Topic: What is the last game you beat? Thoughts/impressions?

[Order.RSS]

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (WiiU)
[...]
My biggest gripe might be that last dungeon was driving me nuts. Maybe I've been away from 2D platformers for too long, but I had more trouble getting to the final boss than actually beating 'em.

Yeah the final dungeon is an absurd difficulty spike. The final boss is way cooler if you collect all the bats, too, but I never bothered going for it since the prospect of going through that dungeon again was too daunting. There was no easy teleport straight to the final boss either right?

[GK]

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (WiiU)
[...]
My biggest gripe might be that last dungeon was driving me nuts. Maybe I've been away from 2D platformers for too long, but I had more trouble getting to the final boss than actually beating 'em.

Yeah the final dungeon is an absurd difficulty spike. The final boss is way cooler if you collect all the bats, too, but I never bothered going for it since the prospect of going through that dungeon again was too daunting. There was no easy teleport straight to the final boss either right?

If there was, I never used it. I stocked up on recovery items so beat the final boss on my first go around.

[azeke]

Asassin's Creed: Odyssey (Xbox One X):



Did all achievements in 200+ hours. It was exhausting. But still finished it 100%, the feeling is similar to how i felt after completing MGSV -- they really should have cut down most of the content and stayed slim and brief. Game is largely the same as Origins and some things are slightly improved from Origins, but the overall bloat  just becomes tiresome instead of enjoyable. They wasted so much of own their time and hard work for such a little and underwhelming outcome. It feels like they stretched their devs and talent so much -- most of the quests felt like busywork and there was no quality and impact felt for anything in the game.

The decision to make both Kassandra and Alexios playable as main characters, that alone doubled if not quadrupled their voice acting time and budget. I picked Kassandra and her VA is okay, but from what i heard of Alexios as main character in youtube videos -- he just sounds as loud buffoon. All that time these 2 actors spent on their lines (and motion capture!) feels like a complete waste on Ubisoft's part because the game is so monotonous -- NOBODY is gonna be in a hurry to replay it just to hear different VA.

Other NPC voice actors also feel like they were stretched thin. It feels like there are only 5 people doing the voices even if imdb page lists hundreds VAs. One guy especially stands out, his voice and mannerisms are so noticeable and cartoonish he always takes me out.

Gameplay-wise Odyssey is pretty much the same as Origins. Everything good that Origins brought is still there: brilliant eagle vision redesign, BOTW-like climb everywhere, less emphasis on a map and NPCs giving you directions based on actual in-game sights (again -- very similar to BOTW), great graphics, interesting setting and gorgeous vistas. The game is even more colourful than Origins and visuals really pop with HDR.

They fixed a problem i had with Origins with UI elements. Because my TV is prone to burn-in i always try to hide all UI elements but in Origins a few of them were always shown. Odyssey fixes that, allowing you to remove everything. For some of the bosses i had to bring back my health indicator and ability icons because i needed to see cooldowns on abilities and when i need to heal, but most of the game i played without most of the UI.

One of the differences from Origins is notoriety system, like in GTA or very first Assassin's Creed games. Of all things to bring back they reintroduced the most annoying one. Now you get penalized for looting and killing people (yeah, the game called Assassin's Creed penalizes you for killing -- figure that one out). Eventually the heat on you gets too unbearable with soldiers, mercenaries and even citizens and random dogs attacking you -- you're forced to run away. It's just annoying and breaks power fantasy of roaming around in this open world doing whatever.

The main villains are now yet another secret organisation they made up instead of Templars because neither Assasins nor Templars can't exist properly before Crusades start. It's not a big deal but i wonder why had to make up yet another new power-hungry "not-Templar" secret society when they already had Order of the Ancients in Origins. It is especially dumb because in DLC story Order of the Ancients shows up too! And the game have even more secret societies than these two -- there are also Followers of Ares! How many masked cults can one country have?

Odyssey also removed a longstanding tradition of baddies having post-death cutscene which at least gave some characterisation to their villains and was a signature feature of the entire series. Was that also because of bloat? They made so many cultists, they couldn't afford doing the lavish death cutscenes for all of them? It's really a shame.

The bloat also probably hurt quests -- so many quests feel like so generic like they were autogenerated. And many of them WERE: game features special time-limited quests that pop-up randomly and these are your generic "deliver this to that guy", "kill this person". Some of them are just "i'm down on my luck, gib me money plz" -- these are the best because you just get an exp right then and there without all that delivering or killing business.

The sheer number of story and side quests was why quality of writing took a major nosedive. And to make things even worse -- Ubisoft was so eager to utilise their new dialog branching systems -- number of lines were multiplied several times over. And many of the decisions you make in dialogs DO change the story rather significantly which is good in theory but looking back feels like yet another wasteful decision on their production team because they multiplied their writing and quest making budget for seemingly no result -- because again who is going to replay this huge open world game.

I actually got to see the impact my decisions make on a story -- because of a bug. Due to random error my save file got overwritten by previous version and i lost 20 hours and had to replayed some of the quests. Man, i was so demoralized because of this, i didn't touch the game for a week. But still -- what else am i to do sitting home? So i came back and it wasn't too bad and i got to see different outcomes.

And the impact of my dialog decisions also turned out to be yet another underwhelming mess. My choices definitely DO make changes but they're don't really follow any logic and just feel random. When i didn't kill one person first time around that led to additional time wasting and when i DID kill him after file-save bug it led to cutting that quest line down to 10 minutes instead of 20. There isn't really any logic or reward for doing things one way or another even if you DO replay quests.

And some of the writing is just plain bizzare, like one quest line involves an NPC asking me to kill his grandma? And this is supposedly a good and standup guy? Oh by the way, the game features "romance" system in dialog and i can romance this dude too in-between all that grandma killing. Really sets the mood.

That "romance" system is kinda hilarious for how out of the blue it is. Sometimes you just walk up to random NPC and speak for the first time and a dialog choice with heart symbol appears right away. It almost feels like a parody of romancing options from Saint's Row but implemented completely seriously.

I am okay with the fact that open-world games like AC: Origins are mostly auto-generated these days. But i really dislike the trend of not only autogenerating the map but to also fill it with autogenerated mission as well, like Shadow of Mordor does.

Odyssey introduces similar system to Shadow of Mordor orc generals with mercenaries than you occasionally have to hunt down or they start hunting down you. And as i mentioned -- some side-quests are auto-generated too. Publishers really want to cut down costs of making these huge open world games and it feels like you're being tricked.

Odyssey also has user-generated missions, though i never opened them even once. From i've seen it's bad, but i like the aspect of opening-up dev tools for quest making to players.

But the most obvious autogenerated thing in Odyssey are tombs. These are just mazes, with the same generic copy-pasted corridors and same rooms, it feels like an 8bit RPG with confusing 3d labyrinth that was added just to pad time (and it's not like Odyssey needed to add any more padding). There is no climbing, no grand set-pieces, like we got in previous games with churches and secrets inside them. We just roam around in these tombs and occasionally move some blocks to clear the way. It's especially insulting when you compare them to pyramids from Origins because each pyramid was entirely unique outside and inside.

Combat is basically the same as in Origins and the same loot system. There are now even more abilities -- they even added a second melee wheel of abilities. Lower enemies you can just kill by assasinating them one by one, but bigger enemies and especially bosses require to run around spamming arrows and waiting until cooldowns on abilities end and then activating. That's how i was killing most of the end-game enemies in Origins and the strategy stayed mostly the same here. Only this time there are no healing arrows so i have to circumvent that with different loot weapons. Overall all bosses are huge bullet-sponges so battles span a lot of time doing the same thing -- running around shooting arrows and dodging and activating abilities. It takes a lot of time and is really annoying when you die right at the end and have to redo the entire boss encounter. Cerberus boss fight was especially infuriating because it (literally) dropped you into this boss fight so the game was checkpointed and i couldn't even go back to previous point in the game and change and upgrade my loot accordingly. I think that alone took me almost an hour of retries.

Speaking of loot, they also added another annoyance -- if you get too many loot weapons and armour you become "encumbered" and start to move really slowly, so you're artificially forced to either dismantle all your trash weapons or sell them to the nearest blacksmith. Loot is just became more annoying to deal with especially the procedure of dismantling hundreds of loot trash weapons and clothing out of your inventory.

Game has lots of extra costumes, ships and costumes to buy but i was more than fine with what game was giving me, though for half a day Ubisoft REALLY wanted me to buy anything from their costume store so they've been showing an ad for their DLC sale every single time i was opening a map which was kinda annoying.

Speaking of DLCs. Game has 2 extra DLC campaigns. Each has 3 episodes each and are pretty long. One is on the same map as regular game just with added missions and other one features a new pretty big maps for each of the episode.

Legacy of the First Blade is more focused on the story -- however it just exposes further how tired Assassin's Creed's "revenge story" has become really. In both main game and in this DLC especially you always know that everyone main character becomes close to WILL die violently at the hands of baddies du-jour so they can fuel the story.

Fate of Atlantis i liked more because it had 3 rather big location with fantastic and different style. I loved "floating-islands" design of Elysium and grand gold-laced futuristic Atlantis. I really like fantastic architecture in videogames and movies -- the weirder and more aesthetic the setting is -- the more i like it.

Speaking about weird, Odyssey did something really, really, REALLY strange in (one of it's) ending and i actually kinda like it. They actually pushed the envelope on the sci-fi side of a series and changed the relationship between main characters inside and outside the animus. So kudos for that.

Overall the biggest problem with the game it is filled too much with filler. Where Origins quests and story felt brief and meaningful, Odyssey is almost all filler and at odd with itself. In Origins they purposely capped themselves to only leave the most interesting quests in and in some places there wasn't even much to do, but at least it played good. While in Odyssey it feels like bar for quality was lowered so much -- nothing leaves an impression.

It's a good game in minute to minute gameplay, but they really should have cut like 70% of it instead of stuffing it so much.

[MagicCow64]

Xbox Gamepass (PC):

I saw that this was $1 for a month to start, and wanted to play Carrion, so I signed myself up. The desktop app is weird and kinda terrible, and makes you jump through dumb sign-on hoops, and a good third of the time the games don't boot right, but given how cheap it is, these are forgivable quirks.

Carrion

I was excited for this, but it's just kinda okay. It makes a strong first impression because the monster is fun to control, and the gamefeel is quite different from much else out there. Unfortunately it's very linear, not really a metroid-type title, and fundamentally repetitive. Combat is more of a hassle than anything, and the level design is rather plain and one-note.

The Messenger

I'd been wanting to try this out for a while, and was happy to find it on the service. Ultimately, though, I found it somewhat hollow and repetitive. Some of the boss fights are fun, but most of the regular level space feels very similar to traverse regardless of whatever gimmicks are introduced here and there. The big "metroid' switch up is not actually that interesting or engaging, and the 8-bit 16-bit lightworld/darkworld flips are pretty arbitrary--nothing ever feels different.

Sunset Overdrive

One of the few Xbox titles that looked interesting this generation, and I was pleased to find this runs perfectly well on my laptop. But boy, what a whiff of a game. Once you unlock all your traversal abilities, it's genuinely fun to cruise around the map, but that only goes so far when the combat is a miserable chore and the level design is by-and-large the dullest open world suite you could imagine. There are maybe four or five story missions that actually leverage the movement toward engaging challenges, and those are easily negated by repeated, dreadful, mandatory base-defense sequences.

[MagicCow64]

Xbox Game Pass (PC):

My $1 intro price rolled over, but hell, I'll stick around for another month at $5. I might exhaust the catalog in that time, but I can always just drop $5 back in if a few things drop that I want to play. Although, I guess there's always the specter of them jacking the price up, but it doesn't seem to be on the near horizon.

Halo 3

Finish the fight! JK, there will be infinite Halo games. I'm not a big fan of the franchise, and in fact actively dislike the fact that it made certain of its features standard for years (very limited weapon inventory, shield regen, e.g.), but I nonetheless played through the first two games on Legendary back in the day. I got 3 on Gamefly pretty close to release, but popped it out and returned it after about an hour because it felt exactly like the previous two games and I was sick of it.

Many years later I was in the mood to revisit, and it runs great on my computer with OG graphics. And it does still feel virtually identical to the first two games. In the current landscape, however, it was moderately refreshing. It repeats the franchise's flagship sins (repetitive environments, repetitive gameplay, AI boners, weird pacing, botched checkpointing, etc.), and adds a few new ones (throw-away auxiliary items, crappy new vehicles/weapons, lack of dog-fighting, reduced enemy pool), but I mostly enjoyed blowing through the campaign on Heroic (too old to **** with Legendary bottlenecks). No collectibles, no map, no loot, no crafting, no skill tree, no stats, decent time!

As was my experience with the previous games, I had the most fun careening around trying to blow past as much combat as possible, and/or the overpowered vehicle sequences. It's bizarre they only put you in a plane for like two minutes, though. Notably, there's a hideous all-Flood level in extremely narrow corridors that 100% blows, perhaps worse than any previous Flood sequence, which always sucked. Also, the "boss fight" and final escape sequence were absolutely awful. Not sure overall why this is considered such a pinnacle, but I'm glad I can put a cap on the "real" series.

Gris

Pretty much as standard an indie cinematic platformer as can be imagined. Great hand-drawn look, decent level design, if overall very easy. Sniffing out the collectible bits tends to be more engaging, but the game is also poor at signposting how the progress works, so it's very easy to go past points of no return when you think you're trying to explore. This is a problem in a lot of these games, where "go left or right?" can screw you out of a complete run of a level. The areas in Gris are also quite long, so I have no desire to re-run them to clean up the missing stuff and possibly miss something again. On the plus side, there is no dialog, so you can completely ignore whatever "this is about emotions" thing they were going for.

The Touryist

Been interested in this for a while, but not enough to pay for it. Enter GamePass! First of all, the game looks great. They really nailed the voxel thing down to tiny details, and it definitely augmented the whole experience. Overall, it's quite a pleasant time, and keeps you chugging after progress and interaction as you open up more islands. Ultimately many of the side quests devolve into busywork with little tangible reward, but it's entertaining enough rooting around in the environments to keep you engaged, and the majority of the minigames are engaging enough in their own right. Weirdly, though, there are a few extremely irritating platforming bottlenecks that I don't understand how they made it through play-testing. There's one particular sequence where you have to jump on rotating orbs to finish a temple that just blew my mind how it existed.

[Morningshark]

Played both Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (GBA) and Partners in Time. For "reasons" I won't divulge, the last few hours of Partners in Time were horrible because of some frame rate drops. That said, I had a great time revisiting them. It's been years. Of the two, I enjoyed Superstar Saga more, and of all of the Mario & Luigi titles, it seems like the most versatile in terms of hardware it could be played on because it's a fairly brisk play through, with zero reliance on touch screen, microphone, dual-screen mechanics. I'm hoping we get a new Mario & Luigi title, despite the sad closure of Alpha Dream, but if we don't, a port of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga in HD would be great!

[Stratos]

Nintendo has stated in the past they typically don't buy studios, they buy talent and bring them in. I would not be surprised if Nintendo did this with a portion of the talent at Alpha Dream and they have them carry on the M&L games or some other projects.

[RABicle]

Little Red Lie
Pretentious misery porn, avoid.

[ThePerm]

LA Noire - Great Game. It's exactly like GTA except you're a detective. I hope for a sequel. Maybe San Andreas Noire.

[MagicCow64]

Xbox Gamepass (PC) Continued:

Ori and the Willy Wisps:

I am on record here as finding the first game thoroughly mediocre, particularly in terms of Metroid-style design. The sequel is very similar, but significantly bigger. Within the general linear flow of the progression, however, I found the sequences better designed and more intricate, and the increased focus on horizontal mobility enhances the moment-to-moment gameplay. Swapping out the weird shooting from the first game for a Hollow Knight-esque melee-focused combat system is definitely an improvement, but the busyness of the visual design makes combat difficult to track at times, and, like with the first game, there's just too much of it. The addition of sidequests pretty much only serves to provide more secret junk to rustle up, which is fine, as the big-ass map needed the density, though I did like the races.

Like with the first game, I found the visual palette repetitive and borderline garish along the lines of Trine 2. And the sentimental narrative is even more eyerolling. Still, overall, I'd probably give this a 7/10 compared to the first game's 5/10. Weirdly, though, they removed the one formally innovative element from the first game, the incorporation of quick-saves into the basic gameplay.

Battletoads:

I have vivid memories of renting the NES game multiple times and never making it out of the tunnel level, so I am both a prime target for a revival of this property, and one of the vast majority of original players who never saw most of the game. Outside of surface similarities (beat-em-up core, vehicle segments), nothing about this new game really feels like the old game. Instead, it's more of an interactive cartoon frequently swapping genres  and inserting minigames, which is a perfectly fine approach for a game in 2020. That said, most of the constituent elements aren't that fun, and the brawler gameplay gets tiresome quickly with its dependence on spammy ranged enemies. The tongue system was a good idea, though!


Crosscode:

I'm cheating here, because I didn't finish this game. I quite liked it initially; it felt like the rare retro-styled game that leapt forward in time to carry on the particular visual and design ethos of ambitious 16-bit action RPGs. But the more I played of it, the less I liked it. Everything is just too much: too many systems, too much enemy health, too many screens between towns, too many branches on the skill trees, too much grinding required for trading, too many rooms in the dungeons, etc. By hour 25 or so with no end in sight, it felt like chewing a mouthful of dry carrots, and I just spontaneously quit the game and uninstalled.

It bears mentioning that the narrative presentation is actively offputting. The concept of the game is a confusing mess that feels like otaku fan fiction of itself, and the "We're instantly best friends!' character stuff is cringe city.

Super Lucky's Tale:

So this one is frustrating. I recall the original VR release of this getting pretty poor reviews, but also that the re-release for regular consoles being heavily tweaked and improved. Given the paucity of 3D platformers out there today, I was happy to check it out.

It was just okay at any given point, kind of a cross between Crash Bandicoot and Mario 3D World. Never particularly interesting or challenging, but basically competent and fulfilling a certain gaming need. Bad pizza of platforming, if you will.

But then like a week after I finished it, it turns out I was mistaken (?) and they put the actual rejiggered version out on Gamepass that's supposed to actually be good. Or at least a major improvement. I'll never play that version.   

[nickmitch]

Golf Story:

This was a fun one.  The humor really makes the game, but the core golf gameplay is really solid.  The RPG element are pretty good, and made me feel like I was progressing a bit too slowly at times, but really it was just right.  Leveling up gives you points to add to your stats, and adding points to power takes away from other stats.  This means you'll lose accuracy and spin as you gain power, but you can get those back by adding points.

Puzzles were fun, but I wish there were more.  Being able to tee up from anywhere is a fun gimmick, but felt underutilized.  The side quest challenges often felt harder than the courses, but were more fun than frustrating.  Actual courses and match play were pretty far on the easy side.  I only lost once, and it was the final tournament.  Speaking of side content, not being able to play minigames after you beat them once is the pits.

[Adrock]

Resident Evil 5 (PlayStation 4)

Completed the base game on Normal difficulty, and I'm considering going for my first Platinum (though not necessarily looking forward to Professional difficulty). This was the first time since maybe 2011 that I've put a significant amount of hours into the game which holds up pretty well. The bumped up resolution and frame rate on PS4 is what I remember RE5 looking and feeling like years ago. However, I recently watched some old YouTube videos and nah, it's much better now. Playing the game on PS4 in 2020/2021 shows some of the warts of the previous generation far more clearly. The level design is pretty simplistic here, and it felt at times that PS3/360 hardware couldn't handle more. Most of the areas in which you're actively engaging in combat are small to medium sized rooms/hallways gated by loading doors.

The gameplay definitely shows its age. For example, you can't run and shoot, you can't reload while running, the cover system (when available) is rudimentary at best etc. Despite those things, RE5 is still enjoyable to play today. Even in 2009, Capcom could have done more with the multiplayer aspect. Kicking a few doors down together, hitting some switches, and pulling some levers is about as far as the co-op gameplay goes. For all the heavy-handed dialog about partners in this game, it hardly felt cooperative. It's largely two people shooting things at the same time. QTE is still and will always be total bullshit.

And for a remaster, it would have been nice if Capcom at least tried to fix or improve the CPU partner's AI. It wasn't as if the developers didn't do anything except improve the resolution and frame rate. Mercenaries and Mercenaries Reunion are now a single mode. I wonder if Capcom's plan is to eventually remake RE5 once they finish remaking RE4. It's already been like 12 years. We've seen full remakes in far less time.

The story is typical B-movie grade, Resident Evil fair masquerading as something more. It's silliness which can be both charming and frustrating. RE5 doesn't lean into the series' cheesiness as much as RE4 did. And if Capcom really wanted people to think Jill Valentine died, it had to put that in an earlier game so it would hit harder similar to how Wesker was hella murdered by the Tyrant in the original Resident Evil. Then, when he showed up three games later at the end of Code Veronica and suddenly has super powers, it matters. That said, the twist that the hooded, thief lord/plague doctor mask wearing character was Jill the whole time meant almost nothing. It's also not a good twist because who else was it going to be? Clearly, the plots of the games are created as they go and very few seeds are planted for future installments, and the overall series narrative suffers as a result. I'm not expecting award winning writing here. Rather, it could stand to be more cohesive and coherent as a whole. And as much as it pains me to say this, Jill should have actually died in the present day events of the game. That's how you raise stakes. As is, Jill "died" years before the start of the game and is alive at the end. Status quo was maintained, and no risks were taken. Jill hasn't done anything noteworthy in series canon since so narratively, I don't think anything would have been lost to that end. Chris doesn't even mention her in RE6.

On a personal level, I really liked the character of Josh Stone, and I'm disappointed he was barely in the game and has not appeared in a Resident Evil game since.

Anyway, I want to address the issue of race in this game as I'm not proud of my takes from 11 to 12 years ago. I have a much broader worldview at 36 than I did at 24, and I've been thinking about this a lot since replaying RE5. Here goes:

I don't believe it was the developers' intention to make a game that was offensive to people of color though, admittedly, I don't have enough information about the individuals involved in the production of the game to definitively make that call one way or another. It should be noted that racism, particularly at the time RE5 was originally released, was and apparently still is a really big issue in Japan.

That said, if you set an action game in Africa, you're likely going to end up having players shoot black and brown people which isn't inherently a problem because aforementioned black and brown people aren't portrayed as unjustifiably hostile. Like the villagers/Ganado in RE4, they were just living their lives until bad faith actors invaded their space and fucked everything (figuratively, and possibly literally). I believe the developers' intention was that pharmaceutical conglomerates like Umbrella and Tricell are a global threat, and they'll hit anywhere to further their agenda (of creating BOWs out of viruses or some other such nonsense), and it doesn't matter to them who is in their way or who they have to harm in order to get what they want.

We should also acknowledge that the main antagonist of RE5 is a blond, white guy. And perhaps more importantly, Wesker's goals weren't racially motivated. He thought everyone was inferior to him. Not a huge stretch to pull a megalomaniacal/hero-in-his-own-mind move of wanting to create a new world order with him at the precipice. To achieve that goal, he infected a huge swath of a country's citizens, most likely destroyed an entire culture, and something something Uroboros.

The problem though is once you get to Chapter 3 in RE5 and encounter the Ndipaya Majini. There's supplementary literature within the level in the form of a "Village Youth's Diary" detailing that after being infected, "The men are all dressing like our ancestors and fighting each other." The bolded part isn't racist per se but is, in my mind, definitely racially insensitive. Sure, they were taken advantage of by Tricell, but I can't think of any reason why, based on the game's text, they would need or have the capacity to dress like their ancestors upon ingesting all that plaga. Why would that ever need to happen? From a gameplay perspective, the developers wanted tougher enemies for that part of the game, the Ndipaya Majini essentially functioning as RE4's Los Illuminados (the cult dudes in hooded robes). However, going full tribal was unnecessary and seemed more like Capcom retroactively coming up with an explanation to a problem they created yet didn't need to create. Just have the Plaga Type 2 enemies wear something else instead of the most stereotypical and racially insensitive thing one can put in a game set in Africa. I don't know how that got through QA. Like no one at Capcom was like "Maybe we shouldn't?"

Here's a very obvious solution: just make the Plaga Type 2 enemies Tricell scientists and personnel. Excella was so obsessed with Wesker that she sacrificed her own employees, implying further that Tricell is so corrupt and evil they indiscriminately tested on whoever they could. If Capcom really wanted, it can even include the Ndipaya Majini without putting them in tribal gear. Tricell used them because they were there.

This is exacerbated by the fact that one of Sheva's alternate costumes puts her in tribal gear. Her personal history does not have her as part of a tribe. Why the **** is that in the game? And it's like a "sexy" tribal outfit. Come on, guys. We treat these things like they don't matter. I don't know, man... maybe they should though?

I read an interview wherein Shinji Mikami stated he refused to "eroticize" his female characters or portray them as submissive. In the Resident Evil games he directed, that's fairly consistent. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (not directed by Mikami) put Jill in that ridiculous mini-skirt so when she appeared in that very cleavage-y catsuit in RE5 (also not directed by Mikami), it was hardly surprising. Once Mikami left Capcom, no one was gatekeeping that stuff. Collectively in RE5, it's easy to see where some of the problematic elements originated from. So while the developers may not have meant to be offensive or insensitive, intention doesn't change that something is or at least can be construed as such. Ignorance may be the reason, but it is not an excuse.

[Order.RSS]

The problem though is once you get to Chapter 3 in RE5 and encounter the Ndipaya Majini. There's supplementary literature within the level in the form of a "Village Youth's Diary" detailing that after being infected, "The men are all dressing like our ancestors and fighting each other." The bolded part isn't racist per se but is, in my mind, definitely racially insensitive. Sure, they were taken advantage of by Tricell, but I can't think of any reason why, based on the game's text, they would need or have the capacity to dress like their ancestors upon ingesting all that plaga. Why would that ever need to happen? From a gameplay perspective, the developers wanted tougher enemies for that part of the game, the Ndipaya Majini essentially functioning as RE4's Los Illuminados (the cult dudes in hooded robes). However, going full tribal was unnecessary and seemed more like Capcom retroactively coming up with an explanation to a problem they created yet didn't need to create. Just have the Plaga Type 2 enemies wear something else instead of the most stereotypical and racially insensitive thing one can put in a game set in Africa. I don't know how that got through QA. Like no one at Capcom was like "Maybe we shouldn't?"

Here's a very obvious solution: just make the Plaga Type 2 enemies Tricell scientists and personnel. Excella was so obsessed with Wesker that she sacrificed her own employees, implying further that Tricell is so corrupt and evil they indiscriminately tested on whoever they could. If Capcom really wanted, it can even include the Ndipaya Majini without putting them in tribal gear. Tricell used them because they were there.

Having never played a Resident Evil game, I have a few (possibly dumb) questions: Does the Plaga mean there's a sort of viral plague which infects people? If yes, do they turn into zombies? And do they then spread that plague further by eating each other?

I ask because a lot of older zombie tropes are often traced back to either Haitian vodou or West-African folklore. (Western) storytellers stripped away the religious/spiritual elements and obvious slavery allegories, and then combined surface level descriptions of zombis with real-world diseases like cannibalistic Kuru from Oceania. That way you get pretty close to typical zombies-as-diseased stories.
From there the leap from disease to viral pandemic spread through biting and such basically gives birth to the zombie apocalypse genre, like the Romero movies, which in turn trace a seemingly straight line to Resident Evil. (I'm vastly oversimplifying and am definitely no expert in any of this subject matter.)

As an outsider reading your description it sounds like they unquestionably adopted the racist stereotypes which underpin zombie fiction's origins: a hodgepodge of mystical exoticism and heaping wildly different cultures on a single pile of "others". An imaginary, homogenous group of others who skew non-white, have cannibal traditions, believe spirits can leave the body and leave slow-walking living husks stripped of their soul, who live in mud huts, dress in tribal gear, and speak in tongues to their ancestors through voodoo magic.
And it feels like they just wholesale regurgitate all those deeply reductive tropes because "it's part of the genre"?

At best that reads as just careless ignorance caused by insular corporate cultures which do not include viewpoints of the places their stories are set in. Careless regurgitation of colorist standards (am I wrong in thinking Sheva is a light-skinned African woman who hunts darker skinned African people/zombies?) and colonialist white savior complexes.
I don't know whether any of this is on purpose, and like you say they likely thought the primary message was against bioweapons and aimed to portray the local population as victims of ruthless weapons manufacturers.
But if the only African setting they could think of (are there more?) was mud huts & spear throwing... I mean, especially if it's set in modern/near-future times (which I'm assuming based on the weaponry and sci-fi plot), that's uh... That sure is a choice.

Hope I haven't said anything dumb or ignorant here, but I'm just kind of over excusing this sort of stuff. They can still inadvertently repeat ingrained racist ideas inherited from upbringing/society, even if they don't intend to. I'm not saying all zombie fiction is inherently racist, or that people should stop liking the games or whatever. By all means we should see more games set in African countries, and see the vast diversity in locales, cultures and people of the continent.
But if they indeed remake this someday, I hope they wield a defter hand and take the opportunity to make some big changes.

[broodwars]

I will defend a lot of the stupid crap that RE5 does, with the lone exception of all that tribal crap (including Sheva's tribal outfit costume). C'mon...even if we want to pretend that Capcom Japan was woefully ignorant about what they were doing, Capcom USA clearly understood what was happening (given the notes in the game about it) and would have warned them.

As for the Plagas, Discord, the Las Plagas are a parasite that's injected (or in RE5, fed to) into a host that allows a person to control their actions, basically turning them into a voodoo zombie of sorts, but not one that carries the bite-based infection of the Romero zombies.

[broodwars]

As for me, I've been busy of late. I tried to make 2020 (and now 2021) the year where I got major games out of my backlog, stuff that's been sitting there for years irritating me.

As such, I finally played Assassin's Creed 3 via its recent Remastered release, and BOY do I hate that game. I hate its whiny, wooden main character (voiced by an actor who can't act); I hate its shitty pacing; I hate how it takes 5 hours to cross the gigantic maps; I hate how you have to waste hours in a pointless maze minigame in order to unlock fast travel points in the cities; I hate how the ending makes no sense (if the precursors were wiped out by a Solar Flare, why would Juno be able to shield the Earth from one now?); and I hate the really terrible mission design dictated by secondary objectives that are WAY too strict and finicky. And mind you, I played the REMASTERED release, where the developers went out of their way to "fix" the mission and environment design.

But more than anything else, I hate how this game completely half-asses the American Revolution, the thing I'd been wanting to play the game to see. You certainly see snapshots of it, but the game does a really terrible job of telling the story of the revolution.

Oh, and the developers also wrote and recorded a fantastic speech from Connor that wraps up his character arc; cut it from the game; and then left it in the code. Enjoy.

Edit: Youtube embeds don't seem to be working too well these days, so here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g59vyPocZQQ

I've played more, but I'm trying to split these posts up.

[broodwars]

With AC3 Remastered finally out of the way, I played through Assassin's Creed Liberation Remastered as well, since it was on the disc as well. I played the original version of this game on the Vita, and I remember liking it. Playing it now, it's...fine. It's an average Assassin's Creed game, and quite short by the series standard, but that's part of why I like it: it gets to the point. You're an assassin, here's your area, there's your target, go.

I still feel like the gameplay in Liberation is way too restrictive and tedious, but the mission design is decent and the Bayou in general is just SO much more enjoyable to get around than AC3's "Frontier" area. Liberation is also the ONLY game in the AC series to really try to DO something with the fact that this is an experience controlled by Templars. As such, the game censors dialogue and plot points that make the Templars looks bad, and only by "hacking" the game can you see the "truth".

On the heels of these 2 games, this probably sounds suicidal but I was really in the mood to replay Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. Instead, I finally played through Assassin's Creed Rogue via its Remastered release.

Rogue gets on my good side right off the bat by throwing you into the AC experience within seconds of starting the game up, and in general it never left my good side. Rogue is an incredibly short game if you don't bother with the side content and collectibles (which I did do and get), which is both a benefit and a detriment here. On the one hand, I appreciate above all that Rogue doesn't waste my time. On the other hand, Shay's story of being an Assassin that turned to the Templars is really rushed, to the extent that certain beats don't hit at all since we have no emotional attachment to that location or person.

Likewise, the short nature of the game also means that you never really feel a difference between playing as an Assassin & playing as a Templar, and the game could have spent a lot more time explaining the Templar philosophy instead of just showing this particular branch of the Assassin Brotherhood to be incompetent assholes.

Still, if you want more of Black Flag's ship combat and exploration, Rogue is a pretty decent time that won't waste yours.

[broodwars]

Last 2 for a while, I suspect. And just like the others, I expect the coming of the deafening silence.

Mortal Shell - It's a Souls-like. I feel like I could leave the write-up just at that, but there are a few minor things that make this game notable from your standard Souls-like: for one thing, there is no leveling system whatsoever, nor equipment really (with the exception of weapons). Instead, you play as a skeletal naked person that has the ability to harden to temporarily withstand any attack. However, scattered throughout the main hub area are the bodies of 4 fallen warriors. By possessing those 4 corpses (or "Shells"), you gain access to essentially the game's 4 character classes: a knight in armor with balanced stats; a wizard with slightly better health but slightly lower stamina; a rogue with low health but very high stamina; and an armored knight with high health but very low stamina.

Instead of gaining levels, you collect what the game calls "glimpses", which are specific to each Shell and  unlock stat bonuses unique to each shell (for instance, the standard Knight can get a bonus to their stamina regeneration upon Hardening; the Rogue gets a teleporting shadow dodge, etc.).

Here's the thing about this system: I played through the game as the standard Knight, and the main reason why is that this is the Shell that's put in your path right at the beginning of the game. You have to find the other 3 Shells, and all of them are hidden behind tough early-game hordes or mini-boss fights. So by the time you GET those Shells, you've already gotten used to playing as the one they practically gift-wrap you, so why would you even bother learning how the other Shells play? You'd think that the 4 shells being swappable would encourage strategic use of them, but since the glimpses ARE shell-specific the game HIGHLY encourages you to pick one and specialize. The game also outright LIES about what you need to do to unlock the Shells' abilities, something I was aggravated to discover online after spending hours combing the hub area looking for objects belonging to my given Shell so the Seer could unlock its true potential, only to discover that you just need to talk to her and hold down the confirmation button until a circle filled in.

The whole game is like that: overly cryptic, even by the standards of Souls-likes. The game likewise has an interesting system with items where you don't know what items do until you use them; but the more you use them the better the effects of that item get. For instance, there's a mushroom in the game that poisons you the first few times you use it, but after that it provides healing FROM poison and temporary immunity. It's a weird game.

What also sets the game apart from other Souls-likes is its length: it's a VERY short game, consisting of 3 dungeons (2 short, one long) and a hub area. This allows the game to end before it wears out its welcome. It also allows for a scenario where the player does a "no shell run", where you beat the game with essentially 1 HP. Because the game's creatures all essentially idle until you get close to them, you can essentially run past most of them on your way to and from the game's 3 primary bosses. Because of the game's emphasis on strategic hardening and dodging, it also turns the game's boss fights into essentially Punch-Out. Now, did I do something so incredibly suicidal?




Maybe. 

[broodwars]

Finally, there's Final Fantasy XV, my old nemesis. I've attempted to get through this game probably 3 times now, but after putting the game up for years due to just not caring anymore about where the plot was going, I finally finished it.

Having finished it, I don't want to hear **** about Final Fantasy XIII from people ever again. Say what you will about that game, and I will openly admit that game is flawed as hell, but as bad as that game's storytelling is...at least the story was PRESENT. You could play through that game and not even pay attention to the mountains of Datalogs, and you could still understand that game's basic story & villain motivations. Its story wasn't run through Square-Enix's corporate shredder to sell back to players at a premium 1-2 years later. It didn't sell its soul to Audi; Assassin's Creed; and fucking Cup Noodle to make a quick buck.

In order to understand FF 15's story, you need to...

- Watch the prequel CGI movie Kingsglaive.
- Watch the prequel "Brotherhood" anime episodes (which were never dubbed, by the way)
- Wait for 2 years of story patches that added cutscenes.
- Buy the "Royal Edition" content; which includes a bunch of story and side content added to the main game, as well as the Episode Gladiolus; Episode Prompto; and Episode Ignis DLC packs.
- Buy the Episode Ardyn DLC pack.
- Play the Multiplayer story mode (whose servers are no longer up) that fills in the gaps of a time jump that takes place late in the story.
- Play certain temporary festival content (like the Assassin's Creed Festival content that no longer exists).

FF 15 frustrates me because there is a good story here and a decent game to go with it, when the game decides to share what it IS. It's a game where the developers constantly play "Keep Away" with the plot, to the extent that by the time I finally finished the game I had no clue what Ardyn's PLAN was. I knew WHO he was, but not what his deal was or what he hoped to accomplish. That's kind of an important thing for the player to understand in an RPG.

Now, the DLC that actually released does fill in some crucial holes, though Gladiolus' DLC is pretty pointless and Prompto's is fairly dull. Ignis' and Ardyn's DLC are a blast to play through, particularly Ardyn's, and WITH Ardyn's backstory firmly established I can say that I love him AS a villain. It's just a pity that it took Square Enix YEARS to finally convey what his deal was.

I despise FF 15's story for how half-assed it comes across in the main game. Hell, the game's entire emotional core is built around a romance between Noctis and Lunafreya that exists ENTIRELY off-scren. I want to like the main 4 guys, but NONE of their relationship is explained in the game itself. I felt NOTHING when characters died or were severely harmed in this game (with the exception of Ignis). In fact, it says a great deal that I had more of an emotional moment when the fucking CAR died than when the game killed off a major character. The game kills off GODS COMPLETELY OFF-SCREEN, and then mentions them in passing.

Also, as much as the holes in FF 15's story bug me, it also bugs me how this game wants to be this epic "road trip" story, and yet refuses to commit to it in the name of generic "Open World Freedom." Let me put it this way: FF 10 was also a road trip story, and it kept its momentum by forcing the player to journey ever onward, not allowing them to return to previous locations until the road trip was over. By contrast, I spent my first 40-50 hours in FF 15 ignoring the plot and just driving around the open world doing monster hunts. By the time I finally returned to the story in Chapter 3, my characters were already strong enough to take on the game's DLC superbosses. By refusing to commit to their story & acknowledging player psychology (i.e. "if you put a sidequest in a dedicated player's path, they're going to do it, come hell or high water, wherever it takes them"), they shot their game's narrative momentum in the foot.

As much as I hate how FF 15 handles its story, though, I genuinely enjoyed the monster-hunting (aside from the damage-sponginess of the enemies) and light dungeon-crawling. The side activities like cooking & fishing are quite enjoyable. The DLC is quite good in its own right, but man is this game STILL (even now, all these years later) an openly unfinished trainwreck and a slog to get through.

[Order.RSS]

Thanks for the RE5 info Brood! I tried watching one of those FF15 movies (Kingslaive) and it's pure cringe. And that's coming from someone who owned Spirits Within on VHS. Animations looked incredible, but woof.

As such, I finally played Assassin's Creed 3 via its recent Remastered release, and BOY do I hate that game. I hate its whiny, wooden main character (voiced by an actor who can't act); I hate its shitty pacing; I hate how it takes 5 hours to cross the gigantic maps; I hate how you have to waste hours in a pointless maze minigame in order to unlock fast travel points in the cities; I hate how the ending makes no sense (if the precursors were wiped out by a Solar Flare, why would Juno be able to shield the Earth from one now?); and I hate the really terrible mission design dictated by secondary objectives that are WAY too strict and finicky. And mind you, I played the REMASTERED release, where the developers went out of their way to "fix" the mission and environment design.

But more than anything else, I hate how this game completely half-asses the American Revolution, the thing I'd been wanting to play the game to see. You certainly see snapshots of it, but the game does a really terrible job of telling the story of the revolution.

Yeah Assassin's Creed 3 really is terrible. It all looks great, and there's like 5 different games sandwiched in there, but none of them are polished at all. They can also inadvertently lead to a scenario where you play as a Native American man whose village was massacred, so he takes revenge by.... Establishing a 24/7 on-call murder squad of hitmen who you send all over the east coast to slice up dudes, while simultaneously operating a lumber trade empire, and distributing pamphlets intending to overthrow the British rule to... establish the U.S. government???

It's a plot which really only makes sense because the series needs to wind up adjacent to reality, but from a character perspective it's... puzzling. I guess the Assassin order is just prescient, and pursues the Templars regardless of what governments they erect in the process?

What I also hate is like, why are these games pretending to be open world at all? Half of all missions are location based anyway, and all the tailing missions outright make it impossible to use the open city. It's a bunch of hallways disguised as GTA: 1770ies. Sometimes messing up the stealth has consequences (like in the prison), other times it just seamlessly segues into combat. There's so little consistency despite its no doubt astronomical budget. I've got Black Flag in the backlog still, but just thinking about AC3 makes me not even want to try to get to it.

[broodwars]

Discord, Black Flag is IMO the best game in the series. It's basically "What if Wind Waker was about Tetra?" The AC stuff is the worst part of the gane, but it is an amazing pirate game.

[pokepal148]

Black Flag is the only one I've really played and I suspect I won't be returning to the series afterwards. It isn't that I don't enjoy the series, it's just that I feel like I'm getting my fill of it out of Black Flag.

It definitely runs well on Switch and the way the world is set up with the little islands and stuff really helps it avoid direct comparisons with more modern open world style games like BOTW. I definitely recommend it.

[Adrock]

I will defend a lot of the stupid crap that RE5 does, with the lone exception of all that tribal crap (including Sheva's tribal outfit costume). C'mon...even if we want to pretend that Capcom Japan was woefully ignorant about what they were doing, Capcom USA clearly understood what was happening (given the notes in the game about it) and would have warned them.

Just curious what that entails, mostly to see if it aligns with my list of issues.

Anyway, broodwars answered most of Discord.RSS's questions so I didn't want to spend a lot of time on them. It should be noted that functionally, plagas infected enemies were essentially Capcom making "smarter" zombies. The plagas are parasitic while everything pre-RE4 was viral. Not sure what the benefit of that change was. They're overcomplicating something that wasn't that deep to begin with. Narratively, we'd be getting in the weeds with series lore which is a confusing mess, and one I feel the recent remakes tried to rectify. I read something about Nemesis now connecting to RE4.

As an outsider reading your description it sounds like they unquestionably adopted the racist stereotypes which underpin zombie fiction's origins: a hodgepodge of mystical exoticism and heaping wildly different cultures on a single pile of "others". An imaginary, homogenous group of others who skew non-white, have cannibal traditions, believe spirits can leave the body and leave slow-walking living husks stripped of their soul, who live in mud huts, dress in tribal gear, and speak in tongues to their ancestors through voodoo magic.

Honestly, I doubt the developers thought that hard about it which I think is actually part of the problem. If they looked into the origins of zombie lore, they may have come up with a better story. I still have a bit of trouble completely understanding parts of RE5's plot, namely how some of the key Macguffins connect (assuming they even do or were meant to). As it stands, RE5 finally adopted a twice discarded idea of the "Progenitor Virus" which all the series' other viruses were (retroactively) created from, including Uroboros. The Progenitor Virus is derived from an African flower called "Stairway of the Sun" though I have no idea what it has to do with the plaga. They seem like separate entities that don't really crossover in the game's plot which is bad writing. They were just both in Africa, I guess.

That leads to another, perhaps more important question: Why Africa? "Why not Africa?" -Capcom, probably. My speculation is since the earliest known human remains were discovered in Africa (not sure if that's still true, but it probably was when RE5 was developed), it's supposed to illustrate just how long people in the RE universe have been fucking around with viruses, plagas etc. Africa is a vast, untapped setting especially in video games, and RE5 didn't go far enough. It's a shame really. I completely understand the criticism that Kijuju is portrayed really dingy, almost slum-like suggesting that's how the developers view Africa as a whole even if the implication of the text is that Kijuju was fine before Umbrella Corporation/Tricell ruined everything.

And it feels like they just wholesale regurgitate all those deeply reductive tropes because "it's part of the genre"?

That's probably correct. Resident Evil started as a remake of an NES game called Sweet Home. Obviously, it developed into its own thing. I believe series creator, Shinji Mikami, admitted to drawing inspiration from George Romero's movies.

At best that reads as just careless ignorance caused by insular corporate cultures which do not include viewpoints of the places their stories are set in. Careless regurgitation of colorist standards (am I wrong in thinking Sheva is a light-skinned African woman who hunts darker skinned African people/zombies?) and colonialist white savior complexes.

Possibly. I kind of feel like it's dumber than that. To me, the issues with RE5 stemmed from careless ignorance to a refusal to fully pivot when the reveal didn't go as planned. My understanding is Sheva was a relatively late addition. RE5 was originally intended to be a single-player game starring Chris Redfield. Capcom publicly revealed it, and white-guy-shoots-black-and-brown-people did not go over well. Then, instead of going back to the drawing board, Chris got a black partner who Capcom still wanted to be hot (which absolutely can be read as colorist) thus RE5 became a co-op game. You can tell Sheva was kind of shoehorned in because she barely does anything essential plot-wise. The narrative throughline of RE5 is the rivalry between Chris Redfield and Albert Wesker dating back to the original game. None of that even had to happen in Africa; it just happened to happen in Africa.

Capcom kept digging though. Sheva is there "because Africa" and making her lighter-skinned than many of the Majini she's murder-death-killing kind of makes the original issue worse. The developers very easily could have elevated the B-plot (Tricell fucks up a fictional African country) to the main plot and saved the Chris/Wesker stuff for a subsequent game. It doesn't even really make sense why the BSAA dispatches Chris, a North American BSAA agent, to Africa when the BSAA has an African branch. RE5 could have starred Josh Stone (a darker skinned supporting character who trained Sheva), delved deep into the history of Haitian vodou and West-African folklore you previously mentioned to create a more interesting and palpable origin story for the Progenitor Virus, and ultimately presented a more coherent narrative that actually intricately used its setting to its advantage. Unfortunately, in 2009, Capcom definitely did not have the courage to make a POC the lead in one of its tentpole games. It still doesn't as the cast of subsequent titles are:

[broodwars]

As it stands, RE5 finally adopted a twice discarded idea of the "Progenitor Virus" which all the series' other viruses were (retroactively) created from, including Uroboros. The Progenitor Virus is derived from an African flower called "Stairway of the Sun" though I have no idea what it has to do with the plaga.

I always interpreted Uroboros as being derived from the plaga sample that Ada stole from Leon at the end of Resident Evil 4.

I will defend a lot of the stupid crap that RE5 does, with the lone exception of all that tribal crap (including Sheva's tribal outfit costume). C'mon...even if we want to pretend that Capcom Japan was woefully ignorant about what they were doing, Capcom USA clearly understood what was happening (given the notes in the game about it) and would have warned them.

Just curious what that entails, mostly to see if it aligns with my list of issues.

The Many Stupid things about RE5...hmm...I'll have to think about that. It's been so long since I did my Platinum runs on the PS3 version of RE5 Gold. Just off the top of my head...

1. Annoying New Jersey guy that turns into into a giant sea monster (aka "Irving") - Well, RE4 gave us "squeaky-voiced midget Napoleon" (to quote Yahtzee), so my big issue with the dude is less that he's there than that he's given no introduction or development. He just...exists, then he doesn't, and the game never mentions him again.

2. The big action set pieces (too numerous to count) - It's funny. I've been on both sides of this argument over the years: the frustrated RE fan that wanted a spooky, tense Survival Horror experience...and the action gamer who just enjoys a good 3rd person shooter. In the end, I'm fine with RE5 being a big dumb action game (what my mother would call a "macho shithead movie"), because the combat is so fast and satisfying and this game WAS meant to be the finale to the main Resident Evil series plot. I also think a lot of people who hated on RE5's action focus hadn't played RE4 in a while, a game that basically gave up on being a horror game halfway in and went full-tilt action movie against steroid zombies wielding gattling guns.

I would also note that the main villain of this game is a scenery-chewing David Bowie lookalike who wears sunglasses at night. Resident Evil is a DUMB series, and it was welcome to BE dumb...once. And it's hard to argue that this was the wrong call, considering RE5 is STILL the best-selling game in the series at 13 million copies, despite FAR better games in the series having come in its wake. The problem is that Resident Evil KEPT not only being this dumb (and arguably got even dumber in RE6), but being so self-serious about how dumb it was. It wasn't until Revelations 2 that the series started to have fun at its own expense.

3. Wesker is Nightcrawler (aka Wesker's hilariously stupid superpowers) - Much as I'd like to knock RE5 for this, this is a Sins of the Father situation. Code Veronica introduced this stupid element, and RE5 was left to deal with it. I will say, though, that I love that the way you take him down is to turn off the lights in the arena so the idiot wearing sunglasses at night can't see you.

4. The teleporting Josh Stone - No, not going to defend this. It's just terrible writing the game actually attempts to lampshade at one point.

5. Samus Aran (aka Jill Valentine) - Nope, I've never understood why Capcom decided to turn Jill Valentine into Zero Suit Samus. It was a stupid idea, and pretty much every RE game since has tried to ignore that it happened. The game doesn't even provide an explanation for why Wesker changed her hair color after mind-controlling her.

6. Sheva's godawful AI - Yeah, it's awful. I just chock that up to it being Capcom's 1st attempt at an AI partner, and it's worth noting that their AI partners have gotten SO much better in the intervening years with RE6 and Revelations 2. It doesn't make her habit of repeatedly wasting MY ammo to shoot ME in the back (because I'm standing between her an an enemy) any easier, but at least you can mitigate the damage she does by making her the pistol user while you wield the more powerful weapons.

7. The restrictive inventory system - Yeah, I miss the attache case, but if you keep it organized it is a lot faster to switch weapons and manage inventory that it used to be, and it does keep you in the action.

8. The boulder punch - You know...the boulder punch is stupid and nonsensical...but it's also kind of hilarious, and In the Moment it doesn't really bother me. Thing is, I think people focus too much on the boulder punch (which doesn't even crack the boulder. It just rolls it off a precipice) when there's a much more stupid thing going on: you're fighting a mutated, bladed David Bowie in an active volcano over pools of lava that should disintegrate your characters just by being within 50 feet of them. Compared to EVERYTHING else going on at that moment, is the boulder punch REALLY that big an issue?

9. The BSAA - The existence of the BSAA is actually legitimately my biggest problem with this game, as well as those that followed. Why? Because we've now reached the point where Resident Evil isn't about people fighting tooth and nail to survive against hideous monsters. It's now about Private Military Companies fighting each other in this giant proxy war with no end in sight. That's what RE6; Revelations 1; Operation Racoon City; Umbrella Corp; the CG movies; and even RE7 to some extent were about. And, mind you, EVERY character who survives an RE game up to this point apparently joined one of these PMCs (except Leon, who might as well be in one).

I GET that this is actually a logical extension of stuff set up as early as Resident Evil 1. That doesn't make it any easier to swallow that Resident Evil is now about fighting terrorists or armies using BOWs in some foreign country, not about fighting the Unknown. The introduction of the BSAA; Tricell; Terra-Save; FBC; etc. turned Resident Evil into Call of Duty more thoroughly than all the explosions and quick-time zombie motorcycle fights ever could.

[Adrock]

I always interpreted Uroboros as being derived from the plaga sample that Ada stole from Leon at the end of Resident Evil 4.

I thought so to until I looked it up. The sample Ada stole in RE4 appears to be unaccounted for. The Plaga Type 2 (Town Majini) and Plaga Type 3 (Ndipaya Majini) in RE5 were created from a sample Wesker obtained from Jack Krauser's body in RE4. I haven't been able to confirm any real connection with Uroboros which apparently is viral.

The Many Stupid things about RE5...hmm...I'll have to think about that. It's been so long since I did my Platinum runs on the PS3 version of RE5 Gold. Just off the top of my head...

I don't want to quote these individually so here goes:

• Nah, can't defend this. Irving is clearly supposed to be RE's version of Salazar except he lacked everything that made Salazar hilarious. He had far less screen time as well. If Capcom cut the Chris/Wesker plot, Irving's role would have been a lot more meaningful.
• I'm one of the plebs who prefers the more action oriented Resident Evil though I think RE5 was pushing it with all the set pieces then RE6 jumped the shark. RE5's attempts at horror fail tremendously. The Reapers are so stupidly infuriating because they're just invulnerable (unless you farm for better equipment/upgrades) until they inexplicably reveal their obvious white weak spots. You just have to back away from them until that happens, or they instant kill you. It's supposed to be scary, but it's just bad gameplay. **** those things (not literally).
  
  Resident Evil definitely got dumber with RE6. I have not played Revelations 2 at length. I have it for Switch, and the load times were off-putting (over a minute to restart from last checkpoint... which I do often). Maybe I'll pick it up on PS4.
• I kind of hate that you mentioned Wesker's Nightcrawler powers as I never made that connection before, and now, I can't unknow that. I will defend this because I mostly thought Wesker was a great villain despite still thinking either this game should not have taken place in Africa or it could have taken place in Africa as long as Chris/Wesker's plot thread was removed.
• Yeah, you can make a case for Josh teleporting whenever the plot needed a supporting character to help Chris/Sheva. He did have helicopter support from Doug who only appeared in the Desperate Escape DLC. I'll defend this because it's the least of RE5's issues.
• Nah, man, can't defend what the developers did with Jill Valentine. I previously discussed this so I don't want to repeat myself. They pretty much made every wrong decision with Jill in this game. I should note that I also do not like Zero Suit Samus (outside of Super Smash Bros).
  
  I was under the impression that the experiments Wesker did on Jill changed her hair color. She did look extra pale even if the P30 device was giving her super powers or something.
• Okay, fine. It was the developers' first crack at an AI partner. However, Capcom remastered RE5 in 2016 and didn't do anything to improve this. Boo/hiss. It got to the point where I had to take my AI partner's things away just so they wouldn't mess with my strategy, and even then, they still get in the way.
• I'll defend the inventory system. I liked it more than the attache case in RE4, especially in Mercenaries because the weapon switching shortcuts is great. It isn't perfect because diagonals can't be selected though admittedly, that would have been a nightmare especially on Xbox 360's D-pad.
• The boulder punch was awesome. I'll hear no boulder punch slander. At that point (in the middle of the final boss fight), the game was so off the chain-hook, why not have Chris punch an f-ing boulder in a QTE segment?
• I'll defend the BSAA because it was the only direction to go once Raccoon City was bombed into dust. That set the bar, unfortunately. It seemed like the developers felt they had to keep going bigger. I was hoping Capcom would reboot the series to scale it back. RE5 got a little out of hand then Leon fought a meat-dinosaur in RE6 with an on-rails section right in the middle of it. That sentence sounds like I'm making it up. What was Capcom even thinking with that nonsense?

[TrailerMan]

The last game I played was a game called Sludge Life. It was weird, but overall interesting. It reminds me of a 1990s MTV music video.