Saw 6: Free Speech Dies, this Halloween.

I haven't posted in 4 months because there's nothing I am going to bother with. Things have happened like the Nobel Peace Prize which I am pretending doesn't exist at this point but for the most part I've been being constructive and using my new mission-specific blog. Until this. This doesn't even merit an explanation because if you can't derive from the title and one paragraph alone why I'm absolutely correct, you need to be locked in a padded room.
Saw 6 is coming out in 2 weeks. Um...............Saw 5 didn't even come out one year ago and there's already a new movie. It's a "halloween thing."
I'm guessing Saw 6 will just be Ben Franklin and Abe Lincoln and the Adams and other great Americans locked in a gigantic Hollywood microcosm and each one faces an incomprehensible patriotism challenge to which the expected answer is the antithesis of all that is or ever was good, decent, or American. In the end they all die a horrible death and a movie producer takes the reigns of the New World Order.


Please get rid of any first amendment protection that allows Hollywood to do what they want. I'm sorry, but this is incredibly unacceptable. Words can not describe this.

Empire Total War - F this game

A review for those who actually play Total War.

Oh, god. Where to start with this release. Maybe an intro paragraph entirely unnecessary because the title f the game is self-explanatory . It's the 18th century, a period of colonization and mass emigration, ideological revolution, theological revolution. Revolution, in other words. So obviously the game encompasses the entire western world and leaves the other four continents to serve as land for the raping.

Empire started, in the minds of Total War players at the least, as a dream after Medieval included musketeers and cannons at the end of the game (which i might mention were 100 times more reliable and lethal than any unit in Empire Total War with the exception of quicklime and grenadiers and percussive exploding shells). Everyone went "Oh, hells yes. They should make a game with real guns. And Napoleon." In the mean time, Imperial Glory came out, essentially a carbon copy of total war but with much smaller units, and of course, realtime naval battles, completely identical to the ones later implemented in ETW. Then they showed us pretty screenshots of ships on fire on the high seas and whatnot, showing us that we needed new computers if we hadn't gotten them already. It looked awesome and everyone thought it would be great because, after four successful total war games and and four expansion packs, how could they possibly go wrong this time?

Oh.....creative assembly. I used to believe in you. To put it briefly, I wouldn't buy this game if Sega sent a truck full of games, girls, energy drinks, Pocky, enough materials to build a BD's on my street and staff it from which I would receive all profits, and my own personal contingent of Creative Assembly developers to both a) Give me a job as either a programmer or a game media designer with their company and b) stand gaurd while i play the game and endure me throwing stones at them every time something pisses me off and c) a sixteen thousand dollar Alienware machine to play it on. Unless of course my friends peer pressure me into doing it so we can kill each other and strangers online, which is granted.

Empire Total War is without a doubt the biggest pile of fail I have ever seen come out of the gaming industry in 20 years, and trust me, I'm including incredibly nightmarishly awful games like ET, Cyberia, Shenmue, Summoner 2, Mechwarrior 4, you name it. And no, it's not because it's a terrible game, it's because it's a horrible misrepresentation of what Creative Assembly is truly capable of, which is to say briefly, far greater than this game.

Don't get me wrong: It's good enough for me to make 15 gb of room to install it, and spend a LOT of time playing it because my game for whatever reason ran as slow as possible, to the extent that as I did in every total war game, I took over the entire campaign map and then purposely incited revolutions and whatnot just to have someone to fight. Having said that, it's a disappointment and it absolutely does not improve over the first four games in any way at all.

There are new features: Naval battles, garrisoned buildings, DLC, the Road to Independence campaign (which is fun after you're finished literally assaulting forts every turn and losing 800 men for no reason), the technology research tree, which rather makes the game a pain in the ass because the only way to learn it peacefully and quickly is through diplomacy, requiring you to have lots of money, meaning you have to take over everything to get money, negating any point in advancing your technology or in being diplomatic if by the time you finally get rifles you already control the world and the only enemies left are your allies, the united provinces, who have supported you honorably for 200 turns, and achievements.

Unfortunately, this game is likely to be infinitely better for newbies to the franchise than it is for die hard TW fans. We've endured the same relatively awful AI and awful glitches for years and years and assumed they would be fixed to make the new game enjoyable. They weren't and they still haven't been in the three month since I wrote this review.

At least 5 times out of 10, your units will entirely ignore your commands. The other five times, assuming they even attempt to follow orders, they'll likely get themselves killed, such as marching towards an enemy you tell them to shoot, but instead of shooting when they're in range, they just keep walking straight into them. Or grenadiers, which although they are an incredibly useful and awesome unit, are retarded all the same. They have to be within 10 feet to throw their grenades, which is fucking stupid, because they lob their grenades 100 feet in the air and drop them down on an enemies head, entirely unnecessary when you can overhand through a grenade at them from 100 feet away and still kill just as many. Because of the arch, trying to throw grenades at units that are running away becomes a pain, although admittedly using grenades on routing units or moving units is just trying to be mean to them.

Equally as annoying is the fact that, just like the Aztecs in MTW2, the natives are insanely overpowered. They run far faster than your units, and do far more damage, and their cannons actually work better than yours a lot of the time. However there fortunately is a bright side to this as they do tend to break morale without too much effort, whether they are your own units or enemies. The natives are way overpowered and too fast, but occasionally so are the other factions. Like the Sarmatians in RTW, the Marathan units easily raped so many of my units the first time I went to India, it got to a point where I literally had sent an expedition to India (as it is a requirement for Britain's victory), three full armies with my two best 10 star generals, full of top level elite troops, thinking they could at least gain a foothold and hold off until I sent reinforcements, seeing as it is a ways away. They all got systematically raped by the AI's new perseverance. The same thing happened in France, but worse. I sent an army to place-hold my position for 1 turn before i could get more armies there to support it, across the English Channel, and as soon as the turn ended, the French attacked me 9 times in a row, losing each battle until they finally killed my army by attrition.
The AI is far more aggressive this time around, though still somewhat retarded. As I said, the same thing happened in India, which finally pissed me off. Losing three 10 star generals and thousands of troops made me rather angry: I literally sent 30,000 men to India after-wards, and trained over 10,000 more after conquering it. The first 30,000 conquered all of available Asia, 10,000 of them dying in the process through battles and through strategic blunders on my part, such as splitting my fleet into multiple single ships to carry so many armies (a strategy that worked well in previous Total War titles, unless there were ships right near your fleet). Speaking of, shipbuilding is an arduous process this time around and you simply can't wait 4 turns for two ships. Unfortunately, as the AI is far more aggressive, it also literally violates the programming of the game.
The AI will, at whatever point, literally spawn armies on the spot if you invade them. You'll march on Paris and you'll be able to SEE the city and see that it only has 2 armies, and then they will attack you the next turn with 10 armies. Granted Paris can train about 5 units at once in the beginning, that's no explanation for 15000 troops coming out of nowhere. It's like Barbarian Invasion except that the entire tribe springs forth from the nitrogen in the air or something this time on the spot.
It's pretty though, that should make up for it, right? Despite the common sense needed to realize how much better the game looks, some reviewers seem to overlook the fact that the graphics engine is very much revamped from MTW2. I play all the Total War games regularly and I can easily tell how much better ETW looks than MTW. The smoke effects, heat distortion, explosions, quick-lime, musket fire, cannon fire, fire fire, shading, and water look beautiful, even on low graphics, which I'm using. However this comes at a price because the performance of the game is notably awful.
For those using AMD processors, I wouldn't even bother installing. You be the judge, as this makes no sense to me: The first time i played the game, and the machine I'm currently using, is a Pentium D 805 dual core running at 2 ghz, with 1 gb of DDR2 667 and a 7950 GT OC 512mb GDDR2 card. The game runs absolutely fine NOW on this machine, but the first time I did my Britain campaign where I took over the world, the AI turns (with ai move turned off obviously) would literally take MINUTES. The battles run fine of course, but the Campaign map is god awful. The computer I'm writing this on is brand new (though by no means a monster) - Turion X2 2ghz, 4 gb DDR2 800 mhz, geforce 7150 with 1900mb ram. The game runs absolutely horribly on this computer, on low graphics. The campaign map however runs perfectly fine - on this machine. Frankly, the campaign map is absolutely stupid in this game. Every single object on the map has a shadow and moves with the wind, that's thousands of trees, making it laggier than hell.
Speaking of the campaign map, it's actually much better this time, from a game-play perspective, ignoring the performance. Instead of everything being in the city, the parts of your region are spread out. Colleges and churches and shipyards and farms and the like are their own towns. and you control everything that develops. Also, new towns automatically grow in your regions according to the growth rate in the region and nation, which is affected by technology and tax policies and your government. The campaign is now two turns per year, i assume it was the only way to make the game last relatively long, since it seems to crash at 1829. The campaign map is the same as always, with the addition of those great changes. There are the same stupid quirks about it, as well as new ones. For example an army will still, instead of marching straight to a spot right in front of them, decide its better to go in a 5 turn march in a circle to get there. Or for instance, when an army gets off a ship, they have no move points, which is also stupid. There are some neat things now, like if a fleet is carrying an army, you can tell that fleet to attack anything on land and it will know to tell the army to do it. Unfortunately, the campaign play seems stifled this time. It is a race to control trade resources and make money and its hard to make money it seems now because everyone already has dibs on the trade theaters by the time you get a trade ship there, and you don't want to declare war on the entire world at once, do you, especially without any money. The first time i played and took over the entire world, by the time I had 50 or so provinces, I was raking in serious money. I make about a million per turn on my old Britain campaign. I don't know how i did it: all i did was gain the colonies first and then capture Paris, which eventually had a population of 200 million. In my new campaign, I'm lucky to make 5000 money in a turn. I have no idea what the deal is.
Also unfortunately and imo, downright stupid, you can't cheat in the game anymore. At all. You don't necessarily need to cheat, but cheating was in the first 4 games and frankly it was nice to be able to increase the population of your towns in less than 500 turns, or actually have an army. Another stupid thing missing since MTW2 is AI controlled reinforcements. Granted that in RTW the AI would often get your 10 star generals and elite troops killed, the fact that you could have EPIC battles with tens of thousands of men was amazing. That's how i played all of RTW. I actually used realistic legion sizes of 12000 men and marched several armies around as one army, the way it went in real life. It's so retarded now that your reinforcements WAIT for your first 20 units to die before they enter the field, when the enemy can have 30000 units or more if they want.
The absolute worst part of this game is the fact that it's based entirely on Steam. Valve and their quest to control the gaming market is frankly pissing off everyone I know very quickly, and now I'm pissed off too. The only purpose Steam serves for this game is to piss off those people who pirated the game, as all patching and xfire use is done through Steam. Total War players have downloaded their own patches and taken care of their own game for over a decade, we don't need steam. Fuck steam. Also, the Special Forces pack became available for free, as did the Elite units of the west pack, like a day after they announced it. Or it will be free when the new patch comes out. They didn't think it through when they put the game on the steam network, especially if DLC becomes free after people paid for it.

If you have a 5000 dollar computer with three way SLI each using a 2000 dollar video card and liquid nitrogen cooling and 12+ gb of DDR3 then I recommend this game. Otherwise, fuck that. Wait till it's like 15 bucks on Steam sometime. In 2011. After Napoleon has come out and thoroughly disappointed everyone again.

Windows 7 Fail

I've always been a supporter of Microsoft. That's not to be confused with a fanboy. I frequently curse and wish death upon Microsoft and it's employees when their shit goes wrong, which, when it's happening, seems like all the time, but in reality it's not. However there is an underlying network of stupid decisions and bullshit that Microsoft and other major IT companies have done that all comes together so beautifully to make you angry enough to say, smash your head through an LCD display, or break your keyboard in half, or whatever.
So when I get fucked out of responding to the Windows 7 RC survey 2 days after the beta ends, that royally pisses me off. I had good and bad things to say about 7. Very good things. And then literally an hour ago Seven decided to take a shit on my pc and now I am utterly pissed off in multiple different ways.
First and most egregiously, the schedule Microsoft sent us was wrong. Not just the dates were wrong, the information was fallacious. First of all, the beta did not warn us 2 weeks in advance that it was ending. Second of all, the beta does NOT shut down every 2 hours. It stays on, whilst incessantly warning you that there are 0 hours left in the beta. Then without warning, without asking, it simply bluescreens your computer in the middle of whatever you're doing. There's a difference between blue screening and shutting down, please learn it Microsoft. I'm trying NOT to smash any of my computers or equipment right now so I'll be kind and I won't go on a brutal rant about it. Needless to say, it is fucking stupid that you would close down the survey 2 days after the beta ends. Do you honestly think we have all the time in the world on the 4th of July, or, ANY weekend, to immediately devote to the survey? I didn't even get to use Seven for but 7 days because my old laptop wouldn't cooperate with it. The first thign I did when i took my new laptop out of the box last wednesday was install 7. I had that much time to use it for real; off-line computer usage....theres no such thing. A computer is worthless without a network.

Part II

Dear IT Industry: Stop EPIC FAILING AT LIFE

Microsoft is largely to blame for this, but the smaller companies are definitely not innocent. I don't care how much money it costs, how much paperwork, if you have to sell your soul. Make your shit work with Windows. Microsoft, make your operating system work with other peoples shit.
Now of course when you buy a computer from a company, which is mandatory if you get a laptop unless you actually want to build your own, which is still from a company, or you have too much time and access to hard to get materials, you get your OS preinstalled and the drivers already work. So, in the event that you have to reinstall or install a new OS, you are probably completely fucked, like I am now. They don't offer recovery CDs anymore because you are expected to use upgrade features and all this complete bullshit, which no one is doing. I'm not putting Vista and Seven on different partitions, I don't want Vista. So now I either install Vista and use it offline until Seven comes out (AKA NOT ACCEPTABLE) or use RC 7 until I end up breaking my laptop from the bullshit that I put up with. Because HP is too cool to provide functional wireless drivers for their products. And wireless/network drivers are the only drivers that matter; once your net works windows will do the rest for you.

I hate you Microsoft. I really do. Scratch that, the entire computer industry.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Honestly when this movie was being promoted I completely disregarded it and I gave absolutely zero craps about another Street Fighter game or movie. Obviously Street Fighter was a good game and it's the only one of their game franchises Capcom hasn't betrayed utterly yet, but a second, unrelated film wasn't really an obvious choice for any Street Fighter fans. So I didn't actually watch it until now, because of that, and because even as a miniscule Street Fighter fan as I am, I was disappointed they didn't choose someone Chinese, or with giant thighs that could crush my entire body like a steamroller, or bigger breasts, as she is illustrated in every game and picture that has ever existed.

Kristin Kreuk, as everyone remembers, is the slutbag from Eurotrip that sex's everyone, including Matt Damon, so I don't think anyone believed she can act, but she's definitely hot. Well that's me I like girls that look like her. Legend of Chun-Li definitely proves otherwise though. Admittedly none of her lines or scenes are deep, sincere examples of a great actress but in comparison to the original Street Fighter movie, it's definitely good. The movie holds together well and with a believable plot and characters, and even throws in the good old hadouken, though they made her fireball reddish instead of blue. Speaking of that, the movie definitely includes her signature moves: the jebus kick, the fireball, and others that I remember from Street Fighter II. As far as other SF characters go, Bison is of course the enemy, and this time he's played by what's his name from Band of Brothers, who did a good job in my opinion. Vega as well is in the movie, though he's kind of a punk assassin and not too good at his job (I'm not sure what his character is supposed to be really because I'm not a fan), and Ryu makes a cameo in name at the end of the movie.

Action scenes in this movie, unlike the first Street Fighter, actually seem feasible and are believable to people watching, at least to me. I didn't feel like I was watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Physics Book , which makes me happy. And at the same time I didn't feel like it was a nonsensical video game where people throw fireballs constantly. Plenty of guns and shooting and killing are abound in this movie, but not at a retarded Punisher rate, and there are definitely some surprisingly disgusting parts, though they aren't shown fully. All in all, Legend of Chun-Li is definitely a legitimate movie and far better than the original 90's Street Fighter live action film.

Fuck American Companies

This economy and the American corporate culture and environment is WORTHLESS. If you didn't realize that yet I'm sorry to be the bearer of shitty news but it's been the truth since before I was born.

There is NO corporate responsibility in this country anymore. I'm not even talking about major important shit anymore. Fuck that. Fuck Ken Lay, Enron, Tyco, GlobalCom, Adelphia, AIG, GM, all of these assholes. Let's not even necessarily focus on you worthless wastes of semen anymore.

The American product is worthless and useless. We live in a consumer environment with no accountability whatsoever anymore. You can't even use software because the nature of multi-threaded (aka good) software programming necessitates that there are entirely random and practically inexplicable bugs in the code that an entire team of programmers that wrote it cant even figure out.

Not only that but then there isn't even an ATTEMPT by the firms to support their products and offer the slightest bit of help to end-users. Are you fucking kidding me? If a google search, the documentation, and the companies technical support fail to even ACKNOWLEDGE the existence of your problem, than what the fuck is the point of your company? What the fuck is the point of your tech support when it doesn't even exist?

And why the fuck are you people not upgrading TEN YEAR old software to work with Photoshop CS4? ITS NOT EVEN NEW ITS BEEN OUT FOR LONGER THAN CS3 WAS BEFORE THEY UPGRADED.

Alestorm – Captain Morgan's Revenge

 

Originally I had seen and heard of this band "AleStorm" through iTunes and CDNow's (I refuse to refer to it as Amazon as the original companies URL still navigates the page, obviously for customer continuity reasons. Don't get me wrong I love Amazon) respective "related artists" and "customers also bought"features. And every time I saw it I said to myself "Well it's related to bands that are most certainly good and indefinitely worth purchasing and listening to, do I really need more motivation?" Regardless, due to being pre-occupied with something or other or just lazy, or a combination of both in addition to other things, I never got around to buying or downloading their first album until the last two weeks. Captain Morgan's Revenge, their major label debut with Napalm Records came out in January 20008, it's now April 2009. As odd and shallow as it may seem, at the point when I discovered this album, I was literally basing music purchases and downloads upon the quality and appeal of the album's cover art, which isn't necessarily a fallible strategy when it comes to metal artists because most metal artists have beautiful artwork on their albums, and those same artists typically end up being the most worthwhile to listen to.

I won't go into the band's history as this is a review of this album, not of the band itself, but as a debut album review I must discuss as much of their style and a brief history of the artist as is required to establish a familiarity. Alestorm hails from Perth, in northern Scotland above Edinburgh and Glasgow, and were formerly known under the name of Battleheart, the original title of the band when it was formed in 2004. As aforementioned, iTunes and Amazon (I use these two because they're the only mainstream music services worth trusting. Don't get me wrong, there are many free music services that are quite astounding.) associates Alestorm with bands such as Firewind, Mastodon, Tyr, Turisas, which all play a genre of music that reviewers are calling "battle metal", and considering it's the name of one of Turisas' albums as well as several metal compilation albums featuring these bands, in combination with their actual musical style, it seems to work for me. Also, I'm not sure if the major music services make this assosication, but I would most definitely associate Alestorm's musical style with that of Korpiklaani and similar bands like Eluveitie.

Unfortunately to anyone who doesn't necessarily listen to those specific bands or metal in general (though I don't know why you would be reading the review instead of just listening to it first if that were the case, I'm glad you are trying) that doesn't necessarily tell you anything. Hopefully the following comparisons will give you a clue but if all else fails I may just resort to some actual descriptive abilities. Alestorm, to me, sounds like Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys, Metallica, Blind Guardian and Korpkilaani had a cross-over dream with each other and it turned into a band. If you ever wanted to hear the inherently cheery and entertaining sound of Flogging Molly or the Murphys set to a faster, metal, exclusively fictional (Pirates aren't fictional obviously, though at this point the popular European kind are) rhythm, I'd have to say Alestorm is exactly what you're looking for.

Musically, Alestorm is exactly as complex as you would come to expect from underrated and less mainstream metal artists these days. Like Blind Guardian, In Flames, Iced Earth, Korpiklaani, Hammerfall, any metal band you can think of that doesn't play the "death" metal style, every song by Alestorm is rich with sound. Their actual instrument line-up isn't any more erudite or versatile than the standard metal band, featuring the typical three instruments and a keyboard, but it doesn't stop them from making each song sound distinct and different enough to be memorable. Their songs range from Dragonforce-style epics (minus the absurd amount of intertwining guitarists) replacing tales of Dragons with accounts of plunder, sailing the high seas and booty, to less serious modern day pirate sea shantys that wouldn't feel too out of place on a Flogging Molly album.

In an age where pirates are romanticized in Hollywood films, video games, novels, and inaccurately used to refer to distributors and illegal acquirers of copyrighted material, debuting to the world with the concept of Scottsh pirate metal is actually a rather intelligent commercial endeavor. Most people in our age group (18 -25), including those younger and older, are quite fond of pirates. Whether because of Disneyworld's ride, its' awful movie trilogy, or because of their strong ideological convictions about file "piracy", people identify to some extent with piracy or are at the very least entertained by it. In addition, with their second album coming out, the recent international Somalian pirate incident and the ensuing South Park parody have done their share to keep pirates fresh on the public's mind.

Other reviewers have mentioned the two potential problems with Alestorm's success and future as a musical artist. I think most legitimate of these two concerns is the Dragonforce scenario, or what some people believe to be the case with Dragonforce. They came out and they were awesome and then almost immediately people said "Okay that's enough, shut up, just shut up with your three guitars and your dragons" and as soon as Dragonforce was "popular" they were immediately "crucified" by public opinion. Maybe that is the case, I don't pay attention to trends in the music audience, I just listen to music I like, because that's what music is for. Second, others have stated that they feel Alestorms style is built too much upon their colleagues in the power/folk metal genre, which honestly is quite irrelevant because that happens with every new band. In time they were chisel out their own unique style, their second major label album hasn't even come out yet.

All in all I absolutely love their first album and as I wrote this I listened to their second album, and loved that just as much. The song that stands out the most to me from Captain Morgan's Revenge is "Wenches and Mead", for its jovial tone and in my opinion absolutely hilarious subject matter. Not because I objectify women and I think it's funny to refer to them as wenches (though you have to admit it's funny to hear the word wenches in lieu of the more offensive bitches, come on) but it's just a funny song when you consider that even though it's supposed to be a pirate thing to head to a tavern for mead and wenches, it stands the test of time both a thousand years before the height of piracy and today, centuries after the supposed extermination of piracy. Could we as males ask for much more? It's quite simple.

 

A wench by my side and a jug of mead,

these are the things that I most need,

so I sit back and sing this song

and drink and party all night long.

Hey hey, I want more wenches,

hey hey more wenches and mead,

hey hey I want more wenches,

lots of wenches is what I need".

 

 

Yarr, ye be buyin this cd, ya hear me landlubbers!

 

Resident Evil: The Review of Death

R\Grenadeh's Reviews

 

Resident Evil: The Review of Death

Part One: resident evil
(2002)

I will preface by saying two things in regards to reviewing in general as well as reviewing these specific movies. It's been eight years since I've written a review of anything, as well as it has been eight years since I've written a public review of anything, as I used to do in the entertainment section of our high school's news magazine. I am not a professional writer, I do not work for the media in any way, I do not run an entertainment-review devoted blog that I think somehow empowers me and qualifies me to have an opinion. I'm a student, a civilian, a technologist, a gamer, a nerd, a liberal, and Jewish. Just an everyday normal person that, like most normal people, actually have a brain in their heads, as opposed to the monkey suits we are expected to listen to in the mainstream media.

That having been said, I will preface this review by stating two things in specific about the first movie: No one's opinion on this movie or this movie series matters to me even if you agree with me, in the slightest bit, though I'm sure most reviews will label these films with similar results as my own, though certainly they will be significantly less scathing or enlightened.

Obviously reviewing a movie several years after it came out, even several years after it came out on DVD/ HD-DVD/Blu-Ray seems quite retroactive, but I am prompted by my recent acquisition of the Blu-Ray of the series to finally start writing reviews again, starting with my opinion on the dramatization of the best video game franchise in the history of video game franchises. Either way, I feel I should give this film series the review it deserves from someone who actually knows what they're talking about. One thing I will admit off the bat: I've seen all three movies at least twenty times, so no matter what I say, obviously the movies were enjoyable (though most of the views are the result of a combination of procrastination and intense boredom). In fact, I'm watching the first movie right now and I have it minimized, because I know the script for the movies so well I don't even need to look at the video.

In 2002 when the first movie was released, Resident Evil was still in it's youth, though growing at dramatic speed. Only four years had passed since the first amazing game was released on the Playstation, and in short order RE2, RE3, and Code Veronica had been released ( admittedly Code Veronica being the last public review I had written). In light of all this, I and my friend among all of our other colleagues were greatly pleased by news of this Hollywood rendition of Resident Evil coming to our theaters in the summer. However, this review is not about the Resident Evil games, which in my opinion don't necessarily even merit any criticism of significance.

Obviously it was established immediately that the Resident Evil movie was not a Hollywood rendition of the video games (no video game movie ever has been, with the exception perhaps of Mortal Kombat), but it was instead based upon the universe created in the Resident Evil games. Technically that doesn't really please any fans of the Resident Evil series. No matter how much anyone, including me, loves the lore and the fictional universe developed by Capcom®, it's easy to say we'd rather see a live action rendition of the events we had to suffer through in the games rather than a Hollywood (and inherently ludicrous) version of different events.

The movie begins and a guy spiels about Umbrella, speaking of lore which matches very accurately that established in the video game universe, fans rejoice. We are introduced through the eyes of a wall to the Hive laboratory complex, getting an up close and personal look at the Tyrant virus, a cute bunny, and its involvement in testing the anti-virus vaccination. Then we are personally introduced to a virus containment apparatus which seems is being loaded with all the available samples of the virus and anti-virus from this cute bunny room. So far, so good, everything is as high tech as expected from Umbrella, and the colors of the viral strains are accurate to the game. Then the shit appears to hit the fan as our friend Spence can be somewhat identified tossing the virus on the floor , indicating to all Resident Evil gamers that the shit has just officially knocked the fan over and turned the fan itself into more shit.

The following events detail to us (as much detail as any Resident Evil gamer or person with an imagination needs) the ensuing viral outbreak and sanitation of the Hive laboratory complex, ending with a woman assumedly being decapitated by an elevator. Funnily enough, later on her head is nowhere to be seen at the elevator bank, assuming it was chopped off, which you would only logically deduce if a woman were put in a computer controlled guillotine with a blade (the solid steel floor) travelling at her head at x miles per hour , the only conclusive deduction judging by how concerned they all are that the elevator next to them has just murdered a plural number of people by free falling about a thousand feet. Insert retarded part number one, they could easily have pulled her back into the elevator or similarly pushed her out of the elevator. Those doors don't get stuck, they're designed to be manually opened in the event of emergency. Ridiculous, excusable, but unforgiveable.

Cut from the crisis in the laboratory to a rather cute and naked Jovavich laying on her shower floor, covered only by a shower curtain, which obviously she had the foresight to pull from the shower curtain rod and cover herself with lest anyone see her naked, alone, in a mansion. The following shots establish that she is suffering from amnesia, yet she can still navigate her own house quite perfectly. Unfortunately for me, this is where the movie starts its downward spiral , though very slowly at this point. She gets scared of the wind, which is completely understandable. Everything about the Spencer mansion is frightening and unsettling, I might be inclined to run away from the wind as well, though in the game they sought shelter in the mansion after being chased by a whole shit ton of Cerberi (zombie dogs.), so everything in and around the Blair Witch 2 looking mansion and the Arklay Woods is uncomfortable in any rendition. Suddenly, oh my gods! A copper grabs her and apparently intends to rape her back, and then cue in the obnoxiously loud and annoying techno music as an Umbrella special forces team busts through the window and the doors, though in real life as well as the video games they would have used the doors exclusively for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that breaking windows quite conspicuously announces their arrival, as well as simultaneously compromising the security of their position if in fact enemy combatants were within the premises.

Here I must digress from a strict focus on the movie and begin the first of several comparisons to Resident Evil itself, though I will chronologically continue the review in the background with the things I criticize. The Umbrella team is quite professional, not to mention arrogant, and ignorant. In many ways this perfectly recreates the Umbrella Special Forces operatives from all the Resident Evil games, though it is unacceptably illogical and unforgiveable for so many reasons. Paramount of all these reasons is a very simple one, an oversight seemingly impossible for "intelligent" writers, which obviously shows you two things: Writers are morons, and movies are intentionally written as unrealistically as possible for the sole purpose of plot progression and consistency. An Umbrella Special Forces unit sent to contain, or to have any involvement with anything whatsoever (in Resident Evil this almost exclusively means a form of violent combat action), is going to be very well informed of all the tactical details of the situation. Now inherently, as they are higher status employees in most circumstances than actual Umbrella researchers, shift workers, whatever, they are going to know what they are getting into. No company involved in ethical businesses needs it's own professionally trained para-military organizations, so it only stands to reason in the job interview or at some point during the course of their career they would have inquired as to "So uh, why do you Ivy League doctor kids need tanks and marines?" . So obviously, by the dictates of common Eff'ing sense, the Umbrella team sent to the Hive : a) Knew the layout of the Hive beforehand , b) Knew that Umbrella was built solely to research and engineer bio-organic and viral weaponry and most importantly, C) Was informed of vital tactical information such as the fact that the only way to defeat any of the Tyrant virus mutations was a massive trauma to the brain. In fact, this is deductible not only by the logical constraints of the established Resident Evil universe, but in real life by actual police, military, and para-military forces. Ask the S.W.A.T, Delta Force, SEALS, whatever force, it's a very public and well established fact : Two in the chest, one in the head. Subsequently by virtue of all, or any of the preceding facts, everyone not only in the first movie, but every Resident Evil movie, and every zombie move in history, should be aware of how to kill zombies, because they are killed the same away as a human being: the head. Shooting people anywhere but the head is a foolishly optimistic and merciless method of killing them. If you were to be killed by gunshot, would you rather bleed to death from your heart or would you rather just die instantly? Easy fucking decision.

Now that all these facts have established the inherent stupidity and absurdity of not only Resident Evil but all zombie movies, it's time to address the few remaining things of note in the movie.

When they discover Spence on the tram en route to the Hive, behind a forcibly shut door, they don't have the common sense to look in the conductor's chamber of the tram for a nanosecond to notice there's a black duffel bag on the floor. What do they think he was doing? Going on vacation into the Hive at the exact time it went Chernobyl? In addition to that, having established both in this review and in the movie through the dialogue itself the Umbrella teams knowledge of the situation and the facility, they OBVIOUSLY should have realized, considering that the leader knew Alice and Spence were security operatives, married to each other, that this random man in the tram was Spencer. This is what I said about intentional unrealistic writing solely for the sake of plot progression and filming. Now, of course, if there were any tint of reality whatsoever to this movie, an intelligent team of Umbrella operatives would have acted out the following script I have so brilliantly concocted.

 

Medic : Lie still.

(Spencer groggily fidgets around, lying supine on the tram floor)

Medic: I said lie still!

Medic: Follow the light.

(Spencer follows the light with his head, barely able to lift it, though lying otherwise motionless)

Medic: How many fingers am I holding up?

Spencer: Three

(Kaplan meanwhile steps past the two into the tram conductors chamber, looking for anything of concern)

Kaplan: Found something!

One: Bring it out here.

(Kaplan picks up the duffel bag, moving back into the main room of the tram, and sets it on the floor next to Spencer)

One: What's in the bag?

Spencer: What? ……. I don't know?

(Kaplan exchanges glances with the commander, crouching on the steel floor of the tram over the duffel bag. One nods, and Kaplan proceeds to open the bag.)

Kaplan: What the hell? (he produces a shiny silver lunchbox out of the duffel bag, emblazoned with the universally recognizable biohazard symbol).

One: Open it.

(Kaplan opens the lunchbox because realistically if he had the ability to decode the door locks within the laboratory he could figure out a simple four digit encryption on a temporary biohazard transportation container)

(The lunchbox hisses open, some pressurized gas spewing from within the container like dry ice)

Kaplan: ..it's the virus!

Rain: Alright, pack it up. Fuck this shit let's get the hell out of here.

One: No. We have to find out what happened down here.

Rain: What the fuck did you say? The lab automatically seals in an hour, we don't have to do a damn thing. We have the most important piece of company property down here, let's get the fuck out before that homicidal bitch kills the rest of us, too!

One: Oh, good point.

One: Kaplan, can you reverse the train and send us back to the mansion?

Kaplan: The tram travels automatically to its destination, we won't be able to change directions en route. We'll have to wait until we get to the loading dock.

One: Alright, let's do it.

End of fucking movie.

 

(Why Kaplan? Because Kaplan is obviously the smartest one in the entire group, being the technologist (though he is initially too stupid to realize his turning the Hive off released the zombies) though in a realistic scenario such as my script his display of such possible stupidity would never have occurred because the situation would have ended while they were ahead)

 

Obviously for the sake of entertainment and intentional irritation of the viewing public, this is not what happened, otherwise the story would have had too happy of an ending and been 30 minutes long. Which frankly would be only fitting, considering that in order to get an A rank in the game, you have to beat it in under an hour, not shoot anyone, and not waste time and health.

Unfortunately this isn't the only thing that pisses me off about the film, it's just one of many things. I'm going to digress from the review for now and simply list them, hopefully in chronological order of their occurrence.

They try to go through the labs which, when looking at the 3d layout of the hive on his wristputer, was a fucking retarded idea in the first place, even if there weren't zombies everywhere. Going down the stairs through the "dining hall" was obviously the most direct route to the Queen's Chamber, though it may have taken a slightly greater amount of time.

The team approaches the good old laser hallway ( of course not knowing it's a laser hallway because after all it's not like they are security operatives and KNOW intimate details about the Hive facility). Ol' Shiny kills all but five of them. This is inexcusably and inarguably the stupidest fucking scene of any movie ever produced anywhere around the globe and I would go so far as to include the entire universe, assuming there are an intelligent sentient race of beings on a planet or space station somewhere that produce fictional motion pictures to sublimate their subconscious desires and distract themselves from their mortal boredom. I've already established the governing principles of why everything I will list is absurd to the point of insensitivity, but I'll restate it for fun.

How the fuck does this team of operatives not realize, after explicitly stating that the Red Queen has its own defensive systems, that there's a LASER hallway governed by an obviously intensely complex algorithmic program that can readjust in real time to sensory information gathered on its "assailants" so well that it can actually trick them in addition to killing them? Now, ignoring that, because when faced by a fictional and non-existent laser hallway governed by intensely complex algorithms, even an Olympic gold medal gymnast would be most certainly boned if trying to outmaneuver it, let's examine the other absurdities of Ol' Shiny. There are spaces on both ends of the hallway which quite blatantly are not susceptible, insofar as the two movies starring Ol' Shiny are inclined to show us, to the reaches of said laser hallway. Use what little common sense that you (as a person in the movie) obviously don't have and hide your stupid body in the ample space afforded by the blind spots at both ends of the laser hallway. At least two of you can survive to watch the rest of your friends die. Is it possible that the laser hallway could adjust its parameters and manage to project a laser beam beyond the reach of the system of mirrors and googamajigs behind the glass on either side of the wall? You could speculate so, but in the movie it doesn't happen, and judging by what mechanical knowledge I have of nonexistent infallible laser grid hallways, the laser beam requires amplification on both ends of the hallway to be effective (or else the lasers wouldn't be so obviously anchored and "generated" by both sides of the hallway), so I don't imagine that one side of the hallway itself would be able to project a dangerous laser beam on its own, or else they would have made the laser hallway scene far more complex because it is in fact probably the most CG intensive scene in the movie, so they may as well have made it worth the massive sacrifice of credibility and characters.

You may have thought at this point that Ol' Shiny's fifteen minutes were up at the end of that run-on sentence, but rest assured, they aren't. Having established the precedent that Ol Shiny can cover the entire Z-axis with an inescapable laser grid capable of slicing easily through not only human flesh but solid metal, it is interesting that the computer components to the Red Queen mainframe stored in the duffel bags carried by the victims of said laser grid did not get destroyed. They most certainly were passed through by the lasers. There is no differentiation between molecular densities or any such chemical properties of metal in the course of the hallway scene to establish any logical basis which informs the audience that the lasers can only cut "certain metals". Now perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps the combat knives carried by the Umbrella operatives are composed of a carbon fiber polymer that is more malleable than steel or whatever the mainframe components are made of(or whatever the hell they actually are) and that explains why they can be cut. I just love the incredibly large holes in logic we are expected to overlook in movies these days for the sake of entertainment.

On top of that, there is one thing that always severely pisses me off not only in zombie movies, but all movies that feature arms of any kind. Why the fuck would you intentionally discard your arms? Why!? There is NO reasonable excuse for discarding your weapons in any situation whatsoever unless they literally weigh so much it reduces your chance of surviving. In Resident Evil the film this is not the case. The Springfield 1911, the Heckler and Koch MP5K, the Heckler and Koch G36, the Beretta 92FS, whatever .357 looking revolver Kaplan had, NONE of those firearms would have been a burden on them in any situation. Yes, they ran out of ammo (because they're too god damn stupid to aim for the head.) If "people" are coming at you that obviously are walking on broken feet, are missing half their heads, their bodies are decomposed, you aren't stupid enough to have any hope that there is salvation for these mutated creatures. Regardless, in a zombie scenario, you don't drop your weapons. Weapons can always be used as clubs. Clubs may not necessarily be the most effective anti-zombie weapon, but they're better than your body. In addition lets examine the reality and the inherent ramifications in reality of abandoning your weapons. First of all, they're Umbrella employees. If they make it out of there, they have to go back to work afterwards. Umbrella's going to scold the shit out of them , dock their pay, maybe even fire them, for leaving several thousand dollars of company assets half a mile underground in a contaminated and compromised research laboratory. Secondly, it's mentally retarded to drop your gun because in the case of Resident Evil, there is a 100% chance you're going to get more ammunition because , as I will touch on later, Resident Evil is not a zombie apocalypse franchise. Resident Evil is a science fiction franchise about corporate sin, scientific and business ethics, and dirty warfare. Every incident that occurs in Resident Evil is an incident, not a part of a global doomsday. There will be more ammo, unless they managed to use billions of bullets, and at the same time all the workers of all the firearms industries die or go on strike.

Other than those things, there aren't more things I find unforgiveable with the movie itself. However, there are things that are retarded in terms of discrepancy between the game and movies. In the movie, lickers are intentionally manufactured BOWs, as opposed to the licker lore of the games (or so you would assume. They never explain in the movie how the lickers come to be, or call them lickers) . In the Resident Evil series, a Licker is formed by a further mutation of the Crimson Head zombie variant, assumedly by consumption of fresh host blood. This in turn has the potential to mutate Crimson Head zombies further into fullblown lickers. Granted, this explanation for lickers is introduced YEARS and YEARS after Resident Evil 2 came out, after it was already established that the Tyrant virus has no ability to cause further mutation in human hosts after the zombie stage, in contrast to the newly developed G virus which forces severe mutation in mammalian hosts each time they integrate additional DNA into their bodies by feeding on a fresh victim. This part of the movie pissed me off the most because they combined the T and the G virus into one ultra virus, as shown by the licker immediately mutating into a full blown G Imago after it killed Spencer, the G Imago being the first boss in Resident Evil 2.

Before I wrap up this first third of the review, I have to make one more obvious observation on the massive inconsistencies in the movie. When Alice wakes up in the abandoned hospital and she makes it out alive, we are treated to her stepping into an absolutely fucked up Raccoon City and taking a shotgun from a police cruiser. It looks like it's about one P.M or so on a rather dreary day, and the entire city area you are shown is derelict and destroyed. Now, we have to put this in a time frame, because obviously the second movie rewinds an unspecified amount of time to show us how the city becomes a wasteland, though it does a terrible job. When she steps out, it's most definitely early in the day. When Resident Evil Apocalypse picks up, it's obviously at some point early in the day (as established by Angela still being at school and one of the researchers being in a bath robe, assuming these are somewhat respectable citizens and they don't sleep all day (obviously overlooking their involvement in incredibly unethical and illegal research when we label them as respectable citizens)). However, in the shots you see afterwards the city seems quite uninfected during the day and it seems that by nightfall a vast amount of the civilians trying to escape through the Umbrella quarantine check point at the Ravens Gate Bridge are still uninfected. It is not until late at night we are informed through the reflection of a motorcycle cop/umbrella special operatives reflective helmet visor that the entire city has finally become the Necropolis. However, it is important to interject that the establishing scene of Jill Valentine is during the day and a zombie outbreak *seems* to be ubiquitous. Either way, the last shot of Resident Evil is of a terribly wrecked, congested, and abandoned street (assume it's main street and that the streets which are navigable are less important) is during the day. It is NOT possible for this shot to have happened the day after the outbreak (outbreak in terms of citywide) because at that point the city has been nuked. Now, it is possible to suppose that Alice was kept in the Hospital facility for a few days after the Hive (it seems odd that they would intentionally wait a long period of time to reopen the Hive), so perhaps as in the game it actually took a few days for the entire city to become infected, which would explain Jills familiarity with how to kill the zombies. Of all the bothersome things in the first movie I'll concede that this one is just convoluted as opposed to absolutely absurd and impossible, but nonetheless it's a plot hole that's rather annoying.

Having said all the negatives, I must admit as other Resident Evil fans did, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. The action was pretty close to the games, the situations were somewhat reminiscent, and they did stay as close to legitimate consistency with the game universe as they could I must say. Additionally, the CG is great, the zombies and makeup and wardrobe are pretty excellent, and the movie is definitely rewatchable. Despite my uber nerd problems with the entire movie series, I give Resident Evil four and a half out of five stars.