The Geek Cometh

Let’s be honest, Resident Evil has gone from being a survival horror to a survival shooter. There are many reasons why RE4 destroyed the very soul of that series.  Capcom spent so much time improving the game engine that they forgot what the series was all about in the first place, I think the original Resident Evil remake for the Gamecube shall remain the pinnacle of that series for some time to come. And with good reason. It was Fucking scary.

The last game to really get my heart racing was Doom3, I like to play my horror games in the middle of the night with all the lights out using a big pair of headphones, and believe me Doom3 was made to be played like that - any other way just doesn’t cut it.  The dark atmosphere, sound effects and subtle whispers made a somewhat repetitive FPS into an altogether more exciting prospect. When done right scary games can be scarier than the scariest scary movie, simply because the experience is much more immersive.

I could never get into FEAR, I haven’t played Alone In The Dark since I had a 486 and I don’t want to run around as a Japanese school girl taking photos of ghosts with some prehistoric camera.

This pretty much leaves me with Silent Hill. I know there’s other scary games out there but the problem with third person horror games is they also have to be somewhat enjoyable to play….which is actually quite a rare thing for the genre.  Silent Hill 2 was one of the best survival horror games ever released, period. It really was quite a story. There are entire essays on the net about the various darker than hell undertones running throughout that game.  I got the ending where James Sunderland killed himself, it still remains one of the most perfect game endings I’ve ever experienced because the utter despair projected throughout the game until that point never truely lets up.  I’ve never played a game that portrayed a descent into bleak suicidal madness so well. There were other “happier” endings, but the suicide one has since been, somewhat fittingly, revealed as the only true ending to the game.

SH3 had its moments but felt rushed, 4 was a return to form in terms of atmosphere but had some very questionable game design.  And so now we are on the brink of Silent Hill Homecoming for PS3 and Xbox 360. I find it fairly ironic that a series somewhat inspired and created on the back of RE’s success appears to be super-seeding survival horror’s finest in all the areas it originally sought to mimic, aside from perhaps game play, however the SH games have never been that game-breakingly horrible to control.

I’m looking forward to this game, it’s a series that has been bold enough to flirt with themes and subject matter that would probably have got it banned had they been less subtle.  The music has always been superb too. One thing though, the development house is different this time as it’s being made in the US and not by Japan’s finest, which could be a crucial factor in how this game turns out. In the immortal the words of Travis Touchdown - who knows? Could kick ass… Could be dangerous. Could totally suck.

I do know thing for sure though, beating half naked zombie nurses to death with a steel pipe never gets old.

Chris.

There arent enough work passes in the world.

So, I’ve recently been rather busy with work, hospital appointments, and other such joviality and as such havent managed to post anything. But I figured I would save all my blog skills for the trip that I currently find myself on. I am in Leipzig. In Germany. For the Leipzig Games Convention.

The European E3 is entirely overwhelming. From the size of the Leipzig Messe where the event is held, to the sheer numbers of people attending…. its just huge. So my first day was spent walking about in a general zombified state trying to take as much in as possible. Because of this I didn’t get any gaming done. So not much to report from day one apart from the noticable lack of Nintendo ( Casual gaming indeed! ) and the huge queues for the Blizzard booth ( Its an MMORPG lartards! ). I’m hoping day two will involve a lot more actual game stuff! Until then, please enjoy these random photos from today :

One last thing for today. A lot of the companies at the convention give stuff away. Nothing big or expensive, usually stickers, posters, demos, and what not. But some of them give away lanyards. Lanyards! I have now made it my mission to come away from the 4 days with as many lanyards as possible. Here’s a shot of todays haul :

Thats it for now, back again tomorrow!

Dave

I saw Wall-e yesterday, I’ve never been a fan of Pixar movies….none of them have really done anything special to my bones, which is understandable because they are primarily made for and appeal to kids. Well…kids, plus most of the female population, gay guys and the odd lemon to be more elaborate.

It has to be said that the Movie House on Belfast’s Dublin Road is never the best place to see a movie, especially on Screen 1 because they still haven’t cleaned off the stain where somebody threw a Coke at it about 8 years ago and there’s always some annoyingly loud drunk people who stumbled in from Wetherspoons, but looking past all that this movie is beautiful. It’s the first Blu-ray movie I shall buy when I get round to HD movie buying, it really is that good. Right from the start you also realise that this is a bit different than the Toy Stories and talking animals that we’ve come to expect, which is a blast of fresh air.  The first half of the movie is pure artistic and sonic wonderland, the latter stages….not so much, but I guess you have to please everybody.

There’s a great sense of solitude and loneliness for a large part of the beginning, sure there’s the “fun” bits that you would expect, but they seem more like light relief than crowd pleasing moments.  A surprising lack of dialogue is refreshing and the fact that the cockroach character is modelled on an ACTUAL cockroach, which cannot talk but yet you can’t help but feel some sort of empathy for, is a real lesson in characterisation. He/she/it makes you glad that CG sidekicks don’t always have to be the most annoying thing on the fucking planet.

So yes, without spoiling too much it’s damn good. There’s lots of forward thinking (world of fat people) humour in it and talking robots with cool sounding voices.  Every time Eve spoke it reminded me of Portal, which can only be a good thing because I loved that game.

Chris

Heath Ledger didn’t just play The Joker, he was The Joker.

Apart from The Dark Knight being in my opinion the overall best comic book movie to come out in probably the last forever there’s lots more reasons to be happy that it’s so successful.  There is nothing in that movie for kids, it’s darker than any 12A movie ever released. After seeing that film I don’t think a typical 12 year old would take too much away from the experience other than confusion and horrible nightmares of some guy in clown makeup trying to cut their face off.  But the main reason why it’s good that TDK has grossed the GDP of a small country is that it paves the way for more darker comic book movies in the future. Which leads me to the next bit of cool…

Darren Aronofsky is apparently making a new Robocop - It’s such a strange combination but I quite like most of his films so this should be interesting if nothing else…  What’s also weird is that Aronofsky was in line to do Batman Begins before the Nolan’s got it but was also making cool art/cult films before now seemingly trying to reboot a major comic book (in this case heavily inspired) adaptation.  They should continue with the contemporary social satire of the original….but less of the, admittedly hilarious “Robocop is basically the story of Jesus Christ” parallels that are mentioned in the audio commentary of the dvd.

Now Robocop movies were never triple A to begin with but it better be Robocop for adults and not any of this fun loving shite that they went with on the last few, when I think of Robocop I think of that scene in the original where the ED-209 goes apeshit in the board room and shoots some dude like 57 million times….and then in the directors cut he shoots him some more. Any sort of violence on that level is absolutely fine, it doesn’t really even have to be over the top Verhoeven-esque, just as long as it’s satisfying and makes you feel slightly uneasy for a while.  It all bodes well though because Requiem For A Dream did make anyone who watched it feel uneasy for about an entire week after they saw it.

I’ve had no money to buy any new games recently due to my eternal post-graduation job hunt, but everyone should play/get Braid by any means possible. Just read some of the review quotes on that page to convince thyself.

Yeah…somebody forgot to tell the new Lara Croft model that in promotional shots for the new Tomb Raider game she should definitely NOT do this. Here’s a video of her talking about herself with unintentionally funny extreme closeup towards the end.

That’s about it, I need to go wash my eyes after seeing that Lara Croft photo again.

Chris