Foreword (Report #003)

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₪ Genre: Action, Horror
☑ Release date: January 2017
♬ Soundtrack: On The Road and Love To Death

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Just a pair of stipulations before I dig into Resident Evil 7 proper – last games I played to any significant degree and finished was the original RE trilogy and I never jumped on the first-person horror bandwagon in recent years. That pretty much made me experience THIS game for what it was without many of the strings attached. In my opinion, at least. In some ways this is both oddly familiar and utterly alien at the same time.

As far as story goes our dude EEEETHAAAAAAAN Ethan gets a message from his former wife. Why former? Because, well, she's kinda supposed to be dead. Which really makes it all the stranger when in the message she tells him to forget about her and lead a good life. Kinda sending mixed signals there, aren't you Mia? Following the clues Ethan heads for Louisiana and the Baker family's home where she's apparently at... where he promptly goes through a horrific experience as the hillbilly cannibal family imprisons him and it's not looking so good for the protagonist. Biggest surprise as far the story goes is that, in fact, this whole thing does tie into the Resident Evil mythos but it takes its sweet sweet time getting there and I obviously can't go into spoilers. Not that it's much of a dramatic twist or anything, after all it doesn't take a genius to figure out this ain't exactly natural or what series you're in, but the way story gets there is intriguing enough to keep you invested.

It's also aided by very humorous, disturbing and memorable characters. Mainly the family where Jack stands out the most as he chases you throughout certain parts of the game and you even cross, err, blades here and there. Others have their quirks but it was the father who stuck with me the most and finding out what happened to them and why, doubly so when you get a brief flashback much later on, was the most interesting part of the story for me. It's kinda funny because the entire thing is a footnote in the overall plot. Ethan and other two story-relevant characters are sadly much blander and token. For a regular guy who finds himself in a situation straight out of a snuff movie our leading man sure takes it all in stride. Gotta give that to him at least.

I did like the final cameo of a series familiar character.



But enough about all that fluff nonsense because I know you want to hear what's gameplay like now that the perspective has changed. Well, surprisingly like the olden games from what I could surmise. Sure, it's first-person now and graphical fidelity is way off the charts, but the methodical play style you don't really see much in modern games overall is still there. I absolutely loved the feeling of being stalked in the old house and counting my every bullet, both in how many I had and how carefully I had to aim my shots. Limited starting inventory also adds some edge to this, but I was never forced to play inventory Tetris. One aspect game probably should've handled better are probably puzzles, though. As much as they were basically “Collect a special key to unlock the special door.” and still invoked that “Who in the hell would design this for practical use?”, there just wasn't enough of them as the game is a lot more action-centric now. Thankfully, they aren't nearly as obtuse and contrived as they used to be.

To be fair, I'm speaking from the position of someone who has finished the game – first half is amazing and much better than everything else after you move elsewhere. Claustrophobic and messy rooms paired with enemies that can appear randomly and give chase really set the mood well. This is kinda diluted in the second half or so when you get much more weapons and games forsakes sneaking around to stay alive and conserve ammo for brief, and yes there is a difference, forced stealth section and outright action at the very end. I really do wish it was more evenly spread out, but in a sense that's also staying true because you would accumulate a veritable warehouse of weapons in the old games after a certain point. Not so much in Resident Evil 7 as you mainly get to replace pistol and shotgun for better models, but also get your greedy paws on some specialist weapons like a flamethrower and grenade launcher that will certainly do much good in your hands.

This also brings me to bosses which could've used some more versatility and less of just being bullet sponges. They have far more PERSONALITY as characters than they have mechanical complexity. Just like in the pacing and mood, game tends to make a good impression early on as most of the bosses are in the first half. Final boss, though, was maddeningly a letdown. Come on game, you gave me all this cool stuff and I don't even get to flex my fire grenades beyond stalling for time? Disappointing.



I cannot even fathom how this game has to play with VR on, but even without it was already putting me in that uncomfortable territory. It's horror, alright. Horror relying on jump scares and gore, oh god the gore, but one that makes good use of both of those elements. There are scenes early in the game that genuinely had me thinking I must've failed something, but no and that's just how Resident Evil 7 rolls – one moment you're getting your leg chopped off with a shovel and the next you're putting it together with a first aid med. Outside of combat, even. It seems only the green herbs have survived the Great Herb Wars and they're your primary healing method with the ability to turn them into genuine first aid medicine. I like how everyone's, even your own, ability to heal is actually explained by the story. Nice touch. Oh, there are also collectibles you can find in the form of coins you then use to unlock couple of goodies another character left for you. I'm talking things like steroids to raise your max health, which is still abstracted and tracked by heartbeat meter, and stabilizer to increase your weapon reload speed.

Not being one to really get into graphics this is one of those cases where I have to for couple of reasons. First – game looks positively stunning on higher settings. Effort put into cluttering the locations and making them all disgusting enough to make you uneasy at all times does the other half naturally. Second – it's scalable as all hell and has convinced me Resolution Scaling needs to be a thing in every game. It's nice being able to play the game on a system below minimum specs even if you have to sacrifice eye candy. Soundtrack left me mostly ambivalent. It's your horror soundtrack with situational stings and cinematic score where fitting otherwise, but nothing that stuck with me. I won't be humming anything from this one, I'm afraid.

In the end, I liked it. Is it perfect? No, especially when it drifts away in focus after you change locations, but most of Resident Evil 7 is really good and its well made as a game. Tension and dread are there in almost every hesitant step you make, gameplay is “tanky” enough in first-person to not be so off-putting to me, if that makes any sense, and the mystery is decently engaging. I just wish the main character's motivation came more to the fore and he wasn't just going about for the sake of advancing the story or become someone tells him to.

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₪ Genre: Superhero, Fantasy
☑ Release date: November 2016
⇲ Running time: 115 minutes

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The way it usually goes with superhero movies these days it's actually kinda difficult to say much about them unless they're either massive flops or massive successes. It doesn't help that I personally don't know much about Doctor Strange as a character considering I never read single one of his comics in my entire life. With those things in mind let's see what I thought about the movie.

We see doctor Stephen Strange being an arrogant prick around his co-workers until he has an accident that basically screws up his hands so he'll never practice surgery again. He of course undergoes procedure after procedure, but none of it works until, after alienating his ex-lover and co-worker, he catches wind of how one guy apparently cured himself of paralysis and following his instruction Strange goes to Kamar-Taj. There he learns there's a lot more to the world than he knew as a doctor – another multiverse where magic is real and threats to humanity even realer. Following a brief shock therapy course he agrees to begin training to heal his ruined hands...

As far as origin stories go this one is a pretty straightforward and nothing you haven't seen before in some form. One thing I liked though, and where time was well spent was portraying just how much of an asshole Strange actually is. While Tony Stark is personable Stephen Strange really isn't on that basic “he has a heart of gold” level and you can't help but wonder how this relationship he had with the [insert generic female romantic interest here] actually worked when it did. This even extends for a long while when he embarks on the “mystical awakening” part of the movie as it takes him good half of the movie or so to ditch the attitude and assume the mantle of a classical hero ready to sacrifice and all that. It certainly doesn't feel like it happened too fast, is what I'm trying to say. It maybe even takes longer than I would've liked to establish some ground rules.

I'm not sure if any of the characters are really worth talking about that much – start with the Ancient One and her enigmatic yet eccentric personality to rest of supporting cast who are barely fleshed out. Even Kaecilius' motivations are ultimately rooted in somewhat transparent and obviously flawed logic, which someone who has thought all of this through really should've oped out a long time ago before putting their master plan into action. In one significant chunk it is neither here nor there approach to characters that really undermines the movie in my opinion. They're just there to have scenes with Doctor Strange and that's about it. Is it perhaps because I'm not familiar with existing material? Perhaps, but I think other Marvel movies did a largely better job with secondary characters even if they've still flubbed the villains. Acting overall is also OK. I mean, there were really no standouts except Cumberbatch himself who sold me on Doctor Strange as far as completle ignoramus can make such a claim. I wish I could compliment Mikkelsen because I really like his work, but he didn't do much for me here.

Not being someone who does drug I can only speculate on the following, but I can't even imagine what these action scenes must look like when you've affected your consciousness. Easily the highlights of the entire movie they look stunning. Even if people are far too easy to involve the Inception comparison which I think isn't really beyond the notion of “overlapping cityscape” because here we have a lot more methodical and mechanical approach to the effect. Interesting considering you'd expect something more... well, fantastical from characters using spells. Sadly, same cannot be said about combat effects and choreography. Whoever decided characters like the Ancient One and Sorcerer Supreme should resort to duking it out with their fists and magical lines should reconsider their position in the industry. It feels like a MASSIVE wasted opportunity to not show off some more visually impact spells for personal combat, perhaps something to match the Mirror Dimension effects and whatnot. Cloak of Levitation makes up for it with sheer personality, though.

So what do I say in conclusion? Pretty damn great effects, simple and understandable story with potential for the protagonist to go place in Marvel's Cinematic Universe. I have no idea where, though. We'll have to wait and see if this whole “Mystical Marvel” angle pans out, but I could certainly stand to see more of it.

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₪ Genre: Speculative fiction
☑ Publication date: July 1994
⇲ Pages: 128

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More than ever before I feel like I should open this with a simple statement – I'm no anarchist nor do I really have any interest in it as a political philosophy, seeing as I believe it's not really exactly achievable, if for no other reason then because of the very human nature itself. This puts me at odds with My Journey With Aristotle To The Anarchist Utopia by default.

As a result this could very easily be my shortest book review so far.

It doesn't help there's no real story or characters here either. Why? Because everything is essentially in the service of preaching the message to the reader, albeit set against an interesting futuristic backdrop. As novel begins we follow one of the miners called Tom as he and others are protesting in Australia over how their government is incompetent and doesn't really care either way as long as they're safe themselves. This escalates when police breaks into their meeting and chases everyone off while managing to club Tom. He wakes up deep inside side the mine where two police officers are seemingly going to do him in before some noise from the outside distracts them and they leave him there. Suddenly, Tom finds himself awake elsewhere, outside in the field, and sees an old bearded man watching him quizzically. Old fellow introduces himself as Aristotle and two of them strike a conversation.

What I said above still stands – book is relentless in its message, but it is to be expected from a lifetime adherent like Purchase, I guess. Difference is once our protagonist wakes anew and Aristotle begins to preach it is at least more intriguing than the bleak reality we're familiar with. We discover that during the last thousand years or so humanity has turned itself towards preservation of the planet through unprecedented ecological doctrines and study. Book goes to GREAT lengths about this, but I'll surmise and say they adopted concepts of anarchism like no borders, absence of government, etc but this is facilitated through sheer biotechnological advancements that some bio-regions employ while others do not. Essentially making it Green Anarchism made manifest. For example, Bear City, where most of the book happens, seems to have one side for all the houses made entirely of some odd translucent organic material that doubles as an energy collector panel, hydroponics vat and recycler at the same time. Paired with many other technologies and cultural norms, such as fully self-sufficient cities, freedom of the people to form up however they wish as long as environment is safe, etc results in a rather compelling setting of its own.

Problem is all of that enthralling stuff, to me at least, is intermittent by narratives delivered from practically every character who isn't Tom and they're all dead set on converting you. Converting you to something I see as a very implausible and incredibly naive philosophy. It only works in the books because everyone forgets they're human and are essentially small communes. Metaphorically speaking, of course. People accepting arbitration decisions from some random old guy just because he's “well-respected enough”? Educating kids on “Let's only teach them specific subjects if something from that field catches their fancy on a random chance” principle without any standards to adhere to? Keep in mind this is also the same society that's decidedly NOT backwards, unless a particular bio-region decides to go full new-native style, as they have hydro power and are launching organically-made satellites into space. I don't buy it for a second beyond author's convenience and pushing his own set of beliefs.

So why a middling recommendation? Standing at barely above 100+ pages it didn't grate on my nerves too long and just like I said the setting itself is worth reading about. It's other things that are the problem.