One Hell of a Night

After only a week, Resident Evil 7 is beaten. That was a few days ago now. I haven’t really had a chance to make more words about it until now. Though I don’t know if I really have that many more words about it? I guess we’ll see when we get to the end of this post.

When I last left off, the protagonist of the game, Ethan, has mysteriously vanished and I was now in control of another character aboard a wrecked ship. There was a flashback sequence that played more like a run and gun shooter, but back in reality, the actual ship level is more evenly paced. While it does play like the rest of the game, for whatever reason, the ship level didn’t really grab me. I think maybe it’s just because I kept getting lost. Thinking back on it, there’s nothing really overly wrong with it.

The final stage is… it’s semi-traditional. There’s a secret lab where you learn all the final pieces of the plot, but it’s like two rooms at the bottom of a mine. The entire mine area is a fairly straighforward gauntlet of monsters, which isn’t out of the ordinary for RE, and is actually more of a final boss than the actual final boss. Also, not a single MO disk to be found. I’m okay with that. It’s 2017, after all.

And finally, because being cyclical makes it more impactful, you end up back in the guest house that served as the game’s first chapter. You’re alone and searching for a girl again, and the night has passed into day.

What really separates this game from the rest of the series is that you feel a pang of guilt when you kill the final boss. Make no mistake, it needs to be killed because it is a living weapon that murders people without remorse, but it is a somewhat pitiable entity. It’s not your typical RE crazy person that’s gone and mutated himself in a mad quest for world domination or revenge. Well, I guess Birkin was kind of sympathetic, too. I’d better replay Resident Evil 2 again to make sure.

And yes, you are thrown a weapon and told “use it!” to finish off the final boss. It’s not a rocket launcher, but the spirit of the tradition is present. I am content.

Then, at the very end of this 12-hour game in which I only spotted two teeny-tiny references to previous Resident Evil games, Ethan is airlifted away from the Baker property by none other than Chris Redfield. And he is looking skinnier than ever. And he is riding around in an Umbrella helicopter. What is happening!? I don’t think these really count as spoilers, because they don’t really have any bearing on RE7’s main plot. There is a (free) DLC episode featuring Chris on the way, but otherwise he is merely a way to connect RE7 to the rest of the Resident Evil canon.

Some final thoughts: I love the ambient sounds. The creaking of the houses and random thumps are a great way to get little frights, and they also put you on edge. Was it just a random noise? Or is there an enemy skulking about, ready to spook you?

Speaking of spooking, I am so glad that I didn’t play this in VR. I like being scared, but RE7 would have been way too intense. Plus, 90% of the jumpscares are of the in-your-face-screaming variety that is so popular these days, and I just couldn’t handle that without the reality buffer.

I was a little wary of the game’s new style at first, but it really came into its own once Jack stopped stalking me. Its crazy how much pressure was caused by the fear that Jack could show up to ruin your day at any moment. Looking back, his patrol areas are actually very small, and he won’t even chase you all that far. In the end, he seems to be a lot more menacing than he actually is.

Coming down off the high of finishing the game (I quite enjoyed the credits sequence, BTW), I immediately popped open the Playstation Store and bought the DLC season pass. I was going to do it as soon as I bought the game, but decided to wait just in case I ended up not liking this very different Resident Evil.

The first DLC pack is out and downloaded onto my PS4, but I haven’t played it yet because I started a new game to try for the 4-hour speedrun trophy. Either I am much slower than I thought, or I accidentally left the game running while I left to do something else, because about half an hour in, I noticed that my timer had picked up an extra hour somewhere. Needless to say, the speedrun was doomed. Guess I’ll just have to try again! (Hooray!)

I do not relish the idea of playing the game on Madhouse difficulty. But I’m certainly going to try. I’ll probably unlock all the bonus items first, to ease the burden a little.

And that’s about it, I guess. For now, at least. Look forward to hearing more about this game in the future. I can’t get enough!

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – January 2017

Holy crow, 2017 is already flying by. It seems like it was just New Year’s Day, and already we’re in February. It’s gonna be Switch Day before we know it!

And that’s about the extent of my small talk abilities. That’s why I spend so much time playing video games alone instead of socializing with humans.

~ Game Over ~

Layers of Fear (PS4) – Appropriate that the first game I beat in 2017 is yet another spook-em-up walking simulator. I think I may have found my sub-genre. In an effort to try to toughen up a bit, I started playing with the lights off and headphones on. That lasted for half the game, at which point I simply could not take it any more. Anyway, I really liked it, and played through twice to get all the trophies.

Layers of Fear: Inheritance (PS4) – A DLC half-sequel for the game listed above. It was good, but much less frightening and also I needed to play through it three times for all the trophies. Though that’s really not such a big problem when the game can easily be run in under an hour.

Resident Evil 7 (PS4) – I was so excited for this scaled-down take on RE, and then about two hours in, I realized “oh, this is just a backwoods version of Alien: Isolation.” But then it quickly got much better and I got completely sucked in. Loved it. Can’t wait to play it again.

Day of the Tentacle Remastered (PS4) – There couldn’t have been a better time to accidentally subscribe to PS+. This was one of the free games for January, and though I own the original game, I haven’t played it in, oh, 20 years? It was wonderful to relive, and looked gorgeous on my giant HDTV. Absolutely perfect bit of nostalgia.

Shovel Knight (3DS) – I played Shovel Knight again. Surprise, surprise. But I did play New Game+ this time, which is v difficult.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – January 2017

Some mouldy thoughts

I’m about all blogged out after that massive Top 12 thing, but I feel like I need to do some follow-up on Resident Evil 7. After completing that article, I basically spent all of yesterday playing it, except for a few hours that I devoted to catching up on episodes of Nintendo News Report. Needless to say, I have far more things to say about it now.

First of all, it’s become apparent that yes, this is definitely a Resident Evil game. It doesn’t adhere strictly to the classic formula, opting instead to continually shift the pacing to keep you on your toes. In general, you’re shuttled between several large areas to explore as different levels or chapters, but you have a certain amount of freedom to move around the entire property as you see fit. It’s not like RE4 where each area gets locked off once you move on to the next chapter.

So, I think the best comparison is RE3? I don’t really know, as that is my least favourite of the original trilogy.

Continue reading Some mouldy thoughts

The Top 12 Video Games of 2016

“Why” you ask, “did you choose to list twelve games?”

The answer is simple. Because sixteen (for 2016) seemed too many, and ten is too cliché.

“But doing a Top X Things of Year list is in itself too cliché!”

Shut up!

(You should know my Top Video Games rules by now: Any game that I beat in 2016 is fair game, regardless of what year it was actually released in. No remakes or remasters allowed.)

Continue reading The Top 12 Video Games of 2016

You can’t spell Escape without Ape

I completed Ape Escape 2 last weekend. Well, “completed.” I’m going for the platinum trophy, you see, and the game asks you to beat it twice for that. Which is a little ridiculous.

Let’s back up a bit, though. Ape Escape 2 asks you to tromp through its levels and used a variety of gadgets to find and capture all the monkeys that are running rampant. It’s kinda like Super Mario 64 if Super Mario 64’s stages were oversized loops and the power stars would run away and shoot homing missiles at you. So, much more aggravating than Super Mario 64.

Anyway, when you visit a stage, you only have to catch X of Y monkeys to clear it and move on. At which point you’re booted back out to the level select menu. So your (my) gut instinct is to jump back in and snatch up the remaining monkeys. Now, sometimes, certain monkeys are behind barriers that you can only pass once you get a particular gadget. So you collect all your toys and then go back to collect all the monkeys. Super.

What’s curious, though, is that the stages say “cleared” while the boss stages say “perfectly cleared.” Hmmm.

Then you get to the end of the game and defeat the final boss. Hooray! But if you load up your save file again, you’ll be told that OOPS guess he’s back on the loose and also there are now more monkeys in every stage! Hope you didn’t go back to collect them all already! If you did, hope you enjoy exploring each stage a third time!

Yes, I know, Super Mario 64 makes you play each course six times. But those stages are typically smaller, wide-open playgrounds, rather than big, long tubes. Each star usually has you going to different parts of the level, and most levels change depending on which star you select. Super Mario 64 encourages and rewards exploration, and it’s fun. Mario can get nearly everywhere with his basic moveset, and anywhere he can’t get to, there’s always a nearby cap to help. Whereas in Ape Escape, you’re just following your radar down the tube, being slowed down by having to constantly stop to switch out and use gadgets. Going through a level multiple times feels more like work than play.

But that’s still not the end. Once you capture all 299 (!!!) monkeys, you finally get to fight the true final boss. Defeat him, and you’ll earn the ability to start a new game as Spike (or “Kakeru”, because apparently the PS4 release is the European version), the protagonist from the first game, who comes equipped with all the gadgets right from the start. You have to collect all 300 monkeys again as Spike/Kakeru to earn Ape Escape 2’s final trophy. That doesn’t sound too bad!

Ape Escape 2’s last troll, however, is that every stage still has the “collect X of Y monkeys” thing on your second time around, which is suuuuuuuuuuuuper dumb. Even though you start the game with all the tools you need to catch all the monkeys, they still force you to slog through every stage twice. So lame. If that “feature” had been removed for new game+, I wouldn’t have even bothered to write this dumb rant.

So if it bothers me so much, why am I going through all the trouble? Because I’m a masochist and a trophy whore, obviously.

Oh, Ape Escape 2, I wish you were more fun. And also I wish you didn’t have trophies, so I could just not care about all of your bullcrap. This is the last updated PS2 game that I buy!

Mama, Mia!

When I moved back in with mom and dad, it came with a slight change that I didn’t really account for. See, while I used to always get my groceries from Safeway, they live much closer to a Sobey’s. Which, since they’re two heads of the same beast, you wouldn’t think is a big deal. However, Sobey’s bananas are notably inferior to those that Safeway stocks, and just today I learned that the pizza buns at Sobey’s are also pretty terrible.

The obvious solution is to just make the five-minute drive back to Safeway, but I’m far too lazy to do such a thing. I could also just stop buying my own groceries and subsist off the food my parents buy, but where’s the fun in that? Also I don’t want to be a complete mooch. Like, 90% mooch is about where I need to be.

Thanks to all the money I’m saving thanks to that mooching, I bought Resident Evil 7! Hooray!

Honestly… Not totally into it yet! Don’t get me wrong, it’s good, but it’s been a very slow burn so far. In the three-ish hours that I’ve played, there have been exactly two enemies, and both of them were bosses. Or, I don’t know. This game is so different than usual that maybe they weren’t bosses. Maybe that’s just how normal enemies are now. Anyway, exploring the backwoods farmhouse has been equal parts fun, disgusting, and tense. There doesn’t seem to be any indication for sure if you’re being stalked or not, so you’re pretty much sailing around on intuition and hopes that you aren’t unexpectedly ambushed. Although you will constantly be unexpectedly ambushed, because that’s apparently RE7’s thing.

Other notes so far…

I got a trophy for beginning the game. How stupid.

There are bobblehead figures scattered about for you to destroy. I can’t help but see Vault Boy when I look at them, even though they don’t really look all that similar.

The game begins with your character on a rescue mission. So far this is the only thing that RE7 has in common with RE4.

Those two bosses were hard. Died multiple times to each. Because they can catch up to you and hit you while you’re running away, and it’s very hard to bait their attacks and dodge successfully.

I have no idea where the story is going. But this family of evil hillbillies can’t support the entire game. Right?

The last thing I did before saving and quitting was collect an emblem that unlocked a big, ornate (and completely out-of-place) door. So this is definitely still Resident Evil on some level.

Capcom still can’t animate faces worth a damn.

The gory details

I’ve been watching the first season of Ash vs Evil Dead lately (which is SO GOOD), so when the question of “what movie am I going to watch?” came up last weekend, I immediately went to Evil Dead. To be more specific, it came up while I was browsing Netflix and then I immediately put it on.

Let it also be known that I’m talking about the 2013 Evil Dead here. Not the original. Though I may binge the original trilogy next weekend, because man am I ever in an Evil Dead kind of mood.

The thing that boggles my mind the most is that somehow, this is supposed to be both a reboot of and a sequel to the original films. Which was perfectly fine until Ash vs Evil Dead came along and sort of invalidated it as a canonical entry in the series. I guess Evil Dead 2013 could have a different Necronomicon and cabin, but that’s… you know what? That’s fine. I’m fine with that.

Anyway, ED2013 is a fine movie in its own right, but is very different from its older siblings. I don’t think there’s a single joke in this movie, and I don’t find any of it unintentionally funny either. This version of the tale is played completely straight, and pulls absolutely no punches.

This story focuses on Mia, a recovering drug addict, who is out at a cabin in the middle of nowhere with her friends in an effort to quit cold turkey. Of course, eventually they find the Necronomicon, someone reads a passage that unleashes an ancient evil, and they all start getting killed and/or possessed. Only instead of being goofy, these Deadites are dead serious.

ED2013 is brutal and is so excessively gory that even I have a tough time stomaching it. That scene with Natalie and the carving knife makes my stomach churn in a way that movie gore hasn’t been able to do in many years. And then there’s the grand finale where literally everything is covered in blood. More blood than Evil Dead 2. If you can believe it. It also contains one of the most amazing chainsaw scenes ever committed to film, and it’s absolutely worth watching the entire movie for those two minutes.

Overall? It’s not really what I wanted in an Evil Dead sequel (that’s what Ash vs Evil Dead is for), and I don’t usually enjoy movies that exist simply to torture their characters for two hours. But the supernatural bent saves it and I do like how it reimagines the original story. I mean, I’ve seen it like five times now, so yeah, I obviously like the flick. Do I recommend it? That’s tougher. But I feel like there’s enough information in this short post for you to make that call on your own.

I feel sick just thinking about what she’s going to do with that knife…

Can you do a “Year of Something” twice?

I ask because it’s looking like 2017 is going to be another Year of Nintendo 64.

In the last two weeks, I have purchased three N64 games on Wii U Virtual Console. Strange, right? I know.

For the record, the only one I bought at full price is F-Zero X. Pokémon Snap and Star Fox 64 I already owned on Wii, so it was just the little “add save states and controller configuration” upgrade fee for those two.

I’ve also been eyeing up Excitebike 64 for some time now, and it’s a bummer that Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey will never appear on VC because for some reason I am really jonesing for some wacky arcade hockey action.

Hm. This might… this might actually happen…

Drakengard 3 – The twistening

Hey all. Against all odds, I am sticking to my guns, and still playing Drakengard 3. While the opening hours were a little bland and the trademark Drakengard insanity had only reached “silly” on the bonkersometer, I forged ahead, undeterred by mediocrity.

And it’s begun to pay off! But we’ll get to that in just a moment. First: gameplay. It hasn’t changed much. In addition to the swords that you begin with, I have unlocked spear and bracer weapon classes. Spears are kind of garbage, as they don’t cut a nice, wide swath like swords do, and it’s difficult to connect with enemies if you aren’t locked on. This is in stark contrast to NieR, where the Phoenix Spear was my weapon of choice for nearly the entire game. Bracers, on the other hand, are super fun, as they let you combo a whole bunch of hits really fast. That, and punching guys just feels right, you know?

I also learned that blocking is a thing. And like most games of this style, you can parry attacks if you block just before they land. Unfortunately, enemies are kind of hard to read, which makes parries even more difficult to perform than in, oh, let’s say Dark Souls. Also, Zero has crazy long recovery lag after attacks (even worse with spears), making it nearly impossible to time a block properly in the middle of an attack combo. As a result, I basically haven’t been blocking at all, relying mostly on the dash as my defence strategy. So essentially, I’ve been playing Drakengard 3 the same way I play Monster Hunter. Only Zero’s dash doesn’t have any invincibility frames, so it’s not terribly effective on large enemies with wider attack ranges.

I think the best way to describe Drakengard 3’s combat is ” like Hyrule Warriors but slower.” But it’s still a heck of a lot faster than the combat in the original Drakengard.

Luckily, the game isn’t all hack-n-slash. It also has a handful of stages in which you ride around on Mikhail and blast fools with fireballs. The missions that still technically take place on the ground (All-Range Mode, if you will) are a little janky, as you have to manage Mikhail’s altitude by flapping his wings now and then. It’s a little more involved than other air combat games where you have the privilege of consistent propulsion. Missions in the sky proper are a lit more fun, as they’re basically just less interesting Star Fox levels. It’s on-rails, and you just blast everything out of the sky. No obstacles, no wingmen, no power-ups. It may actually be more akin to Galaga than Star Fox, to be honest.

What surprised me the most about Drakengard 3 so far is that it has a very overt sense of humour. The first game and NieR may have had their moments, but were typically played very straight. D3 takes every opportunity to make a joke, whether it be the soldiers freaking out about being slaughtered, or Zero and her companions trash talking back and forth. Though, in the latter case, whenever a companion character takes a jab at Zero, her response is usually “You wanna die?”

Zero and Mikhail also have a very weird relationship, wherein she is like a very abusive mother towards the immature dragon. There is a touch of love buried deep beneath the insults that Zero is constantly slinging at Mikhail. And while Mikhail does question Zero’s motives, he always follows her orders and tries to do his best in an effort to earn her respect. It’s very entertaining just to listen to the banter between the two. Criticize the game all you like for its awkward gameplay and last-gen graphics, but it’s got some excellent writing.

There are also the hilarious hijinks that ensure during cutscenes, like when Zero kills Five and the screen switches over to a censor card stating “this content has been deemed inappropriate for pretty much everyone” while Z stabs her sister repeatedly. Or the time where Zero and Dito are crushed by an avalanche and a “The End” screen pops up, only for Zero to burst out of the snow shouting “I’ll decide when it’s the end!” while Dito turns to the camera and shrugs. As a fan of comedy, Drakengard 3’s sense of humour is very welcome, especially since it stands in such stark contrast to the ultra-violent and otherwise horrific content of the rest of the game.

Speaking of which! It’s time to see what makes Drakengard 3 completely bonkers!

So, after the prologue, Zero was severly injured, having lost an arm. The arm was replaced with a metal prosthetic, which is apparently controlled by a parasite that attaches to the wearer’s body. Gross. But what’s more, Zero also mysteriously started growing a flower out of her right eye. A flower with what sort of looks like the butt end of a syringe sticking out of the middle. We get no information on this weird flower until halfway through chapter 2, where Zero’s other arm is chomped off by a wayward Cerberus head. Zero is about to collapse and die when the flower suddenly blows up to super-size. Then, a bloody had shoots out if it, and pulls out… a fully-formed clone of Zero, complete with the arm that just got bitten off, covered in nothing but buckets and buckets of blood. Calling this scene grotesque may be underselling it a little.

And that’s more or less been it as far as actual shockers go. There’s the rather explicit implications that Zero is banging her companions, which isn’t weird in itself. But when she recruits Decadus, she orders him to “Clean yourself up. Front and back. We meet tonight.” to which his eyes widen in fear and his voice beings trembling as he complies. At one point, Dito asks if Mikhail and Zero have slept together, completely serious. Mikhail, of course, is incredibly naïve and has no idea what Dito is really asking. I can’t decide whether the exchange is hilarious or disturbing. Probably both.

So that’s pretty much the extent of my impressions as far as the end of Chapter Two. Stay tuned for more, maybe!