it was upping the stakes - instead just feels sorta dull, and anyone who views the film today is probably going to see it as a weaker version of The Walking Dead. Oh, and it ends with Alice discovering clones of herself, which will only serve to screw with the loose continuity of these movies as they go on.

Resident Evil: Afterlife - This one starts with Alice’s clones raiding the Umbrella facility in Tokyo, and the whole sequence - which feels like it should be the finale - is reduced to a few minutes of special effects in the beginning. (This is foreshadowing for the next two films, which both end with hints of giant, climatic battles that mostly happen off-screen, if at all.) The first thing that I noticed when watching this was how slow-mo kicked in every five minutes and how the camera seemed to linger on bullets, and I eventually remembered that this film was released during Hollywood’s obsession with 3D during the early 2010s. This explains Afterlife’s IN-YOUR-FACE-IN-THREE-DIMENSIONS action scenes, which are initially pretty in a music video sort of way but become overdone and tiresome as the movie goes on, kinda like a Zack Snyder film. (I place Paul W.S. Anderson in the same “style over substance” category of director as both Zack Snyder and Michael Bay, by the way.) Anyway, Afterlife deals with Alice teaming up with more survivors to try to find a secret ship haven free of zombies. Along the way she runs into Chris Redfield, who looks more like a janitor than the jacked BSAA agent that he is in the games, and Chris and Claire Redfield have a quick sibling reunion and fight Wesker in a scene with choreography shamelessly stolen from Resident Evil 5. It’s pandering fan service and sort of diverting, but ultimately none of it matters. Chris disappears after this movie and is never seen again, and Afterlife is more interesting as a specimen of 2010 3D excess than it is as an actual narrative.

Resident Evil: Retribution - Retribution amps the pandering fan service that Afterlife dabbled in to new levels. Ada Wong is here, played by Li Bingbing but dubbed by her original voice actress, Sally Cahill, probably because Li’s English isn’t that great. Leon Kennedy and Barry frickin’ Burton show up, both looking pretty much like their in-game counterparts. Even Michelle Rodriguez and a few other faces from Paul W.S. Anderson’s first Resident Evil flick make an appearance, thanks to the fact that this movie has clones up the wazoo and uses them to handwave away any series inconsistencies you could think of. So you’re got fan service for the people who like the games and fan service for the folks who liked the first movie, and on top of it all the film has the extreme 3D that its predecessor possessed and a buttload of battles because it all takes place in a giant Umbrella simulation facility full of stuff that can easily be wrecked. By now the plot to these things has gotten more scrambled than my eggs in the morning, but I will say that thanks to its inclusion of classic characters, Retribution is more or less tolerable. There’s even a bit of characterization this time around, thanks to a little hearing-impaired clone girl who Alice takes under her wing and begins to care for, and the movie ends on an okay cliffhanger in a Washington DC under siege, promising epic things to come in the next movie. Unfortunately... Resident Evil: The Final Chapter - I really did not enjoy The Final Chapter for a myriad of reasons. First of all, the Washington battle promised at the end of Retribution never happens. Instead, we fast forward to several months later, when Alice is (big surprise) the only survivor, and EVERYONE she was with in the last flick - Ada, Leon, the little deaf girl - is gone and never mentioned ever again. Wesker, who Alice was working with in Retribution, is back to being a bad guy for poorly explained reasons. Another bad scientist dude that Alice killed in Extinction also returns for even worse reasons, because supposedly Alice only offed his clone three movies ago. But wait, this “real” bad scientist dude is also revealed to be a clone as the TRUE bad scientist dude shows up in the movie’s last act! AND THE ULTIMATE TWIST (look away now if you actually care about spoilers) is that Alice is HERSELF a clone of the original daughter of the Umbrella corporation’s founder who died of a degenerative disease and served as the basis for the Red Queen AI. The idiotic thing is that this daughter was said to be the progeny of Dr. Charles Ashford in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, but this movie retcons her to be the spawn of Dr. James Marcus. The Final Chapter, in fact, screws with continuity to a degree I have rarely seen before in a long-running film franchise. Yeah, the framework tying this series together got weird as soon as clones were introduced, but previously it seemed that Paul W.S. Anderson at least cared about his own messy fan fiction. Here? It’s like he forgot what he’d spent the last 15 years building up to and ended on one sloppy fart. If this weren’t bad enough, The Final Chapter is edited in that god awful “shaky cam, lots of fast cuts” way that I hate. In fact, I counted something like twenty cuts in a scene of a few seconds when Alice is attacked by a creature, which means that this film won’t just baffle you with its disregard for continuity - it’ll give you a headache too.

Resident Evil: Degeneration - After watching an array of live-action flicks that took random Resident Evil threads and mashed them together with the elegance of a splattered turd, it did feel good to switch things up and move to the CG movies that were actually put out by Capcom. This 2008 offering takes place in between Resident Evils 4 and 5, stars Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy, and deals with a virus breakout in an airport and some of the pharmaceutical company backstabbing that occurred in the aftermath of Umbrella’s destruction. It’s all stuff that feels like it could have come from a lesser gaiden game - perhaps in the same vein as the first Revelations title - and it kinda gives off that “so-so anime movie” vibe, especially because the dubbing always sounds a tad off. Nevertheless, Degeneration’s still a breath of fresh air compared to the Anderson series, and there’s a nice gag where Claire’s searching for a weapon in the airport, someone hands her a physical umbrella, and she looks at it and is like, “Hm, didn’t see this coming.” (Lollerskates.) The main issue I have with Degeneration is how “plasticky” everyone looks - it’s hard to realize how far computer animation has advanced in the last decade until you look at Degeneration’s stiff visuals and compare them to the other CG films. Also, Leon’s characterization is terrible. He’s meant to be a super serious badass, I guess, but he mostly just looks like someone rammed a Samurai Edge up his sphincter. I prefer my Leon Kennedy to be the “Don’t worry Ashley, I’m comin’ for ya!” version from Resident Evil 4, or at least a dude with a little sass to him. The guy in Degeneration is about as interesting as a board. Resident Evil: Damnation - Damnation is a noticeable step above Degeneration, both in computer animation, which really got better from 2008 to 2012, and in all-around presentation. The dubbing’s still somewhat wonky with that same anime movie vibe, but the characterization is on point, and Leon, who’s taking center stage once more, is just like his RE6 self. Speaking of RE6, this movie channels that game’s themes of international terrorism with a plot that involves rebels in a made-up Eastern European country using Lickers and Las Plagas in an effort to fight for their freedom, only to learn that lo and behold, the nefarious female president who’s seized control of their nation has her own B.O.W.s - in the form of Tyrants - at her disposal. Leon’s caught in the middle of this mess and ends up befriending some of the rebels, and Ada Wong’s also infiltrated the country to manipulate the president. Ada and Leon’s interactions are as insubstantial as they’ve been in pretty much every game that isn’t the recent RE2make, but we do get a cool fight between Ada and the president, who for some reason knows substantial knife fu. There’s an even better battle between Tyrants and Lickers in a city hall square, and Leon gets throw against pillars, regularly takes hits that would kill a normal person and pilots a tank alongside one of the rebels who looks a lot like Chris Redfield but isn’t Chris Redfield. This dude serves as the film’s sympathetic character - a guy torn from his peaceful existence thanks to political wrangling and is tricked into using B.O.W.s to try to achieve a brighter future. It ends with the fella severely injured but learning how to live and move forward in a world infected with nefarious bioweapons, which is the very theme that the Anderson flicks ditched around movie number three. So good work for side-stepping previous failures and recognizing what Resident Evil is all about, Damnation.

Resident Evil: Vendetta - If Degeneration’s a so-so anime movie, and Damnation a good anime movie, then Vendetta is just a good movie in general, with no “anime” distinction needed. The dubbing’s finally pretty decent, for one, and the story takes place in between RE6 and RE7, teaming Leon and Chris Redfield up with - HOLY CRAP - Rebecca Chambers, who’s been AWOL since Resident Evil Zero. They’ve gotta stop an arms dealer from bio-nuking New York and doing nasty things to Rebecca, who resembles his dead wife, and along the way Leon pilots a motorcycle on the freeway with his feet while shooting at Cerebrus with his hands. Nearly all of the movie’s considerable action segments are punctuated with rapid fire John Wick-style gunplay, and it works. It’s like the folks who made this film realized that the coolest part of Resident Evil 6 was the point where Leon and Chris point their guns at each other for a few seconds before deciding that they need to put their differences aside and cooperate, and even though you could conceivably fault Vendetta for leaning heavily towards the “action” side of Resident Evil rather than the “horror” side, it’s a well-paced film that finally gives us a substantial interaction between two series mainstays beyond the one minute they shared with each other in RE6. Also, people are still posting GIFs from Vendetta’s action sequences all across Tumblr and forums whenever arguments break out over whether Chris or Leon is TEH COoLER Resident Evil protagonist, so Capcom obviously did something right. If we get another computer animated film, I imagine it’ll lean more heavily towards horror since that’s where the series has gone recently...but hopefully the path of improvement that we’ve seen from Degeneration to Damnation to Vendetta won’t be broken.

And with that, whew, I’m done with RE movies, at least until the rumored Hollywood reboot that’s supposedly drawing inspiration from Resident Evil 7 comes out. (It can’t be worse than The Final Chapter, I suppose.) I can’t say that my friends were wrong when they warned me that half of these would be shite, but I also can’t say that I ended on a bad note, because Vendetta was pretty good.

After all this, my grand playthrough and consumption of all Resident Evil media is about to finish Next post I make will be a last look at the franchise as a whole...and what a year’s worth of zombie headshots taught me. All screencaps taken by me.

#pixel grotto #video games #now playing #resident evil #biohazard

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explorevenus · 1 year

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HE NEEDS TO CHILL I CAN’T FUCKING BREATHE

YANDERE DADDY/BREEDING KINK LEON GANG GET IN HERE!!!!!!!!!

#says venus #yandere!leon kennedy #the ai leon chronicles

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zippdementia · 6 years

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The Main Resident Evil Games, Ranked

I’ve been playing Resident Evil games since Resident Evil 2 first terrified me as a 14 year old. I have fond memories of having to have my friend play through the sewer sections in that game, the ones involving giant spiders... and I also have fond memories of eventually overcoming those fears to achieve the coveted A Rank on the game and unlocking Hunk and Tofu (God, I had way more time back then). Since those early days, I’ve played through every main game in the series and have mostly kept up with the lore of the side games. It remains one of my favorite go-to franchises for its atmosphere and fun mix of horror and action, not to mention its over-the-top story, which always feels a little bit like Capcom browsed Reddit for its favorite fan fiction than turned it into an official game.

That said, this list looks at only the nine main games in the series (that’s Resident Evil 0 through 7, plus Code Veronica) as those are the only ones I’ve played, outside of obsessing for a month or two on Umbrella Chronicles... oh, and a brief, extremely un-fun run through Outbreak.

Because I started the series so long ago, I have a love in my heart for the old school fixed camera games and those that give us a healthy dose of survival horror over action, but I’ve tried to be as objective as possible in creating this list, keeping in mind that of course such things can never stray too far from the subjective. Also, as an added bonus, I’ve included a “scariness” ranking for each game separate from the main ranking. This, of course, is COMPLETELY subjective.

And with that, let’s do *assumes dark growly voice* RESIDENT EVIL: RANKING.

#9: Resident Evil 6

Resident Evil 6 is a mess of ideas and intentions. From the beginning, its development was hampered by too many cooks in the kitchen as various directors and producers continually changed their mind as to what the game should be. Eventually they settled on making it everything by breaking up the game into three extremely different short games, one that relies heavily on horror aspects, one on action aspects, and one on shooting aspects (including heavy use of a widely panned cover system). Unfortunately, these three approaches are intrinsically opposed to each other in terms of genre, gameplay, and aesthetic. Instead of pleasing all fans, this approach guaranteed that no matter who you are, you are going to like exactly one third of Resident Evil 6 and hate two thirds of it. It also highlighted for fans that Capcom no longer knew what its series wanted to be. The asinine story which arguably jumped the shark as far back as Code Veronica now captured that shark, put a saddle on it, and rode it around an arena while Chris Redfield did steroids. In short: the story was so nonsensical, it seemed to leave nowhere else for the series to go (a problem they just sort’ve ignored in Resident Evil 7). Resident Evil 6 has some fun elements to it, and it fixed many of the problems people had with bad companion AI and clunky run and gun mechanics, but it wasn’t enough to make the experience a good one.

Scary rank #9: In addition to being a poor game, Resident Evil 6 almost completely moves away from the game’s horror routes. Leon’s campaign has some nice tip of the hats to the old series, but the game never becomes scary. The fact that you run around with a partner for the entire thing and that those partners quip ridiculous lines like “it’s really powerful, especially against living things” means you’ll be cringing in embarrassment more than fear from this title.

#8: Resident Evil 0

Released in 2002, Resident Evil 0 feels like the final evolution of the old school style and systems of Resident Evil’s fixed camera games. The controls are smoother, the use of weapons easier, you can drop items directly on the floor and the game will keep them there for later retrieval, and there is the buddy system which represents a very early attempt at cooperative AI. Unfortunately, despite all of these improvements to the mechanics, the experience itself feels too well worn by this point to be very exciting. You can tell that the developers themselves were growing tired of the formula as they start to move away from zombies to other monsters... like, er, frogs. Yes, unfortunately the replacements aren’t very interesting: frogs, baboons, a giant bat, and an operatic villain feel like weak additions to the series and make it seem like the developers were out of ideas. The story fills in some of the backstory of the mansion incident but ultimately doesn’t push us forward towards anything new (which is what fans really wanted and wouldn’t get until RE4). Aside from an incredible opening sequence on a train and the criminally underused character of Billy, Resident Evil 0 is a very polished but very bland experience.

Scary Rank #6: The scariest thing about Resident Evil 0 is managing two characters. Trying to gather enough supplies for one person in Raccoon City is a trick in itself. Having to keep both members of your team well equipped, well healed, and ready to deal with the plethora of enemies they will face can be harrowing. It’s the rare occasion where having two does not feel better than having one. And then there’s the leechmen. I don’t know if it’s because they are sturdy or seem to pop up whenever you least expect it, or maybe it’s that music that plays when they attack, but the leechmen will freak me out and leave me with the jitters every time they show up. None of the other enemies are very frightening, though, and anytime I get too scared I just think back to that cinema scene of Markus singing opera to his leeches... and burst out laughing.

#7: Resident Evil Code Veronica

After the events of Resident Evil: Nemesis, no one was sure where Capcom could take the story next. Raccoon City had been destroyed, Umbrella Corps had fallen, and all of our heroes had been given somewhat happy endings. Enter Code Veronica, which blew open the possibilities again by reintroducing Albert Wesker. By now, Wesker is so well associated with Resident Evil as to be a cliche, but it was a huge surprise in 2000 when he was revived, green lizard eyes and all, to take on Chris Redfield once again. Suddenly people were talking about Resident Evil again and where it might go in the future. This success, however, is less impressive now that that future has arrived and there are better games to play in the series. Code Veronica always favored innovation over polish and it has not aged well as a result. Most notably, the game seems to demand more speed and fighting ability of its player than previous entries, pitting Claire and Chris against such fast moving villains as the Matrix-inspired Wesker and his pack of lightning quick hunter beasts. Combats tend to be fought in tighter quarters, sometimes to extremely frustrating effect, such as the infamous “Steve” battle (also, I hate Steve), or the Tyrant fight in the back of an airplane. Players who have not properly kept up their inventory with powerful weapons and healing items can find themselves stuck in these places, struggling with the clunky controls to try and dodge extremely damaging attacks. The atmosphere and story make Code Veronica worth the experience... but only barely.

Scary Rank #4: A lot of Code Veronica’s scares are due to the feeling that you can’t handle what the game is throwing at you. This is, as described above, a mixture of awful controls and enemies that are far too fast and resilient for most players to be able to take on with that control scheme. Still, it does make the experience harrowing. More legitimate scares come from the creepy gothic atmosphere and the bizarre nature of the Ashford twins. Alex is... ridiculous. But his sister Alexia brings to bear all the things we all hate about creepy little girls and then throws in some incest and patricide to boot. Alexia is a genuinely disturbing addition to the Resident Evil roster.

#6: Resident Evil 7

Resident Evil 7 had the Herculean task of redeeming Resident Evil as a series after the missteps of Resident Evil 6. And, for the most part, it succeeded at this. Choosing to return to the series’ horror routes, RE7 draws upon the influences of other games in the genre, most notably Alien Isolation and Outlast, to craft an experience that feels modernized and on par, atmospherically, with some of the best Resident Evil titles. There are moments that are absolutely terrifying and the game doesn’t stop feeling tense until very near the end. Gamers like myself who grew up with RE1 and RE2 love this return to form and find that the first-person perspective retains the feel of the old fixed camera without being as restrictive, creating a horror experience where you are constantly wondering what’s behind you (but at least have the ability to turn around and check). Even fans who are newer to the series seemed to collectively breath a sigh of relief when they played the game. Reading forums and Reddit threads reveals that most gamers find the game to be fresh and smart, and are happy that it lacked the emphasis on lore and the over the top mustache-twirling villains that dominated previous titles. Objectively, though, there are flaws that I think will not be looked on favorably the more it ages. The blocking system, for instance, feels shoehorned in as a quick fix to disguise the fact that you can’t dodge or easily slow an approaching enemy down. Then, too, the game tries to be an action game near the end and utterly fails at it, only highlighting its unsatisfying shooting mechanics. The Molded are scary but overall a let down as enemies, with little variety between their forms, and the boss fights are the worst in the entire series, being clumsy and frustrating and a weird tonal break from the rest of the game. So for as much as it gets right, Resident Evil 7 is hopefully a stepping stone to something better.

Scary Rank #3: For the most part, RE7 does stop being scary after the first couple of hours, but holy shit those first couple of hours. There is more terror crammed into the initial exploration of the Baker house than in the entirety of most of the other games in the series. I was actually glad when the scares let up a bit to give me a breather, but it never quite reaches the same “heart attack” level again. That doesn’t mean there aren’t moments of terror sprinkled throughout: the wrecked ship has wonderful atmosphere, and despite having terrible boss fights, the battle against Margueritte is a stand out experience, making you constantly spin around to see if that creepy woman is crawling around behind you. More often than not, just as you turn, she’ll drop on you from above. Seriously, I don’t know how people play this on VR.

#5: Resident Evil 5

As the game that introduced functional multiplayer into the series, Resident Evil 5 remains popular to this day. As I type this, there are probably at least a dozen people live-streaming the game on twitch for the billionth time, and people are still tuning in to watch. Resident Evil 5′s lasting power comes from an absolutely incredible campaign that takes players through a wealth of diverse environments. Its combat situations are well crafted and each one feels a little different from the last, demanding different things of its players in each new area. Whether it’s fighting your way out of a crowd or solving puzzles while keeping back hordes of enemies, Resident Evil 5 keeps throwing new things at the player to ensure they don’t get bored. Its boss fights are similarly diverse and well paced (with a couple exceptions... that stupid jeep fight key among them). Graphically, it still looks good and mechanically some people think (myself included) that it actually plays a little smoother than its successor, Resident Evil 6 (some people say it looks better, too). The game’s main failings come from the fact that it is about 100% less fun to play as a single player experience and from the fact that the game let go of pretty much any horror elements, opting instead for pure action. The result is a game that is one of the most fun to play in the entire series even while it is also the furthest removed from the roots of the series and probably feels the least like a Resident Evil game.

Scary Rank #8: Resident Evil 5 traded in dark nights for African sunshine and switched out zombies for... tribal warriors? No matter what RE5 does, it just seems to be less scary then when it was done before. The Lickers make a triumphant return... but aren’t as scary as they were in Resident Evil 2. The El Gigante fight in the jeep is frustrating and feels like a weird arcade game. Only the fight against Jill and Wesker manages to be tense and even there tension is somewhat broken by Wesker’s drawling accent and ridiculous dialog. Resident Evil 5 is an action game first and foremost, which does little to sell it in the scariness department.

#4: Resident Evil 1 (REmake)

Resident Evil 1 (even before being remade in all its graphical and mechanical glory on the Nintendo Gamecube in 2002) had all of the right elements to create a lasting franchise. It featured incredible sound design and cinematic camera angles, designed not only to keep you guessing what was around the corner but to emulate camera shots used in actual horror movies. For the time it was released, it was mind blowing, unlike anything else on the market in terms of both ambition and quality. More than anything, it was its precise timing that was so impressive. For a horror experience to be good, the timing has to be perfect. That’s easier to do in a film, where the director has control over what the audience experiences and when they experience it. But in an interactive game it’s very difficult. There has to be just enough breathing room to get the player comfortable. Musical cues have to be spot on. That jump scare has to happen at exactly the right moment to have its full impact. And for all of this to work the director has to be able to anticipate what the player will do and where they will go and when they will do it. Resident Evil understood these barriers and crushed them with a key understanding of how gamers play. REmake only improved on this with added enemies (like the infamous Crimson Heads and Lisa Trevor) and new jump scares. The result? Very few of the Resident Evil games since REmake have felt quite so well made. Some took bigger risks, and some are more memorable, but the one that started it all established a formula so good that everything else the series does has been informed by it. Wesker, the Tyrant, creepy mansions... they are all here and as good as ever they will get.

Scary Rank #1: Resident Evil 1 never stops being tense. You never seem to have enough ammo, never enough healing items. You always wonder if this time through the hallway will be the time something jumps out at you. The remake makes this worse with the inclusion of Crimson Heads, which make zombies rise from the dead faster and more resilient (and with a heck of a scary growl), but even the original kept the mansion scary by throwing in those damnable Hunters just when you thought you’d cleared the place out. Speaking of the Remake, can anyone say Lisa Trevor? Dear lord, she alone gives this the number one spot on the list. It may never make your heart pound as hard as Resident Evil 7 does in its most intense moments, but Resident Evil 1 keeps the pressure on for longer and it truly is a sigh of relief when you get picked up by Brad’s helicopter at the end of the game. The first is still the best when it comes to putting your heart in your throat.

#3: Resident Evil Nemesis

Resident Evil Nemesis is a roller-coaster from start to finish, packed with so much action that it is hard to remember that it is possibly the shortest game in the main series. Nemesis doesn’t waste space, transforming Raccoon City into a constantly changing arena. Running around the ruins of Raccoon City as the zombie invasion hits full swing, you witness the city fall further and further into destruction as the streets gradually fill up with harder and harder enemies. No area feels safe in Nemesis, as even spots you’ve cleared previously can repopulate with new enemies. I say “can” because Nemesis keeps players on their toes with a randomly generating enemy system that changes where and when certain enemies appear, meaning you can’t get too comfortable in Raccoon City, even on subsequent playthroughs. And any time you do finally get some breathing room, the quiet is interrupted by a deep voice growling out “STARS...” Originally intended to be only a side story, Nemesis earns its rightful place among the main series mostly due to its titular villain, who is the most impressive of all of Resident Evil’s monsters. Years before Papa Baker would chase you through the halls of his bayou home, the nearly unstoppable Nemesis was already terrifying players by breaking all the old rules of where an enemy would go, chasing players around huge portions of the game’s map, breaking through doors and walls to continue the chase and even equipping a rocket launcher to target players at a distance. There are other innovations that shouldn’t go unnoticed here, either, such as a last-second dodge feature that encourages players to be more aggressive and get up close with enemies. There’s also the “choose your own adventure” timed choices that pop up in intense moments, like when the Nemesis is bearing down on you and you have to choose to jump out of a window or try and blow him up. Sometimes one option is better than another, and sometimes the option changes the story, leading to high replayability. And if you ever get tired of the main game, there is the unlocked Mercenaries mode. That’s right, it wasn’t Resident Evil 4 that started that. Like so many things, Nemesis did it first. All of these quirks and innovations, alongside the incredible non-stop pace, make Nemesis still a blast to play today and one heck of a send off to Raccoon City.

Scary Rank #2: Because the action moves so fast in Nemesis, you will never get a chance to calm down. Not to mention Nemesis himself is a walking jump scare. If Resident Evil 7 proves that being chased makes for some of the scariest moments in a video game, then Nemesis makes you feel chased for the entire game. The only thing that keeps it from being as scary as Resident Evil 1 is that it is over sooner.

#2: Resident Evil 4

Resident Evil 4 represented a revolution in the series, ushering it from its old-school fixed camera routes into a more modern over the shoulder style of play. I struggled with this change throughout my entire first playthrough, upset with the fact that it abandoned the old formulas. Gone were zombies, gone were most of the scares, gone were most aspects of survival horror. But then I also found myself dreaming of it, saying “heheh, what are you buying?” until my girlfriend asked me to stop, and starting over and playing it over from the beginning as soon as I had beaten it. Despite the change in direction, it was a game I didn’t want to end, and I’ve gone on to purchase it on nearly every system its been released on. I’m not alone in this: Resident Evil 4 is one of the most successful games in the franchise and indeed one of the most influential video games of all time. It didn’t only redefine what Resident Evil was for an entire new generation of gamers, it also redefined how people thought of third person shooters, opening the doors for everything from Gears of War to Uncharted. If you load it up today, you’ll find it takes an hour or so to get used to the older controls, but the game was so well designed that once you do you’ll see how everything in the game caters to those controls, creating an enticing run, stop, aim, shoot cycle that is addictive and never stretches beyond its limitations. Of the over the shoulder Resident Evil games, Resident Evil 4 feels the most complete, not requiring a co-op experience to make it good nor relying on years of lore to understand and care about its story and characters. Resident Evil 5 may have been fun, but it never got quite this good again.

Scary Rank #7: Resident Evil 4 is often tense, because of the nature of its gameplay, which forces you to stand still while shakily aiming at oncoming enemies. It never really gets scary, though. Enemies are too slow and your bullets too numerous, your spin kicks too awesome, to make you truly feel vulnerable. It does get props for a certain boss that chases you relentlessly through a certain caged area... oh, and for the Regeneradors. The Regeneradors, with their constant snuffling sound and their twitchy gait, are among the scariest enemies ever in Resident Evil. But a few minutes of pure terror isn’t enough to ignore the heavy focus on action and the fact that Leon carries enough firepower to wage his own war.

#1: Resident Evil 2

Resident Evil 1 may have started the franchise but it was Resident Evil 2 which jumpstarted the fan base. Resident Evil 2 had a lot to prove, mainly that this series could survive (pun intended) more than a single outing, that it could expand its scope, grow its cast of characters, and build on its setting. And boy did it deliver. If Resident Evil 1 broke ground when it came out, then Resident Evil 2 dug deeper. One mansion became a city. The two selectable characters did more than have different items and slightly change the order of events. Now, you had to play both characters one after the other to experience the full story. As if that wasn’t enough, the game changed depending on which character you played first, and in order to see everything the game had to offer, you had to play four times. Granted, two of those times would feel awfully similar, but the A&B scenarios changed just enough about the story and scenarios to make it well worth every second. The scares of the first game remained mostly intact but now a healthy dose of video game action was thrown in and boss fights became more numerous and dynamic, creating what remain the series’ best and most diverse boss fights. Simply put, Resident Evil 2 is a masterpiece of realized ambition that hasn't been matched by any other game in the series. It’s one failing now is that it is old, both graphically and in terms of controls. There’s a reason that fans have been clamoring for a remake of this for so long! But I’m glad Capcom waited so long to do it. Resident Evil 2 needs more than a new coat of paint. It is a carefully constructed experience and care is going to be required to give it a second life on par with the original experience. Here's hoping 2019 delivers on that.

Scary Rank #5: One of the best things about Resident Evil 2 is that you aren’t playing special forces this time around. Claire Redfield is a simple citizen and Leon Kennedy a rookie cop. They feel, from the opening cutscenes, completely out of their element which added a wonderful connection between them and the player. Unlike the first game, you don’t start off in a safe situation that grows worse the longer you explore. No, you start off in a goddamned car wreck, surrounded by zombies and not nearly enough bullets to fight them. From the beginning, Resident Evil 2 highlights that you need to run to survive. Then it introduces Lickers, which add a whole new element to jump scares and you think that the game may be too frightening to keep playing. But also around this time it introduces you to grenade launchers and shotguns and lots of ammo for both of them. This makes the Resident Evil 2 scares manageable because the reaction to anything that moves in that game is to scream and then douse it with either buckshot or acid rounds.

#Resident Evil #Frightening #Scary

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weirdesplinder · 4 years

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Jodi Taylor

Oggi voglio parlarvi di una serie di libri che è arrivata in Italia solo l’anno scorso, ma che io ho letto (il primo libro) diverso tempo fa: le Chronicles of St Mary’s (St Mary's Institute of Historical Research) di Jodi Taylor, che qui da noi sembra essere stata ribattezzata Serie degli storici curiosi, non chiedetemi perchè.

Di cosa parla la serie: sono le avventure di un gruppo di storici (studenti, dottorandi e professori dell’Istituto St Mary di ricerca storica), che grazie a delle macchine del tempo studiano la storia rivivendola e combinando tanti di quei casini che nemmeno otete immaginare.

E’ una serie segnata da uno spiccato british humor, piena di situazioni assurde e divertenti, quindi se non vi piacciono le cose assurde statetene alla larga. Perchè questi sono romanzi scritti per far ridere.

La serie è formata da ben 12 libri, più diverse novelle brevi. In italia al momento sono stati pubblicati solo i primi due romanzi:

1. La confraternita degli storici curiosi, di Jodi Taylor

Link: https://amzn.to/3sHjV9z

Dietro la facciata apparentemente innocua dell’Istituto di ricerche storiche Saint Mary, si nasconde ben altro genere di lavoro accademico. Guai, però, a parlare di «viaggio nel tempo»: gli storici che lo compiono preferiscono dire che «studiano i maggiori accadimenti nell’epoca in cui sono avvenuti». E, quanto a loro, non pensate che siano solo dei tipi un po' eccentrici: a ben vedere, se li si osserva mentre rimbalzano da un’epoca all’altra, li si potrebbe considerare involontarie calamite-attira-disastri. La prima cosa che imparerete sul lavoro che si svolge al Saint Mary è che al minimo passo falso la Storia vi si rivolterà contro, a volte in modo assai sgradevole. Con una vena di irresistibile ironia, la giovane e intraprendente storica Madeleine Maxwell racconta le caotiche avventure del Saint Mary e dei suoi protagonisti: il direttore Bairstow, il capo Leon Farrell, Markham e tanti altri ancora, che viaggiano nel tempo, salvano il Saint Mary (spesso - anzi sempre - per il rotto della cuffia) e affrontano una banda di pericolosi terroristi della Storia, il tutto senza trascurare mai l’ora del tè. Dalla Londra dell’Undicesimo secolo alla Prima guerra mondiale, dal Cretaceo alla distruzione della Biblioteca di Alessandria, una cosa è certa: ovunque vadano quelli del Saint Mary, scoppierà il finimondo.

2. Le esoteriche scorribande degli storici curiosi

Link: https://amzn.to/3pZEn3G

Madeleine Maxwell, Max per gli amici, ha scoperto di recente che la sua laurea in storia non l'avrebbe portata necessariamente a condurre una vita sedentaria, al limite della noia. Da quando è stata reclutata dall'Istituto di ricerche storiche Saint Mary, anzi, le ricerche sul campo la catapultano, insieme ai suoi colleghi, da un'epoca a un'altra senza troppe garanzie di far ritorno nel presente. Inviati in missione nella Londra vittoriana per cercare Jack lo Squartatore, gli storici del St. Mary's se la vedono veramente brutta quando è Jack lo Squartatore a trovare loro. Inseguita nelle strade nebbiose di Whitechapel, Max rischia veramente di fare una brutta fine. Di nuovo. E non è che l'inizio: l'inizio di una corsa contro il tempo per salvare il St. Mary's da un nemico pericolosissimo che ne vuole l'annientamento. Un nemico disposto a distruggere la Storia stessa. Dai giardini pensili di Ninive all'isola Mauritius per evitare l'estinzione dei dodo, all'Inghilterra dei Tudor, dove scoprirà una tragedia inedita di Shakespeare con un finale sconvolgente, il gruppo di storici più sgangherati e divertenti della letteratura continuerà le sue scorribande nella Storia, fra scoperte incredibili.

Gli altri libri della serie (senza le novelle brevi che però andrebbero lette), inediti in italiano, in ordine cronologico sono:

2. A Symphony of Echoes (2013) 3. A Second Chance (2014) 4. A Trail Through Time (2015) 5. No Time Like The Past (2015) 6. What Could Possibly Go Wrong (2015) 7. Lies, Damned Lies, and History (2016) 8. And the Rest is History (2017) 9. An Argumentation of Historians (2018) 10. Hope for the Best (2019) 11. Plan for the Worst (2020) 12. Another Time, Another Place (2021)

La mia opinione: a me di solito le storie assurde piacciono, così come quelle ironiche e strane, ma devo ammettere che quando lo lessi, mi sembra due o tre anni fa, il primo libro di questa serie non mi conquistò e decisi di non continuare a leggere questa serie. Era veramente troppo per me, soprattutto in lingua inglese, non mi sembrava di riuscire a cogliere l’ironia tutta inglese che lo permeava o almeno non del tutto. Mi sembrava sempre mi sfuggisse qualcosa e poi era veramente ma veramente pieno di fatti e di avventure e la storia correva a ritmi velocissimi. Leggerlo mi sembrò un tour de force. Era bello, ma tanto faticoso. Forse in lungua italiano lo apprezzerrei di più rileggendolo, non so. al momento non ho voglia di imbarcarmi in una serie così lunga, ma questa autrice di per sè mi piace molto, è ironica e scrive bene, perciò se credete che questo genere possa fare per voi. Vi consiglio di provare i suoi libri.

Dopotutto infatti Jodi Taylor è anche autrice di uno dei più bei romanzi che io abbia mai letto:

NOTHING GIRL

Autore: Jodi Taylor

Inedito in italiano

Link: https://amzn.to/3jeNGtX

Trama: Conosciuta come “The Nothing Girl” a causa della sua severa balbuzie e del fatto che i parenti che la crescono non la amano né la stimano, Jenny Dove ancora bambina si rende conto che non mancherebbe a nessuno se morisse, anzi… ed è tentata di lasciarsi andare e smettere di sforzarsi di vivere, quando all’improvviso ad impedirglielo appare Thomas, un mistico cavallo dorato sicurò di sé e anche piuttosto vanitoso che solo lei può vedere. Lui diventerà il suo migliore amico e per anni sarà anche l’unico, finché una volta adulta Thomas le dice che deve imparare a farcela da sola senza di lui, perché non potrà restare per sempre al suo fianco. Jenny ne resta sconvolta, ma lui non intende certo lasciarla da sola, perciò escogita un piano per trovarle un marito e inaspettatamente riesce a farle sposare l'affascinante e caotico Russell Checkland…

La mia opinione: Potremmo definirlo un rosa contemporaneo, ma in realtà è molto di più, prima di finire di leggerlo ho inzuppando ben tre fazzoletti! Ora io non sono una lettrice emotiva giuro, ho pianto pochissime volte leggendo un libro. Ma qui è stato tragico non riuscivo a smettere finita la scena commovente mi calmavo e poi giù che ne succedeva un'altra ho pianto fino alla fine letteralmente. Al che voi pensere sarà un libro tristissimo… Invece no, è proprio l'opposto è ironico e piuttosto ottimista, ma mi ha veramente toccata perchè la protagonista deve superare veramente molte difficoltà, e al suo fianco fin da piccola ha un angelo custode che per lei ha la forma di un cavallo dorato, che la segue e la guida fino all'età adulta, ma non troppo, è lei che deve avere coraggio di superare i suoi limiti e il loro rapporto è dolcissimo. Non si può non amare Thomas, il cavallo appunto, perchè è l'angelo perfetto che sa sempre cosa dire per consolarla e aiutarla e adora lo shopping e…. grazie a lui Jenny si sposerà e finalmente…ma non voglio svelarvi nulla della trama, dovete assolutamente leggere questo libro. Purtroppo è inedito in italiano, ma se sapete leggere in inglese leggetelo, perchè è veramente meraviglioso e dolce e delicato e commovente ma ottimista e ironico insomma l'ho amato tanto ed era tanto che non entusiasmavo così per un libro.

#Jodi Taylor

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sheet-music-for-teachers-school · 4 years

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#open #Polk: #Coronavirus #aePiot

Coronavirus in Polk: Trying to find an open boat ramp? Still lots of options - The Ledger

The date of publishing: Wed, 08 Apr 2020 07:00:00 GMT

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