Gaming off the Beaten Path

  "The American Prevailing" is a cliche that only happens in your Hollywood movies. Oh Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me. To show my appreciation, I will help you awaken from your world of cliches." Of all my 10s games, I think Resident Evil 4 may be the one I feel the weirdest about. I know, I know, how could I feel any level weird about Resident Evil 4, one of the most sacred of sacred cows of gaming history. This is one of those games that people will straight up rail you for disliking, as if it's some sort of personal attack. I guess that's starting to change a little bit, it's become a victim of being so popular that people start to hate it just for being so. That always seems to happen in the gaming industry, though that is a different discussion for a different day. Besides, it's not really why I've always had a sort of weird relationship with RE 4. I'm not the first person to say this and I'm certainly not going to last, but it just didn...

Welcome Claire! Consider the area you're in a...special playground I have prepared just for you. Please try and keep me amused, and do not disappoint me by dying too soon! Halloween is here, so that means it's time to get spooky once again. It's been a while, but we're finally getting back to Resident Evil. I am not a huge fan of horror in general, but Resident Evil is one of my all-time favorite gaming franchises. It has the third most games in my personal top 100, behind only Mega Man and Final Fantasy, and is tied with FF for the most games on my 10s list (three apiece, for the record). Last year, I reviewed the absolutely incredible Gamecube remake on Halloween. Maybe next year I'll review Resident Evil 4, another 10/10 that just recently received a big budget remake. Both of those are all time classics, they are not only personal favorites but also important touchstones in the gaming industry as a whole. But, as great as they are, as revolutionary as they were,...

  I knew I was going to get here eventually. For what feels like a decade now, I've heard about Sweet Home, the NES game that served as the basis for Resident Evil. It's one of those games I knew I was eventually going to review, and it looks like now is the time. I think a lot of gamers know the story by now. Resident Evil started as a remake of Sweet Home, with the latter's director Tokuro Fujiwara working with the former's originator Shinji Mikami. After realizing the technical limitations of the relatively new PlayStation hardware, as well as a variety of other snags, the project evolved into the zombie-filled survival-horror icon we know and love. It's a title that most people know is influential, even if all they know about it is its name.   You know, for all of the talk about how influential it is, I barely knew anything about Sweet Home's gameplay. I was totally expecting some level of action game, maybe akin to the original Metal Gear. I was shocked, p...

  (Re)-Enter the Survival Horror The days are getting shorter, the temperature is dropping and another Halloween is in the books. I guess now is as good a time as any to finally dive into Resident Evil.   I don't think Resident Evil needs any introduction. It was an instant hit when it was released in 1996, but I can't imagine anyone at Capcom ever saw it becoming as big as it did. It has the second longest running continuous lore of any video game franchise. It has tons of sequels, spin-offs, major motion pictures, crappy Netflix shows that will soon be mercy killed , animated features, you name it. It wasn't the first horror game, not by a longshot. You had games based on horror properties as far back as the 70's. Games like the 7th Guest, Alone in the Dark and D all predate RE, as do more cinematic horror games like Phantasmagoria. But the first Resident Evil was what really put the genre on the map while also coining the term we still use for games of its ilk today:...

  Looks like we have yet another video game adaptation, this time from streaming giant Netflix. And this one at least started off promising. I'm not really a big TV person and I had already heard some pretty bad things about the new Resident Evil series. But when I saw that home screen thumbnail with the licker, I had to at least give it a shot. Even though I haven't really discussed it that much here, RE is one of my favorite gaming series of all time. I have three of them on my 10's list, tied for the most with Final Fantasy. Really, I just haven't gotten around to playing any of them yet, it totally has nothing to do with the fact that I largely play games alone, at night in the dark and I'm a huge wimp. Nothing at all. Anyway, I was excited to see what RE would bring to the streaming world and I'm glad I gave this show a shot...so I could let you all know it's probably not worth your time. Let's start with the story. You all know the story of Residen...