That guy's a Maniac...

Welcome to the world of Survival Horror but with cartoon violence and stuff A whiiile ago now, four spirits from the Resident Evil series were added to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch to coincide with all the Resident Evil games coming out for the platform and this post is an appreciation that that even happened at all. When Smash Bros. Ultimate came out, a lot of fans of the series weren't convinced by the 'storyline' content, the world of light and the single player challenges represented by the Spirit Board. Spirits, in this game are the essences of video game characters, items and places and in order to earn the spirits you have to best them in a fight. What we absolutely loved about battling spirits is that each fight re-imagined the essence, theme and tropes of the wide field of inspiration from across pretty much all of video games as it would be told through the main Smash cast and items. To reuse a well worn cliche, each one is a love lette...

There are religious zealots, there are wars, there are corrupt politicians, we are a race driven by greed and murder. We are in an age defined by media terror and propaganda; we see innocents gunned down, and media parading it like a circus show. We are conspiratorially being told what to think, how to think it, and what we should fear. But these guys... Balrog, Vega and M.Bison...are beacons of hope... Its a widely known fact that over in Japan these three are actually named: Balrog = M.Bison (Japanese) Vega = Balrog (Japanese) M. Bison = Vega (Japanese) When Streetfighter II hit the rest of the world, Capcom were a tad worried that M. Bison might attract some legal attention from M. Tyson, so they did a swapsies. Now the beautiful thing about this is, you don't see outrage, you don't see campaigns or picketing about this, you don't see people demanding that all the names be the same across the world. Nope what do you see, acceptance, acceptance of our diffe...

On this day, July 24th 1998 The S.T.A.R.S. team first investigated the mansion... You gotta fucking love that opening. Real people... Not mo-capped. Got i miss those heady days of the PS1. Sniffle. Love and dont open THAT door, Richie X

So we bought Killer is Dead . We could say that we bought it because it is a 3rd person Hack 'em up, with a cool edgy art style. We could also say we bought it as we were fans of No More Heroes and other Suda51 titles. In actuality be bought it for the Over-The-Top Misogyny and the CG Boobies!. They all want to do it with you! We love misogynistic games, anything hyper-sexualised is always a winner. Never mind this issue about women in games or how they are ruining the industry . But in all seriousness... The game is mediocre, generic hack/slash game with poorly implemented Dodge and counter mechanics. The art style is, um.. Stylistic, however It doesnt work, it makes these Hi-Res "rounded" models look very PS2-ish. It's all too extreme, and actually poorly implemented with jagged Anti-aliasing, which I consider an insult to me, I bought a fucking console which can make this pretty, but they fucked it. The story and atmosphere is its only redeem...

Yeah so new generation has hit, there is updated graphics, physics, engines... the lot. But I'm not done with "Current Gen". I will save you the resounding cry of thirty somethings with real jobs, complaining about responsibilities, not having comparatively enough time for games. I specifically am not done with Current gen as I have a back log of around 10 games (with more hitting soon!) I need to finish them first. Hell there is even DLC I need to pick up for Skyrim and waste another 100ish hours on that! I know folks are banging on about playing an Xbox through an Xbone but something about that really does not sound economical/or indeed necessary, and frankly the machine should have some back compatibility anyways! So Fuck it, next/Current gen can wait a minute, and calm the fuck down, get some updates, and some good titles. Then I may consider it worthy of my wallet. Thank you and see you in 6 months PS4/XB1 unlesssantabringsmeoneomgomgomg Love and Grinchy ...

This image has very little to do with the film. Richie and I were supposed to be saving watching this for a girl's night in but now we live within 600 miles of each other we don't see each other half as much as we used to. So I caved and watched it and unfortunately I roped my better half into watching it. She'd sat through the first Silent Hill film and it had such an impact on her that halfway through the film she confessed that she thought Silent Hill was Hellraiser . In a way I was wishing it was too. This film is bad in a generic and inoffensive way delivering a double dose of cringe. One cringe for it just been a not very good film. Another cringe for it being yet another not very good movie adaptation of a video game. I've not checked the rankings recently but surely in the order of genres of film, video games adaptation must be down near the bottom of the list just below 'American TV dramas about big city people falling in love with a rural '...

I can't express in any phrase more succinct than this that it is my sincerest wish that what "it" may be is not the bodily life fluid of my friend, who wears green and goes on missions armed only with a knife who may or may not be developing a serious steroids problem.

So I finished Resident Evil 4 on the 360. It was again great fun, The only places I really got stuck were the silly slide puzzles, the Graphics are great, and all the gameplay was back there, enjoyable as ever. I played Resident Evil 4 originally on the Gamecube, then again on the PS2 with all the extras, I then tried the PC version, and of course the stupidly easy Wii version. So I have played it a bit too much. The 360 version remains faithful in all ways to the original sight sounds and scares. The only problem was I had done it 'all' before. Unfortunately there is 2 achievements on the 360 version I will not get. And that is playing it through on professional version, because I just cant be bothered, been there done that, and annoyingly, remaining faithful to the original, you have to play through normal difficulty before unlocking the professional difficulty. Secondly, is gaining all the bottlecaps for the shooting gallery, I spent ...

"Resident Evil Revival Selection HD Remastered Version" Yep that is the name of it! It is going to be released on 360 and PS3. It contains Resident evil 4 (and the parting ways Ada side missions) and Resident Evil Code Veronica! Well Isn't that nice? I have played Resi4 on Gamecube, Wii, PS2, PC, and now I can play it on my 360! AND on top of that get some classic "Code: Veronica" on the go! In saying that though... I kinna which we would get RE1/RE2/RE3 resurrected... Might happen! Lickers and Bandersnatches Richie X

To those of use we lost 12 years ago to this day during that “incident” in that “mansion” just outside Raccoon city . To the brave souls of S.T.A.R.S. Alpha and Bravo teams we lost; May we never forget you! Love and dearly (re)departed fake specialist police teams, Richie X