SPIKE'S RANTS. Not Up For Debate.

So, Nite had this idea, pertaining to RE4, how I should make a thread, to point out, link to, when I feel the need to discuss, and defend RE4 againts the haters. That's what this is, but Ive decided to make it for all rants of mine. It's not a topic for discussion or anything, but for subjects such as, but not limited to, RE4, it'll just be a nice way to not have to write a novel everytime.

So, to start off,

Resident Evil 4

RE4. RE4 gets a lot of hate.

It think a lot of this is unfair. I think it really becomes so common and easy and comfortable to just say, "RE4 sucks". I think one or two people who act like RE Purists look at RE4, have all kinds of negative BS to say about it, and then, tons of people, who either don't have an opinion or mind of their own, or just simply start to believe that BS, start saying the same thing. Like I said, it becomes comfortable. One of those people just go, "Yeah, he's right, RE4 doesn't have any horror, survival or puzzles".

Totally false, unfair, unjust, and annoying.

RE4 has horror, and plenty of it. From Regenerators, Dr. Salvadors among others. Even the Ganados were somewhat frightening at first. Some of the horror being taken out is simply because of our ability to handle any given enemy and situation, like a pro, like a person who has experienced fighting all kinds of BOWs and all kinds of horrific events in the past. There's nothing wrong with that, it still plays very RE. One negative, perhaps that the enemies drop ammo and other items.....which is not cool. It takes aways a bit from the survival aspect, but it's a little thing that could easily be fixed. Also, another good example of horror, remember the part where you play as Ashely, there's a puzzle, it's a dark area, you get only a flashlight, and there are those knights that you can't defend yourself against....and as I already mentioned, Regenerators and their breathing, Salvadors and their chainsaws, as well as Garradors and their blindness and the way you have to go about killing them is pretty intense.

Also, remember the fight with Salazar's right hand, the Verdugo? I remember playing that, having no health, using up all my ammo, and I didn't even kill it....I was luck to escape with my life. Eventually of course, I figured out, use the Nitrogen, and an RPG, but that was certainly not the first run, or the 5th. Not that you would have all kinds of extra money or space on your first run.

RE4 has plenty of puzzles. Actual puzzles, as well as the pick up a couple of peices and combine them to unlock a door variety. Hedgemaze anyone? There are plety of other examples in the game too, all throughout. They might not be the more prominent and even often tedious puzzles that we've had in the past(I'm certainly not implying that every puzzle in games Pre-RE4 were tedious, but there were quite a few that I could name, like in RE3 for instance), they fit in nicely. RE4 did a great job of balancing horror, survival, action, and puzzles.

It did get a little overpopular and perhaps some of the hate is just coming from people who feel the need to rebel against the norm. The norm being that RE4 is great. So they have to say the exact opposite, RE4 Is Horrible. BS. I hate hearing, "RE4 is a great game but not a great RE game", or "RE4 would be a great game under a different title".

The enemies also get heat for "not being zombies". Is it that they aren't zombies or is it just that people want to complain. I mean how different are the ganados to zombies anyway? I've mentioned before how some of the earlier versions of zombies, like in old black and white movies, I think there was one called, White Zombie. But they used to be like controlled by some sort of leader, it was actually much more similar to the Las Plagas infectees in RE4, than the other kind of zombies, you know, the flesh eating variety.

Anyway, my point about the enemies being that, while RE is not a zombie game, it's a survival horror game, it doesn't have to have zombies, though they were always there, that has to count for something, the ganados aren't completely different. I mean, if we didn't know that they were Las Plagas infectees, if that whole story wasn't like it is, would anybody have anything negative to say? I mean, what if there was some variation with the T-virus that was used to create these more intelligent enemies, would there still be an issue? Damn straight there would be, because nobody really cares if the T-virus is there, that's just something complainers like to say.

I've also mentioned before how this isn't the first time we've had a parasite in the series, as RE3 introduced the Nemesis parasite, and with it, a more intelligent enemy that could, wield weapons, speak, etc. Nobody bitched & moaned about that one. Parasite + Tyrant=Nemesis, Parasite + human=Ganado. It's really not so different at all. Certainly nothing to warrant all of the complaints.

It's just BS generalizations. It's definately one-sided too. I mean, while it's totally netative for RE4, it's completely positive for anything Pre-RE4. You know, the, "This isn't as good as RE1, RE2, & RE3", "RE1 made me fear for my life", get over yourself asswipe.

RE4 may not have been the most relevant story to the series, but neither was Leon's role in RE2. RE4 did contribute some significant things though, particularly with Separate Ways, which was the more relevant side of RE4's story, the behind-the-scenes stuff.

In closing, RE4 doesn't deserve all the hate it gets. It also doesn't deserve getting overly loved and becoming a love nest for fanboys of Leon. It's made some great changes, but it isn't so different to where it deserves to be crusified. Most of the changes in RE4, aren't spontaneous or unprovoked, they are things that have been happening for a long time now.

Action has been becoming a larger part of the series since RE2. RE3 had tons of action elements, including the dodging. CVX had tons of action, as well as being the first, and only game in the series to allow duel wielding, and it also had the FPS mode for the sniper.

You can also look at games like Outbreak & Dead Aim for other examples of features from earlier games showing up in RE4. Let's stop with the hate. Though it doesn't seem to be too much of an issue here, it is still something that exists, like slavery.

"like slavery"

Sheva Alomar

Sheva is one stupid, B%$^*^&%&*%*&%*&%*(%*%^*&(, annoying, C*%$^(&^^&*%^&$.

She get's a lot of hate too, but unlike RE4, I think a lot of it is actually pretty deserved. Not all, but most.

Again, just like with RE4, it becomes so easy and comfortable for one to hate Sheva. I mean, perhaps just fitting in. When you see, "I hate Sheva", in every other post of mine or somebody else, you can start to feel that same way, you can start to see her under a different light, if you didn't already.

That isn't so fair, that is what happens to RE4.

If you are going to hate Sheva, and believe me I do(not entirely though), you have to do it for the right reasons.

First off, when RE5's first trailer came out, apparently a guy named N'Gai Croal, watched it, and one of the comments he made, though I don't have an exact quote, was something along the lines of, "Wow, obviously nobody black worked on this game". A completely moronic and stupid comment for him to make on his blog. He also went on to say how the game, from the trailer, depicted, "Classic racist imagery", so calling RE5 racist, in so many words. He also acknowledged that it was only the first trailer, but that doesn't really seem to matter.

An ignorant A-Hole decied to make some comments about a game from a series that he has apparently never played, affected it for the rest of us, true, devoted RE fans. Not fair at all. I think he also said something about kids playing it, and seeing people in Africa as, "Inhuman savages", starting them off young as being racists. More bologna.

Obviously with an M rating, RE can't be purchased by anybody younger than 17. Not to naively think you can't play RE if you aren't 17, I think most people here can testify to that but obviusly Capcom doesn't have some malevolent plan to turn the kids of the next generation into racists......how stupid to even entertain the idea of Capcom being racist.

This is where Capcom made the mistake of playing guilty. Capcom is like oragami, they fold under pressure, and by laying down, they really ruined RE5, not entirely, but in a huge, huge, gigantic, horrific way, they took away what RE5 could have been, judging by the early trailers.

It seems like they scrapped a lot of ideas, made huge changes, and/or at least pasted in a new character, Sheva Alomar. This name makes kids cry, old people go blind, it makes the world stop turning....this horrible she-devil.

Capcom claims that she has pretty much been there since the beginning.....right, and I'm Bill Clinton and I did not have sex with that women. Double BS.

You can see scenes from earlier trailers where she was nowhere to be seen, but in the final product, she was there, just lingering.

She is introduced as your new partner, and you are forced to co-operate with her throughout the ENTIRE game. If you are separated from her, much like what happens in the likes of RE0 or an Outbreak, you are put in a position where you can easily get put into Dying status, where you have to rely on her to resuscitate you, or use a medical item. Big no-no.

She is forced down our throats, we are forced to cooperate and play along with her. She was obviously added in to counteract the racism claims. Great job, as that caused just as much of an issue, as Sheva "didn't look black" according to some. I mean, Sheva had 99 Problems, and a bitch was one, her.

Like I said, it seemed so obvious that she was added in, I used the term "Pasted", as she could very well had just been photoshopped into the game...

She is so passive throughout the entire thing. She doesn't contribute anything, and her AI, really reflects badly upon her. The AI really acts as Sheva's personality, as she doesn't have much of one. The dialogue between her and Chris sounds so horrible and forced too. Like they are they are being forced to talk.....I mean, it's just horrible. Usually ending with Sheva saying something stupid like, "All right, then let's go take care of business", like I'm supposed to think, "Yah, Sheva's part of things, she's a real contribution to this 'team', and Chris couldn't have made it this far without her".....

Parts later in the game, like with Excella, Sheva says, "She's tough, I'll give her that much". How innappropriate. She hasn't earned the right to give her opinion, and has made it even harder for her to be accepted, than if she were a new character starting from scratch. The way I see it, she is starting from -100.

The scenes involving Chris, Jill & Wesker. Possibly the 3 most important characters in the series, with a deep, deep, rich history in the games, Sheva really stands out, and not in a good way. She seemed so out of place. Chris & Wesker had such an awesome rivalry that was unmatched and unparralleled, with Leon & Krauser maybe coming in for a pretty close second, it still didn't compare.

Chris & Jill, they are PARTNERS, and have been together, not romatically(at least not as far as we know), and been together since RE1.

I feel like the forced Co-op really cheapened the rivalry with Chris/Wesker, as well as the parntership with Chris/Jill.

In the scene where you take the apparatus that was controlling Jill off of her chest, her and Chris have a touching moment. Or at least it should have been, a real emotional, tear jerker.

Instead, it was interupted by Sheva, was just loiting there, staring at the two MAIN characters. Jill actually felt obligated to look over and start talking to her. It's like, DAMN, just go down stairs and let them have their moment!

Right before they leave, oh, and by they, I mean Chris & SHEVA....Jill says, "Take care of him"....I could have died right there....

Another thing that bugged me, is on the plane, DC Douglas Wesker(don't worry, there's a rant for him too coming up) was sounding like an cheap, angry, british guy, instead of Wesker, and at one point, as Sheva was about to fly out of the plane, there's a moment where Chris has a flashback to Jill before she 'died', and again, it's like the desired effect was supposed to be, "Oh, Sheva is just like Jill, she can't die, she's Chris' partner!"........Nope, he should have let her go, get rid of her & DC Douglas Wesker.

Now, no doubt, the most unforgivable, and the most agreeablly hatable thing about her, is the ending. Josh & Jill fly in for the rescue, fair enough, Chris & Sheva get up there from the volcano, and there are two RPG's on the chopper's wall....

Now, for some reason, Jill directs BOTH Chris & Sheva to use the RPG's to launch at Wesker, who is sitting in liquid, hot, magma BTW.

So, in a really disatisfying manner, Chris & SHEVA both shoot and kill Wesker(that's right, he's dead, no arguing about it, as it was confirmed by Capcom), ending the annoying character he had become, and giving Sheva even more reason to be hated.

She did not deserve to kill him....Horrible.

In closing, Sheva got a huge role that she did not deserve. Other new characters that have been introduced, we have gotten to know them slowly over time: Billy, Steve, Becca, etc.

Sheva was forced on us, forced down our throat, for pretty illegit reasons, and it really affected in a hugely negative way, RE5, the game that we were all waiting years to play......

"I'm Bill Clinton and I did not have sex with that women"

Albert Wesker

Albert Wesker was a great character. His voice actor from RE1, Sergio Jones, wasn't anything special, forgetable really. In Code Veronica however, Richard Waugh took over the role and really made the character.

Waugh continued to voice Wesker in CVX, RE0, RE4, as well as doing RE4's Separate Ways & of course narrating the Wesker's Report.

The character seemed like he had reached an all time high. He was one of the most interesting, coolest characters, from anything as far as I was concerned, and it seemed like everything the character did or said, was really cool. I had memorized all his lines from CVX, RE0 & RE4.....

In UC, DC Douglas took over the role. Not so bad, considering that Umbrella Chronicles used an entirely new cast for that one game, much like the REmake. That said, he and most of the others in UC were terrible. I could live with that though, it was the fact that DC Douglas was used for Wesker later in RE5 as well, and later, Darkside Chronicles.

Douglas has certainly gotten the role, not temporarily, but permanently.

Now the reason I say this in a negative way, is because it's a negative thing.

It's a negative thing for a few reasons. Richard Waugh is Albert Wesker, like Allison Court is Claire, and Sally Cahill is Ada, and Paul Mercier is Leon, and Roger Craig Smith is Chris, etc. He was one of the best, coolest, and consistent voice actors in the series, and really made the Wesker character as cool as he was.

DC Douglas, couldn't match the voice. In addition to Douglas' impression being inferior, completely, the character seemed to undergo tons of personality & style changes too. He didn't act, sound, behave, dress, etc., like the character I loved so much.

If you've played Buffy The Vampire Slayer on Xbox, you'll notice that Douglas voices The Master in the game. He does a great job, now this came out in 2002, with UC coming out in 2006. DC Douglas sounded exactly like his Wesker from UC, in Buffy, years before voicing the character, that's how little effort he put into sounding like the character.

Douglas himself has stated how he doesn't like doing impressions, and if he could change one thing about the character, he wishes he could have voiced him from the beginning. I agree, I would rather have had Douglas from Day 1, and never heard of Richard Waugh, than getting a taste of Waugh's awesome voice and then switching, downgrading, demoting the character to the horrific voice of DC Douglas.

Let me also go on to say that I don't hate DC Douglas, he seems like a really cool, witty, funny guy, from the interviews I've both read and seen. That isn't enough to make his voice for the character good. It's not just different though, it's also bad. It sounds fake and ingenuine. When I hear his lines, it just sounds fake, forced even, and takes me out of the scene.

"A new genesis is at hand and I'll will be the creaTor", "Over, I'm just getting stARted". Just go back and listen to his lines in UC & RE5, it's horrible.

Some of the blame can certainly go to Capcom's writers though. Obviously the things the character says, sound different too, and Douglas has nothing to do with that. The character has really turned into an annoying, generic, monologuing villian. It seems like they were trying to do that for awhile, like in CVX, according to an interview with Ricahrd Waugh that I read, he mentions how he cut down on preechy monologues when voicing the character, just making suggestions on how he think it possibly should be done.

This was great, as it really brought the character down to earth, made him that much more real and cool. He was a great, flawed character.

Now, Wesker's only flaws aren't human flaws, but an annoying voice, wardrobe, lines, and actions.....just everything. There's a difference between disliking a character because he is a villian, and disliking because he is an annoying piece of shit, rip-off, and just a remnant of what he used to be.

In UC, they kind of just made him into an emotionless robot....really took his character's personality, and what he tried to be like, and just multiplied it by 100......not cool.

In RE5, the horrible voice was there, the crappy lines, crappy wardrobe, namely a leather trenchcoat with a large slit that goes up to the lower back, so that two flappy things are flapping around like a gay cape while he's doing his gymnastic moves.

BTW, all of a sudden, Wesker has some sort of extensive martial arts and gymnastic knowledge. Realistically what happened was Capcom wanted to add all that Matrix bullshit, and used his character to do so. It would have been more acceptable, and even cool, if they had introduced a new character and had all that stuff, instead of piling it onto an already existing one.

Anyway, to see Wesker doing mid air barrel rolls to avoid bullets, to do all kinds of backlips and sommersaults....that's just not his character. I mean, do you(reader) think somebody like Barry Burton would be doing backflips? The answer is no. The same would apply to his character, yet, he's doing it, and most people just accept it. In fact, all of this annoying BS that isn't his character, has made him even more overpopular, and garnered a fanboy following, making the entire situation even more infuriating.

They ruined his character, that's the bottom line.

DC Douglas' impression of the character, the new personality, the new intentions(which are basically just him using Spencer's plans of having a Utopia of just worthy people, and himself as ruler), really aren't Albert Wesker.

The monstrosity that Wesker was in UC & RE5(& DSC for that matter too), was at least finished off in RE5, not that the way it was done was any good, but at least we don't have to hear too much more from this annoying rip-off of a great character.

Wesker's last real appearance was in RE4. Everything post-RE4 involving him, UC, RE5, DSC, etc, are despicable.

Now some of it comes down to opinion. If you like DC Douglas Wesker, that's all well and good, I can't see how, I certainly couldn't imagine how someone would like his version BETTER(unless that's the one they knew first, before Waugh), but to say that his character is the same is not opinion.

His character has changed, FACT, if you like or dislike it, OPINION.

In this case, I think my opinion is right, but that's why it's mine.

I doubt his character will ever recover, so I'll just have to go back to RE0, CVX & RE4, in addition to the Wesker's Report, to experience the Wesker I know & love.

"They ruined his character, that's the bottom line"

Resident Evil Live Action Movies

This one will probably be much more brief.

So, in RE, there are the games, and there are the movies. As well as novels and comics, figurines, etc. As far as the movies go though, they are a succesful franchise of about 4 movies, Resident Evil, RE: Apocolypse, RE: Extinction, RE: Afterlife, and that's all thus far. I'm of course talking about the live action films, not the likes of Degeneration, and Biohazard 4D: Executer.

The live action films are directed by one of my favorite directors, Paul W.S. Anderson, herby referred to simply as Paul Anderson or Anderson, as two initials and a last name are obnoxious, D.C. Douglas, George W.H. Bush, etc.

The films are very popular and succesful, just in general, to the point were sequels have been made. The thing about these films is that they don't follow the games storyline, and are in a different canon all together. They don't take place in the same universe, therefore they don't have to follow the same rules, the characters don't have to be exactly the same, etc.

Fans of the games pretty much dislike this one thing about the movies. Fair enough.

But once you get past the fact that they aren't part of the games, the fact that the don't affect in anyway the games, they can be enjoyed simply as a good movie.

If they affect anything about the games, the games sometimes take good ideas from the films, Red Queen AI, laser sequence, Outbreak using RE movie's font for title, etc.

They aren't too bad though. I personally loved the first RE film. It had a score by Marco Beltrami(from Scream) and Marylin Manson(he's a freak). Tons of awesome sequences and ideas in the film, like one would expect from Anderson, who's done other creative movies like The Fifth Element, Death Race, Mortal Kombat(and I think it's sequel), AvP, etc.

The sequels have gradually departed and deviated from the games more and more. I think it's unfair to judge the first one in this way, as it was made as a prequel to RE1, Anderson talks about this in the special features for the DVD. RE0 of course as we know, came out a bit later, and was a prequel to RE1(REmake), and did a much better job I think.

This pretty much made Anderson's film obsolete, as far as being a canon part of the game series. I don't know that he wouldn't have made the movies more his own anyway, but it seems like he was pretty innocent in the beginning. Perhaps after getting screwed over by RE0, he just decided to make some money making movies for a game series that he really enjoyed.

As I've said though, they aren't all bad, at all. Some dislike them anyway, others just look at what others think for their own opinions, but I think there is a good enough amount of the fan base that looks at the movies as just another great think RE related. S.D. Perry's novels don't get nearly as much hate, perhaps since they are less mainstream, perhaps less people read nowadays?

Either way, whether you enjoy the films or not, at least you can sleep well in the fact that they don't affect the RE game's canon storyline directly, and that is a comforting though.

"two initials and a last name are obnoxious"