I’ve recently played Resident Evil 6 for the 1st time after playing Resident Evil 4 (an absolute masterpiece) & Resident 5 (a pretty good game). I was already aware of the hate this game got over the years. But after experiencing it, it’s only bad in an artificial way. Like yeah, it’s nothing like the classic games and it’s too much in the action category.
Otherwise, as someone who loves action games, it’s a pretty fun game. Especially in Mercenaries Mode, where it’s fun to mow down body-horror themed enemies. As a Resident Evil game, it’s pretty bad. But…as an action third person shooter with splatter punks, it’s quite well executed
I’ve shown the video game Antichamber to about a half dozen people and watched them bounce right off it.
You know how sometimes snobs of any particular thing tend to start liking things a general audience hates? Like, I’ve seen movie buffs express a love of stuff like Street Trash, or whiskey snobs really like whiskey that tastes like smoke, leather and iodine. I think you’ve got to be like that with video games to like Antichamber.
Antichamber is a non-euclidean 3D first person puzzle platformer. It’s set in an abstract series of stark black and white corridors that in many cases don’t make sense. It’s a strange place that doesn’t behave like the real world, it is internally consistent, but you’ll encounter all kinds of weird shit like falling a long distance only to wind up above where you started, multiple paths leading through the same doorway, things appearing and disappearing, mazes that aren’t physically possible…and somehow it makes all the bizarre little puzzles you find yourself in parables for living a human life.
I can’t fault anyone for not getting it. It’s arthouse bullshit. I’ve shaken my head mouthing “what the fuck are you doing” to modern artists, I recognize this as arthouse bullshit, but it’s arthouse bullshit that I at least partially understand.
Mando and Grogu, and for that matter Skeleton Crew. Just mindless fun. Dude, it’s Star Wars, not fuggin’ Shakespeare.
Big Bang Theory. I don’t think I would enjoy it on a rewatch but watching that show became a ritual for me and my family.
David Lynch’s Dune. I understood the hate it got. It is a horribly difficult book to put on film. I thought the style and feel of it was great and so over the top at times. I read the book so I knew what was going on but I understood the criticisms. Sting in a speedo though, wtf? lol
Edit: Almost forgot, a great lineup of actors too.
“I did not say this. I am not here.” Goes so damn hard. Too bad only the guild decided to act in that scene.
I loved that scene. So otherworldly. The guild gave that machinations behind the scenes combined with alien feel. The imperial look is like a combination of the Shah of Iran mixed with 1600s royal Spain mixed with WW1 royal navy.
Best Dune movie ever and I’ll die on that hill. Never read the books and I had no problem following it.
I’ll join you on that hill.
The hallucinatory scenes on Giedi Prime horrified and fascinated me (I was way too young when I watched it).
(2002) Time Machine with Guy Pierce and Jeremy Irons
Wasn’t a big hit when it came out and it’ll never be as iconic as the George Pal Time Machine from the 60’s. But the 2003 adaptation has the coolest looking time machine to come around in a while (at the time it was the most expensive prop ever built, might still be but I’m not sure.)
Critics shit on it for not having the cataclysmic event that destroys humanity be global warming. While I’m all for talking about global warming I can kind of understand why they didn’t use that and why they didn’t reuse the 60’s disaster of nuclear war.
spoiler
In the 2002 film humans destroy the moon while nuking underground living spaces to build a low gravity retirement community for the elderly.
But to be fair to the writers their choice to destroying humanity was original, kind of a tongue-in-cheek joke about the elderly crisis we’re currently entering into and the plan is in fact an idea that has been discussed before.
Aside from that the film is pretty solid. In the book by HG Wells and the 60’s film the Time Traveller (doesn’t even have a name) has zero motivation aside from achieving a new scientific advancement. Thats cool and all but modern audiences, having had several successful time travel stories since Wells time, do need a better eureka moment than that. The 2002 film provides a good and believable motivation.
spoiler
His girlfriend is killed while he proposes to her. His first time traveling event is going back in time to save her, only to have fate killed her in some other cruel way. So instead of repeating the event he goes forward in hopes someone in the future will figure out how he can change the past.
The film also features a believable super-distant future where the human species splits, just like in the original stories. Samantha Mumba is a member of the tribe of humans that live above ground and are technologically ignorant, thought not exactly like the child-like race we see in the 60’s version. They do maintain that there are no old people and why that is.
spoiler
Morlocks are eating them up before they get old and the meat gets all tough and stringy.
Samantha Mumba did a great job in her role and while I don’t normally discuss a persons race the fact her father was Zambian and her mother Irish did kind of lean into what a future race of people could look like. She has a distinct look which played to the role.
Orlando Jones makes a couple appearances as a sort of AI librarian. It’s nice to see him in the odd movie role.
Jeremy Irons is the head morlock, the race of humans that stayed underground, and doesn’t disappoint, although his character is more of a cameo.
spoiler
He is the one who eventually explains that the issue with changing the past is a temporal paradox since Guy Pierce wouldn’t have built the machine if his lover hadn’t die, thus she must die because without the machine he couldn’t have went back to save her. Then to save his new future girlfriend the 2 fight to the death and he uses the time machine to sort of blow up all the other morlocks.
The film also had a good soundtrack and special effects that features the classic “years passing in seconds” stuff that was iconic from the 60’s film.
But ultimately the film is mostly forgotten to audiences.
This is one of my favorite popcorn flicks. The first half of the movie is amazing (up to the part where the moon gets destroyed), but I feel like they could have done more to make the second half more entertaining. I don’t know what, but it feels like it’s missing something. I also like how the film predicted the concept of LLMs and giving them an avatar, even though they predicted it happening about decade too soon IIRC.
The core problem is the source material is also boring. Aside from the motivation issues and the fact Wells never even bothers to name the Time Traveller, the whole plot is a bit slow. Sure, the morlocks eating people is creepy but it never manages to get to the horror level like how Jurassic Park or Jaws was able to achieve. You never really felt like they were going to sneak up behind you and slash you or tear you limb from limb.
The changes they made to the story helped: named the character, moved him to New York instead of London, gave him a deep motivation, even the morlocks had a more organized system that was more believable (hunted the Eloi and were controlled telepathically by Jeremy Irons.)
Maybe having more Irons in it would’ve helped but with the plot elements they had to work with it would’ve been tricky. The good thing is they didn’t drag it out, 90 minutes is the proper length. Nowadays they’d try to make it 2 1/2 and it’d be bogged down.
I still like watching the time traveling sequence.
That and the machine itself are the real star of the film. I came across some behind the scenes of the build years ago and it was impressive. The wood deck is all steel painted to look like wood. Since the spinning bits weighed a ton, acrylic and brass, they had to have it be secure. Even the geared computer (forget what it’s called… a baggage computer?) worked. Really impressive prop that doesn’t get enough love. Makes the Pal time machine look like a joke.
I was a young man when this came out and I certainly remember Samantha Mumba’s performance.
Yeah she was fun. Shame she didn’t do more stuff. I’d probably blow up my time machine and live with her instead of going back too.
Can’t think of anything on top of my head, so instead I’ll ask: What makes you say that Resident Evil 4 is a “masterpiece”? For me it completely ruined the series. It went from survival horror to action shooter when RE4 was released, and every game since has been an iteration of that.
To me that’s not Resident Evil. The fun of these games comes from the horror of not knowing what’s lurking behind the next corner, and the fact that even one zombie can ruin your night. RE4 removed all of that by placing the camera behind the player, and then turning zombies into cannon fodder that swarm you by the masses. That’s not Resident Evil for me, and for that reason I consider RE:0 to be the last good game in the series. (Not including the remakes of course; I’m only counting new entries.)
The thing is, your opinion is the majority. I’m the odd one out here, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. One theory I’ve been told is that for a lot of people, RE4 was their first Resident Evil game, in which case I can understand liking it if you never knew how good the old games were. I also understand that the tank controls can be off-putting, but that can be bypassed by mapping forward to a button other than up, that way you can move and turn at the same time (also the remakes give you an option to turn off the tank controls). So I really can’t think of any other reasons why one might prefer RE4 to past titles.
“what makes you say that Resident Evil 4 is ‘masterpiece’”
Mainly the gameplay. Ya, it feels dated, but it also feels intentionally as it makes you think strategically about your approach. It also allows a variety of gameplay styles
As for why the statement I made is a unpopular opinion, is because people praise RE4 (rightfully so), but are mixed on how action heavy 5 & 6 are. I’m just someone who likes action and dislikes horror (the opposite of most RE fans)
Well like I said, my problem isn’t that it’s dated, but instead that they modernized it too much by turning it into an action game with puzzle elements, rather than a puzzle game with suspenseful elements.
It seems to me that you like RE4 for all the reasons why I hate it. So is it safe to say that I was right when I guessed that RE4 was probably your first Resident Evil game? I think my opinion is so much different because I started off with the original.
Sucker Punch
The internet has been shitting on it for years. I don’t even remember why. Maybe something along the lines of sexualizing female hero figures. I think a lot of people don’t like Zack Snyder. I don’t care. It’s stylish as hell, looks awesome, has fantastic action sequences, and a killer soundtrack. And it has a whole inception vibe. I love watching it.
Sucker Punch
This was a movie that was like “hey! wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a world where the nazis brought back dinosaurs to fight with- Wait! wouldn’t it be cool if there was like, a world where space travel was affordable and we had a moonbase an-wait! wouldn’t it be cool if there was a world where-”
And each time I’d be like “hey, there will be cool lore and world-building I’d love to see aaaand they already shifted into a different thing.” That movie pissed me off so much. Shoulda just been either a softcore porn, or leaned more heavily into the idea of a real-life “Heavy Metal” remake.
I really like the 90s Romeo and Juliet, set in present day with the lines unchanged (mostly). I’m alone in this, I think.
I’m alone in this
Alone with every single girl coming of age in the 90s who swooned over it cuz of Leo “Heartthrob” DiCaprio.
I skipped it back in the day but my gf made me watch it last year and I liked it. Very stylish.
He was actually annoying in it I felt.
Weirdly, I think that is a strength of his performance. Romeo is a misunderstood character: people associate him with romance and chivalry when the Romeo from the play is obsessive, fickle, and impulsive. Kind of a dweeb, really. Juliet fails to see through his bullshit because she is so, so young.
Romeo is annoying as a character, in all fairness.
They’re both annoying af I think that’s half the joke. I’m a big fan of Shakespeare’s sense of humor.
It was alright but the fact that they didn’t modernize the language is what ruined the film for me. Who the hell spoke like that in the 90s? It made no sense.
That’s… that’s the point. It’s Shakespeare’s words given modern visual elements to make it more comprehensible by a modern audience. It’s the prose of Romeo And Juliet that make it Shakespeare, not the swords and doublets.
Yeah and as someone who hated Shakespeare back in my grade school days (and still does), I couldn’t care less about that. I simply want to see a modern take on his plays with the script translated to a prose that I can actually understand.
As someone with ADHD, it’s difficult enough as-is to focus on words on a page written in a modern dialect, let alone an ancient one! Canterbury Tales was an even worse time for me because of this. I have to be fully invested in the story, or I can’t understand a damn thing in these old manuscripts because my brain refuses to pay attention to anything that isn’t urgent, interesting, or novel to me.
Are you aware you’re asking for something that cannot exist? If you don’t have the Shakespearean prose, it’s not Shakespeare. It’s the identifying element of the thing. You can bend and stretch many aspects of a work, but you can’t remove the identifying elements. For poets, like Shakespeare, their word choice is core to the identity of the work. The ‘story’ is almost meaningless.
e.g. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and Loveliest of Trees have the same ‘story,’ a man takes a moment to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of a treed landscape in winter, but one would never say they were the same thing.
Why not? If religious people can update the Bible translations to use modern English, why can’t we do the same with non-religious texts?
It’s sick.
“Fetch me my sword” grabs a gun named sword. Plus it has the best Mercutio.
Hogwarts Legacy. It was surprisingly good!
Dragon Age: Veilguard. Was it MCU-ified? Sure. Still enjoyed it quite a bit. More than Inquisition, actually.
I preferred Inquisition, especially in terms of the stories and challenges of the characters, and especially their use of LGBT storylines.
In Inquisition, Krem is trans. Is that an issue? No, it’s just part of their character. Is that even the most focused on thing about Krem? Absolutely not, Krem is a badass, that’s the focus on Krem.
Dorian is gay. Is that a problem? Yes, but not specifically for some particularly homophobic reason, it’s mostly about his role and the pressure to marry his betrothed and generally come back to Tevinter and their ways, which Dorian has been fairly steadily against (not just the pressure to not be gay). It wasn’t a simple “I’m gay and want my parents to accept who I am” story.
Then there’s Veilguard. Where we have a drawn-out thing about how Taash is non-binary, and for some reason that is a huge problem for their mother, even though the Qun have been accepting of trans people the whole time (but supposedly get their loincloths in a wad about non-binary? Come on). And that becomes their, like… whole deal. They’re even bisexual, which is treated as a non-issue (thankfully). And they’re the big dragon-slayer person, who rarely offers anything in terms of killing dragons. It seems like Taash’s entire existence in the game is for a ham-fisted egg story, and it just gets tedious, frankly.
Every other character has interesting storyline and interesting interplay. Taash gets… one story, and a beat-you-over-the-head allegory in terms of accepting her Qun parts or her Rivian parts, with the painfully obvious answer of “both.” Basically, we are too far along to have the cardboard cut-out non-binary character in a story and calling it representation.
Gameplay-wise, I missed the tactical system for fighting from Inquisition, though once I got the hang of the ability system of Veilguard it was an okay replacement. Definitely more fluid.
The Emoji Movie. I get it, the trailers looked awful. It had ‘shallow crap’ written all over it. But my kids loved it, and honestly, it was a perfectly fine movie. Better than a bunch of other animated movies I’ve had to sit through.
Yes but how do you write a plot around emoji? Are they literally the emoji in your phone becoming sentient, or did the scriptwriters come up with a whole alternative universe that they exist in or something? I’m mildly intrigued but don’t care enough to look up a summary.
It was about being more than just what you are expected to be. Every other emoji stayed what they were, he was able to change. That’s… it.
Torment: Tides of Numenera
A lot of people give this game bad rep because its (in)direct ancestor was amazing Planescape Torment, the game with one of the best stories ever made. Sure Planescape was amazing, with all its bizarre characters and places, deep thoughts provoking story, vast amounts of book like conversations, that’s all true.
But Numenera was ringing the exact same bell for me.
I get some of the hate it’s not real Planescape, but that’s because of licensing reason and we can’t do shit about that. But world of Numenera was amazing replacement! It’s just as bizarre, just as strange, just as different, I loved it!
I get some of the hate of “shallow” characters which is somehow true for some random NPCs, but that’s in every game. But your companions were all interesting with interesting motives and background.
I don’t get the hate of mechanics and combat. I honestly prefer its game mechanics to d&d, because we’ve already seen it million times and this was new. And it works well. And combat? Lol. That’s the last thing this game is about so I don’t mind it’s not perfect. And honestly, combat in “the original” sucked even more.
All in all I did not expect much thanks to reviews but I was very pleasantly surprised. I highly recommend the game for all patient gamers out there.
Scrubs s9 and the Star Wars prequels.
I quite enjoy The Big Bang Theory. It’s not great art, but it’s relaxing and not taxing.
The Last of Us 2. I get the hate but I LOVE playing as Abby. Christ almighty is it a fun game. Dark, but fun.
