Greetings and salutations.
Already knocking off tasks from my To Achieve list for the year.
Firstly, now that I'm done with Fallout 4, I'm also one step closer to the end of the Resident Evil saga. That's the one you all wanted to hear about, right? Finished Resident Evil 4 last night. Still the super bad ass and solid game that it was when I first played it on GameCube. I would have played it on GameCube still if my dog hadn't decided to eat my copy within the first week of owning him. Since it's been almost five years that we've had him, I guess it's hard to still be mad at him. And he's a dog. A cute dog at that.
Regardless, since I'm taking the time to talk about Resident Evil, 4 still is the best installment in the franchise. It's one of those watershed moments in gaming that you see echoes of it through other titles, and all through the current and last gens of games. While I was playing it, it felt like a standard current gen game in gameplay matters, with just the little differences that makes it show its age. Like crappy limited camera movement/no twin analog stick support for aiming. Having to use save points (though continuation points when you die was a much needed addition to the series), even though the typewriter save point is a series mainstay. Over the shoulder 3rd person shooting replacing tank tread controls when it comes to moving in a 3D environment is probably the biggest and best change. Also, the resource management is pretty close to perfectly balanced. In between minibosses/bosses, you feel like you're scraping by just to survive with barely any ammo at your disposal. Especially when random drops from defeated foes aren't kind about healing items and ammo. Of course, right before you get to a boss there's usually a save point, weapons merchant, and plenty of items to pick up, but before then, prepare to sweat and aim well.
Its horror is not only from the survival aspect that has been the game's mainstay (and really dropped off come RE5 when it became more of a full on shooter) but also the boss fights as well. The boss fights of the series are usually more of a, "Stand here and shoot your magnum till it's dead." RE4 requires active battlefield movement, weapon juggling and crowd control skills. Opposed to the previous games where it was more a steady progression of swapping out your guns when you got the next one (or being pistol/shotgun/knife for the whole game), in 4, holding onto all your weapons for various applications is actually a boon to you. As frustrating as a game with an actual difficulty curve can be, it was wholly rewarding to give it another playthrough.
So yeah, that's Resident Evil 0, 1, 2, 3 Code Veronica, and 4 taken care of. Next up is Revelations 1, RE5, Revelations 2 and RE6. Then I'll have a full grasp on the convoluted story of the Umbrella Corporation. I'm excited for the upcoming installments since I haven't played any of these games except RE5, which I've only played once 6 years ago. Is there a word like tsundoku for videogames? Because I have that. Books and videogames are definitely things you buy to have and thy just pile up. The more you go through your stack, the more you buy to fill it up.
Okay, enough talk about zombie plague survival horror games.
In other news, I finished the first draft of West Side Connection. I'll post it next week. Still needs something else in my opinion, but as for now, I'm not sure what. I'm also getting back on track with my research book reading. I'm a quarter of the way through Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces. Debating on my next read. Either The Power of Myth, or Robert Rodriguez's Rebel Without A Crew. I haven't begun rewrites on To Slice The Sky yet, but I have the manuscript on my table, daring me to pick it up.
Meanwhile, I'll be working through my media backlog, and getting published. See you next week.
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