Resident Evil Rising

Ug. Two posts about pokemon. How lame. Let's talk about zombies.

Resident Evil 6 was recently announced. I'm curious. That's about all I can say about a game series that I used to love. Don't get me wrong, I still love Resident Evil (1, 2, 3, Code Veronica, and 4). I guess there's even a trading card game. Nuts.

Right now there are three Resident Evil games out in limbo for me. One is out and two are about to be released in the next two months. I'm talking about Mercenaries, Revelations, and Operation Raccoon City. Two of these outliers are for the Nintendo 3DS. That instantly makes me cringe. But let's break these down.

Starting with Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, this little guy came out over the summer and tripped tons of used game land mines with the controversial save feature. I don't care about that. What really pissed me off about this was Mercenaries started as the mini game at the end of RE3 and was further hashed out at the end of RE4. I really find it hard to believe that this title can stand alone as its own game without a story arc laying the foundation. When this came out for the 3Ds, it didn't make me want to buy a 3Ds. On the contrary, it made me go back to RE3 and RE4 and play the Mercenaries mode.

Over the years, Resident Evil has definitely shifted from the actual survival horror genre into the action survival horror space. Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is meant to satisfy that action survival horror audience. I can't complain too much about the third person over-the-shoulder shooter style (because I liked it in RE4), but I did get tired of it in RE5. However the action-oriented game play makes for great co-op. The setting, story, inventory, and lack of zombies in RE5 bothered me, but I loved playing it co-op with my best friend (and fellow Resident Evil fan); I hope Operation Raccoon City will offer a similar experience. Additionally, it takes place around RE2 and RE3 (two of my favorites) and has zombies. And then there's the pre-order swag. Look at all this RE bling.

My only worry, stemming from playing as Jack Krauser in the RE4 Mercenaries, is that all these super-powered Umbrella spec-ops characters are going to have clunky controls to execute their special abilities. I don't want to play with six different Krausers.

Last is the upcoming 3Ds title: Resident Evil: Revelations, this game makes me extremely nervous. Here's why:

I don't always use twitter for this kind of thing, but when I do, I'm never afraid to ask the guys of the 404. Revelations claims to return to RE's roots while keeping the over-the-shoulder visual style. I don't think the zombies are coming back, but this game does take place on a cruise ship, which reminds me of past games. But it also reminds me of Deep Rising. What a horribly hilarious movie! Which also sounds like Dead Rising, another zombie game. Shit is getting weird. I better call it a day.

Will Resident Evil: Revelations force me to shell out the cash for a Nintendo 3Ds? We'll see.

Killing Mewtwo is the Only Way to be Sure

Thanks to a vacation day and MLK day, I skipped out of the office on Thursday with a four-day weekend in front of me. The PSP went back into its mobile game case and I dug out my DS Lite and SoulSilver. This is all thanks to this messy mess.

I powered through all the Kanto gym leaders; with all sixteen gym badges, I'm ready for all the "endgame" activities: the elite four rematches, catching all the legendary birds, catching all the legendary cats, battling, defeating, and (hopefully) catching Mewtwo. There are probably some more out there that I don't know about. Wanting to catch all these stupid critters myself, I'm not doing any Internet research on the topic. You'd think that capturing legendary, elemental animals would be my moral dilemma (with these creatures having a high impact on the forces of nature and everything). But, in truth, my largest catching quandary has always been Mewtwo.

I guess I spent too much time grinding in the Cinnabar Laboratories (the pokemon mansion) and learned the Red/Blue horror story of Mewtwo's creation. Plus I have the movie and it’s gawdawful sequel on DVD. Derp. I'm a pokemon nut. No. Not really. I'm just a fan of Mewtwo. He is one of the many untapped wells of storytelling (as I've previously mentioned) in the pokemon universe.

Mewtwo is the Caesar of the pokemon world. If he wanted to pull a Rise of the Pokemon, he could. And he would have some powerful allies. But Ash tends to talk some common sense and sappiness into the monster at precisely the right time. Ash ruins everything.

My dilemma is: do I attack him, weaken him, and capture him knowing that I will never be able to contain such a powerful creature for long. At least, I shouldn't be able to contain him. Or I go for humanity's only hope and attack him, weaken him, and, when the moment is right, kill Mewtwo.

Killing Mewtwo seems to be the only way to be sure. He would inevitably escape his pokeball, even if it was the masterball. It would only be a matter of time before Mewtwo found a way to escape. That's what is truly terrifying about this laboratory monster.

What if (and this is a big one) you only played through the pokemon games to capture Mewtwo and trade him to another game? Has that ever been done? I can imagine an army of forty Mewtwo wreaking havoc on Pokemon Black or Pokemon White. Those are the newest games, right? The tactic is to create a team that could speed-run the main story, blast through the elite four, and tank the Cerulean Cave to catch the sinister bastard. Masterball or no, just catch him and send/trade him to the "home" game. Reset the Mewtwo game and start all over again.

The real question: what does a speed-run, Mewtwo-hunter team look like? Also, what version is the Mewtwo game? I was initially thinking of HeartGold and SoulSilver, but you could also go with FireRed and LeafGreen. The GBA games might be faster. But the team. It's like the X-Force of Pokemon. I might even nickname the pokemon after Marvel's writers.

A Mess, A Messy Mess

My mind is just crapping out on me right now. I can't think of anything to draw on my board and my sinuses are so clogged up that I think my head might actually explode. My neck is even starting to hurt under the pressure.

Writing mode is set to random right now; I just want to see where this goes. For no real reason, I've been browsing /r/pokemon lately and all that has done is make me want to draw a crazy picture of Mr. Mime. Maybe winter is actually killing me. It's not even that cold here. Nasal cavity monsters are making it impossible to breathe through my nose.

Pokemon entered into my gaming universe as a curious little specimen "mon" partly because I knew nothing about it and partly because I only had a Game Boy at the time. Blue and Silver were the only games that I played; my neighbor owned the counter-parts. When we learned that the new GBA games were not trade-compatible with our games, my neighbor and I quit playing all together. Does one really quit playing Pokemon? Hrm. Anyway, I came back with the remakes of Gold and Silver for the Nintendo DS.

Yes, I own a Pokewalker. What amazed me on the remake was the ability to trade via the WiFi connection. Had that existed way back with Red, Blue, Gold, and Silver, I probably would not have hung up the trainer cap and "quit."

My DS Lite and SoulSilver cartridge are collecting dust right now. But they're having to compete with my PSP and Disgaea's Item World. The funny thing is that both are grinding games and the grinding sessions of both can be pretty mindless.

The world of pokemon seems rife with story-telling potential, but I've not seen any of the games tap into that vastness. A real shame, in my opinion.

And that's how my do nothing blog turned into a pokemon fan fiction blog. Ha! Dear Lord, no.

Keep the Internet Free

We can't claim the Internet or access to it as a certain unalienable right. The Internet is a privilege. It's extra. It's icing on the cake, connecting all the craziness that is this planet. Our ideas, our cultures, our arts, and our lives. Certainly the Internet contains the unsavory, the inappropriate, and the illegal. But that's part of it. That's part of the freedom. A freedom that fosters discovery and encourages interaction; that's the Internet.

The First Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.

H.R.3261 "Stop Online Piracy Act" and S.968 "PROTECT IP" will abridge the freedom of speech.

These blanket solutions cover the unsavory, inappropriate, illegal facets of the Internet, but they damage so much more than just the intended targets. The blast radius will cripple the Internet as we know and love it.

Save the Internet. Save the discovery. Save the connectivity.

Keep it free.

READ. THIS. SHIT.

Do Nothing Goals

Welp, it's January 2012. The final countdown. Can't you just hear the music? But seriously, 2011 was a crazy year. I'm looking over this blog and remembering how it was basically dead. In June of 2011 I came back with new motivation. Twenty-three posts later, it's the beginning of a new year. For those of you who can't math (like me), that's 23 posts in 6 months, which is 3.8333333333333333333333333
333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333...posts per month. Sorry, I can't resist recurring decimals.

So, if a new year is supposed to be about goals and commitments and change, what is the plan for this space? This mass of jumbled thoughts and broken language about video games, a digital life, and (seemingly) doing nothing. I guess the lazy answer is to keep on keepin' on. And I am never opposed to sticking with the lazy answer.

Focusing on audience seems like a good place to start. Go for more views/hits/clicks. Isn't that how the Internet works? If I were trying to make money off of these ramblings, that might be the way to go. But I don't care about money. No, I'm more interested in content. If I have a goal or new year's resolution for blogging, it would be to produce more.

More than four posts per month and at least one "original" comic per month. None of this rage comic crap or movie stills with text. Maybe dry erase board stuff. More creative, original content in the form of words and images. That's the ultimate goal.

I hate writing game reviews, so I'm not going to delve into that well. There is a different process that I follow when it comes to buying new games. It goes something like this:

Funneling - What video games interest me?
Research - What have I read/seen/heard about this video game?
Expectations - What am I going to find/see/do in this video game?
Purchase - Did I buy this video game based on the three areas above?

No - Why not?
Yes - Did the video game fail/meet/exceed my expectations?

If I were to start writing reviews, this would be the format I'd follow. This could also be a sexy infographic.

Speaking of infographics, have you heard of wordle? It's an awesome word cloud generator. I created two word clouds for this blog. Maybe I should do this every six months and see how the image changes.

The last thing I want to mention is Destructoid's community blog and their "Blogger's Wanted" weekly topic. I've written in on four of those topics. Just four. I'm picky. So, the goal here is to be less picky and try my hand at more video game topics. The last one I posted was on Christmas eve. I love the picture that went with it.