Been a Resident Evil fan from the beginning, and while I was initially skeptical of VII, I ended up loving it in the end. Definitely not my favorite RE game, but I really dug the fresh take that almost felt like it was in a different universe save for a couple subtle callbacks and the Umbrella/Chris reveal at the end.

what cat and mouse gameplay? the people that stalk you occasionally? they work exactly like Mr. X and Nemesis in the old games. when you run into them fill them will bullets and they’ll leave you alone until the next scripted moment when they have to appear.

The first time I heard his name, I thought it was just a tool. “Do they have a different kind? Why?” In hindsight, that’s about right.

Wow, Fincher’s response is a masterclass in emotional intelligence. I guess I’m so used to today’s endless, vapid Twitter bitchslaps that I wasn’t expecting it.

I’m slowly making my way through Valhalla, but I might take a break this weekend to finish up Mortal Shell. It’s not as polished as the mainline Souls games, but what I played before was really satisfying.

News of the assault on the Capitol broke when I was teaching a remote high-school class. Being reassuring and terrified at the same time is my new least favorite thing.

I question Mank being on this list at all. I really do!

...where’s Mulan?

Games like Anthem and Fallout 76 feel like casualties of all the economic trends we like to complain about. The publishers are leaning on established brands and developers to generate interest around games-as-a-service, but this leaves the studios with huge ambitions, vague goals, and a release date.

This seems like accountability theater all around. Both Sony and CDPR have now taken visible steps to calm angry customers, and removing the game will keep less informed customers from stumbling into a pre-patched nightmare. But the publisher knew that the game was not finished on PS4, and Sony could always screen…

Of course it’s okay to love bad art. But, often enough, the people who remind us that “art is subjective” and “some things are just FUN” are not children with quirky homegrown taste; they are adults defending mega-popular franchises.

Oshii recalled something that Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki once said: A work can appeal to a million people, and anything above that is a social phenomenon.

I’m just hoping the success of Bumblebee doesn’t inspire Michael to get personally involved again and fuck up what finally became a good Transformers property. I’d been waiting since goddamn 1986 for that!

He’s a low budget Michael Bay.

See also: Snyder, Zack; Abrams, JJ.

“That hack’s been getting away with his low effort bullshit forever now cause his movies have always sold tickets. Hopefully next time Capcom picks someone who gives a shit, at least.”

Oh my god, making jokes about George R.R. Martin makes me pine for the before time. I’m not sure I even know how anymore.

I’m excited for this. It does look like Anderson will play loose with the series lore, in the same way he did for the Resident Evil movies, but who gives a shit? The decision to make Monster Hunter into a portal fantasy is a little cheesy, but it’s not a deal breaker. Who the fuck is watching this movie - or playing…

I’m so used to the original character model that any change was going to feel wrong, at least at first. I don’t hate the new design, which does seem more compatible with the voice actor’s boyish intonation, but I wish they had gone with an aged-up version of it. One of the things I liked about the game was playing as…

The interesting thing about Forrest Gump is that it plays in one moment as an ode to the Boomers and in the next as a scathing satire. Gump may be an angelic cipher, but he’s also blundering through history. More often than not, Hanks finds himself on the business end of the film’s nasty editing, which punctures the…