Let's Play Quantum of Solace

Wrestling with Video Games

There is hardly a more pure competitive gaming genre than the fighting game. Two players in one on one combat (sometimes two on two), battle to determine who is the best competitor. Wrestling is arguably the best form of sports entertainment. Well, to some. Wrestling games have been around since the original Nintendo and over the years, I've played most of them. As a wrestling fan (sometimes fanatic) I'm an even bigger fan of wrestling video games. I've played every wrestling game I can get my hands on, to the big retail releases, all the way to the obscure fan made Internet games. For the last two years I have played a wrestling game at least 360 of the 365 days of the year. I wish I could say that was an exaggeration. I have become so absorbed in the Universe mode in the WWE games (starting with 11 and moving to 2K14) that I have lost days to those games. Well with all my time playing wrestling games I thought it was about time I talk about my time with them. Why I play them, what I like about all of them, and what I'm looking for in a good wrestling game.

First I should talk about my favorites. I'll start with the current generation of wrestling games. While WWE'2K14 is easily the most polished and well made wrestling game in recent years, packed with loads of nostalgic hooks and some if the best match mechanics, WWE'13 is easily my favorite wrestling game. It's not that far behind 2K14 in terms of quality, and the roster is by far the best as it represents the best nostalgic era of the WWE, the Attitude era.Now a lot of people hold the old Aki games close to their hearts and I'm no different. I've probably played Wrestlemania 2000 and WCW/NWO Revenge more than any other wrestling game and these are still two of my favorites. No Mercy is also a game worth hours of time. The Nintendo 64 was one of the best eras for wrestling games and will always be where some of my fondest memories remain.While eventually Smackdown would come out and be the best wrestling game on the PlayStation, there was less success with the WCW games. When I was watching wrestling as a kid I was watching WCW. I loved Sting and the angle with the NWO so when I was looking at wrestling games, naturally I wanted to play a WCW game. Unfortunately when it comes to PlayStation (which was what I was playing at the time) there were only a handful of bad to mediocre WCW games. I played a lot of WCW Nitro and Thunder even though they were both pretty terrible. However my friends and I found solace in WCW vs The World. A game for PlayStation the combine the big main members of the WCW roster and some Japanese wrestlers. I remember late nights with this game as Danny's older brother consistently stomped me into the ground with this game. I remember WCW vs The World fondly but I recently revisited the game.So now we live in the modern age and have our first next gen wrestling game out with WWE 2k15. The WWE games are the only noteworthy wrestling games being released anymore ( I enjoyed TNA Impact but I doubt we will see another outside of mobile) and if you are looking for something different you have to look to the past or to obscure Internet games which is where I found two shining gems. Two wrestling mobile games that have hooked me like any other mobile game has before. The first is called Wrestling Manager by a company called Serious Parody. This is a game similar to the general manager mode in the Smackdown vs Raw series where you are buying and trading wrestlers and trying to put together the best shows you can. Each show gets a rating and review and you can look at each match on your card to see what matches were better than others. The entire game is played trough menus and the wrestlers are represented by what look like playing cards. All of the characters are parodies of real wrestlersbut there are a lot of original made up wrestelrs as well. You can bid on or buy new wrestlers, match types, and arenas and you try to put together the best shows you can.Now the one game I HAVE to mention, and also half the reason I wanted to write this, Is Wrestling Revolution for phones and PC. This game is essentially the most pure and earnest wrestling game. Now the art style is kind of like flash meets construction paper and colored with MS paint. It controls very weird but once you get the hang of it, it's easily the best playing phone game that has buttons on the screen that I've ever played. If that's an issue for you then you can download a PC version which works better. It's not exactly the gameplay that makes this game so much fun though. Yes when you figure it out it is fun to play, however the lifestyle aspect is the draw here. So you start out in wrestling school and you can be contracted by different wrestling promotions that are all parodies of existing wrestling promotions. The wrestlers are also parody. Cm Punk equals Mc Puke and Colt Cabana is Kute Kavana. That sort of thing. So when you finish an event  you get a recap of the week between all of the promotions. You see who leaves, who wins titles, who resigns a contract, and even who died of an overdose. That's right wrestlers will die and then you have to wrestle charity events.There are so many more wrestling games out there but these are some of the ones I feel deserve some attention or are worth remincising about. While I may have fallen off of actual wrestling for a long time I never stopped loving the games and I will continue to play all of the ones that come out. So what are you favorite wrestling games? Do you know any that a lot of others may not have heard of? Feel free to share it.

While the modern day roster has some obvious gaps, this game is loaded with so many great wrestlers that a lot of the B tier characters that are neglected aren't missed. The only one up that 2K14 has on WWE'13 is the rivalry system which really steps up the universe mode. Looking back to the inception of the PS3 and XBox 360, Smackdown vs Raw 2007 was the first split gen wrestling title (though only on 360 and PS2) and was a phenomenal game. The general manager mode is one of my favorite additions to any wrestling game and the roster was amazing. The gameplay was fast, the hits felt hard, and had an addicting Road to Wrestlemania mode that I played multiple times. Now if we step back a generation to the Playstation 2, Smackdown here comes the pain is easily my favorite game of that era.
Like most of these games for me, it all comes down to the roster and replay ability which Here Comes the Pain has both of. The career mode is a lot of fun with different ways to play to keep it fresh every time you jump in.


While I spent days of my life with the Aki games, my earliest and fondest memories of really losing myself to wrestling games was WWF Warzone.  While I had encountered wrestling games before with the Super Nintendo WWF games, I wasn't an addict until Warzone. While nothing about this game would be considered good by any of today's standards, its multiplayer was enough to bring me and my best friend Danny to the same couch everyday after school just to pick our favorite wrestlers (or create our own favorites) and beat each other senseless.  When we weren't playing Warzone we were wrestling on his trampoline with our friends. It was the time of the attitude era and wrestling was our everything.

Incredibly stiff and bare bones compared to wrestling games today, WCW vs The World is a game that relies on its nostalgia and doesn't hold up well over time but is probably the best WCW game on the PlayStation but really the Aki games are where it's at. I choose to ignore WCW Mayhem and Backstage Assault and you should too.

You can choose the winners or just let the matches play out, only represented by watching bars rise and fall. After the show you get a raiting and profit, or loss. Honestly all the game amounts to is buying the better wrestlers and bigger arenas and putting together as many matches as you can until you build up enough money. You do have different tiers of challenges that add a lot of playability to the game and keep you coming back. It's fun and addicting. You want to keep completing your challenges but beware because as soon as you finish the challenges the game has little to offer.

Not real enough for you? You can also injure/get injured during a match, which is signified by a scream and your character having trouble manuvering after. Sometimes however after someone get's injured you might find out afterwards that they went to the hospital and died from their injury. It's easily the most earnest wrestling game and doesn't shy away from the darker aspects. This game even has ten man matches that are pure mayhem and it's incredibly fun in just how much of a mess it can be. It's easily one of my favorite wrestling games currently out and I would love to see this game make it to a Vita or 3DS or something. It's worth checking out and you can tell it's a wrestling game made by a wrestling fan for wrestling fans. There's also a new 3D version out but I haven't had the chance to play much of that yet.

The First Person Innovation

It seems we are at the point in the gaming industry where there are at least eight different first person shooters coming out every year. I don't know about anyone else but I'm getting sick of gunning down bad guys from a first person perspective. Not to say I don't enjoy those games from time to time but I'm just ready for something a little different. I don't think the first person genre should be left behind completely but there is plenty of room for advancement. While any game that has a first person perspective is more than likely going to involve a gun and the player shooting dudes but that doesn't mean there isn't room for other features. 
 
In the last couple years we have seen an advancement in the genre with realistic animations (which may bother some but I really enjoy as it gives a sense of character) and varied game play features.  The first games that come to mind are The Darkness and The Chronicles of Riddick. These games introduced some interesting concepts such as experiencing every day things (watching a movie and kissing your girlfriend) and hand to hand fighting from a first person perspective. I found these games to be highly unique and a great fun experience when they came out and I am glad to see sequels to these games being released. Far Cry 2 and 3 seem to be good examples as to how you can take a standard first person shooter and make it a little more interesting with dynamic character animation. I feel like varied animation can give a lot to a first person character even if it is a silent protagonist you can still get a feel of how this person thinks or feels in the position that they are in. Some people find this distracting to game play and that it slows them down but I am more than welcome to embrace good character animation in my first person shooters just so I can have a little more variety.  
 
Prey 2 is on the horizon and this game is giving me a lot of hope for the future of first person shooters. While it has the makings of most standard shooters it is also far more in depth with the fact that there are choices to make in the game and traversal elements for making your way around the environment (something Brink tried to implement, but well . . . yeah.) The one thing about Prey 2 that is most interesting to me is living through the life of a bounty hunter in first person. This is something that I wouldn't mind seeing more of in future games. All of the different things you can do in Prey 2 make this game so fascinating to me (aside from the fact that this seems like an awesome sequel to a terrible game) such as the option to play through your missions differently and the world they have created for the game. 
  
I can only hope to see more variety in first person games in the future. There have been plenty of attempts with games like The Darkness, Riddick, Prey 2 and even fatal frame with the camera mechanic. I would even be interested in a first person puzzle game with no weapons (a first person horror puzzle games could be pretty fun.) I'm not saying the average Call of Duty game should disappear but a break might keep the series from going stale.

A Retrospective Look At Mortal Kombat

2011 has without a doubt been the year for Mortal Kombat. With the release of their reboot title, a popular web series, and the classic arcade collection we have seen a plethora of MK material this year and I couldn’t be more excited. Mortal Kombat was the franchise that drove me so deep into video games and is the first game I ever played in arcades. I probably pumped more quarters into the original MK cabinet than any other machine in an arcade. Spanning from 1992 to 2011 Mortal Kombat has still managed to wow its fans with every release and somehow manage to keep everyone wanting more. There have been a lot of fighting games throughout the years and next to Street Fighter Mortal Kombat has managed to stand out among its competitors as one of the best.

Mortal Kombat first burst onto the scene in 1992 and was highly controversial for its extreme level of violence. It’s easy to understand how people could be upset about a game where you can rip off your opponents head after you just finished beating them into the ground. While the violence was argued upon it didn’t stop the game from pulling in a lot of attention or keep it from winning awards. Thus a legacy was born and Mortal Kombat turned into a thriving franchise that still pushes strong today. Mortal Kombat was developed by Midway (now NetherRealm Studios) and created by Ed Boon and John Tobias. Midway had previously already created some of the most memorable arcade games of their time and continued to dominate with the success of the Mortal Kombat series. With a colorful cast of characters and amazing special moves, it was not easy to forget a series such as this that only continued to improve over the years.

Mortal Kombat II and III only improved upon the franchise with introductions to new characters and game mechanics such as the ability to run and the implementation of a combo system. However after the first three games Mortal Kombat proved that it too could suffer. Mortal Kombat 4 was the series first introduction into 3D and was the least successful of the franchise to date. MK4 was also the last title to be released in arcades with the company moving onto console version with the next iterations. Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance and MK Deception improved on the 3D fighting and brought the violence to a whole new level with updated graphics and more gruesome fatalities.

One of the most interesting things to me about the MK franchise was all of the rumors that circulated about the original arcade games. Supposed secret characters or glitches that were passed around by word of mouth by kids who had sworn they knew a guy who had a friend whose brother had unlocked. Midway never turned a deaf ear to any of these rumors and in the ultimate fan service some of these characters have such been created and added into the games. Ermac and Skarlet are two examples of characters that were rumored to be glitches and were later inserted into a game.

Mortal Kombat established itself as a franchise that could move beyond the realm of video games with the release of the first movie in 1995. Being well received and in my opinion one of the best video game movies so far Mortal Kombat expanded into a television series (Mortal Kombat Conquest), cartoon (Mortal Kombat Defenders of the Realm), a horribly made sequel film (Mortal Kombat Annihilation), and in 2011 a ten episode web series (Mortal Kombat Legacy) that may possibly expand to a second season. While all of these are worth watching except the second movie the biggest downside is that the television series has not been released on DVD in the United States so getting a hold of it is pretty difficult in the States.

In between the creation of the fighting games there were other MK games developed that were trying to take the series in a new direction. MK Mythologies Sub-Zero was the first in what was supposed to be a series of MK games that would focus on singular character stories, however it was poor received and only led to one other character game based on Jax called Mortal Kombat Special Forces which performed even lower and thus canceling any more character specific games. That wasn’t the end of adventure style MK games however because 2005 saw the release of Shaolin Monks which was a retelling of MK II following the characters of Lui Kang and Kung Lao. Shaolin Monks became the most successful Mortal Kombat game that wasn’t a fighting game and went on to sell over a million copies.

While MK Deadly Alliance and Deception were still well received they still received some backlash from fans. In 2006 we saw the last release of the previous console generation with Mortal Kombat Armageddon which was the end of the MK story as it stands now and featured every character featured in an MK game up until that point and even a couple of new ones. Armageddon did well and even expanded on the story mode known as Konquest from the previous two games and allowed Mortal Kombat to have its last hoorah in the PS2 and Xbox era. It was only two years later when we finally saw the return of Mortal Kombat on the PS3 and Xbox 360 with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, a much different MK game that combined Mortal Kombat with the DC characters in a battle to save both of their worlds. It introduced new mechanics and updated the combat and was an excellent fighting game and a welcome introduction into the series with its online play.

2011 saw the most recent release in the reboot simply titled Mortal Kombat which is a retelling of the first three games. Mortal Kombat brings back the 2D fighting from the original games in a big way and pulls it off perfectly with the 3D character models. With the new game being such a success it only begs the question what is in store for the future of Mortal Kombat? It has been said that NetherRealm hopes to produce a Mortal Kombat game every year and I say bring it on. With new possibilities for games and the hopeful continuation of the web series Mortal Kombat could still be a driving force in years to come.

If I Made A Game: Space Edition

Space is the largest and most wide open place imaginable and as far as we know it goes on forever with no end. Yet somehow space has always been a very limited and very structured concept in video games yet it should have the most options available because literally anything is possible out there. I’ve had a lot of sci-fi on the brain lately so when thinking about the kind of game that I would want to make, what I would consider my perfect game, my mind is immediately going to space. Er . . . figuratively that is. Now there are obviously a lot of space games, and some that are just huge, like Mass Effect or the some simulation games, but there’s nothing out there that has everything I’m looking for all in one package.

There are four things I am looking for when I think of my perfect space game, freedom, fiction, action, and simulation. Now when I say simulation I don’t mean like A10 Warthog style flight simulation, I’m thinking more along the lines of Sid Meier’s Pirates or The Sims. I want Sid Meier’s Pirates in space! However that is just the starting ground and good platform to build off. Mas Effect 2 is probably the closest I have come to what I envision traveling through space in my game to be like with more FTL style encounters, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The beginning of the game will have you picking your class and role in the universe. You can be a Starfleet soldier and work up to commander, a bounty hunter who goes around and you know bounty hunts, a space pirate, or maybe you just want to be a settler and explore all of the worlds in different galaxies. This leads us into your path through the game. Each class will have their own story naturally and they will all be independent and not just lead into the same end like some games of this type have done in the past.

The way I see it is that the Star Commanders will have the real narrative story involving some kind of space war (because there is always a space war) and will actually have multiple styles of play. Normally you will fly your ship around and have random encounters that can go all sorts of different ways such as trading with aliens, engaging in combat, or even talking your way out of a situation. Space combat will involve three things with the first being the ship to ship combat. You can control your ship in battle and fight off the enemy ships or you can try the second and more tactical way, control everything from the bridge like a Star Trek captain. Maybe if flying isn’t you thing you can just play as your captain and give orders from the bridge offering a more tactical style to the gameplay. The third will be the ship boarding combat. At this point the game would have third person shooting as you board the enemies’ ship and battle your way to the bridge, or maybe you have to defend your ship from invading troops. You can run all throughout your ship and go wherever you have to to stop the invaders, but watch where you’re shooting because if you damage anything then you will have to have it repaired after the battle. You will be able to employ technicians to your ship though to take care of that kind of stuff or even let’s say if you’re engines are disabled and you are stranded until they are fixed. I like the idea of having to have your ship actually repaired in combat instead of just using healing tools or something like that. Imagine being stuck in space after a battle, repairing your ship, and then all of a sudden another enemy ship comes by and you have to engage in another battle. Talk about intense!

Playing as the rest of the classes will be a little more open ended. The universe map will be huge. I’m thinking of something like Sins of a Solar Empire where you can literally zoom out the map to see four galaxies next to each other. The ships will have some kind of light speed so you can travel all over different galaxies if you wish and encounter all different kinds of stories and other alien races to interact with. The pirate class will basically require you to rob ships or compounds you happen to come across and will involve some stealth elements and cloaking devices while bounty hunters will have places all over the universe to pick up bounties and bring them in to make ends meet. The settler class is basically the sandbox mode. As a settler you start with your character in a ship and you can do anything at will. If you want to play any of the other classes just go to the designated bases and sign up to join and quit anytime. Maybe you just want to settle on a planet and live in a Sims style life game then do that. Maybe you can just play the game like EVE Online and become a space miner or carry shipments. The possibilities are yours.

Space is something an imagination can run wild with and that is exactly what I would want with a space video game. There have been a lot of RTS and Civilization style space games but none that have captured what I have been looking for. Combining multiple gameplay styles and having total freedom to do what you want even if it leads to nothing after hours of gameplay that can still be a lot of fun if the game is fleshed out enough. Whether you want to fight in a war, rob ships blind, hunt down some lowly criminals, or just live a live in space I would just want one game to have my back on whatever I want to experience.

Analyzing Video Game Movies: Far Cry

Well here we are at the end of the year and Far Cry 3 was pretty much the last big release of 2012 yesterday and it seemed appropriate, since we have been talking video game movies, to talk about the Uwe Boll Far Cry film adaptation. Yes we are finally talking Uwe Boll! Now Far Cry is actually one of Uwe Boll’s later video game movies and this may not be a good place to start with talking about his career because Far Cry is actually one of his better movies. Now don’t get me wrong, Far Cry is a bad movie made by a worse director but I can honestly say that if I knew someone who was super interested in a Far Cry movie that I could actually recommend it with managed expectations.  Uwe Boll has made some of the worst video game movies to date but Far Cry is easily his most watchable film in the genre.

Let’s start with what I think is good about Far Cry. This movie actually sticks to its source material very closely. It follows the plot of the first game where ex-military man Jack Carver is running boat tours off his fishing boat and is taking a lovely reporter out to some island where it turns out an evil scientist is running experiments to create these giant super soldiers. The film pretty much hits all of these beats right on which is more than what can be said about some other video game films out there. There are plenty of action scenes and for the most part are all really good. The biggest gripe I have with them is that Jack uses mostly just a handgun through the whole movie and is a crack shot taking down almost everyone with just one shot each. It’s a little corny but the action fits the style of Far Cry and is scattered throughout the film. What is probably the biggest departure from the games is the films setting. While the original Far Cry took place on tropical islands, the movie takes place in a more woodland island setting. You still get Jack moving through forests and trees we have just switched from tropical jungles to woodland forests. Overall it didn’t impact the movie to me though it would have been better in the tropical setting.

It’s clear from looking at Far Cry that this is a movie on a budget. Unfortunately there have been other video game movies with the same budget that looked much better, for instance the Resident Evil films. A 30 million dollar budget isn’t much for what should be a big action movie but there have been movies that prove that it can be done, Far Cry however is not one of them. The biggest thing about this movie is the cast. Til Schweiger plays Jack and while Schweiger is a fantastic actor I just have one problem; he is a German actor who speaks with a heavy German accent in the movie while in the game Jack was clearly very much American. This could just be me being nitpicky but Jack Carver is an American soldier and there is some emphasis to that it is just odd to have the part played with a heavy German accent. Other than that I thought Schweiger does a fantastic job with a script that is a complete shit show, especially next to the female lead. Emmanuelle Vaugier plays the female reporter and again she does a fine job but her and Schweiger have the most awkward scene randomly thrown in the middle of the movie. After he rescues her for the first time (of many) they spend a passion filled night together, as most action stars and heroines often do, and then the next scene is them just walking down a path nonchalantly, even though it’s an island full of people trying to kill them, and he asks her how he was the previous night. Are you freaking kidding me?! Who wrote this movie? To them I shake my finger.

The villain is played by Udo Kier who does a pretty fantastic job as Dr. Krieger, the mad scientist creating the super soldiers. One of the main conflicts is that he has taken the reporters father as a test subject, which gives us our personal vendetta and it plays out in that cliché type of way you would expect it to. Udo Kier is a great choice for Dr. Krieger as the man just has an evil presence on screen and actually looks believable in a lab coat. The most annoying casting however comes from Chris Coppola who I have actually enjoyed in some movies but here just feels like an annoyingly needless sidekick for Jack in the latter half of the film. He’s an attempt at comedy relief in a movie that desperately doesn’t need any. Uwe Boll has made some really terrible films and if he left out the comic relief in movies like Far Cry then that would be a step in the right direction. While his attempts at humor can be mildly successful they just hinder a movie that already suffers from some stale plot points and low budget appearance. Far Cry also just has some really flat writing overall. The movie works as a fine B action movie but does little else to appeal to a wider audience.

Far Cry, while being one of Uwe Boll’s better movies, is also one of his weirdest. This film was finished for a long time before it ever saw a release in the states and was originally only available in Germany even though the Far Cry games are forced into heavy editing there. Uwe Boll is also notable for shooting his movies overseas because of the production cost breaks and Far Cry was no different. The problem with that logic however is that if he was getting breaks on production then why does the movie look like it was still made on the cheap? Uwe Boll has made a career of making terrible video game movies and when he finally has it within his grasp to make a good one he once again drops the ball and turns out something, while not being a terrible movie, just falls far into mediocrity. Far Cry does do right by following the game story line and having a decent cast (which Uwe Boll has an odd talent for pulling in big names) but following the game story line isn’t enough to save this cheaply produced film.

There is a great movie in the Far Cry franchise somewhere but we clearly won’t see it from Uwe Boll. I was very excited to know that there is interest in a film version of Far Cry and I hope that one day we can have another shot at a Far Cry movie with a more accomplished director and a bigger budget. While this movie isn’t terrible and is actually a mediocre watch, that’s really the best thing I can say about it. The Far Cry movie is a novelty for people who have a more than average interest in video game movies like I do and even though it’s a bad movie I can say that I was entertained while watching it and could actually recommend it to dire hard fans or people with an invested interest. I only warn you to manage your expectations and realize you are watching nothing more than an average B action movie.

Analyzing Video Game Movies: The Resident Evil Franchise

While video games have become a major mainstream media and I do love to play them ever so much, video games have also expanded in their own right, onto the big screen. Now as well as being a huge video game player I am also a movie buff and I tend to have a sort of soft spot for watching video game movies, whether to enjoy them or laugh at how bad they are. I thought I would take some time to talk about some of the video game movies that are out there right now and the prospect of the future of this adaptation inspired medium.  This will be a feature that will be broken up into chunks and I will be making them as relatable as possible but for this first look we are going to examine probably the biggest and most expanded offender of the video game movies, the Resident Evil franchise.

Now at this point we currently have five live action and three CG Resident Evil movies which have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Now I’m only going to focus on the live action films and the two most recent CG films as the first CG film was only released in Japan and I have not seen it all but what I have seen looks extremely dated and uninteresting. You can find clips on YouTube if you are really curious but overall you can just skip it. I’m going to look at the live action films first as they are the most notable and successful of the franchise and the ones people will be more familiar with. The live action films also tell their own contained story while the CG films actually fit into the timeline of the video games and are considered to be canon.

The first Resident Evil film was released in 2002 and like all the rest starts Milla Jovovich and was written and directed by (except for the third movie having a different director) Paul W.S. Anderson. So I’m going to start off with talking about the things I like about this movie before I start breaking down the bad parts. First off the music was made by Marilyn Manson and Marco Beltrami and is fantastic! The music sets a great tone with its new age electronic horror sounds and really fits the laboratory environment that the film takes place in. Also I felt the tone of this first movie was really well managed and really felt like a horror film overall, even if it wasn’t a scary movie at all and that starts my problems with the film. This movie isn’t even slightly scary. Now I have a high tolerance for horror movies but even with that in mind this movie couldn’t even give me a jump scare, and this is a consistent problem throughout the film series. So this is supposed to be our introduction into Resident Evil and instead of focusing the movie on the mansion, where you spend about 80% of the game, they focus on the underground lab which is a small chunk of the original game. The ratio of time in mansion and time in laboratory is completely flipped between the game and the movie and that is maybe the biggest mistake as the mansion is the most iconic part of Resident Evil. Even taking the setting aside, what’s even worse is that none of the characters from the game are even in the movie. While some of the main characters from the games would appear in later movies the first has only all original characters and none of them are even that interesting. The story is explained by character motives that just don’t seem to make sense at all and there is hardly any emotional connection to these characters that you shouldn’t want to get eaten alive.

This movie definitely has the first attempt feel that you sometimes see in a movie franchise. Unfortunately the second film has that same feel. Now I will say that out of all of these movies, the first three are the only ones I would call enjoyable. I like the first three films and I would say I like the second one the most because it is the only one that follows the games relatively close even though it is still its own thing. However I will say that it is my opinion and overall, Resident Evil Apocalypse is really bad. It takes the best two games in franchise and just ruins them. This is the first one of the films to introduce an actual game character in Jill Valentine and Nemesis. However one of my biggest problems with this film franchise is its characterization. These films idolize women as being completely bad ass (either that or the cliché damsel in distress) and almost everyone is a crack shot and almost invincible. There’s hardly ever any fear for any of the characters. The third movie did pull this back a little and actually added some tension and danger but all of the other films it feels like all of the main characters are The One from The Matrix. The first film did have some horror elements to it but overall felt like a low rent action movie and the second film just blows it out of proportion. I’m pretty sure the main characters never miss a headshot and there’s even a cliché flick a cigarette into gas fumes like a bad ass scene. The second film holds a special place in my heart by actually incorporating things from the game and by being based off the best games in the series but it is a shameful movie that falls short even by the standards set by the original. The second film is just a huge step backwards from the first. Even the music was changed to be more of an orchestra and just doesn’t hold that same appeal.

Resident Evil Extinction is where this series finally picked up some steam and is easily the best produced movie in the franchise. While sometimes it is said that the third time is a charm, the third Resident Evil movie definitely steps up the game and excels where the first two movies failed. The first thing to note is that this movie is much more bloody and violent. Resident Evil and Resident Evil Apocalypse are two of the tamest zombie movies I have ever seen as there is very little graphic gore to the zombie attacks. Resident Evil Extinction actually has zombies tearing into people and while you don’t see anything as graphic as guts being pulled out of bodies, it is still very bloody and pretty graphic. What’s unique about this film is the setting which has never been done before in a zombie movie but because of that it strays farther away from the games than any of the previous movies. By this point in the story the virus has somehow spread all over the planet with very little explanation as to how that happened. It is then barely explained that since no one is around to manage the planet that it is just withering away and the main characters are no traveling across the Nevada desert which eventually brings them to a Las Vegas that is almost completely buried in sand. This film plays on a lot of other movie inspirations such as Mad Max and sets a very original tone for zombie movie.

Resident Evil Extinction brings back some characters from the previous movie and also introduces us to another character from the games in Claire Redfield played by Ali Larter. However this time around the characters feel even less like their video game counterparts then before and really only share the name alone. That being said this movie actually takes some of the better and more obscure elements from the games and starts to incorporate them in a way that is actually entertaining. The story here is pretty solid and the ending is probably the best of the series. It is also worth noting that the soundtrack is back to the greatness that the first film had and this will remain consistent among the rest of the sequels. It may be worth noting that this is the first and only film of the series not to be directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and is easily the best one to date. Could this be a coincidence? While this may be the best film of the franchise it is also the beginning of one of the worst aspects of the series. Milla Jovovich’s character has gained powers from the T-Virus and this is just a ridiculous concept even thought it was technically in the game Code Veronica. As I mentioned before most of the main in these movies feel a little too invincible and with the main character Alice receiving telekinetic powers she becomes pretty much unstoppable. So this movie actually ends with her discovering hundreds of clones of herself that Umbrella was making to try and find a cure and sets them free to exact her revenge on Albert Wesker who has the lamest introduction and role in this movie. I wonder how they will deal with that in the sequel.

So enter movie number four and within the first ten minutes Alice has lost her powers supposedly killed Wesker (yeah right) and all of the clones have been killed. Whoo that was fast! And the best part is that it all takes place in 3D. That’s right folks! We have stepped into the 3D territory now. This entire film was just advertised as a big 3D gimmick and brags about using the James Cameron 3D technology that was used to make Avatar as thought that could make a bad movie somehow amazing.  News flash, it doesn’t. This movie was a nightmare of boring. This film opens with a huge action scene involving Alice and her clones storming Umbrella and then there is basically no action until the end. Now this film at this point is the worst in the series (until the release of the fifth film but we’ll get to that) but there are things that I find enjoyable about it. First of all let’s get it out of the way. The soundtrack is awesome! Unfortunately this was the first movie not to also have a licensed soundtrack and only had a score. The licensed soundtracks for the first three movies were pretty epic if you were a metal fan and I suggest checking them out. I was disappointed the fourth and fifth movie didn’t get the same soundtrack treatments.

So here we are with the fourth entry and the world is in even more dire straits and we are introduced to another character from the games Chris Redfield. This interpretation of Chris is fine by appearance but lame by story. In fact the whole story is just boring. A group of survivors are held up in a prison surrounded by zombies and they believe that a ship in the harbor is their only hope. It’s a pretty thin plot and there is less zombie killing in this movie than any of the previous but that’s not even the worst part. Anderson loved to pull everything he could from the games and put it in the movies but this is where it goes off the rails. This movie was released after Resident Evil 4 and 5 which didn’t feature zombies but people controlled by a parasite. Well in Resident Evil Afterlife the zombies now have features of the aforementioned video game creatures and we are given literally zero explanation! It is safe to assume that the zombies have just somehow evolved into faster deadlier monsters but even one throwaway line of dialogue could have been inserted to give us that assumption. Instead we just get fast zombies and the executioner monster for no reason. This gets even worse in the next film but again I am getting ahead of myself.

So like I said Alice no longer has her powers in this movie but she actually seems even more superhuman without them. There is a scene where she literally jumps off of the huge prison with just a rope and just rolls out of it when she hits the ground. This wouldn’t even fly in a Die Hard film and John McLane jumped onto the back of a jet in his fourth movie. So this movie builds up to a rather anticlimactic conclusion that rips out fight scene choreography directly out of Resident Evil 5 which manages to be the best part of the movie. Strange to notice the best parts of these movies were all things that came from other people and not Anderson. So the movie ends and Wesker (who has some of the cheesiest acting I have ever seen in my life) either does or doesn’t die (he doesn’t) and we get a huge camera pull back showing the boat being attacked by a bunch of Umbrella ships. Cue the fifth movie.

Now I’m not going to get too deep on this movie because it isn’t even on DVD yet but let me just tell you that unless you are heavily invested in these movies that you shouldn’t even bother watching it. Literally nothing happens in this movie that moves the plot forward on the condition that the world is in which was such a big focus of the last two movies. In the third movie we were told that a cure could be made and here we are in movie five and that still hasn’t been mentioned again. We get even more video game characters shoved into this film for no reason so now we get to see Leon Kennedy, Barry Burton, and Ada Wong all ruined in a film. Thumbs up to Anderson for being able to take some of the most bad ass characters from video games and making them incredibly lame. This movie feels like the biggest half step in a franchises history and just like the last movie is just a big 3D gimmick. This is the worst film of the franchise and I can only say that the more of it I watched the more offended I became. This is the only movie experience I have had where I was literally offended.

As a fan of video games when I see a movie based on one and they want to throw in something from the games I think that’s okay as long as they contextualize it. Resident Evil Retribution literally name drops things from the game with zero explanation as to what it is. Anyone watching this that hadn’t played the games would be completely lost. As a film maker you should think of your audience as being completely uninformed and lay everything in a way that makes sense and is understandable. I guess Anderson forgot all about that after making Mortal Kombat. This movie also has some of the worst interpretations of the video game characters and the previous movies had set the bar pretty low so that’s saying a lot. There’s no need to worry however because this film has no ending and sets us up for one last crack at it. A sixth movie can’t be as bad as this one right?

Now this is a lengthy article but that’s because the Resident Evil film franchise is the largest video game movie series to date. We have made it through the live action films so I’m going to talk real quickly about the two CG movies, Resident Evil Degeneration and Resident Evil Damnation. These two movies focus mostly on Leon Kennedy but Claire Redfield is in the first one which gives us their first reunion since Resident Evil 2. Needless to say these are the best two Resident Evil films that exist. They actually fit within the game continuity and look amazing. The second film, Damnation, is easily the best Resident Evil movie. Degeneration is a solid film for fans but overall is kind of boring. Not a lot happens and has a slow pacing. Damnation however has a well written story, lots of action, and great interpretations of the characters. Not to mention we get to see Ada Wong well represented in a movie. These CG movies are a great approach to the source material and I would love to see Capcom try to adapt the original game in this form. If I had one wish for the Resident Evil franchise aside from a complete reboot of the live action films, it would be a CG movie of the original Resident Evil game.

So we’ve talked a lot about the Resident Evil films and hopefully this sixth film will come and go and we can just get the reboot that we all deserve. Paul W.S. Anderson has tried to justify his approach by saying that no one wants to see the story they already know played out in a movie and to that I say nay. The reason we watch video game movies is to see the story we already know and love played out in a way that we can relate to. Video games have told amazing stories and that’s why we would want to watch the movie version in the first place. Take it from a fan, if you want to make a good video game movie, the first step would be to follow the story that gave the game a fan base in the first place. We will talk more about that next time when we discuss Silent Hill. So stay tuned for more talk about video game movies as I continue to talk about them and give my analysis.