A 1 hour 36 minutes worth of...

V.R.S. stands for Very Random Stuff - a new column where the two of us contributors will deal with things connected with games, but not games themselves. So here we go.

After the blasphemous trilogy of the So-Called-Resident-Evil-Movies-Starring-Milla-Jovovich two of which I vehemently decided not to watch EVARR (FallingStickman did and look at him now) Capcom apparently decided to take the matters into their own hands and released a movie which is what every movie based on a video game should be: CG. Yes, C-fucking-G. You know, like the Final Fantasy ones - a movie which doesn't involve any dumb actor pretending to be your favorite game character, taking your everlasting childhood love and devotion and wiping his ass with it in a process they call "artistic interpretation". In most cases the dumbwit won't even take time to play the actual game. Oh please, why should he? We're not talking about any art: it's a video game for heaven's sake - a safe picture. The writer writes a script, the producer produces, the director directs, the actor acts and voila, where's my paycheck? So what that the big bucks are wet with tears of gamers who went to the cinema, foolishly hoping that maybe this time, maybe this one time they wouldn't fuck this up. All is good, as long as they pay for the tickets.

Nowadays it seems, the whole goddamn movie industry seems to be focused on making adaptations and while everyone at Hollywood seemed to curse the hell out of Uwe Boll, THEY'RE ACTUALLY FOLLOWING THE GUY'S FOOTSTEPS, making one bad game-movie after another bad game-movie. The world seems to have forgotten about one very simple rule, which I believe was even written on one of Moses' stone tablets. DON'T MIX GAMES AND MOVIES. Don't. It's wrong. Nothing good can ever come out of it.

The only game-movie I consider a good one is Silent Hill, but that's because from the half-of-the-movie marker, the plot goes in an entirely different direction than the original - a more movie-plausible direction with more dialogues and less aimless running around. So it's not really an adaptation - it's an interpretation and as such, a well done movie. But then again, I know SH fans who hated it just the same.
Likewise, the only movie-game I somewhat enjoyed is Terminator 3 Redemption which was tepidly acceptable, but only because of the two previous Terminator 3 games, which were so god-awful the developers had to at least try and redeem themselves with a third one, in order not to get crucified by the fans of the franchise standing behind the window with torches in their hands. In fact Redemption would be a pretty nice game were it not for the movie elements: the shamelessly inserted bits of the actual movie, properly cut down and mixed with the CG cutscenes so they don't interfere with the stupidly altered timeline, some very poor levels standing out like lumps of dog-fertilizer in your Viva Pinata garden, constructed this way "because we have to make a level out of every second of the original", and of course, the absolutely outrageous voice-acting of Arnold Sch., who, of all people, was the only original cast member to take part in the game's production.
Maybe Godfather and Scarface games weren't all that bad either, but probably because the original hardcore fans of the movies are now either dead or too demented to care.
[evil grin]

Considering all of the above, I feel I have a statement to make:
We, the gamers of this world, have to take a lot of shit. We struggle with cheap-ass media, who call us dangerous psychotics ready to kill off all our friends, because we play GTA4. We struggle with game and console companies, who constantly abuse our trust and feed us garbage (RROD, glitches in Fallout3, Home... take your pick, I could go on with this forever). We struggle with ourselves, fearlessly defending the piece of hardware of our choice against the opposite team, day and night posting increasingly idiotic arguments on why Xbox in better than PS3 or why PS3 is better than Xbox (when of course Crysis owns all). So please, moviemaking people, give us a break. No one should be subjected to the Hitman logo, which to me personally is a kind of a religious symbol, being mercifully blasphemised by Timothy Olyphant's face right next to it. Note that I don't really hate the actual living Mr. Olyphant (you were da bomb in Die Hard 4, yo!) but for Christ's sake, why 47? Why him? Nor do I dislike Mark Wahlberg, but for Christ's sake, why Max? Nor do I and so on, and so on. See? Games + movies = no go.

...

Hell, what was I supposed to talk about? Oh, right.

Well, I must say that I've waited very long for this title. Not only CG, but Leon and Claire with their original voice-actors (which smells of my beloved RE2), G-virus (RE2 again) and a plot related to the actual game, with no reference to the So-Called-Resident-Evil-Movies-Starring-Milla-Jovovich whatsoever (the six triangles of Umbrella logo are not joined together and they have one side rounded). Finally, I thought, a proper Resident Evil big-screen debut: a movie for the fans. And, well, it is a movie for Resident Evil fans. For better and worse.

It's really hard to say something substantial about Degeneration without spoiling it, but I'll do my best and keep it brief. First of all, it's entirely Nippon-made, so forget about the traditional western movie plan. The action is a little jaggy, the flow of events is very rushed (basically it's like watching a flow of cutscenes with no game in between). The climax is not very significant and the emotional bits (including the ending) are just too cheezy. Plus the obligatory, predictable "it's not over yet" sequence at the very end. The dialogues are anything but natural and so is the voice acting. Just like in, you know, Resident Evil. I was prepared for that kind of thing, but it was surprisingly more difficult to accept it in a movie than in the games. That sickly-sweet Power Rangers cheezines made me wonder if it's not just a kids movie, but no, there's gore, some blood and many juicy explosions. Well, I sighed, it's just your standard Resident Evil cheeze. Just like in the game. But wait, there's more.

We have Leon and Claire, but most of the time they are separated (like in the game). Claire watches over a little girl (like in the game), and Leon watches over some woman (like in the game). We've got everything from RE2: an evil money-loving lollipop-stealing politician, a Wesker wannabe, a cop becoming a zombie, a Birkin rip-off, an enormous, sinister laboratory... (there's one person NOT from RE2 and that's that Angela woman - and probably for that sole reason, I didn't like her one bit). We've got all these elements, yet they don't seem well connected. I dunno, maybe it's just the badly written script... Maybe it's the lack of Mikami-san that is to blame. Maybe for this same reason, RE5 PLAYS like RE4 but doesn't FEEL like RE4.

I really can't tell you if I liked Degeneration. It's very well animated and it's nowhere near as painful to watch as the So-Called-You-Know. Still, the only way to like this movie is through sentiments and pleasant memories from 1998, when the Nippon cheeze was still fresh and edible. On its own, Degeneration is pretty hollow. Fans like me will enjoy it, at least to some extent, but it won't gain the Resident Evil franchise any new audience.

PS
Too bad Leon is now permanently Paul Mercier Solid Snake, instead of Paul Haddad first-day-on-the-job cop. In RE4 he sometimes sounded like the good old R.P.D. officer (there was Ashley to shout at), but now he's more 2D than you can imagine. Plus, the model reminds me more of RE0's Billy Coen than the actual RE2 or RE4 Leon. And it's saaad.....

Mutants, zombies and infected villagers everywhere...

Recently I had a chance to play the Japanese Resident Evil 5 demo – a demo of a game that I've been very much craving for after I got every unlockable in Resident Evil 4. Recently however the game totally vanished from my focus. Maybe it's because of all the videos I've seen that made the game look more like a remake of RE4 than a completely new title (an rightly so...to a degree), or maybe because the game is in development for so long (and games which are too long in development have a nasty habit of turning crappy). I don't really know, but it made me approach the game differently – more like a normal gamer and not a hardcore Resident Evil fan.


I will admit – the first impression was surprisingly underwhelming; the game felt like RE4, played like RE4 but lacked the atmosphere from the forth game and my initial RE5 experience was uninspiring. Maybe it's the setting – the concept of an African village seemed great, but the execution isn't. There is no sense of dread and terror – it feels and looks more like Call of Duty 4, which is not good for a Resident Evil game. Also the heavy HDR effects (you go into a house from under the bright sun and you can't see until your eyes get used to the new environment) that were supposed to make the game more intense are not implemented in the demo. The graphics are great, but there are some really bland textures (not many though) and there is terrible screen tearing that is really, really distracting. The explosions kick ass though. The framerate is fluid, which is great, but the animations, although obviously having a lot more frames than the ones from RE4 seem recycled from the previous game and are rather stiff and unnatural. Especially the zombie death sequences – most look like there were taken straight from RE4 – there are no physics involved and there are silly problems like clipping and poor collision detection. Honestly, in this day and age it should look a lot better. All the problems are probably due to the fact that this demo is a fairly early build of the game, but then I'm a bit baffled why Capcom decided to release that and not something more polished. Hopefully the North American demo that should be released at the beginning of 2009 will be something different (yeah.... right).

After playing the demo five or six time I finally got a good hang of the outdated controls (yes, they are almost identical to RE4, so I shouldn't really need practice, but I guess I got spoiled by „today's standards") and the game became more enjoyable. The fights can get intense, the general mechanics are still great and the infected enemies are more persistent than ever before. Still the game doesn't feel as well prepared and fresh like no.4 and I really doubt, that now, when Mikami-san „has left the building" we'll be as impressed as with Resident Evil 4.

The game is a good action game, and I'm sure that it will feature a lot of memorable moments, but the demo doesn't let you feel that.

I also have a problem with Sheva – the A.I. character that accompanies you (and according to all sources will do so through most of the game) – even though most of the time she's rather helpful and able there are moments when I can't help but clench my teeth because they annoy the hell out of me. Those moments include taking ammo to weapons that she doesn't have (and I do), often standing in my line of fire (and completely blocking my view) and getting ripped to shreds by the enemies in some really silly situations.

Something that I really hate in games (*Cough* Silent Hill: the Room Cough*) is the necessity to babysit an A.I. character. If that happens in RE5 (and there is a strong chance it will, because it always does) the game for me will be broken beyond repair. I do however see great multiplayer potential in this (only online though, the split screen is a disaster).


To sum up – even though I did enjoy the time spent with the demo I'm not as impressed as I should be (especially with all the hype the game gets). I really hope that the full game will have more to offer than what the demo suggest because the game could be a disappointment – and we really wouldn't like that, now would we?

But hey, at least the main menu is really cool.

Meh...

I wanted to start out with NXE, but screw that, I will start with HOME.
When HOME was announced 200 years ago I wasn’t really interested. Sure, I thought the concept was nice; especially that Sony would let everyone enjoy it for free. I figured it would be a more mature and a bit less content-packed version of Animal Crossing focused on network aspects. It’s not. It’s a barren playground for idiots with absolutely nothing better to do with their lives than to stand around among other idiots talking shit or playing a fucked up version of Arkanoid.
Let me write this in big, capital letters.

HOME IS THE MOST DISAPOINTING, BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME, EFFORT AND MONEY I HAVE SEEN THROUGHOUT THE 25 YEARS OF MY GODDAMN LIFE!

It would be best if Sony had killed the project when it was still early in development. HOME is a disgrace, a slap in the face for every Playstaion 3 owner, every gaming journalist and everyone over the age of 3. Everyone responsible for this obscenity should be hanged upside down and whipped.
Let me explain.
First of all HOME is ugly. I’m not saying it’s not pretty, I’m saying it’s hideous. It’s has the worse graphics I’ve seen during this and throughout most of the previous generation. The locations are painfully simplistic and poorly designed – they have no interesting features and no attractive elements. Even the small waterfall and stream flowing through the Square don’t help. Everything is boring and mundane. I have no idea where all the screenshots Sony presented came from, but they couldn’t have come from this application – it’s simply impossible.
The avatars players can create are even worse – terrible, low-polygon models with faces even Quasimodo would be ashamed of. When you enter the character customization screen you’ll spend a few long moments waiting for stuff to load until you realize that more things won’t load, because THERE FUCKING AREN’T ANY! The first glance on the face customization menu will leave you with a wrong assumption that you’ll be able to tailor the looks of your avatar to your needs (maybe even make one that looks like you). You won’t. No matter how hard you try, how long you’ll spend tweaking the setting you will always end up with something that look either like a horse or a toilet seat – with no options in between. It’s hard to believe but the avatars in NXE have more customization options than the ones in HOME. That says a lot about this “app”. But wait, there’s more.
The quality of the graphics is lower than bar charts showing the current condition of stock markets. The textures seem to have been taken form a 3D game developed in the mid 90s, the objects consist of a number of polygons that a one-handed lumberjack could count on the 3 fingers of his good hand and the shadow system it as advanced as a screwdriver.
And the worst thing is the aliasing. Oh my God, the aliasing! I’m sure that if you would stare at this game for over 15 seconds your eyes would bleed. Even the title screen has it and the title screen is composed of a “plastic” block on a grid background… I know, it’s some advanced shit, - I’m sure the PS3 heats up like a blast furnace when it has to count all those effects used for that scene. Looking at HOME is like a trip to a lumber mill. HOME is an ugly, ugly thing.
Did I mention that it takes ages for everything to load? No? Well, it does. I was playing draughts with some dude and his character model became its hi definition version after about 60 seconds. It’s ridiculous, considering there is really nothing in there to load.
Just to add to the picture I will say that the static ads in HOME are presented in a resolution so low that it’s sometimes hard to tell what they represent, and the videos that are played on multiple screens in HOME are of YouTube quality – and yet those take ages to load as well. And those are not streams; they are downloaded to your hard drive. Why?
Ok, enough about the technical aspect. Let’s take a closer look at the features, or rather the lack of features.
What can you do in HOME? Not much. You can redecorate your apartment… but not really since you have like 7 or 8 objects to use …all of them white and ugly. You have a few wallpapers to change how your walls look – 8 of them, all ugly. You can also go out to the balcony and watch the view. The view is ugly unfortunately – well, the view itself is not ugly, but the graphics designers who modeled the environments made sure it will look ugly. They did a very good job.
Ok, so you are done not redecorating your flat. What else can you do? You can go shopping – buy new clothes, new furniture, even a new flat. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, guess what. It’s all fucking paid, with real fucking money! So Sony said that HOME will be free, but in the starting package they give you squat and make you pay for almost everything else. Free content my ass. I had a choice – buy a summer house or a PSOne game from the PS Store – the cost the same. Crash Bandicoot is one of my favorite platformers, I can tell you that.

I have one thing to say. Fuck you Sony! You’re not getting any of my money through HOME.

So screw shopping. What else can I do in this stupid app? I can play some games – bowling, pool, some arcade games, chess and the afore mentioned draughts. All suck. Bowling is so basic is not even worth mentioning. The blowing mini-game in GTA4 is much better. Pool… same as bowling – GTA has a much better one, so don’t bother. Arcade games – all suck. I can’t be bothered to write about them save for one. A game called Ice Breaker which basically is an Arkanoid clone. When I first saw it I was like – “NICE, finally something for me, I love Arkanoid”. Four minutes later when the game finally downloaded (yes, you’ve read it right – you have to download everything) I was ready to eat my SixAxis. They actually managed to fuck up the controls in this game. Can you imagine that? Sony managed to break controls in Arkanoid – a game with a technical sophistication of PONG. What a bunch of cretins.
And chess and draughts? Well, they are what you expect – chess and draughts. Just ugly.
And people are sore losers – I’ve played draughts 5 times, 4 of which I would win if the people I played with wouldn’t leave just before the last move. I would like to send my regards to the nice Spanish dude who beat me in draughts and it was one of two normal encounters with other gamers in HOME.
So there you have it – playing games in HOME is not fun either so the only thing left to do is to socialize. But that’s no fun either – most people do not have a USB keyboard and even fewer have a headset. Writing anything with a gamepad is a bitch and takes ages and people with headsets sound like they are talking from behind a glass wall while chewing on a raw fish. So it’s not good. Oh, and the interface is unintuitive and ugl… well the interface looks ok, just doesn’t work well.
Oh, one more thing about HOME that is just so incredibly stupid - when someone plays an arcade game, uses a keypad etc. nobody else can use it, so when the person using a given device decides to eat a five course dinner, or take a really big dump everyone else is screwed – another great design choice Sony.

To sum up.

HOME is a piece of crap! The end.

HOME does have one good side though – the connection to the servers is so unstable that with a bit of luck you won’t be able to log in at all… or you’ll be disconnected a few minutes after you log in. As EXramp put it – “Thanks to Sony you’ll know how it feels to be kicked out from your own HOME”.



Now for the New Xbox Experience.
Let me start by saying that for me NXE is not as criminally offensive as HOME, but I do not have many positive thoughts about it.
First of all it pisses me off that M$ forces something on me that I don’t really want. Like Vista on Notebooks – you want to get one with XP, but you just can’t. Come to think of it NXE is exactly like Vista – it looks really good, has some cool effects and options that the original Dashboard didn’t have, but most of them are useless or unavailable and the whole thing is as user friendly as a hollow spoon. I don’t care how much practice you have – using it will always be a frustrating experience.
Honestly I can’t really figure out who the people from Micro$oft had in mind when they designed the thing. The 360 is supposed to be a platform for hardcore, male players, but they create cartoonish Mii-like avatars (which you HAVE to create and use) which seem rather opposite to “hardcore, male”. They want to attract casual players, kids, elderly women and lepers? Great, but they don’t have games for them. So then why? Why create something that has no defined function and is as intuitive to use as a hydron accelerator?
To be completely frank with you I can’t really experience everything NXE has to offer because according to M$ I don’t live in a civilized world and am not worthy – hence, many of the “cooler” NXE features are not available to me. That must be because M$ still thinks the Earth is flat and that civilization only exists on the piece of land from Washington to Florida.
NXE does have a few good features that I must (for the peace of my own mind) enumerate. First and foremost the ability to “install” games on the HD – every 360 owner probably loves that feature for a number of reasons the most important being the reduced noise that the 360 makes. And believe me it’s a significant change. Xbox is still a rather loud machine but now you don’t have to worry about permanent hearing impairment. Also, most games tend to load a bit faster. Of course not everything that shines is gold. There are reported issues with some titles – sound skipping, problems with cut-scenes, etc. A small price to pay if you ask me.
Unfortunately people with the 20GB model can only install one or two games and if they want to install more they will need to buy the in-fucking-credibly expensive 120GB hard dive – courtesy of Microsoft.
Come to think of it the game installation seems to be the only positive feature. How odd.
Now the negatives. First of all the NXE is much slower to use that the Dashboard blades. Also, a lot more has to load which makes it even slower. I don’t care how it looks – it’s an equivalent of an operating system of the console and it should primarily be fast and intuitive and it fails to achieve both qualities. Also, for some reason the swollen brains behind the creation of this deformed mutant decided it will be fun to add 500 additional pages to every section and make the users scroll though at least half of them to reach any executable function. Do I have to say it makes it even slower? Well, do I?
Another decision that doesn’t seem to be compatible with my cognitive processes is the necessity for absolutely every component to load before I can download anything from the Marketplace. It looks like this – you want to download a trial of a XBLA game, so you scroll through 237 “boxes to reach” it, you press the “A” button and the you think you will actually and finally be able to use the “DOWNLOAD” link, but you can’t, because it’s grayed out until every little picture and piece of text loads from the Marketplace. It’s extremely annoying. You can also take three guesses how that affects the speed of using the NXE. I will give you a small hint – it doesn’t make it any faster.
Oh, by the way – if you happen to have a long friends list be prepared to spend a lot of time scrolling through all the avatars that just had to have some stupid background elements behind them and are 20 meters apart from each other.

NXE seems to feature some better community tools, like parties to make chatting and exchanging pictures more… I don’t really know how it affects the community activities because every time I get to the part where I want to set up a party my thumb goes numb from all the scrolling so I turn off the console and go to sleep.
I must however admit that using the NXE is a pleasure for your eyes. It features many subtle animations and effects that really make it attractive. But again, it’s not the point.
Also, the new in-game menu that you get after pressing the “guide” button works very well (this is what happened to the old Dashboard – it was redesigned a bit and turned into the new “guide” menu). It’s clear, fast (surprisingly) and has more options than before.

In the end however I really find the NXE a pointless creation. Apart from the game installs it didn’t introduce anything useful and only made using the 360 a bit more annoying. Sure, it looks great, but I would rather have a faster interface than better looks.


Two words of comparison of the “community functions” of HOME and NXE.
Both introduced some new features for the users of PS3 and 360, but in this regard I must give Sony a plus, because HOME actually lets you interact with other players (both your friends and random people) – provided you are not constantly disconnected. NXE simply expanded your options to interact with people from your friend list and it did it in a relatively simple way.

Still, I find both HOME and NXE more than underwhelming and I like HOME more only because I don’t have to use it.