#anyway its about FORCES OF NATURE AND NATURAL THINGS AND ALSO SPOOKY. spooky season. this is a halloween post i guess
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(im extremely caffeinated rn this might not make sense, lets go)
With recent events, absolutely amped for Bell's Hells to become a full manifestation of the concept "horrific force of nature".
Between Orym, and Fearne and now Laudna, plants that grow and sprout and die around them, all the pretty bits of nature as well as the horrifying aspects of it. Waking up with flowers grown over and into you. Branches outstretched like fingertips, roots that can ground and choke. Vines that move on their own and wrap around your neck like a noose. Poisons and toxins growing around you. Out of you. Exquisite. Fantastic.
With Imogen, a storm, raging, crackling, bearing down, rain that could either save you or flood you. The sky turning a deep, deep red, cloud cover and nature gone silent in the face of something awful. Lightning and wind that can tear everything to pieces, that drown out everything else, set things aflame and rip them apart. Sexy. Unparalleled.
With Chetney, a wolf, howling in the distance, bloodlust that crawls in your veins, rage that is bestial and also very, very natural. A wild look in someone's eyes, glint of sharp teeth in the dark, predator and prey and jackrabbitting hearts. Visceral. Passionate.
With Ashton- Time, space, gravity, literal forces of nature, slowling and warping and bending around you. Your limbs inexorably heavy, your feet no longer planted on the same patch of ground, everything going too fast or too slow. Laws of the universe, the things keeping it anchored- all bending around you to swallow you whole. Right before a big ole stone cracks your head open. Horrifying. Inexplicable. (cool as hell).
And even with F.C.G: Something manmade, a pure technological advancement, metal and magic fused. Except: everything about them, their purpose, their kindness- wrapped up in human emotions, feelings and passion. Vulnerabilities too. Insecurities, weaknesses, patterns of mistakes made by all living minds. There is nothing more natural. Nothing more inescapable. Mortifying. Awesome as fuck.
Bell's Hells! Forces of nature! By some broad definition. With all of the inherent horror and menace that term implies. Bell's Hells as a spooky, otherworldly troupe, except everything about them is the worst bits of this world come to life. hell yes.
#have some lovely meta provoking asks in my inbox but i also had coffee which means my brain is going TOO fast for it so instead we get this#anyway its about FORCES OF NATURE AND NATURAL THINGS AND ALSO SPOOKY. spooky season. this is a halloween post i guess#im absolutely VIBRATING im going to get off my phone now. have fun with this folks.#critical role#c3e38#bell's hells#meta#character meta#my meta#narrative meta#(?)#MAN I DIDNT EVEN TALK ABOUT THE FIRE. AND THE HELL. but thats there too
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My experience with Analog Horror/ARGs and why you should check them out
Marble Hornets: the classic, and a big favorite of mine for obvious reasons. I cannot stress enough how good and spooky that series is, and the ToTheArk videos gave me nightmares, love it! <3
If you're into Slenderman stories, you should definitely check it out. The acting is very well done and the story is awesome overall :)
The Sun Vanished: the ARG that started my interest for ARGs, and especially enigmas/internet puzzles. Unfortunately I was not smart enough to figure the stuff out by myself, so I just watched explanations on it. Highly recommended if you like post-apocalyptic settings and subtle horror.
The Mandela Catalogue: possibly the series that brought back my interest for these things. I have only watched the first two seasons of it, as I sadly lost interest after a while, but from what I have watched, I would recommend it to those of you who like horror with religious themes (which is a big thing for me) and most importantly, trust issues. Do keep in mind this series deals with more serious and dark topics, though you have probably heard it already.
Local58: the analog horror of all analog horrors, Local58 barged in before TMC took the spotlight. There is so much going on and all of it is very interesting and scary. America's pride leads to its doom, the moon can control electronic devices, and weird creatures spread through the world. If you like stories that leave you not understanding what the hell just happened but loving it anyway, you will love Local58.
Rocket Archives: A single-video series that has unfortunately been taken down for reasons I am not certain of. But if you're curious what it was about, the video presented a reality where us humans were forced to leave Earth with how hot it was getting, and moved to contained bubbles in space. Suddenly, uh oh! The sun's getting closer! Outer Wilds moment! Everything is melting! Humans are gone and the sun is... alive???
Analog Archives: made by the creator of Rocket Archives, has also been taken down but can still be found re-uploaded. The series is slightly similar to Local58, as in it also focuses on broadcast hijacking used for ending off humans. The series also includes a few religious topics that can get very dark. I love it. "Nature Show" makes me tear up with fear every time.
Gemini Home Entertainment: ALL-TIME FAVORITE MOMENT!!! I don't think I need to explain why I love this one so much. GHE leaves a lot to your imagination/speculation, while also twisting your head directly into the direction of the threat and forcing you to look at it while you squirm in fear. GHE is subtle in the most obvious way, obvious in the most subtle way, and most importantly, IT'S COSMIC HORROR, BABY!!! THERE IS A PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM THAT GOT HERE UNINVITED AND NOW IT WANTS TO EAT US!!! UGHHHH I can't put in words why I think it's so good, it just is. Watch it. The Gardeners are cute, I swear. There's even a plush of them.
Monument Mythos: something something alternate realities, something something time loops. I have not watched all of it, barely even half, but I deemed it a little bit too confusing for my brain. BUT! If you're into things that boogle your mind, you might really like this series! I mean, world monuments are alive, what could be scarier?
Vita Carnis: EW. (affectionate)
But, seriously, if you like gross, you are certainly going to like this series. It's meat, and it's alive. Although, I did stop watching it because it got a tad too graphic and violent for my taste, but if that doesn't bother you, then I recommend it a lot! The editing is soooo good, and some of the creatures are very likable and cute ^v^ (the others are gross and I do not want them near me I do not WANT FUCK OFF)
Don't Look at the Moon: Minecraft spooky. Do I need to say more?
#katesaysthings#analog horror#arg#marble hornets#the sun vanished#local 58#the mandela catalogue#rocket archives#analog archives#gemini home entertainment#monument mythos#vita carnis#don't look at the moon
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Please talk more about your reboot!
16: If you could change anything in the show, what would you change?
okay so how i would re-do CANON is completely different from how i would talk abt a reboot so im gonna touch on a couple things in both contexts! the reason for the difference is canon rewrites imply i can go back in time and introduce dp fresh and new, before anyone knows what it is; but for a reboot, id be working with an audience that has a better understanding of the source material, so i dont need to spend as much time explaining, but i also need to keep everything recognizable
Valerie
REWRITE: i would def make it more danny's fault that her dad lost his job, like danny was intentionally being reckless and shattered some security stuff, and he has a whole mini lesson about learning to not just run in guns blazing. i would probably remove the dating stuff with her and danny (and tuckers crush) too, I think them wanting to be good friends is good enough for freshman year
REBOOT: the fandom already knows valerie exists, so i would actually skip the whole shades-of-gray introductory episode and have her be present as the huntress from day 1-- probably even before danny got his powers. cujo is also HER dog, and her backstory-- we'd find out in like, season 1, that a natural ghost portal (maybe one wulf opened) ripped open on her dog and killed him, and since then shes had a vendetta against ghosts cause of how reckless they are and their disregard for life-- of course, cujo isnt actually dead. cujo is a halfa. a puby halfa. anyway instead of a hoverboard she actually rides cujo around cause he can fly and its big and epic. valerie has BEEN amity parks ghost-eradicating superhero for at least a year (tho shes been in the shadows abt it) and her hatred towards danny actually just becomes really petty, like them flying next to each other chasing skulker just going "I got this. no I got this. no I got this" and they just get in each others' way and its a mutual grudge.
BOTH: i am NOT keeping in vlad giving her the suit to watch danny under any circumstances. it was only utilized half assedly in canon (when vlad couldve just had an invisible duplicate watching him instead) anyway, and I dont have any reason to keep it in a reboot either. instead i want her tech to be a combination of half-stolen and half-gerryrigged stuff and she slowly slowly learns how to build her own.
I also dont want anyone knowing her secret identity, except maybe her dad, and sam or tucker. i think it works better if danny isnt privy to this magic info
Freakshow
REWRITE: i would honestly just remove him. the episodes hes in arent particularly interesting, theyre just generic "we need a plot about x" filler and he's not compelling enough a character (at least in writing) to carry a better plot that another antagonist couldnt. i'm serious
REBOOT: unfortunately in a reboot he's gonna have to pop up somewhere or else ppl will be like "where IS HE" so I'm going to stick with running some kind of ghost circus, maybe a few occult things, but cut out a lot of the spooky magical knowledge and mcguffin stuff. maybe i could make him like, someone from vlad/jack/maddies college who always felt pushed around by them and so he has a vendetta? and theyd be the only reason he even learned abt ghosts in the first place. idk in either way I want to force him into being irredeemable but also include LYDIA (the tattoo girl ghost) way more-- I want to give her an arc that ends in her tossing freakshow aside and running off to be a ghost vigilante.
BOTH: dear god the infinity gauntlet is stupid that needs to GO AWAY. especially for the reboot cause it would exist in a post-mcu world and way too many people would complain about it
Vlad
REWRITE: amp him up to a far more sinister and villainous character. the crushing on maddie isnt enough, I want to show him on-screen performing experiments on ghosts and himself, dismissing everyone else cause he thinks hes smarter than them. i want him to be actively sabotaging the fentons at every turn. i would also clarify that he doesnt actually want danny as a son, but as a trophy-- a line where danny says something along the lines of "you don't want a son. you want a slave". i want to make him a character who wants to destroy the entire planet and put it in the ghost zone so he can be the true ghost king and i want to make this all evident from day one. if i'm writing a series villain you can bet i'm going to write a GOOD one. less petty drama here and more actual stakes.
REBOOT: it seems silly but sense with reboot we have the benefit of hindsight and recognizing that vlad wasn't a big series villain, theres no way i'd actually go back and write him to be such. for starters, of course, theres the fact that anything he does would really be an exaggerated part of the original, and it would bore an audience to see the same story again-- theres also the fact that it doesnt seem right to take a character who was treated as a joke half the time and suddenly make them big and important. no, instead for my reboot i want to lean into the petty gay uncle vibe. he had a crush on jack and now just casually insults him. he moves mansions every now and again by just haunting the family who lives in the one he wants, and taking over-- i mean, who is gonna believe that an actual ghost haunted you. he dislikes danny not because he has some concept of 'evil' and 'good' but bc danny is just too damn active. of course he actually does care about danny and his safety deep down, it's just on the surface they have very conflicting motivations-- not to mention that danny has been raised on legends from his parents of the villainous Wisconsin Ghost, who has to be stopped at all costs.
BOTH: i want jack and maddie to KNOW he's a half ghost and to actively be hunting him down for it, maybe bc they think hes possessed, or been a ghost tricking them this whole time, or the victim of a tragic lab accident who needs to be put to rest, etc. whatever the case it will give vlad actual tangible reason to despise them and genuinely suspect they dont have dannys best interests at heart. i think it would be neat if vlad was cynical and every time danny hit him with the "I'll expose us both. at least theyll still love ME" vlad could be like in the back of his head "oh god theyre going to kill this child"
Dani
REWRITE: cut her out. we don't need her character at all. maybe replace her with a more ominous shadow duplicate / clone that actually looks like danny himself and doesnt really have a name? you could probably combine her and dark dans characters for their arcs
REBOOT: instead of a clone from vlad, she's a guys in white creation using some of dannys dna after he was captured (and vlad broke him out bc he was like "ugh i guess i have to save this child")
BOTH: vlad actually cares abt her (duh), shes nonbinary (double duh), she gets the funny dissolve into goo powers
i had more i thought i was gonna write but this post is already very long and also im running out of coherency for this LUL
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MONTHLY MEDIA: January 2021
A new year but this monthly recap of media consumed keeps on keeping on! Here’s how January shaped up.
……….FILM……….
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
I’d forgotten how bonkers the ending is. Just so much fun and hopefully someday I’ll be able to check a stage production of the musical. Funny and horrifying in a way that only the absurd can be.
Time Bandits (1981)
Just surreal. I wasn’t exaaaactly sure what to expect but somehow it completely delivered. I love a good fantasy picaresque. Silly and sincere but perhaps not the best pacing, I still love the whole premise and execution.
A Simple Favor (2018)
In looking up what year this was released, it appears to be billed as a black comedy and...okay. It’s absolutely a weird movie and maybe putting it into a category is unfair. Some of the twists definitely feel like they’d work better in a book. I sound like I hated the movie but I mean...it kept me hooked the entire runtime, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it. Like I said, it’s a weird one.
……….TELEVISION……….
Chernobyl (Episode 1.01 to 1.05)
Oofadoof. I mean I knew it was going to be bleak, but I wasn’t expecting the parallels to the current situation (science denial, underplaying severity due to politics, and just a general attitude of “I can’t see it so it’s fine”) to really hit home. Not for the faint of heart but really fantastic television for those that can stomach it.
Superstore (Episode 1.01 to 1.11)
After Chernobyl, we needed something a little...lighter. It’s one of those sitcoms where you don’t reeeeeally need to watch them in any order, and it’s nice and light and fun. I mean I was sold on the idea that the co-lead is Ginsberg from Mad Men.
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Episode 4.01 to 4.08)
Across four seasons there were absolutely a couple episodes that really delivered on the premise (or at least what I had hoped from the series). Batibat! The “TV” episode! All good stuff. But the rest of the time it just felt like it both had too much going on (in the background) and not enough happening (in the foreground). And I was shocked, SHOCKED, at the implications of the very last scene. Why include this?!? Anyway I might check out the comics in the hopes that it delivers a little better.
The Bachelor (Episode 25.01 to 25.04)
This season started strong, but I’ll admit that Victoria feels like a villain from the early 2000s and this past episode (where new contestants are introduced) felt like the show at its worst (mean-spirited, focusing on women fighting each other, and at the same time kinda dull). Will it get better? I mean hell if I should know.
The Stranger (Episode 1.01 to 1.08)
Solid British mystery series and Rupert from Ted Lasso makes an appearance! The season started with some...frustrating decisions being made, but the series evens out after a few episodes and most of the characters learn from their questionable decisions so overall, a satisfying watch.
……….READING……….
Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett
(Complete)
I’ve always loved Pratchett’s writing and Discworld is, without a doubt, my favourite fantasy setting. It really feels like he’s hit his stride with balancing fantasy tropes, novel ideas, his humour, and his good-natured characters. Fantastic read and I can’t recommend this series enough. If you’re looking for an alternative to grimdark fantasy, this is it.
Animal Wife by Lara Ehrlich
(Complete)
A beautiful collection of short stories that almost feels like a collection of long-form poetry. There’s a rhythm and musicality to each entry that is unlike anything I’ve read before. Perhaps not as over-the-top or...fun...as the cover would hint at, but it’s still a collection I 100% recommend.
Feel it Out by Jordan Sondler
(Complete)
While certainly not a replacement for therapy, it’s great to have a lot of general advice and support in a concise, beautifully illustrated format! Check out Sondler’s work and if it resonates, so will this book.
Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment by Roger Stern, Mike Mignola, Kevin Nowlan, and more
(Complete)
Having only seen Doctor Doom in a few cartoons and the movies, this is still my best introduction to the character and gives a glimpse as to why he’s such a good villain. It actually works well at introducing both Doctors and has a great inciting incident as to why these two join forces. Really great reread and now I want more stories of both characters!
Silver Surfer Black by Donny Cates, Tradd Moore, and Dave Stewart
(Complete)
Rereading this cause I love how concise, fantastical, and psychedelic it all is! This and Cosmic Ghost Rider (who I’m just learning was also written by Cates) are two of my top reads of recent Marvel stuff so I plan on checking out his Guardians of the Galaxy and Dr. Strange offerings next!
……….AUDIO……….
Off Menu (Podcast)
Love the concept (interviewing mostly comedians on their ideal meal) and the hosts are excellent.
The Chernobyl Podcast (Podcast)
An excellent compliment to the series and I wish more series would dive into production like this; I love a good peek behind the curtain.
……….GAMING……….
Inside (Playdead)
So atmospheric and spooky and probably the upper limit for me, as far as “scariness” in games is concerned. It does a great job of changing things up and each puzzle really feels like a set piece. No filler and I’m only now just mentioning how beautiful the game is. 100% recommend.
Hades (Supergiant Games)
I wasn’t sure I’d like it (Roguelike games are not my jam) but this is proving to be a loooooot of fun! Though I have a deep love of Greek mythology so there’s probably some bias creeping in. Anyway I’m knee-deep in this and am more than happy to chat about it if you’re playing as well.
Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
Holiday special has wrapped up and now the group is stuck in a hive of giant insects! The longer recap is on Reddit and is chock full of hexcrawling details.
And that’s it! As always, let me know if you have anything to suggest and happy Sunday!
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The House of Anubis (Atem x Reader Halloween Special)
Part Two: The Shadows
One //// Two //// Three (coming soon) ///
Summary: The house was large, a manor, really. Imposing, yet striking more aw with every turn of a corner. You had never thought you’d be dragged back into the family business, but your brother needed you, and so too did his latest project. It stood alone among the trees, yet, you never felt alone when inside. Hairs prickle on the back of the neck, shivers run down spines, and hands fidget with every unoccupied moment.
And the thing- or rather, person, who simultaneously eases and worsens these feelings? Atem, a man who was just as mercurial as the house itself, all smirks and light comments one moment, then lingering stares and strange musings the next.
So the real question remains, will you uncover the secrets both the man and the manor are harboring?(A Halloween mini-series inspired by the show ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ and the movie 'The Frighteners’. The Reader x Atem themes are, admittedly, light as this mostly focuses on a spooky haunted house story, but the romantic undertones are there. Gender-neutral reader.)
A.N. HAHA look at me, actually getting this chapter done just in time to end Halloween on a good note! I can't believe I did it, but I'm proud of myself. We still have a chapter (maybe even two depending on how the ending goes) until we get to the end of the miniseries, but I hope this is creepy enough to spice up your Halloween! I also hope everyone had a good holiday in general, whether you stayed in watching movies, dressed up with a friend/loved one, or actually managed to get some treats! Also @ohyema and @itachified figured I’d tag you so you wouldn’t miss this <3
Happy Halloween!
You swiped at your forehead yet again, clearing off more sweat gathering there. Why exactly had you picked the last hot day of the season to do this?
Oh well, at least it was done now, you told yourself as you leaned back, stretching your muscles and looking over the work. It was only a temporary ramp, laid over the crumbling front steps, but it would serve its use: helping your brother get inside so you could both be in the house even before he was recovered. Just because he couldn’t lift anything didn’t mean he couldn’t help.
After weight testing the ramp to your satisfaction, you tucked the few tools you dug out for the job back into your belt. However, before heading into the house, you took a moment of respite, wandering over to the small wicker table that would likely need to be repaired or thrown out. You were surprised and lucky to find that the local gas station actually sold your favorite drink and took a long swig of it after sitting down in the equally disheveled wicker chair. With a long exhale you scanned the grounds around you, the forest, the forgotten flower beds that would need cleaned up as a bonus selling point, the weedy grass in between.
Despite the unkempt appearance, it was still peaceful. More peaceful than you felt inside the house anyway. Though, admittedly, the isolation that you disliked inside the manor persisted out here in some ways. Cars rarely passed on the road, not that you could see it from the house, the woods walling the grounds made an effective barrier, almost letting you wonder if there was anything beyond them at all. But there was, and out here you could tell that. Birds sang, squirrels and other critters nested in the trees, and there were houses somewhere in the distance. It was easy to shake aside any foreboding or negative musings out here.
Allowing yourself a few minutes more, you closed your eyes and took in the smell of the approaching autumn. It would only get chillier from here, but today the breeze felt nice and you only made yourself get up from the seat when you found yourself edging dangerously close to a nap.
With a sigh you grabbed your drink and headed inside, annoyingly aware of the work that still needed to be done today. You had left the doors open but shut them tight behind you since you would be occupied inside for the rest of your would-be work shift. The music you were playing from the boombox was louder now of course, but you didn’t bother turning the volume down since your next project was in the library.
As usual, you passed through the conservatory to get there and hoped that the room would wash a calming mood over you. The garden-like room was quickly becoming your favorite in the whole house. Perhaps it was how open the room was, easing the trapped effect big and old manors tended to have when you were alone in them. Or maybe it was just the peaceful sound of nature on the other side of the glass walls doing their job.
Either way, passing through the conservatory and even lingering there a moment didn’t help you. The moment you shut the door to the study behind you something seemed to tighten around your whole body, making you quite aware of the deeper breaths you had been taking since resuming the renovations.
You felt stupid for it, knew that your unease was the same unease you felt in any other large home. Having no one else around just made the wide and vast rooms feel more...void-like. Knowing that there was room beyond room around you just...empty, devoid of anything but chairs and paintings and figurines atop mantels; that you were the only living thing moving from room to room-
You shook your head, wanting to slap yourself. It wasn’t a new feeling, and you told yourself you should have gotten over it by now, this weird uneasiness of voids and empty spaces. Of being completely alone.
Of course, your next task surely wouldn’t help your discomfort.
It was only your second day of actually working on the house, but you told yourself you couldn’t put this next task off for the third day or the day after that. Surely the worst part would be cleaning up the blood, which you had done on the last visit. Surely climbing up that ladder and patching up that window wouldn’t be terrible.
So why did you find yourself standing at the bottom of the ladder, staring up at the cracked pane for nearly five whole minutes?
You swallowed down the lump in your throat, honestly, there was nothing to be scared of, it’s not like the ladder caused your brother’s heart attack. Forcing yourself to take a deep breath, you reached out, fingers closing around the metal step.
Something crawled up your spine.
Something so tangible your body jerked, but you knew nothing was behind you. No, no it was just cold. But why was it so intense? You shivered next, still paused in your act of climbing the ladder- why was it so cold all of the sudden. You forced yourself to look up, eyes crawling up the ladder toward the window, images of what might meet your gaze playing in your mind.
But there was nothing, just the cracked pane and the sunlight seeping in through the stained glass. Still, you were finding it hard to breathe even as you tried to ease the breaths out in a calming manner. You had just fought off another shiver, when something gave a shout somewhere behind you.
A gasp almost escaped as you wheeled towards the door that led to the study. Someone had called your name. Your heart was thundering in your ears now, breaths getting caught in your lungs. Another beat, your breath holding as you simply stared towards the door and the call from the other side. Then, the voice said something else.
And your lungs released their chokehold on you. It was just Atem. Or at least you thought you recognized that sultry baritone. Seriously why the hell were you so damn jumpy?
With a ragged sigh, you all but stormed towards the study, passed the room, and stepped out into the conservatory. Atem stood there, by the glass door that led out to the grounds, looking cautious as he peered into the home. He flashed you that small smile when he spotted you.
“I thought I would ask permission before entering this time, since I startled you so badly during our first meeting.”
You actually found yourself snorting at that, “Thanks, but you can always use the doorbell you know.”
“It’s broken. Has been for years.”
“Of course it has,” you sighed, actually vaguely remembering the note to fix it being way down at the bottom of your brother’s to-do list. Then, after realizing that he was still waiting for permission to enter (what was he, a vampire?) you waved for Atem to follow you. “Come on, you can help steady the ladder while I patch the window.”
He complied wordlessly, and as you slipped into the study, you remembered how you wanted to scold him about shutting doors properly. Just as you started to look over your shoulder though, you heard the soft click of a latch behind him. Satisfied, you just gave an approving nod without even turning as you both entered the library.
Perhaps it was still your own lingering apprehension, but you were acutely aware of the way Atem seemed to stiffen as you approached the spot. His eyes drifted up the wall beyond the ladder, as if he was taking stock of every inch of it, waiting for it to do something. Maybe brother was right, maybe Atem was a bit traumatized from finding him mid-heart attack. No one could blame the man, heck, just the knowledge that it happened here was freaking you out. Enough to make you a jumpy cat at every cold breeze and knock, at that.
“You okay?” the question was out before you even realized you wanted to ask it, but it felt right.
Atem’s eyes flicked away from the wall to gaze at you from their corners, “I will be. Just...promise me you’ll be careful.”
You gave a shrug, hoping to lighten the mood, “Come on, not like this spot in the house is a heart attack inducer or something, I’ll be fine.”
To further lighten, you stepped towards the ladder, facing your own hesitation head-on as you prepared to climb.
“That’s not what I meant, not exactly.”
Atem’s voice was low, and it almost seemed to tickle your ear despite the fact that he hadn’t moved closer. When you looked over your shoulder his gaze was steady, boring into you with something too gentle to be intensity, but too binding to be soft.
“Just be careful while you’re in this house,” he continued and you couldn’t break his gaze even if you wanted to. “This place...it has a bad habit of collecting accidents. Just...please be careful.”
Your throat was dry, so dry you didn’t bother trying for a verbal response. Instead, you just nodded after a moment, and something in your chest seemed to release when another smile lifted Atem’s lips at the agreement.
Despite how odd that moment might have been, you still took comfort in Atem’s presence as you turned back to the ladder and began climbing with care. Some part of you still expected something to happen with each step you took, but you were able to push the paranoia to the back of your mind.
After the hurdle of the climb was over, the actual patch job didn’t take more than a couple minutes, just gluing the cracks so they didn’t spread further and taping up plastic. The pane was a simple square, easily replaceable much to your relief. You were just about to climb back down when something else caught your eye.
Oh, you almost forgot about the odd tears you had seen on your first visit, but up here they were almost at eye level. Seeing them up close was even more odd. There were two tears in the wallpaper in the small space between the window and the bookshelves. They weren’t warped or bubbled enough to be moisture or water damage, besides that there weren’t any other signs of that on the walls. You ran your fingers over the tears, feeling the rough texture of the thick paper. The edges weren’t clean, they were frayed, stressed, like something had swelled underneath until the paper burst. Again your mind went to water damage, but you had never seen it do something quite like this, and surely it would have bubbled up further down the wall.
“Is everything alright?” Atem called from below, snapping you out of your baffled wondering.
You shook your head, “Uh, yeah, just trying to figure out what caused these marks. Always have to watch stuff like this, houses will give you signs of problems if they can.” Another motto your parents had left with you and your brother, though you supposed it was true in a way, you always had to look closer at these things, in case they were symptoms of a worse issue.
But, since you couldn’t find anything wrong besides the cosmetic damage, you opted to leave that for further investigation on another day. Besides, you were still a bit eager to get down.
You climbed back to the ground with ease and found Atem waiting patiently with his hands tucked in his pockets. It was only then that you took real notice of the man’s clothes: a plain black turtle-neck, and dark blue pants that weren’t as casual as jeans, but not dressy either, honestly you weren’t sure what kind of pants they were. He looked cozy in them at least, which, despite the heat of today, would be useful as fall continued.
“So, what’s next?” Atem asked with polite curiosity.
“I’m heading upstairs now, there’s a support beam in the attic I need to check on and a leak in a sink that should be taken care of before it gets worse.” You hefted a bag of tools over your shoulder.
He followed beside you as you headed towards the library door that led to the entry hall and the main staircase. At least the architect of this place had the common sense to make most rooms accessible from most parts of the house. You had been in several from the victorian era that were like mazes to get through, that had rooms you could only open after jogging through four other rooms.
The second floor of the house wasn’t as grand as the first in terms of decor or originality. In fact, most of the rooms were rather standard for a place built in the 20s, though still emulating the victorian style. The third floor wasn’t much either, though it had a nice loft above a den-like area that could definitely be the envy of any kid’s room. Heck, even you caught yourself daydreaming about how you would have decorated the space as a kid. Most of the third-floor rooms were cramped compared to the rest of the house, ceilings angled as the roofs neared their peak, spaces narrowing as the craftsman style made the rooms more haphazard than the first and even second floor.
The only access to the attic was via the second set of stairs in the house, the narrow servant’s stairs near the back. It was even more cramped up here, despite the fact that there was literally nothing but cobwebs, dust piles. and some minor debris from the house chipping and flaking away with age. Anyone on the tall end of the spectrum would have to crouch the whole time they were up here or risk banging their heads into the rafters and ceiling frames. You noted that Atem was short enough to avoid that problem altogether, though that wild hair of his was likely collecting some cobwebs.
He was rather quiet, another note made as you shuffled your way across the attic.
“I replaced this support beam the other day,” you started, if only to have some form of conversation, “it was the next pressing thing on the to-do list, but it’s been a while since I’ve done a repair that important so I want to keep checking on it.”
“You did such a thing by yourself? Isn’t that dangerous?” Atem asked, and though you couldn’t see his face as he walked behind you, you were sure his eyes were a bit narrowed in a silent scolding. “I never thought work like this should be done alone, yet you and your brother seemed determined to do so.”
You flashed him a rather flippant scowl over your shoulder, “We’re not stupid, yes, we do prefer to do things with minimal help, mostly because of cost, but we do hire other people when we need to.” You had reached the beam in question, and inspected it carefully as you continued, “There’s this kid- well, teenager, in town he had already agreed to help when it was needed, so he helped me with this.”
Atem apparently didn’t feel the need to reply and you took another minute to look your work over in silence. Then, satisfied, you looked back at your companion. He didn’t seem to be quite there, mentally speaking, he was gazing at nothing in particular and only blinked himself back into the moment once you gave a gentle call of his name.
“Sorry, I was just thinking. Well, at least you have help when you need it, I can’t imagine how upset he would be if you got injured while having over his project.”
You snorted at the thought, though you supposed your brother would be beside himself if you got hurt. Big brothers were always expected to be protectors, but that went double for yours. He had taken the role as your guardian very seriously after your parents were gone.
“Never mind him,” your tone was light again, still trying for that easy air, “ I’ll be beyond pissed if I have to join him in physical therapy.”
Moving on, you ducted past the beam, and Atem jerked out of your way as you headed towards the stairs.
“So, Atem, I really don’t know anything about you yet, mind if I ask some stereotypical questions?”
He made a small scuff of a laugh, “I don’t mind, ask away.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a historian. You made a joke the other day about me being an Egyptologist, I’m not, I simply know quite a bit about history in general.”
“So you, what, mostly do stuff online? There can’t be much call for a historian out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“I manage. You could say that I don’t need much to get by, and live a rather quiet life.”
As you two came to the door that opened to the stairwell, you took a moment to look back at Atem. He hadn’t really answered the question, though you supposed it wasn’t much of your business if he didn’t want to. Hell, for all you knew he wrote historical erotica and was too embarrassed to admit it. You had to hide your smirk at the thought as you turned to march down the stairs.
“Are you married? Seeing anyone in this teeny little town?” you asked next, though you were worried the loud creaking of the steps under your feet would drown out his answer.
“No, I don’t tend to get out enough to date. And you?”
If you hadn’t asked the single or taken question first, you’d be tempted to tease the way his voice went up a notch when he asked you. “Nope. Been single for over a year now, but that’s okay, he was an ass you made me seriously reconsider my dating priorities.”
“I see...”
You thought you heard Atem take a breath, ready to say something else, but a noise from your phone interrupted him.
“Right on time,” you said, taking a quick glance at the screen, then, seeing Atem's curiosity you waved the screen displaying your brother’s name and message, “He’s giving me a one-hour warning before his therapy is up so I know when to head that way. Should give me just enough time to fix that pipe.”
You notice a slight fall in Atem’s expression, “I did not realize you would be leaving so soon, I suppose I should have visited earlier.”
Though you weren’t sure why, something akin to guilt started itching at your chest, especially since he was seeming to avoid your gaze now, opting to look at the hallway walls instead.
“Well, if you’re free tomorrow, both of us will be here all day,” you suggested, even as you turned into the master suite. “Now that I put that ramp in, we can spend most of our free time here. Besides, I know big bro will be happy to see you, he’s pretty certain that he traumatized you last time you saw him.”
You were happy to hear Atem chuckle at the words. “You can assure him that it takes more than that to shake me, at least now that I know he’s alright.” Right when you reached the bathroom door, Atem stepped slightly in your way, making you halt. “I will be sure to visit you both tomorrow, until then, have a good day,” he ended the parting words with your name and a nod of his head, though his eyes lingered on you, trailing over your face for a long moment before he stepped back.
“You too…” the words lingered after him and his rather abrupt goodbye as he headed out of the room, only giving you a smirk over his shoulder as he went.
He had done that during your first meeting as well, suddenly taking his leave as if his time here had always been pressed. Then again the man had a life of his own, work or errands likely calling his attention.
Shaking it off as the man just being ‘a bit odd’ as your brother had said, you went ahead and stepped into the bath to wrap up the day’s chores. As you crouched near the sink and dug out the needed tools, you tried to listen for the front door, but there was only a soft thud somewhere in the distance. That made sense though, sound rarely traveled well through homes like this.
Much like the window patch, this was an easy fix, just replacing the gasket that had worn down in the past years, and you had bought the part in the city earlier that day. You hummed to yourself as you worked and barely more than ten minutes later you were done. You noticed a knot forming in your shoulder from the awkward position, and tried to stretch it out as you reached up to turn the faucet on. After letting it run for a bit you were sure the leak was fixed and climbed to your feet. Stretching again, you took in the bathroom’s design, hating how much it would cost to repair everything else in here.
Alexander Hawkins had apparently wanted to feel like the royalty he snatched treasures from, because his master bath was reminiscent of a pharaoh’s bathhouse- or at least what you imagined one looked like. Turquoise mosaics made up the sink, backsplash, and countertops, the walls were painted with a pattern resembling flower bundles, and decorative pillars flanked the bathtub. To top it all off the tub itself was large, with two steps leading up to it, golden faucets, and depictions of Isis and lotus flowers on the sides.
The problem was that time had not been kind to the delicate materials, and numerous cracks littered the tiles and mosaics making up the room. If big brother wanted to keep the design intact, it would cost. Still, the bathtub was in working order, and it was only the outside tiles that needed replaced, that was a plus.
Oh, the thought of a shower was inciting. your shirt was sticking to your back and you felt dirty from the sweat you had collected while working outside. You were going out to eat again tonight, and the thought of going out like this really did not appeal. The tub was clean, showing that your brother had probably used it several times after getting dirty himself. And besides all that, you did have a towel and spare shirt in your backpack downstairs.
You checked the time on your phone. If you hurried, you could get just clean enough and still only pick your brother up only a few minutes late. You at least had the decency to shoot him an “I’ll be late” text as you bolted for the stairs. You snatched your backpack up and headed back up the stairs in record time.
It was only when you reentered the master bedroom that the eerie emptiness of the house started to creep back upon you. It wasn’t so bad with Atem around, having another person made the whole house feel more...alive. But you forced the uneasiness to the back of your mind as you slipped the sticky clothing off, you only had to deal with it for a few more minutes, you could handle that.
The tub didn’t have a curtain, relying on the sheer size of the tub to catch all the falling water, so you just stepped in and turned the golden faucet on, instantly singing as the water hit your bare skin. You reveled in the rain-like droplets, closing your eyes and simply letting it wash over you. You let yourself have this for a while, long enough for steam to build up and cloud the mirror over the sink and then some. But, unfortunately, you couldn’t relax for long, time wasn’t on your side after all.
So with a final rinse, you turned the knob and let the water roll down your skin down the drain, before stepping out. You had to be wary of the time floors, now slick with the condensation of your hot water. After thoroughly patting yourself down with the towel, you walked to the vanity where your new shirt and the rest of your clothes lay.
Your fingers had just touched the fabric when something cold ran up your arms
You froze, just like in the library, something intense and unknowing wracked your senses. It made the hairs on the back of your next stand up, your skin shiver and crawl. Before you could even think as to why, your eyes were darting up to the foggy mirror- and your heart nearly stopped in your chest.
Something had clawed at the glass.
No- no. You took a step back, shaking your head as you clamped your eyes shut. Don’t be stupid, nothing had clawed at the glass! You took a calming breath before opening your eyes and looking at the streaks closer. You were thoroughly scolding yourself now, they were just finger marks, likely having been there for years since the glass hadn’t been cleaned in all that time.
Of course, that’s why they were, there was even a spot that looked like a palm below the streaks. It was the same as drawing on a mirror with water then blowing hot breath on it, it was bound to leave marks. Still, the fact that you were so jumpy was off-putting in of itself, why did this place have that effect on you.
“Christ, what’s wrong with me?” you snapped to yourself. Then, in an irritated move, you swiped your hand across the mirror to clean off the rest of the steam-made fog before snatching up your clothes.
Crack!
Something flashed just above your hand and you reared back with a cry just as a shard of glass shattered on the turquoise sink! You nearly slipped on the tile in your frantic move, but just managed to catch yourself on the counter. Heartbeats were thundering in your ears again as your eyes snapped back up to the mirror.
There, right across the middle in a jagged slash, the glass had cracked, leaving the top half to fall free and nearly impale your hand. You let out another curse under your breath, only then realizing that your breaths were coming out in something just short of frantic heaves. With another step back, slower this time, you closed your eyes, keeping your hand clamped over your heart as you calmed your breathing.
Your sense came back with every breath and once they were under control, you forced your mind to start thinking rationally again. Just like the ‘claw’ marks, the breaking had to have a logical cause. The glass was old, yes, that was it. It was just used to years of the temperature only changing slowly over the seasons. Your hot shower, the drastic temperature change, must have stressed it, and your irritated rubbing was the last straw. That had to be it. You told yourself as much even as you opened your eyes and looked at your jagged reflection.
“Just being jumpy,” you assured yourself in a whisper, the half-face in the mirror staring back at you just like any normal broken mirror would.
Still, once you tore your gaze away from it, you were practically tripping as you yanked your clothes back on, and didn’t look back as you sprinted out the door.
One of the only spots in the village of Hartstown was a mom and pop diner that had specials labeled things like “kettle-me hungry soup” and “sandwich supper surprise”, but the restaurant was decent enough despite its nonsensical wordplay on the menu. Though you had ordered something safer than a surprise sandwich stuffed with lord knew what, you were still picking at your plate with a disinterest that had little to do with the meal.
The scene of that glass shard falling kept replying in your mind, not only that, but your reaction to that and practically everything before it. Maybe it was just the AC unit near your booth, but you thought you even felt a phantom of the shivers that had crawled up your spine during those uneasy moments.
“So, as you might have guessed, I’ve definitely decided to head to LA and dance naked in front of Scarlet Johansson!” your brother proclaimed from the seat across from you, which promptly caused you to blink back into the moment.
“Wait-” you shook your head and finally looked back up at him, “what the heck are you going on about?”
With the good-grace of a toddler, he rolled his eyes at you, “Finally I get your attention, I’ve been rambling nonsense for the past two minutes!”
“Sorry,” your voice sounded more defeated, more tired than you meant it too, and you tried to give him an apologetic smile to strengthen the word.
At that, his brows actually drew together a bit, his eyes gaining a more serious look, “Are you okay?” he asked, tone low, gently nudging, “You’ve been off ever since you picked me up, you’re starting to worry me.”
You opened your mouth, intending to brush his worry off with a ‘yeah’ or ‘of course’, but the words didn’t come. Instead, you finally set your fork down and said, “I don’t know. I… can I ask you something, even if it sounds stupid or silly?”
“I think I got desensitized to silly questions that time you asked me why dragons aren’t real when you were four.” He was grinning now, obviously trying for an easy air, but it only lasted a second before he dropped the silly smile and leaned in. “Come on, you know you can tell me whatever. What’s wrong?”
“Have you...since you’ve been working on this house, have you noticed being more...uneasy, or jumpier? Like does the place make you unsettled at all?”
His brows were furrowed again as he thought the question over. He took his time, maybe looking over all the days spent there, or maybe just trying to figure out the best answer that wouldn’t upset you. “Well, not really. I don’t feel more jumpy necessarily, but… okay, this may sound stupid but, I actually started having these weird dreams about the house. I don’t remember my dreams a lot of the time but these were like...super intense. But I just figured I was stressing over getting the renovations done.”
He thought for a moment again, actually biting his lip before continuing.
“Actually, now that I think about it, I had the weird dreams not long before the heart attack. Maybe they were signs of my health taking a big drop, you know stress or whatever?” His eyes, which had been staring unfocused at the pine colored table, now snapped back up to you. “Why do you ask? Been getting weird vibes from the manor or something?”
Suddenly feeling more embarrassed than before, you picked up your fork again, only to resume batting your food around. “I’ve just been acting kinda jumpy and nervous when I’m in the house, that’s all.”
“Weird, that’s not like you,” concern and even a little interest was apparent in his voice, “heck whenever mom and dad moved us to a new project you were never afraid or skittish of exploring the old places. And I can’t remember how many times I woke up in the dead of night and had to drag you back to bed.”
“I know, it’s why I’m weirded out by the way I’ve felt while in the manor. Doesn’t make sense...” He didn’t say anything at first, and when the silence persisted for a few beats longer, you took a deep breath and put on your biggest smile for him. “Eh, doesn’t matter now, I’m sure it’ll get better now that you’ll keep me company while I work.”
He stared back at you for a bit, eyes narrowing some to show just how unconvinced he was. Still, he let it drop and gave a shrug. “Yup, thanks for putting in that ramp, I think making myself useful will help my recovering go by faster.” Then, obviously deciding to let you move on from the topic, he snatched up the dessert menu tucked between the salt and pepper shakers. “Anyway, if you aren’t going to finish your food, we have to get something in your stomach. You want some cake or ice cream?”
The next day began a repair project sure to be a lengthy one. After talking it over you and your brother decided that working on the grand staircase should be the next task and you were dreading the days upon days it would take to get everything he wanted regarding the staircase done. Well, at least you had help.
“Bring your end to the right just a tad, Max,” you said, making a slight motion with your hand so he wasn’t in doubt on if you meant your right or his. “That’s it, perfect!”
The son of the local hardware store owner was impressing you more and more as the day ticked on. He was a surprisingly capable and had good intuition on what needed to be done as you two worked together. Heck, when he helped you install that replacement beam you hardly had to coach him at all.
“Yes yes, you’re both doing an amazing job! Looks great!” your brother called from his lounged position in the entry hall.
Seeing as how you and Max were crouched in the cupboard space under the stairs, he had made camp on the other side of the opened door with a cup of coffee and some cookies Max’s mom had baked for the three of you. He had also made a habit of gloating for the past fifteen minutes. After screwing brackets to the planks you and Max cut to size, there wasn’t much work for your brother to do, something that he was all too willing to make comments on.
“Oh shut it, before I kick you in your bad leg,” you grumbled as you twisted to the side to screw in the wooden brace you and Max were holding under the step.
“That, kiddo, is sibling abuse and I will not have it from my servants,” he replied, doing a terrible impersonation of an English Lord.
He jumped in his chair when you kicked a stray L bracket at your foot through the door and towards him, promptly causing Max to stifle a snort.
After that “attack” he managed to remain silent as you and Max continued to work, at least for a while. Sometime later there was a knock on the front door, one that echoed so cacophonously, that poor Max gave a start, knocking his head into the underside of the stairs. Your brother called for whoever it was to come in, and the door creaked open with a groan.
“Atem!” he called to the visitor, and though you couldn’t see from your spot in the cupboard, you heard Atem give a warm hello in return.
“I see you’re doing well, I’m glad,” Atem went on and you could just see his figure as he stopped beside your brother’s seat.
“Yup, just have to get these limbs healed up,” he wiggled his cast-coated arm and leg, “after that I’ll be back on the job. And I hear you’ve met the kiddo,” he waved his good hand towards the cupboard, causing Atem to lean down a bit and peer through the door, “and the kid in the back is Max.”
“I have a name too, jackass,” you scolded, before drilling in another screw. He had always made a bad habit of introducing you with the nickname.
“The stairs needed to be repaired?” Atem stepped closer to look over your work with curiosity, though he didn’t enter the space for fear of getting in your way.
“Not dire ones, no, but we noticed some weak points in the wood and figured adding some braces to the steps would be a good call.” You turned to repeat the drilling process on Max’s side, but just managed to catch a glimpse of Atem’s face falling into a slight frown.
“This looks like it will take a while,” Atem muttered and you looked over your shoulder to find his eyes wandering up the many steps.
“It will, especially since the second flights will be harder to get to,” you waved a bit to indicate how the stairs split into two and turned opposite each other halfway up, indeed dreading the chore, “But I think it’ll be worth it, it pays to assure buyers that their grand lavish staircase won’t collapse on them.”
“You’re not going to work into the night, are you?”
At the question, you again looked over your shoulder, almost giving him a raised brow, “Uh, probably not, Max here has school in the morning and we actually like to have a thing called dinner. We’ll be here for a few hours though.”
Atem nodded after a pause of consideration, “Good, it wouldn’t be wise to work so late.”
That comment struck you as odd too, but you brushed it off and turned back to your work. There was silence behind you for a bit, but another glance at Atem showed that he was looking the stairway over with careful consideration. Then, as you and Max moved on to attaching the next plank, your brother decided to distract Atem by waving him back over. Judging by the low tones, you figured he was thanking Atem for saving him that day. Your suspicions were confirmed when Atem simply smiled at him and assured that he was happy he started stopping by the house so often.
You started to tune out the conversation a bit as they chattered, working to get the next brace up before the shake in Max’s arms started to get worse. Once that was done you gave the kid a sympathetic smile.
“Ready for a break?”
He nodded, obviously grateful you had noticed his need for one, poor kid must have wanted to avoid looking like a whiner. When you two stepped out of the cupboard you saw your brother chatting Atem’s ear off and, though he looked attentive to the conversation, you couldn’t help noticing that Atem was looking more worn than the previous time’s you’d seen him.
After tossing one of the homemade cookies to Max and biting into one yourself, you held the plate out to Atem, “Cookie? They’re fresh and super yummy.” You wiggle the plate to further entice him, earning a smirk in reply, despite that he seemed even more haggard now that you were looking at him up close.
“Thank you, but I’ll have to pass,” he actually took a step back then- and you almost dropped the plate when he stumbled a bit, your instinct to jump forward to help him taking over. He held up his hand the moment he straightened, a silent assurance that he was fine to pair with his thankful smile. “I’m actually feeling a bit under the weather all of the sudden,” he looked to each of you in turn, his eyes holding an apology, “I should be going, the last thing I want is to make anyone else ill.”
You took a step towards him even as he stepped back again, the man was practically worsening before your eyes! “I can walk you home, if you want, make sure you get there okay.”
“No, that’s alright,” his smile had fallen now, though you could tell he was still trying to put on a grateful air.
“Need medicine from town or anything? We can go pick some up for you,” your brother offered next, leaning forward in his chair and watching Atem just as carefully as you.
Again Atem shook his head, “I’ll be fine, but thank you.” He gave a look towards the sitting room, one that was a bit anxious. “Do you mind if I use the kitchen door?”
“Uh- yeah, yeah sure,” your brother insisted, waving Atem in that direction, “feel better soon, dude.”
Atem didn’t say any more to that, just nodded his head in thanks and ducked into the sitting room. You tried to listen to his footsteps as he retreated through the house, but rugs must have muffled his feet. At least you didn’t hear him collapse on the ground.
You and your brother exchanged a look and a shrug, before Max chimed in with, “That dude was weird.”
Again, your brother shrugged, “Wonder what made him feel sick all of the sudden,” his eyes flickered down to the cookies, “I mean, the cookies aren’t that bad.”
“I don’t know,” you signed, then set the plate back down on the end table beside him, “Sucks too, I think he was looking forward to seeing you again.”
“Well, at least we won’t stop coming around any time soon.”
You nodded at that, and the conversation seemed to move on as your brother asked Max to go refill his coffee cup. You quickly offered to do it instead, your mind still occupied with Atem’s odd demeanor and wanting to check on something. It wasn’t until you were turning towards the kitchen that you realized the path Atem had taken was an odd one, as there was a door beside the main stairs that led almost directly to the kitchens. He really must have been out of his head with his sudden illness.
That made you more concerned though and you found yourself double-checking the route he had taken to the kitchen just to make sure he hadn’t fallen on his way out. He hadn’t, but you still scanned the grounds through the kitchen windows as you poured your brother’s coffee, just to make sure. You didn’t see anything resembling a body out there either, thank goodness.
Despite having that assurance, however, you found yourself unable to shake him from your mind, even as you went back to work.
Several days passed, two of them spent at the manor, and not a word was heard from your repeat visitor. The previous day you were there, before you began the day’s work, you had even taken a walk in the forest bordering the manor to see if you could find his house and check on him. The search yielded nothing, and you had to tamp down the worry you felt for the rest of the day.
Honestly, the concern you felt for him was a little surprising, you barely knew the man but couldn’t seem to get him far from your mind. If it wasn’t mulling over how...mysterious he was, it was something else like this.
Now it was the third workday at the manor later, and you were hoping he’d show up today. If he just had a cold or felt bad from the changing seasons, surely he would be better by now. Even aside from your aforementioned worry, you felt his absence particularly bad today, as it was the first time all week that you were alone in the house again.
The stairs were all reinforced now, and today your brother had opted to stay at your shared airbnb seeing as how he couldn’t help much with your project today. You wanted to get all the work needed on the staircase done now, and that included sanding down every step and revarnishing them. It was a necessary task to recapture the manor’s original sparkle, but you didn’t relish how much time it would take.
At least the loudness of the sanding belt gave some form of distraction, you hardly ever had time to think about how empty the house was over the noise. No, instead you found yourself constantly looking over your shoulder and taking periodic breaks to check if the house really was empty. You were sure you were just expecting to find Atem leaning against the banister, waiting until you took notice of him before saying anything.
But no, time ticked away and no matter how many times you checked, Atem was nowhere to be found. You worked anyway and took a break to go get some food and check on your brother before going back to finish the job. You were thankful that the house had plenty of lighting because you noted the setting sun as you parked your car in the driveway again. Though you did want to groan at having to be here so late, you were determined to get it done.
There was still plenty of sunlight as you unlocked the front door, but even still, when you opened it you felt the urge to shiver.
Memories of the broken mirror in the bathroom came back to you and gave you pause, the door only half-open. You stood there on the stoop, staring at nothing and only able to register the shiver and those memories. This was ridiculous, the mirror was just a mirror, and nothing strange had happened in the manor that you couldn’t explain away.
Taking a calming breath, you pushed the door the rest of the way open. A vision of someone or something standing on the other side flashed in your mind, but you released a hard huff of air when nothing but the large entry hall greeted you.
You still fumbled a bit frantically for the light switch on the wall beside you, even as the day’s dying light filtered in through the window at the top of the stairs. Again you scolded yourself, rubbing a hand over your face as you all but slammed the door behind you and told yourself to stop being paranoid.
After that, you wasted no time in getting back to work, determined to get the varnishing done so it could dry overnight. This work was quieter than the sanding, but you played your favorite playlist on the boombox to keep distracted. The light outside the window slowly faded until only the lights on the chandelier lit your way, but you didn’t mind. The trees surrounding the house might be particularly foreboding at night, but in here you could easily put such things out of your mind.
At one point you found your eyes closing of their own accord and only snapped them open when your hand felt wet, a result of touching the still wet varnishing in your sleepy stupor. Thankfully two steps after that incident you were finally gloriously done!
With a stretch and a yawn, you took real notice of just how exhausted you were, though little else could be expected after considering how many hours you had worked. Just as you were hating the idea of the drive back to town through the pitch-black roads, your phone rang.
“Hey, how's it going, close to done yet?” big brother asked after you answered.
“Just finished, actually-” a yawn broke the words, causing him to chuckle on the other end.
“Sounds like a good thing too, you sure you’re okay to drive back? Those country roads can be dangerous at night.”
You almost shrugged before remembering that he couldn’t see it through the phone, “I mean, I don’t have much of a choice, not like I want to crash in one of the dust-filled mattresses upstairs.”
“Well, there’s one bed there suitable for human slumber,” he said with a hum, “I cleaned the mattress in the master suite and put spare blankets and pillows in the closet, in case there was ever a night like this and I just needed to crash.”
The sheer magnitude of your exhaustion showed in your cry of relief at the words, “I think I’ll do that, then, because I’m so tired, I could probably curl up on the stairs if I didn’t have a way home.”
“Go for it! Catch some sleep and I’ll see you in the morning, k?”
“Okay, goodnight.”
A tired brand of excitement took over at the promise of immediate sleep, so much so that you almost jumped on the still wet steps before remembering that you would have to take the servant's stairs. That wasn’t a far walk though, and just a couple of turns after the stairs you were in the master suite. Indeed there were blankets and pillows tucked away in the closet and you dug them out greedily before throwing them on the bed. You didn’t bother undressing, considering you didn’t have PJs anyway, and just crawled under the chilly covers, tucked in, and closed your eyes.
Warm took over soon, and with your music still playing downstairs, you were able to drift off rather quickly.
The night ticked on, your sleeping form peaceful from exhaustion even after your playlist came to an end and silence filled the halls. Silence, all except the old grandfather clock ticking in the entry hall. Nothing stirred in the lounge or the kitchen. Nothing shifted in the conservatory besides the crickets resting on the weeds outside the window.
Nothing within the halls of the House of Anubis moved. That is, until the shadows came.
Moonlight had bathed your sleeping form for over an hour, but once the moon crept higher and disappeared above the window, shadows slowly filled the room. You slept on peacefully, even as something scraped behind the walls- claws dragging, searching. Something whispered, something growled as it dragged itself closer to new flesh; a new victim.
The shadows were its paths and something shifted beneath the thick wallpaper of the master’s room. Its claws scraped just enough to make you stir for a moment, but it wasn’t enough to wake you, even as the wall above your headboard started breathing. A hiss, and the walls looked more like cloth as something that vaguely resembled a hand moved under it, and down closer to your peaceful form.
In slow, almost labored movements the hand- the boney claw tried to reach out, straining against the wall like rubber, desperate to reach you- desperate to tear and squeeze the life out! It growled again a beast fighting to grab hold of its meal-
Then it reared back and hissed as even darker shadows grabbed hold of it.
There, in the far corner of the room, something shifted in the dark, sharp eyes glowing as the darker shadows chained the creature, yanking it back from you even as it snapped and hissed and spat. Atem stepped out of the shadows then, hands tucked in his pockets as he glared at the thing hovering above you.
“You can’t have this one, I won’t allow it!” he said in a voice low and cold.
With nothing but a thought, more shadows crept into the room, spiraling out from his own shadow like tendrils until they wrapped around the creature. It fought even though it was no use, it was still too weak to stand up to him and Atem knew it. Soon enough with a snarling whine, it retreated, back to the dark hidden pit it came from, leaving Atem victorious.
He closed his eyes, their glowing irises fading as the shadows settled, blending into the natural shapes on the walls as if they were never there to begin with. He sighed as he opened his eyes again, gaze landing on your form. It wasn’t surprising that you didn’t wake, even if you did you’d find an empty room. Still, Atem almost wished you had, almost wished you had seen the creature hovering over you so you would finally have the damn good instincts to stay away from this place at night!
He bit back the bitter thoughts, he couldn’t blame you, not really, and he should just be thankful that you and your brother hadn’t decided to live in the house while restoring it. Even still, his worry simmered in his chest, causing him to step across the room until he was by the bedside. You looked so calm, tranquil, even...vulnerable.
He hadn’t realized he was reaching out to touch your cheek until his fingers were hovering just a hair away from your soft skin. He let it linger there for a bit, on the verge of touch, until he closed his fist and pulled it back with a shake of his head. He was such a fool sometimes. Even after all this heartache, he still found it hard not to get attached, not to cling to every positive force that he encountered.
Even still and even considering the fact that the creature wouldn’t dare return that night, Atem settled down in the armchair beside the bed, and watched over you until sunlight creped over the windowsill and filled the room.
#atem x reader#yami x reader#yugioh#Yu-Gi-Oh#yu-gi-oh reader insert#ygo#Atem#yami yugi#series: the house of anubis
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Carrebeean, Here we are!!!
As I said before: 5783 nautical miles we sailed towards this little paradise where we are still on quarantine anchorage. Waiting on the PCR result is always making me a bit nervous, especially this time. If we are tested negative, we have the chance here in Grenada to get the AstraZeneca vaccines and we will travel much freer than we do now.
But no boredom: a little leak in the hand wash basin, try to clean the mud off ELITSHA, friends and family to speak to, small other repairs, taking the lead in UBUNTU again since we have full and unlimited internet on board, planning and booking Zora’s and Su’s tickets towards us, baking bread again and of course swimming and snorkelling.
But let me talk first a little bit about Suriname and our short sail to Grenada. Suriname was for a long time a Dutch colony. Since 1975, this country is the smallest independent state in South America. The previous president unfortunately abused his power and all the resources the beautiful country has, for example gold, aluminium, oil, bananas got exported unwisely and the profit went into the presidents and his friend’s pockets. That is what Surinamers were telling us. In the meantime, there is a new president, but there is Corona as well. The ECO tourism, Suriname was good and well known for, stands still and the country is in a bad state and shape. At the banks of the Suriname river, entering Suriname, you see big and then I mean really big villas. According to the locals they belong to friends of the former president and to drug lords. A very familiar story to us South Africans. The Netherlands is still involved and helps where they can, but a few days after we left Suriname they closed the country: total lockdown. Just above 500 000 people live in Suriname and most of them in and close to Paramaribo. People are currently getting infected and dying in huge numbers from Corona: not enough hospital beds, not enough vaccinations, not enough oxygen……… not enough doctors and nurses. Their rainy season is terrible this year due to the ELNino effect and its really tuff for the poor population. After a good week in the Marina and a road trip through the rural part of the country to a big dam where people are searching for gold, visiting banana plantations, visiting Paramaribo with a lot of rain we said goodbye to the populated part of Suriname together with Elitsha and we sailed into the Commewijne river. This was so romantic and special. The jaguars, caiman and anacondas were too scared of us, hahahahha. We did not see them, but we heard and enjoyed the voices of the jungle, saw and heard millions of birds, parrots and all kind of other noises. It was magical. Three days we were totally one with nature, did not see any human being, together with Elitsha.
Coming back from Commewijne river was coming back to happy reggae life. Looking for a spot ashore to get our dingy on board for the trip to Grenada, a fisher of New Amsterdam waved us to come next to his fisher boat. Loud reggae music and a very friendly crew invited us for coffee, tea and biscuits……….and dagga and rum………..Unfortunately, we had to say thank you no (dagga and rum out of question, of course). The threat of getting infected just before we go back to sea again for a couple of days made us kindly refusing the offer. Even though we chatted a while with them and they helped us to get the dingy motor on board. And that’s how Surinamers are, chatty, always happy to assist and help, curious and interested about who you are. As I mentioned before people told us in advanced, that coming to South or Central America or the Caribbean with a South African flag would ask for problems. That was one of the reasons why we registered Elitsha in Germany. But we always say that we are from Cape Town, we don’t hide that and up to now we had no bad experiences. People are impressed that we come from that far to visit their small country and want to know if we like it. They loved the fact that we speak Dutch, because Dutch is still the first language in Suriname. Anyway, after chatting to the fishermen, we tied everything nicely, slept a short night and left New Amsterdam and Suriname at 6 am on the 25th of May.
Aware of the thread of Venezuelan pirates (Surinamers and NOON site (cruiser website) informed us about it), we sailed at a safe distance from the coast. Even though we choose to pass trough the Galleon’s passage between Trinidad and Tobago, but we choose to pass it close to the Tobago side, away of the Venezuelan coast. On our way we saw a fair number of oil platforms, huge ones, with huge flames, we could see from far. This was also a bit spooky. We had 35 to 40 knots of wind and a good speed to leave the oil area and the Galleon’s passage behind us. I think, pirates do not like rain. We had tons of rain and no pirates though……..although: Dick told me later, that 40 miles out of both coasts, the Grenadian and the Tobagonian, a fast open boat with 3 men in it sped past us. We think they were checking us out, how rich we are. The stretch between Tobago and Grenada apparently is also declared as an unsafe area. That is what we heard later when we arrived in Grenada. Our neigor, Steve, always has a gun with him. Happily, with enough wind and a strong currant we passed Tobago at 4:30 in the morning and arrived safely in Grenada at 17:00 on the 28th of May.
Close to the harbour at the quarantine anchorage we spoke to our South African friends of the Aventura, a young couple with 2 dogs and his parents on their way to emigrate to Panama. We saw them in every harbour we visited up to now. They left Suriname a few days earlier then we did. They craved for blue water and thought jaguar, caiman and anaconda would perhaps love their dogs too much. In any way, nice to see them again. They explained the Grenadian procedures to us and on Saturday we went ashore to register with the health department. We inhaled the positive and relaxed Grenadian vibe immediately: steel drum music from the taverns, people on the streets, Corona is almost dealt with.
And in the meantime, 1 week in St George, we are declared negative and are allowed to explore the island. Paul, a registered tour guide grabbed his chance. Slandering around the harbour he almost forced us to have a tour with him. The cruise ships are missed by restaurants, tour guides…not by us. Paul told us, that they on “good” days had 6000 tourists from cruise ships ashore. Dick and I were quite happy to escape these “good“ days. Pity for Paul, that’s why we went with him on a long trip through St. George at noon and let him earn some ECDs. Hot and up and down, I was exhausted at the end. We didn’t walk much for the last 2 months at least..
Grenada is the spice island: nutmeg, gloves, cinnamon, and other spices grow here. They have a golden waterfall and many more attractions. We will explore them all and share with you. For now, we experienced the spicy side of the island by drinking shandies with nutmeg, eating ice cream with nutmeg and gloves and some other weird things you would think its really ugg, but in reality it’s absolutely amazing.
We are registered for Astra Zeneca vaccination and yes, we are in a marina with a nice club house and WIFI and not on anchorage or at a mooring buoy. For the first time in almost 3 months, I am able to go and stay where I want on my own. For somebody like me, who likes her independence, its heaven. Opposite of our little paradise, there is another marina, posh and expensive and not really our style. Elitsha, would feel a bit lonely between all the posh-million dollar-yachts. I don’t know, if I mentioned before, that a lot of other cruisers, have fancy and well-equipped boats with freezers, bread baking automates, washing machine, water cooker……. you name it. Our only luxury is a fridge, a BBQ and a good stove with oven, cosy and exactly what we need no more and no less. Anyway, Elitsha got a good clean-up. Sticky, a local guy, Dick and I made her looking pretty again. The water of the Suriname river was dirty through mud and chemicals, they use for the gold extraction industry, we learned. And this was very difficult to get off the hull-0987654Qasdfuiop[.
My home office is in the marina’s clubhouse, with more than brilliant views! Unfortunately, UBUNTU for Africa’s operations manager, who took over financials and admin of the NGO from me, resigned a few days ago. That’s why I am back on the job and working every day for an hour or 3. Alene Edson Smith, local social worker, who was already involved in the family program and took over my job at Kronendal Primary, is doing the hands-on jobs, where you have to be involved personally onsite, like team meetings, meetings with principals etc. For now, we won’t have stretches which will take more than 3 days and we have internet and WIFI. No problem to work though. I love my work as much as I love cruising. To combine both is absolutely great.
For the rest the NGO is in good hands, with our after-care team, Barbara Heye, who is mentor to a single mother with 3 kids. And as I mentioned before Alene Edson Smith, well known in the valley through her involvement through her own NGO, Serenity, took over the reins at Kronendal Primary from me and is mentor to 5 families in our NGO. We share the lead of UBUNTU for Africa. What I can do, I will do, where personal presence is needed, Alene will be hands on. She will lead the sound and music studio, which will release their first CD soon. Lelo managed to get 2 new volunteers into this project, for marimba and music production. Ricardo will remain taking the lead on Silikamva side and Alene will have a firm look and hand on the project.
After care is just running. Andiswa and her team also get support from Alene. But this team of 5 is just doing what they can do best: love our children and supervise, support, teach them and make sure that they are safe.
Questions for the kids:
1. How many kilometres did we sail from Cape Town to Grenada?
2. Which language do the people speak in Suriname?
3. What kind of currency do we used in Suriname and which one in Grenada?
4. Please explain, what the modern pirates of the Caribbean are up to.
5. What is the name of the small entrance to the Caribbean between Trinidad and Tobago?
Sponsor sail:
For the ones who want to take part in our sponsor sail: We have sailed 1812 nautical miles. You can donate a cent, a Rand, a Euro or whatever per nautical mile. We are sailing for these amazing schools: every nautical mile and each Rand counts. To UBUNTU for Africa,German NGO.
The money will go to the UBUNTU for Africa projects: after care at Hout Bay Primary School and the music project at Silikamva High School. This organisation I started 12 years ago (www.ubuntuforafrica.com) Of course, you will receive a tax certificate.
Ubuntu for Africa-Kinder-, Jugend und Familienhilfe in Südafrika
Volksbank Boenen e G
IBAN: DE91 4106 2215 0054 5799 01
For South Africans and others, who want to donate directly to South Africa (also with tax certificate): please donate to Kronendal Primary School (www.kronendalprimary.com). I worked for 10 years at Kronendal Primary as a school counsellor. This school struggles financially due to the consequences of the Covid Pandemic and deserves our support.
KRONENDAL PRIMARY SCHOOL trading as CUIM (“the account holder”) holds the following account with
First National Bank, a division of FirstRand Bank Limited (“FNB”): Account Type BUSINESS ACCOUNT
Account Number 53452884035
Branch Code 204009
Branch Name HOUT BAY 345
Swift Code FIRNZAJJ
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Resident Evil Time
As we all know, Spooky Season began on August 1st, as it does every year. Skeletons began to emerge from the earth, and we all joined together to help along the slightly unripe ones with just a knuckle bone sticking up out of the lawn. Pumpkins rolled down into town from the foothills, snuggling into piles of radiant leaves as they awaited their new, temporary keepers. Here on the west coast of America, ash began to fall from the sky, as it does every season of ash, and we all went out to frolic in the ash as we gasped for air in our newly toxic Zone. It never rains in California, except when it’s raining ash. As such, around August 1st I began my quest of playing every mainline Resident Evil game, and a couple of spin-offs. What follows is the book report that I wrote on this experience.
Resident Evil is a series that’s been on my radar in one way or another as far back as 1996, when I was a kid, but I never really took a very close look at it, or wanted to, until I played RE7 in 2019. My oldest memory involving this game is wandering Blockbuster with my older brother looking for a game to rent. Another kid was there, also with their older brother, and the little kid suggested Resident Evil, but the bigger kid sagely declared “Nah, the controls are bad,” and they left it at that. I don’t know why I remember this, but I do, and my general feeling about Resident Evil was negative, I think because I had played the demo and didn’t like it, due to the fact that it’s not really designed in such a way that a kid would like it much. My first actual experience with the series, outside of that, was playing Resident Evil 3 in 1999. At the time, I loved it, but I was 12, and wouldn’t have been able to articulate anything about why I liked it other than “cool videogame, Jill pretty. Jill me.” I also played RE4 and RE5 around the time they came out, and I enjoyed them as fun action games, but still didn’t think much of the series or really care about survival horror. My other experience with the genre pretty much only extends to Alan Wake, Dino Crisis, and Dead Space, all of which I played so long ago that I remember almost nothing about them. What kind of monsters does Alan Wake fight? Couldn’t say. Could be anything, really. I remember the main character of Dino Crisis, Regina. She had red hair. Regina pretty. Regina me? Strangely enough, wanting to play the role of formidable, independent, resourceful, attractive women in games was a running theme in my formative years. What could this possibly mean? We may never know. But anyway, I was very excited to go on this journey into the survival horror franchise, and one of the most iconic franchises of all time. It had its highs and lows, but it was well worth it, and I emerged with a newfound appreciation for the design and appeal of survival horror games. The intention here isn’t to give a full, thorough analysis of these games or a breakdown of every aspect of them, but to compile my various thoughts on them, so it’s more of an opinionated overview than a deep dive.
Resident Evil (1996)
It’s actually really hard to place this game when making a tier list, due to the simple fact that none of these other games would exist without the conventions Resident Evil set. It was groundbreaking, and literally invented a genre. At the same time, it's impossible for me to not compare it to other, better games, because I have knowledge of the rest of the series. It was an experiment for Capcom, and it shows in the game's rough edges. It feels like it had good ideas that didn’t always live up to their full potential, due to some combination of inexperience, available hardware/software, and questionable implementation.
RE1 is... not very good at being scary. It does its best, but it's a fairly early PS1 game. I think a lot of this has to do with the atmosphere and graphics. Visually, it’s just kind of ugly in that early PS1 way, and the color choices are dull and lack cohesion. For a horror game taking place in a spooky dilapidated mansion, it feels a little too bright, and I’m guessing it has to do with the fact that no one really knew how to make darkness convincing on PS1 at the time. But it’s not entirely the PS1’s fault this game is ugly, as you can see from RE2 and RE3 being not ugly. The color choices and backgrounds just aren’t especially lush or interesting.
I don't really need to go into the voice acting and writing of this game, due to their status of legendary badness. The live action cutscenes are unbelievably cheesy and almost impossible to watch with a straight face. The live action ending where Jill and Chris hold hands as they fly away in a helicopter is incredibly dumb. If you correctly chose Jill as your main character, it just seems incongruous that after fighting her way out of a deathtrap of horrifying creatures, she's now laying her head on the big strong man's shoulder. It’s bad, but fortunately the game isn’t entirely bad narratively. It was surprising, in a game from 1996, to see the in-world documents scattered around that add to the narrative, telling you what's really going on and adding detail to the broader strokes of the story. This is a thing that's ubiquitous in games now, AAA or otherwise, and I'm wondering if this game helped to establish that facet of games. RE1 has a simple story of evil corporate experiments gone wrong, with the driving force behind everything the player/character does being escape from the mansion, and this simplicity really works in its favor. As we shall see in later RE games, convoluted stories don’t really lend themselves all that well to horror.
If you look at other games released in 1996, there are a lot of fast paced action games, like 3D platformers and first person shooters, as well as RPGs, and it's clear this game was something different. It has that slow, methodical play that makes survival horror feel unique. The feeling of not knowing what's waiting for you behind the next door, but knowing you have to go anyway, and that balance between surviving and solving puzzles to progress. The backtracking and item hunts, the interlocking paths and puzzles, the environmental storytelling and documents, the sense of isolation, it's all here in the first game. Some players may not find inventory management thrilling, but it’s a key part of these games, and it’s mostly done well in the good ones. Inventory management and item scarcity are a big part of what actually captures that feeling of “survival horror.” Since items are needed to progress, your inventory is directly tied to your progress, and at its best this forces you to make tough decisions about what you really need to carry and by extension makes you play more conservatively and prioritize avoidance. At its worst, it forces you to go back to previous areas for no reason and wastes your time while hurting the pace of the game, which RE1 is only guilty of at one point toward the end. The more weapons and ammo you have, the less room you have to do the work of actually progressing in the game through item-based puzzles, so you often have to sacrifice some of your lethality to progress smoothly. There’s a fine line between giving the player too many resources and too few, and almost all good survival horror games walk that line very well. It's also just thematically appropriate that your character isn't able to lug around a hundred pounds of gear. The open-ended nature of exploration, or the illusion thereof, is also an important aspect of survival horror. In good Resident Evil games, you usually have multiple doors you can choose to open, multiple potential paths, and feeling out which one is right, and which places are safe to travel, is a big part of the game. That exploratory feeling of gradually extending your reach and knowledge of the place you're in, knowing how vulnerable you are but also knowing you have to keep going deeper, gives the player a much greater sense of agency than more linear horror experiences.
All of these good design elements are firmly established by RE1, but they're just not executed as well as in future Resident Evil and survival horror titles, and by today's standards, playing it can feel like a chore. I think it certainly deserves a huge amount of credit for establishing almost everything that's good and defining about survival horror. There were earlier horror themed games, and I'm sure there are online people who'd be strangely invested in arguing that it's not the first survival horror game, but Resident Evil was clearly something new, different, and more sophisticated. It feels like a beginning, a rough draft, but it established something special. In some ways, I feel like RE1 has actually aged better than a lot of its 1996 contemporaries. Not in terms of controls, visuals or voice acting, heavens no. But, in terms of things like a focus on atmosphere, good pacing, and elegant, focused design, much of it still holds up today.
-Monster Review Corner-
These are the monsters that started it all. Zombies, undead dogs, hunters, Tyrant, and the absolute classic, a big plant that hates you. And who can forget the most forgettable monsters, giant spiders? The enemies themselves aren't especially exciting, but honestly, they work very well for the style and slow pace of this game. The deadly mansion full of the living dead is a classic horror setting. Things like Hunters and Tyrant seem pedestrian by series standards now, but they would have been a surprise in a zombie game in 1996, and Hunters are terrifying when they first appear. Overall monster score: 7/10
Time to complete: 5:46
Games were shorter overall in 1996, but the short game length is another survival horror trait the game established, and that brevity is a trait I really appreciate about this series and the genre as a whole.
Resident Evil 2 (1998)
I feel like I’m going to be using the word “better” a lot. RE2 is immediately more cinematic than its predecessor, which is a good thing. It’s an important element of establishing tension and atmosphere. All the best horror movies, in my opinion, have smart and artful cinematography behind them. I’m not going to say Resident Evil 2 has masterful cinematic direction, but it’s a vast improvement over the previous game. Gone are the super cheesy FMV cutscenes and the atrocious voice acting. The voice acting here isn't great by today's standards, but people do talk mostly like humans! This must be due to the fact that it was the first time Capcom ever outsourced voice acting to a studio outside of Japan. The writing is also much, much better. The soundtrack is much more atmospheric, and even the save room music is better. Visually, the game looks so much better. Character models are more detailed and lifelike, and backgrounds are much more detailed, colorful and cohesive. I vastly prefer the character designs to those of RE1. They’re very 90s, in a fun anime way. Even the portraits in the inventory screen look way better. Even the story and the documents you find are more well written and interesting, and Umbrella is established as a more sinister and far-reaching presence.
RE2 gives you separate campaigns for Claire and Leon that are similar, but different in some major ways. Rather than being a super long game, it has a short campaign that can be replayed multiple times with different characters for improved ranks, unlockables, and short bonus levels. I actually really like this kind of replayability, as opposed to the much more common type of replayability of modern games, which is just making the game 100 hours long and filled with boring sidequests, trinkets and skill points. This is partially because I inevitably burn out on that kind of game, even if I like it (Horizon Zero Dawn, Breath of the Wild) and never finish the game. Super Bunnyhop has a whole video (“Let’s Talk About Game Length”) about the advantages of this game’s style of replay value which is worth a watch. I’m much more likely to rank a game among my favorites if I’m actually compelled to finish it. I’m always annoyed by how persistently gamers thoughtlessly complain about these games (or any game for that matter) being too short. Gee, maybe that has something to do with why 4, 5, and 6 all feel so bloated and outstay their welcome. Funny how the three most recent games in the series that brought it back from the brink of total irrelevance are all under ten hours in length.
The level design feels less haphazard and boring than RE1, but retains the satisfying sense of interconnectedness that the original mansion had. The balance of the game is good, and it feels dangerous without ever feeling unfair, like all the best RE games. Distribution of healing items and ammo feels right - I rarely felt like I was in serious danger of running out, but I always felt the pressure to conserve ammo and remember where healing items were to pick up later. This game is also a sterling example of the kinds of boss fights that work in survival horror. Rather than being reflex tests, boss fights are more a test of how smartly and conservatively you’ve been playing. If you’ve saved enough powerful ammo by playing well, you’ll have no problem with boss monsters, and there’s also the alligator fight, which, if you were paying attention to the area you just traversed, can be ended with one bullet.
Overall, it’s a huge improvement over RE1 in every way imaginable, and a genuinely good game even by today’s standards, if you discount the cheesy voice acting and dated cutscenes. I finished RE1 in two sittings because I wanted to get it over with, but I finished RE2 nearly as fast because it was hard to stop playing. This is where the series came into its own, and RE2 feels like the beginning of the series as we know it today, while RE1 feels more like an experimental rough draft.
-Monster Review Corner-
This game, overall, has some great monsters. Fantastic monsters, and this is where you’ll find ‘em. First, we’ve got your classic zombies. Classic. We’ve got your zombie dogs, two for one deal. We’ve got some evil birds who inexplicably burst through a window one time. Okay, decent. Giant spiders, boooring. But then, here comes a new challenger! It’s lickers, one of perhaps the most iconic Resident Evil monsters. These nasty wall crawlin’ flesh puppies have got exposed brains, big ol’ claws, razor sharp tongues and a complete lack of sight. Due to this last fact, you can avoid them by being very quiet, which is extremely survival horror. Lickers are great. RE2 also has a giant alligator, which even the RE2 remake team thought was too silly to include in the remake (but to the great relief of everyone around the world, he made it anyway). Personally, I love the fact that they brought the classic urban cryptid, the mutant sewer gator, into the RE family. RE2 also has a Tyrant who chases you around in the second scenario. He’s just Nemesis before Nemesis. There are also big plant monsters who look like walking venus fly traps, totally rad. And finally, all of the G-Mutation designs pretty much set the stage for the monster design of all future RE mutants, including Nemesis. They have this alien, body horror feel to them that’s become a hallmark of the series. Overall monster score: 10/10
Time to complete: 5:06
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999)
RE3 has a darker tone than RE2, a lot of quality of life changes, and the terrifying presence of an unstoppable Nemesis. It’s a more combat oriented game, not in that combat is more complex, but in that there are more weapons, more ammo, faster zombies, and in comparison to the two previous games there are more times where it’s safer to kill enemies than avoid them. Jill can also dodge and quick turn. Dodging is fine, and quick turn, was an excellent addition that’s been in every RE since then, minus RE7. It’s a very good game, but the fact that there are fewer moments of quiet exploration and puzzling detracts from the variety of the game and makes it feel more one note. It definitely feels more like an action movie, not just in its increased amount of fighting but also in its story beats and cutscenes. I think it’s important to make a distinction between the style of this game and RE4/5/6, in that those are action games with light or nonexistent survival horror elements, while this is a survival horror game with action elements. I played the game on hard mode, because this game only has hard and easy mode. Hard is essentially normal, it's what you'd come to expect from the series, and easy mode is easy and gives you an assault rifle at the start.
The titular Nemesis is such a great way to change up the Resident Evil formula. The first time you encounter him, he kills Brad in a cutscene, and you run into the police station. You think he’ll just appear at certain times during cutscenes and maybe a boss fight, but then a little while later he bursts through a window and chases you, and he’s faster than anything encountered previously in the series. That’s when it becomes clear that you’re going to be hunted, and from that point on Nemesis is in the back of your mind at all times, injecting an undercurrent of paranoia into every moment of methodical exploration. Although, I do have complaints about Nemesis, too. If you’re familiar with the series up to this point, his appearances are undermined by that very knowledge. What I mean is that if you played the first two games, you start to get a sense of when events or attacks are going to be triggered in Resident Evil, and that makes Nemesis much more predictable. You start to think “whelp, it’s about time for another Nemesis attack,” and then he shows up. Also, the first time you’re actually supposed to stand and fight him is an awful boss fight, and the first really bad boss fight in the series. The game’s dodge mechanic is finicky and hard to time, and it’s an important part of winning the fight, at least on hard mode. He’s basically a bullet sponge, which is not interesting.
Something that I like about three is it really expands on the setting by giving you lots of details about Umbrella and their relation to Raccoon City. You learn that not only have they infiltrated the city government and police, but a lot of the city's infrastructure was funded by Umbrella donations. You also learn that they maintain their own paramilitary force and are a far reaching, international corporation. Umbrella is really fleshed out as a more robust and powerful organization here.
Another unique aspect of this game, that’s never been in another RE game, is the “choose your own adventure” system. Nemesis will be after you, and you can choose between two different options, such as running into the sewers or hiding in the kitchen. You have a limited time to make these choices, and they have positive or negative outcomes, but never outright kill you, as far as I could tell. It’s kind of neat, and an interesting way to change things up occasionally, but not especially important.
Overall, this is an excellent Resident Evil game, though a good deal less original and groundbreaking than RE2.
-Monster Review Corner-
Honestly, most of the monsters are fine, but nothing to write home about. Nemesis is the star of the show, which you can already tell by the fact that the game is named after him and he’s on the front cover. He’s like the cooler, better, more deadly version of a Tyrant. Nemesis score: 10/10
Time to complete: 5:32
An Aside About Puzzles
I’ve been trying to figure out how to articulate what I like about the puzzles in this series, and this seems as good a place to put these thoughts as any. I get that not everyone likes the puzzles in this series, and that many of them can only be called puzzles in a very loose sense, but I think they add a crucial ingredient to the games.
The thing is, if they were more complicated or difficult puzzles, they would take up too much screen time, they would overpower the rest of the game, like too much salt in a dish. There are a lot of them where you have to follow riddle-like clues to figure out what to do, but they're all pretty easy. There are a lot of item hunts that boil down to finding item A and bringing it to point B, or combining item A with item B and using the result at point C, and I remember plenty of jokes over the years playfully lampooning this facet of Resident Evil. But, while playing through these games, I found myself dissatisfied with the view that these item hunts and simple puzzles are stupid, or bad game design. Because really, what makes these games good is not shooting or puzzles or atmosphere or good monsters, but all of these elements working together in harmony. It seems like the more harmonious that balance, the better the Resident Evil game. All these little parts make up the whole. The puzzles aren't hard, sure, but they aren't meant to be. They add an element of sleuthing and a sense of accomplishment and progression that would otherwise be lacking, and which could easily slip into frustration if they were any more difficult, and detract from the overall experience. If you just went around and shot at monsters and opened doors, it would be missing something big, and it would be a much poorer series. If you need evidence of that, may I direct you to Resident Evils 4 to 6. Without that exploratory feeling, without that aha feeling of figuring it out, it would feel bland. "If I use this item to open this, then I get this thing and I combine it with this, it frees up space in my inventory, and now I can take them back to the spot I remember from earlier because I was paying attention and taking mental notes, and I can open this path..." I'd argue that this feeling of things clicking together neatly, of attentive and methodical play paying off, is integral to the series and to the entire genre it spawned. The whole game is a puzzle that you’re figuring out, and things like item juggling, map knowledge, and carefully leaving enough space in your inventory are a part of that puzzle.
The puzzles in the series are more representational than what might usually be called a puzzle. The item lugging, inventory swapping parts that I remember being maligned at one time are more akin to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle, but those pieces are scattered across a monster infested, carefully designed, difficult to traverse map. What made RE7 feel so much like a revival of Resident Evil, despite it being a first person game that looks and feels very little like its predecessors, was returning to this approach to game design. It was a polished and well made return to the principles that made survival horror popular. The fact that Capcom brought back all those often complained about puzzles and item hunts, and slashed the current idea of game length to ribbons, returning to the roots of the series, and then those games being so highly praised, feels so right in part because it feels like the developers are saying "look, a lot of you were totally wrong about what made these games good."
Resident Evil - Code: Veronica (2000)
To me the most immediately noticeable thing about this game is Claire’s embarrassingly early-2000s outfit: high rise boot cut jeans, cowgirl boots, a short-sleeved crop top jacket, all topped off with a pink choker and fingerless gloves. I don’t think I’ve ever seen character design that so perfectly encapsulates the time period of a game’s release. It’s bad, and the game only gets worse from there.
I really tried to like Code Veronica, at first. But after playing RE1-3, saying it's underwhelming is putting it lightly. I honestly don't think I have a single good thing to say about this game, and it's possibly the worst mainline Resident Evil game ever made (RE6 being the only thing that might take that crown of trash in its stead). It's pretty much not possible to take Code Veronica seriously in any way, especially not as a horror game. The visuals have no sense of darkness or atmosphere and manage to look much worse than the old pre-rendered graphics, the puzzles are uninspired rehash, the enemies and bosses are irritating, the character designs are a particular type of early-2000s bad, the voice acting is insufferable, the story is asinine, and the game is full of the bad kind of backtracking. It's not entirely the game's fault it's ugly, it's a product of its time, but it's weird to see in retrospect because it looks worse than RE3 from one year prior. Previous RE games had bad voice acting, but this is the first one where the voice acting makes you want to turn the game off.
Up until this point, the storylines of Resident Evil games were very simple. Evil corporation caused chaos with a virus, get out alive. There are details scattered throughout about how the city and government were being paid off, but that’s the gist of it. Code Veronica is where the lore of RE starts to get convoluted and sometimes very dumb. I won’t go into all the ways the story is bad, but suffice it to say this is definitely when Resident Evil jumped the shark, and it paves the way for the stupidity of RE4. It also uses the “mentally ill people are scary” horror trope, which is perhaps my least favorite horror trope. The villain for most of the game, Alfred, has *gasp* a split personality and thinks he’s also his sister. Of course, at one point Claire calls him a “crossdressing freak.” I’ll just leave it at that. Of course nobody who writes this kind of thing bothers to do any kind of research into the mental illnesses they use as story crutches. I feel like I need to mention the voice acting, for Steve and Alfred particularly. Steve sounds like he walked off of a middle school campus, and Alfred sounds like your local community theater’s production of Sweeney Todd. They’re both absolutely atrocious and make the game that much more annoying to play. Claire’s acting is about what you’d expect from a Saturday morning cartoon of the era.
As though the fact that it's a bad game visually and narratively wasn't enough, it's also badly designed, not much fun to play, and way longer than the previous three. The game’s map, at least for Claire’s portion (most of the game), is divided into multiple small areas, each with one path leading to them, so you have to go over these paths repeatedly once you’ve retrieved an item from a completely different area, and it makes for a lot of very tiresome backtracking. The series always had backtracking, of course, but never over such long, samey stretches of space. On top of this, there are tons of blatantly bad design choices. To name a few:
-The hallway you have to traverse multiple times containing moths which poison you and respawn every time you leave and are really hard to hit on top of being a waste of ammo. It’s hard to see how they were unaware that this is bad since they also leave an infinite supply of poison antidotes in the same room
-The fact that there’s no indication whatsoever that you should leave items behind for the next character you have to play, which left me struggling to even be able to kill enemies as Chris
-Multiple times where in order to trigger progress you have to look at or pick up a certain thing, not for any logical in-game reason but just because it triggers a cutscene. One of these makes you look at the same thing twice, and I wandered around not knowing what to do for a while before checking a walkthrough
-More than one save room that contains no item box, when this game asks you to constantly juggle items and repeatedly travel long distances with specific items
There’s more, but I don’t want to write or think about this bad game anymore. This game is a slag heap that deserves to be forgotten, and I hope it’s never remade. Something I find really disappointing about Code Veronica is that the setting is ripe for a good Resident Evil game, but they botch it. It takes place in two locations, a secret island prison run by Umbrella, and an antarctic research station, both of which I can imagine a great RE game taking place in. I guess, really, the best thing that can be said about Code Veronica is that it’s a survival horror game. They didn’t totally stray from the principles that made the series good, they just implemented those things very badly, in a very stupid game.
Time to complete: who knows, I quit near the final stretch of the game. The internet says it takes about 12:30, which is far too long.
REmake (2002)
I played the remake first, and it’s the only game I played out of order, because when I started I had no plans to play the entire series. It’s a remake that fixes everything wrong or dated about the original while keeping the things that made it good, and I would say it’s the definitive version of the game and the one that should be played.
Visually, a lot of it looks very good, and uses darkness much better than the original. I like this game’s high def pre-rendered backgrounds, because it’s like looking into an alternate reality where pre-rendered graphics never went away, and just increased in fidelity. I actually really like a lot of the backgrounds in this game. Pre-rendered backgrounds have their shortcomings, but I think they can play a role in horror games. They give the developers total control of how things are framed, and framing/direction are a big part of what can make things ominous or scary in horror movies. You can do this to some extent in games with free cameras, but without nearly as much control. I think over time the popular consensus became that pre-rendered backgrounds are inherently bad, but I think like any style of graphics they have their pros and cons. The late 90s Final Fantasies are great examples of how pre-rendered graphics can be used to frame characters and events in certain ways.
The strongest suit of this game is that it really feels like a horror game, and avoidance is encouraged over combat due to scarce ammo and healing. The pace is slow and thoughtful, the mansion is sprawling and claustrophobic, and even one or two zombies feels like a threat, especially before you find the shotgun. Even after that, shotgun shells are fairly scarce. Like the original, combat mechanics are intentionally very simple and limited, though this one sees the introduction of the defensive items that return in the RE2 and 3 remakes. One thing I really like is that if you kill a zombie and leave their body, without decapitating or burning it, it will eventually mutate into a fast and powerful zombie, and these are genuinely threatening to encounter. You constantly have to make decisions in this game about what’s more important, immediate safety or conserving ammo. The fuel that’s used to burn corpses is limited, and can be used strategically to eliminate threats from frequently traveled areas. It’s a great idea for a game mechanic, but in practice, I rarely did this, because inventory is so limited that it didn’t feel worthwhile to use two of my eight slots on a lighter and fuel. Another nice added horror element is the fact that doors aren’t always safe. You’ll hear monsters pounding on doors, see them shaking, and at multiple points they’ll be smashed open when you thought you were safe.
A lot of the ideas that made this game good and the original good are ideas that were returned to in RE7, the RE3 remake, and especially the RE2 remake, and a big part of what made those games so successful.
Time to complete: 10:15
In my opinion it ran a little too long. It takes almost twice as long as the original, and I feel like the added areas pad out that length rather than improving the game. Even though I think it’s a very good game, it started feeling like a slog in the last few hours.
Resident Evil Zero (2002)
After Code Veronica, it was initially refreshing to feel like I was actually playing Resident Evil again and not some subpar knockoff. This one feels a lot more like classic RE, and in its slower pace it’s most similar to REmake or the original trilogy. I played the HD remaster of RE0(which changes nothing but the graphics) since it's the one I own on steam, so I can't speak to the original GameCube graphics, but the art direction itself is vastly better, and it creates an atmosphere that's perfectly Resident Evil. Highly detailed backgrounds, with rich dark colors, old paintings, dusty bookshelves, soft clean lighting, marble and dark wood, wind-rustled ivy, shadows and rain, creep dilapidated industrial spaces. The HD remaster is gorgeous, and one of the best looking games in the series.
This game adds two major new mechanics: playing as a team of two and swapping between characters, and the ability to drop items anywhere. Character swapping is an interesting gimmick, made more of a curiosity by the fact that it will probably never be used again in a RE game. Often it's pretty neat, but just as often, it's an annoying chore. I like the idea of controlling two characters, but I don't think what they attempted to do with it was entirely successful, and could have been better with a couple of simple changes. Ultimately all the inventory management required feels like more trouble than it's worth, especially since you have to carry weapons and ammo for both characters. Between inventory management and swapping off-character actions, I found myself in the inventory screen a lot more than in previous games. It seems like they could have alleviated these problems with more inventory space and buttons for switching off-character actions. Most of the time it ends up feeling like a chore to manage two characters and two separate inventories. In theory, the ability to drop items anywhere adds an element of player choice and planning, but in practice, I just found myself missing the item box that allows you to access the same items from different places.
This game is fine for the first hour or two, but ends up getting more and more frustrating the farther you get into it. After playing about half the game, I started feeling like I'd be having a less terrible time on easy mode. I died in it a lot more times than in any previous game. The combination of really irritating new enemy types and all weapons (even the grenade launcher) feeling underpowered means there are multiple enemy encounters where you're just forced to lose health. This wouldn't be so bad if there were enough healing items around, but there aren't. Every enemy in the game, even a basic zombie, feels too bullet sponge-y. I repeatedly found myself with very little ammo and no healing items, so in a lot of situations I would just die, and reloading with the foreknowledge of what rooms would contain felt like the only way to progress. Managing the health of two characters, one who has very low health, makes it that much harder. I played through all of the previous games on normal difficulty (RE3 on hard) so I know I'm not imagining the spike in difficulty. It's possible they wanted to make this game challenging for series veterans, but if that's the case they missed the mark, because part of what makes a good RE game is excellent balance of difficulty. In a good RE, you always feel like you're facing adversity but still progressing, and you really don't die all that often if you're being careful and using the right weapons for situations. In RE0, you just die a lot to frustrating video game garbage and feel irritated that you have to reload and repeat content. To make matters even worse, aiming feels weirdly sticky in this game and movement feels clunkier than previous games for some reason.
Just like Code Veronica, this game has a premise that seems like it should excel as a Resident Evil game, but it misses the mark. With the new mechanics, it feels like they were struggling to think of ways to further refine and reinvent a series that was getting a little tired. I love the formula of the first three games, but I can understand why after six games following that same formula, with a lot of very similar in-game occurrences and puzzles, they wanted to move in a different direction with RE4. This game feels like it's floundering, attempting to reinvent the series while being chained to the same rules, and though I have mixed or negative feelings about the next three games, it feels like the series was in dire need of a total overhaul.
-Monster Review Corner-
Whoever designed the monsters in this game thought that giant animals are absolutely horrifying. Giant bat, giant scorpion, giant centipede, giant roaches. There are also guys made of leeches, and they're pretty boring and annoying to fight, and it's hard not to find the way they move comedic. There are also hunters and your typical zombies. All in all, a lackluster offering of critters. Overall monster score: 3/10
Resident Evil 4 (2005)
Let's get the obvious out of the way: this game feels almost nothing like Resident Evil, and feels less and less like it the further into it you get. The devs made sure to do a lot of things that make RE4’s identity as an action game very obvious. It’s a game of series firsts: first in the series with an over the shoulder camera, first with weapon stats, first with such an abundance of enemies and weapons, first with QTEs, first where the primary enemies aren’t shambling zombies, first with currency and a merchant, the first where Umbrella isn’t the big bad, the first where you can karate kick and suplex enemies. It’s incredibly not survival horror. It might succeed as a 2005 action game, but it fails miserably at being Resident Evil.
I’m feeling generous, so I’ll start with the things I like about RE4. I really do appreciate that it’s a slower and more methodical action game than its contemporaries, and precise, thoughtful shooting is rewarded. I also like that the over the shoulder camera gives you a pretty narrow field of view, which makes it always feel like enemies could be lurking just off screen. This makes things more tense and is often used to surprise the player, especially in the early game. The almost identical perspective used in the exceptional RE2 and RE3 remakes shows that they weren’t off the mark with this element of the game’s design. However, in RE4 even this good thing is undercut by the fact that jarring, anxious combat music plays whenever enemies are anywhere nearby. The first 2-4 hours of this game, just about up to the Mendez boss, are actually a pretty good game, and provide most of the really tense and scary moments. Unfortunately, these opening hours aren’t really indicative of all the stupid shit to come. Something I grew to hate about this game is that it feels like it just goes on and on and on. It took me around 12 hours, which is short by video game standards, but long by RE standards. By the time I reached the end, it had long outstayed its welcome. Even in these early, decent moments, there was still stuff I hated, like the button mashing quick time events to run from Indiana Jones boulders, the garishly glowing item drops, the dumb kicks, the dynamite zombies.
The crux of a survival horror experience is the feeling of vulnerability, and this feeling is only scarcely captured in the opening few hours of RE4, when it’s still sort of pretending to be Resident Evil. But then, you keep getting more and more powerful, as you do in action games, you keep getting more and more weapons and upgrades and grenades and facing more and more enemies and bosses until it all feels trivial. It’s thoroughly an action game, and by the time you’re near the end, storming a military fort guarded by heavily armed commando zombies manning gatling turrets while you’re aided by helicopter support, it’s clear the game has entirely stopped masquerading as Resident Evil. On top of being a big stupid action game, it’s also extremely a video game. The glowing items that are dropped whenever enemies die, the tiny adorable treasure chests full of doubloons, the big garish video game markers for QTEs(and the most heinous kinds of QTEs: button mashing QTEs and mid-cutscene QTEs), the action movie window jumps and kicks, the cultists driving a death drill, Leon’s backflips, the dumb one-liners that scarcely make sense at times, a giant fish boss, a mine cart level. The absurd stupidity of this game never lets up, so much so that playing it in 2020, it feels almost like an intentional parody, which I know it’s not.
The story is kind of silly from the start, and delves increasingly into the realm of asinine bullshit as it goes on, as though Capcom and Shinji Mikami sought out the dumbest ideas they could find. In RE2, Leon was a cop for one day during a zombie apocalypse, and now somehow he's working for the White House on a solo mission finding the president's daughter. It's quite the barely explained leap. One of my least favorite things in the narrative department is that Leon's voice acting and dialogue make him insufferable. The humble rookie from RE2 is gone, replaced by a heavily masculinized, aggressive, arrogant, misogynistic, backflipping action movie hero. We went from six consecutive games with women either as one of two playable main characters or the only playable character, with Jill Valentine in RE3 single-handedly destroying the most powerful BOW ever created, to a game where a gruff manly man is tasked with rescuing a literal damsel in distress, and has actual lines like “Feh, women” and “Sorry, but following a lady’s lead just isn’t my style.” It’s atrociously bad, and I hate the character they decided he should be for this game. It also doesn’t even make sense, because why would he even have that attitude towards women after seeing what Claire can do in RE2? It’s a huge step backwards for the series. On top of this awfulness, the actual plot points are just increasingly unbelievable and imbecilic, in a way that totally undercuts any way in which the game could theoretically be frightening. At the end of the game, it’s not Leon and Ashley sitting in silence as they contemplate their harrowing and traumatic experience, it’s “Mission accomplished, right Leon?! Please have sex with me!” and then they literally ride off into the sunset on a jet ski.
At first I thought they were aiming to turn a beloved survival horror series into a big dumb action movie, which is partly true, but then I realized what they had really made: an amusement park. It’s divided into themed zones, like an amusement park: there’s a spooky village, a deathtrap castle, a haunted manor, slimy sewers, an underground tomb, a Mad Max island. There are little coaster cars with purple velvet seats that carry you through the castle, there’s a mine cart ride, living suits of armor, there’s literally a giant animatronic statue of Salazar you can climb around on, there are trinkets and treasures everywhere and a merchant always magically appearing to sell you new toys to make sure you don’t ever get bored or think too hard, there’s a lava-filled carousel room with fire-breathing dragon statues, a haunted house section, a shooting gallery, a cave full of monster bugs, a hedge maze, a tower of terror where flaming barrels are rolled down the stairs(and then you get to pull the lever to roll them!), there’s a crane game, an evil villain lair with a deadly laser corridor, there is for some reason a subterranean battle maze in a cage suspended over a chasm, and your whole visit to this horror themed wonder park culminates in a jet ski ride through a collapsing cavern.
I find it baffling, but "a masterpiece", "the best Resident Evil game", and “one of the best video games ever made” are actual ways I have seen this game described. Multiple reviewers called it the best of the series, and people continue to call it that. Gone is the tense, atmospheric, resource management based survival horror gameplay, the harmonious balance of puzzles, survival and action that made this series so beloved. It’s replaced with a theme park of homogenous action gameplay and an incredibly stupid story. In my mind, it’s not Resident Evil at all, and may as well have belonged to an entirely new series that’s continued in RE5 and RE6. Another oft repeated bit of unquestioned conventional wisdom about RE4 is that it “saved the series from itself,” which is strange given that it marked the beginning of a slump that lasted over a decade. But, who knows? Maybe Resident Evil had to undergo this kind of transformation and decline to ultimately produce the four most recent Resident Evil games, all among the best of the survival horror genre. If these bad mid series games had to come first in order for the latest four exceptional games to come later, then I’ll gladly suffer their existence.
-Monster Review Corner-
Another thing I actually like about this game is a lot of the creature design work. The Mendez boss fight feels like a Resident Evil fight, and his insect-like true form looks like a classic Resident Evil BOW. Verdugo and U-3, likewise, feel like classically inhuman RE creatures, and they’d be right at home in a survival horror series entry. Regenerators and Iron Maidens are genuinely terrifying creatures – or they would be in a survival horror game. Here, they’re just another enemy to mop up. The Plagas that burst out of enemies are a shock when they first appear, and look like horrifying hybrids of The Thing and facehuggers. The chainsaw men are initially one of the best and most horror-centric additions to the game, that is, until you get powerful enough to trivialize them and they stop appearing. At least in the first two hours, they’re legitimately scary due to your narrow field of view and the fact that they one shot you. But it seems like with each thing this game may have done right, there comes something that it did very wrong. Toward the end of the game, you start fighting stuff like the zombies with huge gatling guns, and it’s very dumb. I hate these military zombies, I really do.
Overall monster score: 6/10
Overall monster score minus the merc zombies and dumb robed cultists: 9/10
Time to complete: 11:28
By around the 8 or 9 hour mark, I was practically begging for this game to end.
Resident Evil 5 (2009)
When I started this, I thought I'd like RE4 more than RE5, but it turns out 5 is a much better game. It's a big dumb action movie, but it's a much better big dumb action movie than RE4, or RE6. The action is better, the graphics and art direction are better, the controls are better, the story, characters and dialogue are all better. It's too bad they just couldn't let go of the QTEs. It's a very good Capcom action game, but again, not a great Resident Evil game. It's much more confident as an action game than RE4, and almost entirely stops pretending its gameplay is about anything other than action, to its benefit. The combat is faster and more responsive, but still feels slower and more methodical than most action games. It’s just overall a significantly improved action game.
RE5 Chris is so much better than RE4 Leon. Chris and Sheva are a likable duo who feel like a typical RE pair and play off of each other well. The dialogue likewise has much more natural localization than most if not all previous games in the series. I don't really like how they gave Jill and Wesker Kojima character designs, and this bad aesthetic continues in RE Rev.
The files unlocked in the menu are actually kinda good, and this game expands and fills out the setting in some interesting ways, setting the stage for the Revelations games and RE6.
If you read the files, you learn what happened to Umbrella and how they shut down. What's nice is that the files and in-game story actually go into the ramifications of a world where BOWs exist and can be sold to people with various agendas. It's a world of corporations, NGOs, political subterfuge, and black market dealers making profit off of human suffering, where a whole international organization was created to handle bioweapon incidents. It's disappointing that with this backdrop, the game's actual story is ultimately reduced to a battle in a volcano to save the world from a supervillain. It's a very comic book conclusion.
I know they're infected with a monster virus, but the visual of black people as writhing, animalistic subhumans is, uh... problematic, to say the least. Also, the image of Africa The Continent as a land of dead goats, megaphone-shouting lunatics and rabid, violent crowds. Also the scene early on where some brown savages are carrying off a scantily clad white woman. At least she turns into a tentacle monster shortly after instead of being rescued. It's hard to deny that they probably chose part of Africa as RE5's setting due to the misconception of the entire continent being a war-torn land of petty dictators.
Some parts of the game are much better than others. Generally, the early game is good. The ancient city level is... pretty bad. And it culminates in a laser mirror puzzle that some version of would feel at home in an older RE, but here feels out of place and rhythm-disrupting. I wouldn't necessarily say the game gets really bad toward the end, except for the two consecutive Wesker boss fights. The boss fights against Wesker are both bad and pretty dull. You don't really want your climactic final battle against a longtime series villain to be so boring. I imagine it's a bit less long and dull with another player, like everything in the game. I've played this game in co-op and alone, and you're really missing something by not playing co-op. Sheva's AI can be very frustrating and many parts are clearly designed for two human brains. Overall, RE5 ends pretty fast, and wears out its welcome less than RE4. The biggest problem with RE4, 5 and 6 is that they totally lose the spirit of survival horror. Because of that, I don’t have much to say about the gameplay of RE5 other than it’s a pretty decent action game. If you’ve played an action game, you’ve seen this kind of game design before, and it’s just not all that interesting.
Neither of the D LCs missions are especially good or interesting, but I want to mention them because they do show the beginnings of Capcom experimenting with the episodic formula that they'd continue with Revelations, Revelations 2 and RE6.
Lost in Nightmares sees Jill and Chris exploring Ozwell Spencer's sprawling mansion, and is meant to be a throwback to the old style of RE. Unfortunately it doesn't have the spark that made those old games good, probably because it was designed by the RE5 team. It mostly ends up just being an extended and unnecessary reference to the classic games.
Desperate Escape is essentially just another level of RE5, but you play as Jill. Since RE5 already exists and is a fine length, this doesn't really need to exist.
Time to complete: 9:17
Resident Evil: Revelations (2012)
It's very rough around the edges, far from the production value you'd expect from the series, and definitely not something I'd call exceptional, but there are some good things going on. It definitely does feel more like RE than 4 or 5, but still only kinda feels like survival horror. It would be no great loss if this game didn't exist, but it's an interesting experiment.
This game was originally made for 3DS, and it feels very inconsistent, in a way you'd kind of expect a spinoff game made for a handheld console to be. It’s split up into episodes that usually take around half an hour, and have you switching between characters, and the short length was meant to be tailored to a handheld experience. Usually each chapter starts with a sort of interlude related to the main story where you play as other characters in another location, then it switches back to Jill exploring the main ship the game takes place on. The bite sized nature of the episodes makes it feel easy to keep playing. Some parts of the game are very fun and flow well, and other parts are just dull or frustrating. The game feels like a confused mix of survival horror and RE5 style action, and between that and the constant character swapping and hit-or-miss dialogue, it feels like a game that’s not very sure of what it wants to be. The bulk of the game where you’re playing as Jill aboard the Queen Zenobia, a BOW infested ship adrift at sea, tends to be the strongest part of the game, and it’s a great setting that’s perhaps underwhelming due to the graphical capabilities of the 3DS. You end up in a similar setting near the end of RE7, also directed by Koushi Nakanishi, and it looks a lot better there, and does justice to the concept better. Like so many things in Revelations, it was a good idea, but a bit underwhelming in its execution. This period of Resident Evil was definitely a time of trying out new directions for the series. Revelations, RE6, and another spin off I didn’t play called Operation Raccoon City were all released in 2012. RE6 is bad, Revelations is okay, and by all accounts Operation Raccoon City is not all that good. After a year like this, it makes sense Capcom went back to the drawing board.
The writing in Revelations is not great, and is sometimes suddenly better or worse, but I appreciate what they were going for with the rapport between characters. I also feel like this game messes up that classic survival horror feel of exploring an intimidating place alone. You're always with a partner and always switching perspectives, so it never feels like you're alone, and because of that switching you never even really feel like you're isolated from the outside world on the Zenobia. It feels more like a TV show storytelling technique than something that works well for survival horror. Part of what makes survival horror work is that atmosphere created by feeling isolated and vulnerable, and it doesn't really work when the game is always cutting away between chapters to show what so-and-so is doing elsewhere.
Most of the characters get Kojima style designs, which I'm really not a fan of. Previous RE character designs were always very grounded without being too boring, and included classics like Jill's beret look, Jill's blue tube top look, Claire's magenta shorts look, and Ada's red dress look. I’m really not a fan of the skintight suit covered in tubes, straps and gadgets style of character design. It feels very “anime Rob Liefield.”
I appreciate what they wanted to do by telling a story in multiple perspectives, and how they did it to suit a handheld game, but at the same time I feel like it disrupts the flow of exploration and the atmosphere of survival horror. Revelations 2 does a significantly better job of telling a story in different perspectives. Revelations was pretty fun to play, and had some decent ideas, but it’s nothing I’ll ever return to. It would be remiss of me not to mention my favorite bad dialogue of the game, so here are all of the best lines:
"Sorry, I don't date cannibal monsters."
"Me and my sweet ass are on the way!"
“Jill, where are you?”
"I dunno. A room, I think."
"These terrorists must be brought to justice... blast it!"
-Monster Review Corner-
They went for an “under the sea” aesthetic for the monsters in this game, so almost every monster is a variation of a bloated pale humanoid. It does have guys that are like walking mutant sharks with arms that are swords and shields, which I’m not going to pretend isn’t sick, but they really, really don’t fit in a Resident Evil game. Oops, wrong game, these guys were supposed to go to Etrian Odyssey. The only kinda cool RE monster is the one that’s like a nightmare mermaid with spiny abdomen teeth. Overall monster score: 4/10
Time to complete: 5:12
Random fact: this was the first RE game where you could move while shooting.
Resident Evil 6 (2012)
I’m not going to have much to say about this one. RE6 is bad in many of the same ways the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy is. Abandoning almost everything that gives the series its unique identity in favor of trying to make a game that will sell a lot of copies. Obsessed with QTEs and explosive, loud set pieces, and resentful of player agency. "No no, silly player, look over here. Move at this speed. Go this way. We know best. Now that's entertainment!" It's a game that desperately wants to entertain and impress, dragging you by the wrist through loud, brash, guns-blazing action campaigns that totally miss the point of both horror and Resident Evil. Most of the time it just feels like an arcade shooter, and you're expected to stick to the script so closely that it may as well be a rail shooter. It really does take away everything that makes survival horror special: it doesn’t have a slow pace, it’s not about exploration, you don’t feel vulnerable or isolated, there’s no sense of map knowledge or pathfinding, it has overwrought combat mechanics, there’s pretty much no quiet time, the atmosphere is more goofy than scary, and it takes forever to finish. Sometimes it feels like this game really wanted to be Left 4 Dead 2: the way campaigns are set up like movies, the special zombie types, the co-op play, the sprawling levels. Except the devs seemed to have no clue as to what actually makes Left 4 Dead fun. The producer said the idea behind RE6 was to create the “ultimate horror entertainment,” which perfectly explains why it feels so much like a bad movie you’re being forced to sit through. It’s bombastic and stupid like a Fast and Furious movie, but doesn’t even have the idiot charm of one of those movies. Resident Evil 6 is a long, forgettable and stupid third-person action game that doesn't even have the common decency to be fun.
Time to complete: Who knows. I'd finish this game if someone was paying me to, but they're not. People say it takes over 20 hours, which sounds unbearable.
Resident Evil: Revelations 2
Finally some good fucking Resident Evil. I was actually kind of surprised by how good this game was, something the mediocre Revelations didn't prepare me for. It's a very welcome return to a more survival horror style of gameplay. From the start, it's dark, lonely and atmospheric. You do always have a companion, but it's still mostly very good at capturing that survival horror isolation feeling.
It does have a few holdovers from RE6, most notably sprinting, skills and dodging, but it's the same style of dodge as RE3R, which doesn't feel totally out of place in a survival horror game, rather than the over the top rolls and dives of RE6. It doesn't have any of the dumb combat moves or the pointless stamina gauge or the action movie bombast. Skills are mostly passive and have only a very slight effect on gameplay. To me, this is a good thing, but it also means there may as well be no skills at all. It feels like something that’s needlessly tacked on, as though they wanted to convince a certain subset of their potential audience that it’s not just a classic survival horror experience, or perhaps they were trying to make it feel more modern, or extend replay value, or all of the above. In any case, it doesn’t need to be there and I’m glad it has little effect.
The game has a good deal of combat, but combat is simple enough to fit into a survival horror game. It would have been fine with less, but it's still fine, because it actually has things outside of combat, unlike 4-6, and lets you play, explore, and figure things out without a lot of overbearing guidance. A lot of the puzzles and navigation feel like classic RE, and it’s a great return to form in that regard. Sometimes it has a bit too much combat for my taste, but this is made up for by long stretches with few or no enemies, and it has those survival horror moments of exploration and puzzle solving to balance things out.
This game does AI companions right, for the first time in the series. Moira and Natalia are both really useful, and I found myself wanting to switch to them almost as often as I wanted to play Claire and Barry. You also don't really need to babysit them because it's pretty hard for them to die and they’re good at following behind. There are multiple good segments of the game where your characters separate, and Claire or Barry need to cover their partner while they traverse a room to gain access to the next area. Unlike in RE5, though, you’re not required to have a second player to have fun during these parts, and I don’t think it’s even possible to play the game co-op. At first glance this seems like a missed opportunity, but honestly, if someone had to play either of the secondary characters full time, it would get boring very quickly. I think it was a necessary sacrifice to make the two character system work well in a single player experience. I really don’t mind, since I think of survival horror as a single player genre. As a result, it lacks both the painfully slow character switching of RE0 and the painfully stupid AI of RE5.
It’s funny that just as in RE5, Rev 2 ends in two consecutive Wesker boss fights, but this time against Alex Wesker rather than Albert. Also, these Wesker boss fights are much better. The final boss makes use of the character swapping, and actually does it really well. Barry is running from mutant Alex through cliffside caves, and you switch between him and Claire, who’s in a helicopter with a sniper rifle. It’s very much a Resident Evil fight, in that it’s more about positioning and survival than it is about fast shooting or burning the boss down with damage.
I also actually think this game has a good story for the series, but mostly what makes it stand out is the characters themselves. I also really appreciate the callbacks to previous games. It refers back to things from RE1, Code Veronica, Revelations, and RE5. Alex Wesker, who I think previously only existed in lore notes, is the villain, and the Uroboros virus of RE5 plays a small role. It makes nods to the larger mythos without being so convoluted that someone who doesn’t know everything about every game would have trouble following. The central story is easy to follow: you’re trapped on an unknown mastermind’s monster infested deathtrap island, infected with a virus that causes you to turn into a disgusting, mindless monster if your level of fear gets too high. I love their choices of Claire and Barry as the main characters. Claire being a beloved series staple, and Barry being an unexpected but surprisingly great choice. I also love how you play in two different timelines, Claire and Moira on the island six months before, and Barry and Natalia searching for them in the present. You travel through a lot of the same areas, but fight different enemies, take different paths and solve different puzzles. Rev 2 also has the most naturalistic character dialogue and acting the series has seen thus far. It feels like the rapport they were going for in Rev 1, but done better, and both pairs of player characters play off of each other well. I like that Claire takes a matter-of-fact, seen it all before approach to the situation, because she’s been through two different self-contained zombie apocalypses, while Moira the teenager is always cursing and yelling and basically saying “what the fuck,” and she really acts like I think a teenager might in such a situation. Barry, the dumpy old dude with dad jokes who came prepared with his dorky backpack and cargo pants, and the fearless 10-year-old girl Natalia, also go together well. By the end, I found myself actually caring about what happened to these characters.
Between Rev 2's gameplay, dialogue, and visual style, it's easy to see how it paved the way for the third-person RE2 and RE3 remakes. It was a very good move for the series, and I'm surprised it's not mentioned more often. Despite being a sequel to a spin-off, it was at the time better at being Resident Evil than anything since REmake, which came out thirteen years prior. It has its highs and lows, but it’s a big step in the right direction, and a good survival horror game. It’s not quite the same quality of RE7, RE2R or RE3R, but I really liked Revelations 2.
-Monster Review Corner-
Honestly, the monster designs are one of the weakest parts of Rev 2. The principal zombie-likes are just these kind of blobby, gross dudes who run at you, sometimes while holding wrenches or other makeshift weapons. Most of the enemies follow the same pattern, kinda blobby humanoids that look like bloated corpses or conglomerations of body parts, and I find it pretty dull. There are also some generic RE dogs that for some reason have pig heads. I never hold zombie dogs against a Resident Evil game, because you can’t have a Resident Evil without evil dogs. I don’t make the rules. As you progress you just get bigger, meaner blobby corpse guys with different abilities. There are only really two exceptions that I find less boring than the rest: Glasps, and Alex Wesker’s monstrous forms. Glasps are invisible, bloated flying insectoids that instantly kill you if they catch you. In order to kill them, you need to switch to Natalia, who can sense them and point them out, then switch back to Barry to take your shot. They cause this weird vision effect when they’re near, implying that their invisibility is something they’re doing to your mind, which to me feels less out of place than physical invisibility. If you had asked me before if I thought an invisible enemy was suited to RE, I would’ve said no, but Glasps feel like a creature out of a STALKER game, and I like it. Alex's final form is classic RE, like the Tyrant or G-Mutation designs, but with more of a disfigured crone vibe. Her unnaturally long spiky spine and humanoid limbs give her a creepy marionette feel. The heavily mutated humanoids, like Nemesis, tend to be among the best RE monster designs. Before she injects herself with Uroboros and transforms, she looks like an ancient haglike being with the air of a hunched vulture, with tubes and staples and half her face peeled off, a victim of her own T-Phobos virus.
Time to complete: 7:45
A practically perfect length. It feels like a long and satisfying experience that's paced well and wastes very little of your time.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017)
I actually played this game in early 2019, before I ever conceived of this journey through the series, and I was as surprised as anyone at Resident Evil 7 being a good game. An oft repeated sentiment among RE fans who dislike RE7 is "it's not Resident Evil." In my mind, that's a very strange thing to say, since it borrows almost all of its design principles from the classic trilogy. I think the negativity some people feel towards this game is a knee-jerk reaction to the first person perspective. I've learned that like any fandom, Resident Evil's is full of idiots who just kind of say things, and barely make any attempt to understand the thing they like so much. (Not to say everyone who's an RE fan is an idiot. People like Suzi the Sphere Hunter and Critique Quest on YouTube have plenty of insightful things to say. Your average video game comment leaver or redditor is just a "whoa, cool videogame" meme). RE7 brings back so many things from classic RE: a slow methodical pace, save rooms, a classic style map, limited inventory space, item boxes, emblem keys, limited ammo and healing, a small array of weapons, a relatively small number of enemies, a creepy isolated mansion, a lone protagonist, survival horror puzzles, a focus on exploring in order to escape, item-base progression, simple mechanics, a feeling of vulnerability, environmental storytelling, a relatively simple story, a harmonious balance of all these elements, and a short game length. Even the character switch at one point near the end of the game is classic RE. The design philosophy applied to RE7 is classic survival horror, through and through. This is so much the case that I noticed myself playing in a similar way to the classic era games. Checking my map to carefully plan the safest, most optimal route. Managing inventory for the least amount of backtracking. Making sure I checked every room as thoroughly as possible for useful items. Slowly making my way through a small but interconnected and well designed map. Feeling that sense of tension every time I opened an unfamiliar door. Getting absorbed in the atmosphere and taking my time. It's weird to say playing a horror game feels comforting, or cozy, but RE7 does, in a way. All of this isn't to say it feels just like playing the old games. It's a reinvention, rather than a re-creation, and I think that was the right route to take.
RE7 is the first game to use Capcom's RE Engine, and it looks extremely good, especially its lighting. The one thing that doesn't look exceptional is the models for people and their movements and expressions. People move and make facial expressions in that weird video game way that never looks natural, and it's kind of impressive how far Capcom has come since 2017 in that department. This is greatly improved in the 2 & 3 remakes, which also both use the RE Engine. The first thing I noticed while replaying this game is how incredibly detailed everything is, including the sound design. You hear your character's slightly hesitant breath, his footsteps, the creaks and groans of an old house, and other muffled sounds that can't possibly be attributed to a house's age. All of the visual details let you imagine how every part of the Baker farm slowly fell into disrepair, the toll that multiple floods took on the place, and the gradual disintegration of a family's sanity and normalcy reflected in the physical dilapidation of the house. Like the Spencer mansion in 1996, the Baker property is as much a character as it is a setting. The return to a seemingly abandoned, sprawling house as a setting really helps establish that this is a return to form, a return to slow, creeping horror. The house is a shadowy urbex nightmare of abandoned spaces and black mold. The washed up tanker and the mines you explore in the game's final stretch aren't nearly as memorable or characterful as the house. RE7 succeeds in actually being scary more than most Resident Evil games. It's very good at being a horror game, but has all of the survival horror gameplay that makes the genre so satisfying.
The RE7 team wisely created a new narrative that’s almost entirely disconnected from the convoluted mythos the series has been building on since Code Veronica, but used the ending to leave the narrative open to that connection to the larger story. This, combined with the first person perspective, makes the game feel more intimate and more focused, which really works for it. It's really more a story about the house and its inhabitants, about Eveline, Mia, Zoe and the Baker family than it is about its protagonist, Ethan Winters. In my opinion, he's one of the weaker parts of the game. This series isn’t exactly renowned for its brilliant character writing, but he’s just kinda there, like American cheese. At least characters like Jill, Carlos, Ada, Claire, Chris, Sheva, Barry and Wesker are likeable and/or memorable in a video game character kinda way. Ethan feels intentionally designed to be the most unremarkable mid-30s white dude you could think of, almost like he's meant for a target audience, and he drags an excellent game down a little bit. Even Nemesis, the monster whose only line is "STAAAARRSs," is more memorable. They can really do better. So while I’m very excited to see what they do with RE8 after the quality of the last three games, I was disappointed to learn I’d still be playing as Ethan. I'm hoping they'll figure out a way to make him less lame. The other thing is, almost every RE protagonist is a member of S.T.A.R.S. or the BSAA, or someone who knows how to shoot a gun, so they at least have some explanation for how good they are at handling these situations. Ethan is literally just some guy who goes into a swamp to find his wife.
RE7 is at heart an amalgamation of a bunch of horror tropes and references, even references to the series itself, and yet it feels more like a loving homage to horror than a hackneyed rehash. Meet the family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre as you explore the mansion from Resident Evil/The People Under the Stairs and evade your wife who’s now a deadite from Evil Dead, meet the gross body horror man from From Beyond, shambling swamp monsters, an evil witch grandma, and the little girl from F.E.A.R. You also solve a puzzle from Saw in a serial killer’s murder maze. It's all bundled together and interwoven so well that it feels like something fresh and unique rather than horror's greatest hits.
Time to complete: 7:40
Like all of the best survival horror games, it ends right before it starts wearing out its welcome. The short length keeps any of its ideas from getting stale.
-Monster Review Corner-
There really aren't that many different kinds of monsters in this game, which I'm fine with. The principle zombie-likes of this game are slimy black sinewy humanoids called molded. Eveline, the bioweapon in the form of a little girl, is the cause behind everything bad that happened to the house and family, and she creates a black mold which infects those she wants to control, and which molded are made of. A lot of people think they're boring enemies, but personally I think they're perfectly suited to the setting of a dilapidated, water-damaged house that's being slowly reclaimed by the surrounding wilderness. The first enemy you actually encounter in this game is your wife Mia, who switches between normal Mia and evil deadite Mia. She also chops your hand off with a chainsaw, which is pretty fun. Jack is the Nemesis of RE7's early game. He's an unnaturally pallid middle-aged man who stalks you and has regenerative abilities which are later revealed to be... extensive. As you explore the house in the early game, you're always on edge because you know he could be lurking anywhere. In his later boss form, he's a bulging body horror monstrosity. Marguerite is another enemy who stalks you through the boat house with a creepy lantern. She creates bugs that attack you, so she's like a nasty bug crone. As a boss she employs hit and run tactics, lurking in the dark waiting for you, so slow and careful is the best way to fight her. Eveline is just the little girl from FEAR. No two ways about it. I'm honestly not a big fan of her, just because I kind of hate the creepy little kid horror trope.
Side note: I think this is the first game in the whole series without evil dogs.
Overall monster score: 7/10
Resident Evil 2 (2019)
To my taste, Resident Evil 2 remake might be the most ideal incarnation of Resident Evil that exists. It has everything that makes survival horror great, and it’s all implemented extremely well. Combine this with the gorgeous graphics and chilling atmosphere and you have a practically perfect survival horror game. It feels like the culmination of everything that worked in the series over the years, with the visual fidelity to do it justice. It’s a good remake because it does more than just faithfully recreate the original – it takes the best ideas from across the series. It has the methodical pace of classic survival horror, the backtracking and slow unlocking of new areas, the shadowy, eerie atmosphere of REmake, the highly detailed graphics and sound design of RE7, the item combining of RE3, Revelations 2 and RE7, the close over-the-shoulder view of RE4 and beyond, which notably feels like Rev 2. I’ve talked about how survival horror is a balance of things, and in that sense, RE2R is superbly balanced. Visually, it’s so detailed and nails the atmosphere so perfectly that it makes you want to move slowly just because it feels like you should. Moving forward feels foreboding. The way zombies look and move is scary, and lickers are terrifying. Narratively, it’s the same story but told better, and characters are much more human and believable than the original. Leon is just a regular dude, not the regular shithead he became in RE4 and RE6, and Claire is a great character. The Raccoon City police station is the strongest setting of the game, it’s all shadowed corridors, bloodstained walls and shattered windows. You really get the sense of it being a building that was formerly used as a museum, and the barricaded doors and aftermath of carnage everywhere help you imagine what happened as people fought for their lives, and lost, before you arrived. The sound design is extremely well done and detailed, which I never noticed until I played with headphones. (I wish I had paid more attention to sound design on this series playthrough. It can be an important part of survival horror). Gameplay is no slouch, either. Patient, precise shooting and tactical retreats pay off, and inventory management remains an integral part of progressing through the game. You eventually have much more inventory space than in the classic games, but it still never really feels like too much until right near the end of the game. Puzzles and item usage feel just how they should in survival horror. The Sherry and Ada portions, in Claire and Leon’s campaigns respectively, are both a nice change of pace and they’re short enough that they don’t wear out their welcome.
Strangely, I don’t feel like I have much to say about this game, just because it so well embodies everything I’ve already cited as being good about survival horror. The police station especially is exceptional, in terms of atmosphere, map design, the layout of enemy encounters, methodical play, and balance. It’s very light on anything resembling fast paced action, and I love that. All in all, I think this is the most well-rounded and well-made Resident Evil game to date. It would be a great place to start the series, and a great way to show someone everything good about the genre.
Time to complete:
First run, Leon A: 7:49
Second run, Claire A: 6:39
Resident Evil 3 (2020)
Here are the common criticisms people have of this game, and why they’re wrong:
“It’s bad because they cut content from the original.”
First of all, these two are both excellent games, but they’re different enough to be completely separate games. Even the maps and the paths you travel through the game are totally different. Sure, it would be fun to see a clock tower area in the style of the remakes, but I’m not going to hold nonexistent content against a game, especially one that’s this good. If you want to relive RE3, it still exists. No one seemed to complain about how different RE2R is.
“It’s too short.”
It’s pretty much the same length as RE3, and it’s a fine length for a survival horror game. I like that the game is fast paced and concise, and this captures the spirit of classic survival horror. In this day and age I find short games refreshing, and brevity is a mark in a game’s favor rather than a mark against it. Also, when a game is short, I’m a million times more likely to want to replay it in the future. Case in point, this was the second time I played this game. If it took 20 hours, if it even took 10 hours, it would run too long.
“It’s an action game, not survival horror.”
It’s more of an action game than RE2R, but even that is up for debate. I feel like throughout a lot of the game, you’re really not doing more shooting than you do in RE2R, and Jill isn’t really any more heavily armed than Leon or Claire end up being in that game. There are more boss fights, and more explosions, though, and by the end of the game you have a ton of ammo and resources, but they generally give you tons of stuff at the end of these games. I mentioned that original RE3 felt more like an action movie than the previous two games, and the remake is a lot better at being an action movie. It has a breakneck start where you’re almost immediately in a fight for your life against Nemesis as he bursts through the wall of Jill’s apartment and chases you through the streets, which culminates in the player ramming him off of a parking garage with a car. I’m normally not a big fan of explosive set pieces in games, but this one is really good and is great at setting the tone for the rest of the game. Just like the original, it’s more action oriented, but it’s just much better at action than the original RE3. I really wouldn’t classify it as an action game, like a lot of people seem to. Its pedigree and presentation are thoroughly survival horror, in my mind. Inventory management is an integral part of the game and most of the game has that slow survival horror gameplay. One thing I like less about this game than RE2R is that it has fewer puzzles. It’s not like it doesn’t have any, but they take a backseat, which is why I’d call it more action-oriented survival horror.
“Nemesis doesn’t show up often enough.”
I really don’t know where this comes from, because I feel like if he showed up any more often than he already does it would get irritating and redundant. There are literally four separate boss fights against him, and multiple parts where he chases Jill around. How much more do you need in a five and a half hour game?
Now that that’s cleared up, on to other things.
The Resident Evil 2 Remake has a lot of noticeable similarities to the original version, but Resident Evil 3 Remake is basically a completely different game, and I honestly think that’s a good thing. Somehow, when you play the original RE3 in 2020, it feels more dated than RE2, and I thought RE2 was a better game.
Back on the topic of action: this game does a thing video games do I don’t usually like, which is when the main character is often seen falling off of exploding things and staggering through corridors and burning buildings and thrown against cars and so on and so forth. Here, I don’t really mind it though, maybe because it’s not a long game and these parts take up little of its play time. It also makes the fight against Nemesis feel more immediate and tangible. It does often feel like playing an action movie, but it’s Terminator 2, not Michael Bay. Also, the bad Nemesis boss fights of the original are replaced with actually good boss fights.
One thing I really like about RE3R is the way characters are presented. Jill and Carlos both feel like more relatable, human characters, with actual personalities, and this makes you much more invested in their fight to escape the city. They end up being two of my favorite versions of RE characters, and I hope we see them in future games, though I find that kind of unlikely. Resident Evil is really not great when it comes to consistency in characters. It’s a shame because I’d love to see a direct sequel with this version of Jill and Carlos. Apart from these two, even the rest of the cast are given a lot more character and feel human.
The Carlos segment of the game in the hospital is much more atmospheric and interesting than the original’s Carlos section, and this one ends with a siege style fight much like the cabin fight of RE4. On the topic of RE4, this game has a document explaining that Nemesis was created by implanting some kind of parasite into a Tyrant, and the author of the document berates Umbrella for going the route of parasites due to their unpredictability. You also fight a few zombies in the game who were infected by Nemesis and grow alien-looking parasites on their heads. It can be assumed that this is tying the lore of these games in with the Las Plagas parasites of RE4 and RE5 and paving the way for the RE4 Remake. I think this is neat, even though I wish they wouldn’t remake RE4 on account of it being garbage.
All in all, I really like this game, and it’s one of my favorites of 2020. It’s a very good survival horror game with tons of detail and character that can be finished in two or three sittings. I have pretty much no complaints about it other than the aforementioned lack of puzzles. It’s more fast paced survival horror, but it’s very good in it’s own right.
Time to complete: 4:36 (2nd playthrough)
I don’t know the exact time of my first playthrough, but my old save file that’s right before the final boss was at 5:52.
Final Thoughts
I feel like after playing all of these games, it should be asked: is the story of Resident Evil any good? The answer to that is… kinda, sometimes? But also no, not really? It’s often entertaining, scary, gory, tense and atmospheric in the way that a good horror movie is. It’s also a little silly, often in a charming way, like how you can always tell at any given moment that this setting is a Japanese interpretation of America. The story itself goes well off the rails by the time you reach RE4. I mean, you’re rescuing the president’s daughter from evil zombie villagers and space alien tentacle monsters and cultists and ogres and then the zombies get body armor and guns. (Let's just not ever talk about the story of Code Veronica.) But the story isn’t really the point, is it? I think the series is vastly improved because there is a narrative, and it just wouldn't be the same without it, but you won’t find anything too deep or meaningful in that narrative. The one saving grace is that a defining feature of the story is ultimately the fact that corporations and governments are evil and only care about profit, to the extent of sacrificing hundreds of people in multiple biological weaponry incidents. That aspect at least feels true to life, especially in the midst of a pandemic that neither our government, nor the extremely powerful corporations that exercise control over that government, are doing anything about. Umbrella is an international corporation that no one dares or bothers to oppose who maintains their own paramilitary force, has their own private prisons and research sites, and has their hands in every part of the government and infrastructure of Raccoon City and who knows how many other cities. The villain is always ultimately the unchecked corporation - even in RE7, the nightmare family that seems disconnected from the outside world is ultimately revealed by in-game documents to be directly linked to corporate experimentation.
In Revelations 2, as well as the new 2 & 3 remakes, the characters are at least likable and there’s nothing incredibly dumb like you’ll find in RE 4, 5 or 6. Some would cite the part at the end of RE3R where Jill uses a humongous railgun called the FINGeR (Ferromagnetic Infantry-use Next Generation Railgun) to kill the final form of Nemesis as something dumb, but they are wrong. The characters of RE2R, RE3R and Revelations 2 are likeable and human, so they seem to at least be going in the right direction in that regard. The storytelling of RE7, RE2R and RE3R returns to the more grounded approach of the original trilogy, which is a good thing, and I think a good sign for the future of the series and its setting.
There’s something I’ve noticed about RE games, which might just boil down to my own personal preferences. In pretty much every game, you end up in an entirely new location in the final act of the game, and that last part is never as good as the rest. In RE2R, you spend most of the game in the police station, then go to the sewers (and the orphanage if you’re playing as Claire). For the last stretch of the game you end up at NEST, Umbrella’s secret underground lab, and this part is weaker than the rest. Likewise, the ship and mines areas in RE7 are weaker than the majority of the game, the lab in RE3 and its remake, the lab in REmake, even the last section of RE5. This isn’t to say these parts are necessarily bad, just that they tend to be worse than the rest. At the same time, I think they’re necessary changes of pace and locale. I think there are two reasons for this: one, the first locations of RE games tend to be very strong settings with lots of character, and two, it’s an an example of a problem all horror fiction faces, which is that the more you ramp up tension, the harder it gets to do it in believable and interesting ways. If horror goes on too long, situations become predictable and it loses its bite, and survival horror games are no exception. Ramping up tension and action necessarily compromises the things that initially make horror enjoyable, like slow and eerie pacing, the danger of an unknown threat, the vulnerability of character or player, and the slow unraveling of mysterious and fatal circumstances. At the same time, horror needs a final act, needs some kind of closure, otherwise the building of tension feels like it was for nothing and the story is unsatisfying. I have no idea what the solution to this is, except brevity, which good RE games are very good at.
I liked a few RE games already, but playing through them all really made me realize I like this series more than I previously thought, and I like survival horror a lot more than I thought. The really bad and long mid-series slump that lasted about thirteen years can’t be ignored, but I really like more than half of the games in the series. It created an entire genre with a devoted following, and I feel like RE2R brought the genre back into the limelight somewhat. You can see the influence of the genre even on games that aren’t really in the genre, like Prey, Gone Home, Bloodborne, and Left 4 Dead. I’m really looking forward to playing through my list of other survival horror games.
Things Resident Evil showed me that I love about survival horror:
-Slow paced, thoughtful gameplay. You’re rarely rushed, and action isn’t the focus. Generally there’s nothing dragging you along in a certain direction, forcing you to look at or interact with certain things. It’s up to you to figure out the way forward.
-An emphasis on exploration. This is tied in with the previous point. A lot of the fear and tension comes from not knowing what's through the next door or what will happen next, but knowing you have to explore to progress. These games have a lot of backtracking, a healthy sense of map knowledge and memory as a useful skill, and lots of item-based progression. As I mentioned in my note about puzzles before, the whole map feels like a puzzle to be solved.
-A feeling of vulnerability, reinforced by things like limited defense options, slow movement, scarcity of items, limited inventory space, and simple combat. This goes hand in hand with the sense of isolation usually found in survival horror games.
-Environmental storytelling. Setting details being revealed through documents, destruction, corpses, bloodstains, locales, and even puzzles.
-They aren’t defenseless walking sims. It's on you to survive. Having a way to respond to threats, but not feeling like you ever have quite enough, is much scarier than being defenseless. It's because it's a game - mechanically, you know a game isn't just going to give you no defenses, then throw you to the wolves. Survival horror acknowledges its framework of video game, its limitations and advantages. It gives more of a feeling of success or failure hinging on your decisions rather than on scripted events. The player feels like they have more agency, even if it's not always strictly the case.
-Making use of silence, something games aren't generally good at. This ties in with quiet time, something I wish more games were aware of. That is, times when the player is just quietly left to their own devices, exploring alone, solving puzzles, reading notes. You're not in danger 100% of the time, which gives the danger teeth.
-Simplicity of play, or accessibility. These games generally don’t contain any difficult mechanics or concepts that need to be explained, have little need for tutorials, and are easy to understand and play. Things like difficulty settings, auto aim, and the assist modes seen in RE2R and RE3R expand accessibility too. I think difficulty goes in this category too. Honestly, most survival horror games aren’t all that hard, because if you died all the time, you’d get bored and frustrated. Survival horror games seem to actually want you to have a good time. Imagine that.
-Mostly short playtime. A genre that's often good at not wasting your time. It’s very good for people without much time or people who like to actually be able to finish games and move on to other games, or replay games. It might sound weird, but also, sometimes I feel like really long games have something to hide under all that repetitive content.
-New weapons or abilities feel earned, because you generally go through a lot to get to them and they’re not handed out very often.
-A harmonious balance of elements. When a survival horror game is good, it elegantly combines all of the aforementioned traits.
RE Score Sheet
Endings where I flew away in a helicopter: 8
Crank or valve handles collected and turned: 16
Zombies or dogs or birds that burst through windows: 19
Object pushing puzzles: 14
Shaped indentations filled (including cogs): 71
Jump scares: 13
Puzzles where you configure shapes or valves or gears or numbers or lights a certain way: 18
Oversized animal types: 12
(Spider, Bee, Moth, Snake, Shark, Worm, Scorpion, Cockroach, Centipede, Bat, Salamander, A Different Bat)
Rooms with monsters in tubes: 8
Gigantic mutant plants: 4
Times when it looked like a character died but they didn't really: 10
Secret subterranean labs: 10
Switches that change the water level: 5
Batteries/cables attached to things: 9
Clock towers: 4
Vaccines synthesized: 4
Self destruct sequences: 7
Helicopters shot down or otherwise destroyed right before they were used to escape: 6
Unique viruses: 9 (Progenitor Virus, T-Virus, G-Virus, T-Veronica Virus, Uroburos Virus, T-Abyss Virus, C-Virus, T-Phobos Virus, Mold Virus)
Resident Evil Tier List
Obligatory tier list disclaimer: tier lists are stupid and bad and fail to acknowledge the many nuances of things.
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Weekend Top Ten #452
Top Ten Monsters from Children’s Media
It's Halloween! Literally today! Did you notice? I think it's been a little bit less omnipresent this year, but maybe that's because I've not been going round the shops as much. It's inadvisable to go trick-or-treating so that kinda takes a bit of the excitement out of the equation too. But you can still buy pumpkins and sweets and watch The Nightmare Before Christmas with the kids, so it’s not a total wash-out. And I love Halloween, so I’ll always try to make the bare minimumest of efforts; our Halloween is being a bit weird regardless, but I’m determined (as of writing) to give them a nice, indoorsy find-the-candy activity, as well as making some spooky houses and dressing up as, I dunno, Death of the Endless or Borat or Angus Deaton or whoever they’re into at the moment.
Anyway, kids and Halloween. One thing that’s quite good about kids is introducing them to films, and then gauging when they’re ready for more advanced films. So already this Spooky Season we’ve watched the original Addams Family movie (Values coming this weekend!); creepy and kooky, yeah, but one thing it lacks is a truly memorable monster. Thing? Cousin It? I guess, but one thing that kids’ films (and books, and TV…) excel at is creating terrifying monsters. And, hey, it’s Halloween! Let’s celebrate!
So what follows is a list of monsters, ghouls, and other miserables that have traumatised me in my youth, or else that I just thought were hella creepy as an adult, from all across the spectrum of children’s media. Book characters, TV characters, and lots of creatures from movies. Are they scary? Well, yes; in some cases, very much so. In others, I just hope I haven’t given my children nightmares by letting them watch Spirited Away. I mean, seriously guys: children are supposed to watch (or read) these things! Neil Gaiman, I’m looking at you, you dangerous bastard. Buttons for eyes?! For Christ’s sake.
Anyway, here we go: my favourite monsters from children’s media. Get your creep on.
Gmork (The Neverending Story, 1984): I’ve never read the book, but the big bad wolf from the movie legit terrified me as a child. Horrific, huge, a black beast with a vicious visage; he was a force of nature. Something about him made him unnatural (the fact he was a special effect?) and this added to his uncanny horror. Scarier than American Werewolf, and I saw that when I was a kid too.
The Other Mother (Coraline, Neil Gaiman, 2002): too old for this to be a childhood nightmare, she’s still unrelentingly scary; a would-be supermum with homicidal overtones, that primal fear of your carers turning on you. In reality she’s some kind of timeless creature of consumption (“the Beldam”) with supernatural powers, so yeah – scary. But really it’s the fact she has buttons for eyes that terrifies.
The Grand High Witch (The Witches, Roald Dahl, 1983): dispensing with common witchy folklore, Dahl created a coven of hideous, bald, toe-less monsters who united in a campaign to kill all children. The Grand High Witch is particularly evil and ugly, with a suitably diabolical plan; the greatest monster and most insidious villain Dahl created. She also inflicts wounds on the protagonists, which – admirably – the book’s ending does not gloss over.
The Weeping Angels (Doctor Who, from 2007): is Doctor Who a kids’ property? I have always and probably will always say yes, so I get to include these scary-ass statues. A monster who can only move when you’re not looking at it, suitably scary; but the fact it moves even if you blink? Nightmare fuel, administered straight into the veins courtesy of Stephen Moffat. Great backstory, beautiful gimmick, and a wonderful design; classic Who monstrosity.
Terror Dogs (Ghostbusters, 1984): it’s a comedy so most of its ghosts and ghouls end up being played more or less for laughs; obviously the likes of Slimer and Stay-Puft, but even Gozer isn’t really presented as scary. But the Terror Dogs are something else; meaty, hefty monsters with gruesome faces, who chase and catch our heroes. The scene where they grab Dana, arms tearing through chair upholstery, is proper horror stuff.
Wheelers (Return to Oz, 1985): another literary critter I only saw in a film, the Wheelers freaked me the eff out as a kid. Punkish rogues who tool around on unnervingly long limbs ending in tiny wheels, they’re teased by creepy graffiti in a post-apocalyptic Oz, chasing and bedevilling Dorothy. Genuinely threatening, genuinely creepy.
No-Face (Spirited Away, 2001): partly it’s the creepy visage, a ghostly body with featureless face (hence, er, “No-Face” I guess); but then he starts eating people, becoming a vast, amorphous monster, seemingly unstoppable, destroying all in his path. His subsequent redemption (of a sort) reveals shades and depths that deepens the film as a whole, but he’s still scary as all get out at the start.
The Skeksis (The Dark Crystal, 1982): a veritable tribe of hideous vulture-things, part of their unsettling nature is their scary design (all shrivelled flesh and sharp edges) and part of it is their repulsive behaviour, their regal dress shredded and filthy; they turn on each other, one-up each other, seek to undermine (or even kill!) each other. They’re just nasty, and as a kid I found them incredibly sinister.
Oogie Boogie (The Nightmare Before Christmas, 1993): in a film stuffed with monsters of various shapes and sizes, it’s a fat hessian sack who provides the true scares. A violent and threatening monster with the manner of a mob boss and a dash of New Orleans cool, he’s a literal bag full of bugs, slimy and sinister and full of malevolence. He threatens Santa, for Pete’s sake!
Constance (Monster House, 2006): another straight-up horror film for kids (even if it’s got gags and stuff), Constance is a ghost (scary!) who possesses a house. It’s a scary house for sure, and the various tricks and traps she enacts for the kids are Poltergeist-y in the extreme. There’s an interesting sadness here that might undercut the scares in the end, but for the most part the house is a big ol’ fright-fest.
Right, there we go; ten proper scary monsters that are supposed to be suitable for kids. Can you imagine it? Wheels for hands, buttons for eyes, and no friggin’ face! No wonder we’re so messed up as a species if this is what we’ve been mainlining as children.
Shame I never got round to Zelda from Terrahawks, mind.
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With Us
A/N: Ninth spooky season post! I would like to clarify that everything written in this story is complete fiction and isn’t to be taken as a true portrayal of reality. The story will start under the keep reading as has been common for the spooky season short stories thus far.
Summary: Sometimes interesting things are dangerous. Sometimes, it’s better to stick to the mundane and less mysterious parts of life.
Word Count: 770
Genre: Horror
******WARNING: Mentions of blood & general creepy/horror stuff*******
“Why are we doing this again?” You whine.
Hyungwon rolls his eyes at you. “Because we never do anything interesting.”
��Okay, I’m going to ignore the fact that you basically said we’re boring. How is exploring an abandoned warehouse interesting?”
In response to your question, you only get a shrug from him. Not that you should’ve expected one anyways, he’s the type to choose his words carefully. Your flashlights cut through the dark building, casting nightmarish looking shadows on the walls. The air felt heavy, like it was trying to weigh you down so you couldn’t leave. Or maybe it was trying to force you out. Either way, it was foreboding- you shouldn’t be here. At least, that’s what the voice in the back of your head was saying.
Something about this place felt wrong. Twisted and disturbed. Tables were overturned, laying cracked and decaying on the concrete floors. Rusted metal chains attached to the ceiling were starting to fall apart, unable to hold anything at this point. Lockers lined one of the walls, covered in graffiti- but there were some words that seemed to have a different consistency than the paint of the others. Phrases like ‘this is the home of death’, ‘surviving here is impossible’, ‘turn back now’, ‘leave’. Creeping closer to the lockers, the voice in your head had risen from a whisper to a scream, telling you to turn back. Every step forward you took filling you with dread.
Once you were standing in front of the lockers, you reached out to trace the letters of ‘leave’. Only, the second you touched one, you recoiled in horror. That wasn’t paint. Paint has a thick, even consistency, and once it dries it keeps the smoothness. This, this… Felt like blood, not fresh paint. Examining your fingers, it became clear- it was indeed blood, a dark red coating the tips of your fingers. Breathing heavily, using all your willpower not to scream, you scrambled back hurriedly. The need to leave was more intense than it ever had been.
“Hyungwon, we need to go.” You whispered urgently.
“Why? What happened? Did a puppy jump scare you?” He snarked, walking over to where you stood.
Turning to face him with wide eyes. “No, because of this.” You waved your hand in front of his face.
Hyungwon’s eyebrows furrowed, he grabbed your hand and shone the flashlight on it. “Is that… Blood?”
You nodded frantically, turning the flashlight to the lockers. “From there.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s go.”
A sense of relief filtered through your being, like a weight had been lifted from your chest. It didn’t take but a few minutes to make your way through the warehouse to its entrance. But you never actually got through it. An invisible barrier of sorts was preventing the exit you so desperately wished for. You were trapped. Panic flooded your veins, freezing your brain and jump starting your adrenaline. The sound of footsteps coming from behind had you snapping your head in that direction.
A child stood ten feet behind you, a sad expression painted on their face. Tears trickling down their cheeks as they sniffled, looking at you with wide eyes. “Will you help us?”
“Us?” Hyungwon asked, his voice a higher pitch than usual.
“We want to go home, but he won’t let us.” The child responded, pointing to the back of the warehouse.
Nothing was there, it was just dark shadows- or so it seemed at first. Slowly the shadows began to seem like they were moving, forming into a shape, a figure. The newly formed figure stepped forward slowly, and with each step it took your fight or flight response amped up. Whatever it was, it wasn’t natural, it was malformed and demonic. Lopsided limbs without proper proportions. Moonlight filtered through the windows hitting it, shining on skin that appeared to be cracked and peeling, revealing small spikes poking through its flesh. Finally, when it fully stepped out into the light, you thought you might pass out.
Not only was it taller than you and Hyungwon combined, it was also built like a combination of the hulk and a hunchback . It’s face was grotesque, similar to one of those gargoyles from older french architecture. Saliva dripped from it’s gaping mouth, sharp teeth gleaming in the light. A low growl reverberated through the around you, emanating from the monster standing just behind the child. It set a clawed hand on the child’s shoulder, pulling them further back, while keeping it’s pure white eyes locked on the two of you.
“I guess you’re stuck here with us now.” The child whispered.
#monsta x#monsta x scenarios#monsta x hyungwon#hyungwon scenarios#hyungwon fanfic#monsta x fanfic#monsta x hyungwon scenarios#monsta x hyungwon fanfic#hyungwon#spooky season short stories
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Yugioh S1 Ep 47: Man I wish this was episode 69 so I could just write “Dice.”
Lets see how our favorite Pharaoh is faring, starting up with a duel against this guy who was making a game, and then got hella distracted and ended up shoving five games into one game like he has game designer ADD.
Duke Devlin is the most sane person we’ve dueled but also the most obsessive human we’ve met, if that makes sense. Because I’m that type of person, here’s a little chart I made to explain what I mean.
(read more under the cut)
So, this is just how my brain has been cataloguing the people we’ve spent actual time with. I separate them first into “are they a guy or are they a god?” (Yugi and Ryou kind of being in a vague area in the middle, but I didn’t feel like making a third row for 2 people)
Then, my brain separates them into three categories
the psychopaths, AKA people who cannot let go of a grudge and so live in a near constant state of rage and/or a superiority/inferiority complex. Not necessarily a BAD person just...youknow...
the normies, AKA people who are kind of just there and for the most part hold it together really well.
and the "OOPS! I screwed it!?!” category AKA people who are generally harmless but, for reasons largely out of their control, have a trigger that will send them right off and into the obsessive-cray zone. They don’t want to derail the whole show/get abducted for the millionth time/have yet another complete melt down, it’s just that there was a huuuuge misunderstanding. They’re not really WANTING to murder anyone, it’s just...sometimes people are there at the wrong time and its just gonna happen and what do you do? They probably deserved it? They probably deserved it.
Now this isn’t a good to evil type of scaling, especially since in this show a lot of our characters are morally gray, but it is a bit of a scaling of “what type of far gone are they?” And off the top of my head here’s where I classify them.
Also, I’m in S1 so all of this will probably change. Joey isn’t like super Psychopathic or anything, it’s just that he acts a lot like Kaiba sometimes in how he gets pissed off and holds a grudge against people he barely knows so I feel like he crosses the line enough in my brain to lump them together. I’m on the fence about Bakura. He’s just sort of too random at the moment.
I realize now that I have Panic on here for some reason. I dunno why, I guess I really liked that guy.
And so, of our humans, Duke really freakin screwed it this episode. Like he was really far off the mark, but I don’t think he’s a psychopath or anything. He’s just some guy who screwed it. And Duke, because he’s kinda obsessive-cray is just diving all in on those dice. I mean, when you have a single dice dangle earring, you gotta commit all the way.
But in the meantime, Duke is still dragging Joey, and Pharaoh is still freakin pissed because youknow...that’s sort of his natural state.
My brother tells me this game is actually a very fun GBA game but it really doesn’t seem like my thing. Seems kind of like Megaman Battle Network, if that makes any sense? But with a Carcasonne aspect to it?
Anyway, last episode Joey just really wanted to get close to these girls, and this episode he gets his wish granted, only to realize that this school is about 85% bullies.
How is it playing a game your competitor has never heard of before and then purposely not telling him the rules NOT counted as cheating? Not like it mattered.
And so then we find out the reason that Duke Devlin is out to get Yugi--and it’s a humdinger.
That’s right, he’s a Pegasus apologist--and it’s like are you SURE there, Duke? Are you certain that this is the cliff you want to die on before you oops! duel an actual god?
I feel like you could just swim through all of the paperwork that is all of the evidence we’ve dug up on Pegasus, as if it were Scrooge McDuck moneypit amounts of evidence. That’s how much evidence we have. And yet, here we have a Pegasus apologist.
Duke was inventing this game on a computer--which makes you wonder why he made it into an actual board game since with all those moving dice parts, it would just be waaaaay better on a computer but...youknow. He emails Pegasus, as you do when you have a game idea, and for some reason, Pegasus actually responds.
You’d think that this dice game which operates entirely on RNG would actually be real effective against the psychic but...I guess the eyeball still made him win? Anyways, Duke is so enamored, he’s decided Pegasus is his new best friend, and just jumps into that helicopter thinking this will be the first day of the rest of his life and he couldn’t be more excited and that nothing could ever ruin it. Alas, look at this timing:
Apparently, after the tourney ended, Pegasus became unreachable...because I mean, he’s got a lot to digest after years of being possessed by a millennium item and killing a whole ton of people. (not to mention the staggering realization that, in this state, he painted his spooky dead wife like 400 times always in the same exact dress) After about...only 2 days or so of not being able to reach Pegasus, Duke decides “I know what I’ll do, I’ll clear Pegasus’ name by dragging his victims on national television! That always works!”
Pharaoh hears this story, unblinking, and is like “WTF”
Normally in kid’s programming, you have to tell some sort of moral, and there must always be some overwhelming positive reward for good behavior. But Yugioh doesn’t do that, they show that you can do good things, be a hero and save the day and that despite all that you will get dragged through the coals for it. That’s just life. you can’t ever be the hero without also being someone else’s curse.
So, it’s a play on a normal quest formula, where beating the villain usually means that you did it, the quest is over. The season is done. Everyone’s happy. But, there’s a pretty strong underlying theme in all of Yugioh, that beating a villain isn’t an “end”, it doesn’t actually solve the core problem if everyone else still acts and operates the same way as they did before. You have to unlearn being an asshole and damn, that’s a hard habit to break.
Like how Kaiba didn’t know how to solve his problems after Pharaoh wiped his mind, Duke doesn’t know how to solve this problem without Pegasus. Now that Pegasus is removed, Duke is reacting similar to Kaiba loosing half his brain (which was a hell ton of anger and lashing out).
So, even though Pharaoh decided he’s not gonna do that mind-wipe thing anymore, he’s still that power-reset force that no one asked for. Like Kaiba, Duke has to start his business model over from square one, and much like Kaiba was, he’s in complete denial and desperate to see what he wants to see.
And then, it’s been a while, how’s that splash screen action looking?
Ah. For once it’s not spooky. Did we even get a splash screen for Rebecca? Or like any of the digital arc? Hm. I don't’ remember. Feels like years ago.
Next week, on Yugioh:
Yugi’s normal jacket is just at the dry cleaners, right? Like Grandpa was like “listen, son, it’s growing moss, please let me sanitize this”
So did Bakura just take that eyeball and bounce or is he just busy doing makeup homework? Maybe he’s secretly intending to graduate.
Did anyone clear this with Grandpa or did he just turn on his TV just now and go “Oh Hell, Yugi.”
#yugioh#yugioh recap#photo recap#s1 ep 48#wow only one more episode#and then this season is over#yugi muto#duke devlin#joey wheeler in a dog suit#tristan taylor#tea gardner#way too many dice
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The fall blues.
I has them. :/
This has been a difficult year, guys.
And right now I'm feeling it.
Fall is my season. It's when I feel most alive and festive. Haunted houses, mazes, Oak Glen, Death Cab for Cutie, new knitted cardigans, fall makeup, cider, scary movies, etc. Its my time!! But this year its different. Literally living pay check to paycheck right now we can't do the fun fall stuff I'd normally want to do. And that is bumming me out, BUT I'm trying to turn that bad thing into a good thing. With the thought that next year won't be like this. I said that last year, I'll be honest! But last year I had no direction and that lasted a very long time, and then came my year of rest. I've been working since I was 16 non stop. Crappy job to crappy job, I needed this time to reevaluate and figure some stuff out. I'm still figuring it out, but I am doing something to move forward. Next month I will be starting my online courses to get my real estate // broker license. The whole process should take 2-3 months and then I'll be licensed! I'll probably start off in a real estate office or try to be a property manager somewhere. We'll see where that takes me, but at least I will be employed in a field that actually interests me and this time next year I could be in a completely different place and I intend to go to every haunted house and do all the spooky things my heart desires. This year happened and it was by no means the worst year. It's just been a period of resting for me. I'm ready to move on now and to flourish. I know it's not the end of the year yet but it kinda feels like it for me. Its like october didn't even happen and its my favorite month and I don't even know what to do about Christmas. I am a giver. That is my time! But I don't have much to give right now in terms of gifts. Also Bailey works on Christmas. So yeah that... sucks a whole lot.
However, I will be a force of nature next holiday season. You will have never seen someone so full of holiday cheer. Except Thanksgiving --it's not my favorite holiday. Turkey just doesn't do it for me. Anyway! I also want to spoil my friends when I get a job. I havent done nearly enough for them lately and they are incredible humans. Friend dates need to be more of a thing. Also regular dates! And I want to take my niece and nephew out to like Disney on Ice and stuff! Now that I haven't been so consumed with work I've had time to spend with them and they really adore me and they're getting SO big! I can't believe it.. Next year the holidays will be done right and I'll make more time for stuff that matters. This year I'm just going through the motions to get somewhere good. I know all will be well and I'll be a much better version of myself because of all of this soon. :)
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The Curse of the Vampire: My thoughts on MUA3′s first DLC
Today I wanna talk about the first DLC expansion pack for MUA3: The Curse of The Vampire! Because I can’t contain my hype for this any longer, I have to ramble about it and you can’t stop me.
This post will probably be stupid long, so its all under the cut!
The Curse of the Vampire is MUA3’s biggest update so far, and its first paid DLC update. It released just in time for spooky month, so naturally the entire thing is Halloween themed. Every player will be able to sink their teeth into a new story mode difficulty, ‘Nightmare’, where enemies affected by a vampiric curse will appear, as well as accessing the SHIELD Depot, where you can purchase various costumes and items for SHIELD Tokens. The update raised the level cap from 100 to 150 and added extra sections to the Alliance Enhancement Grid, both of which can be used to further strengthen your heroes. For Season Pass holders, you can also unlock four new characters: Blade, Punisher, Moon Knight and Morbius, through the new ‘Gauntlet Mode’, where you take on challenges in a loop of ever increasing difficulty to get rewards.
There was radio silence from the devs leading up to the release of the DLC, so my hopes weren’t high. But I was really happy to wake up on the 30th September to see the massive amount of content we received! Because there’s so much to unpack here, I want to talk about each new feature one at a time, starting with the most hyped up part of the update!
The Characters
I’ve never been a big fan of The Marvel Knights, but I was really pleased to see most of them had something unique to distinguish them from other heroes and I had fun trying them all out!
Punisher is, of course, based around using his huge arsenal of guns. His stats are horrible, like all ranged characters, but he makes up for it with his surprisingly good evasive abilities, as he can shoot his guns or throw grenades whilst strafing left, right or backwards to avoid attacks. Punisher’s sniper rifle is also incredibly deadly, and feels so satisfying to land, especially on those AIM snipers in Wakanda. Punisher feels like the kind of character where you have to play very tactically to win with, which makes him the one I enjoyed playing as the most out of the four.
Morbius gets KO’d fast because of his poor defensive stats, but he absolutely rips apart enemy health bars. Not only does he have high strength and can increase his damage output with Fangs and Claws but he can also lower his foes’ defence with Hypnotic Gaze. The combination is absolutely terrifying. He can also heal himself by biting his enemies, as a vampire should. Playing as him is very fun because you deal so much damage its’ just obnoxious. He’s like Hulk on steroids.
Moon Knight is the most unoriginal character of the four in terms of playstyle, which is a shame. All of his abilities are identical in use to those from other characters, with the only unique feature of Moon Knight is his ability to glide, which is a more situational version of flight. His crescent kick and EX are also visually impressive. I think Moon Knight is the definition of ‘basic but practical’. He has the least impressive moveset of the four new characters but he’s also the only one who didn’t get KO’d when I ran through Nightmare Mode with them all, so he’s a solid unit.
Blade has the unique ability to charge all of his abilities to make them stronger. While charging he can move around (albeit slowly) and you can even switch to a different attack mid-charge. At first I found Blade the least enjoyable to play because of how slow he felt and how often he’d get interrupted by the enemy before he had a chance to do anything. But with the right items equipped, I found Blade significantly more fun, and seeing him stalk around the stage, charging up and waiting for a chance to strike was undeniably awesome.
Something I also noticed is that currently the characters’ traits are incorrect. It doesn’t say Blade can use elements, but he can. It doesn’t say Punisher has the super strength trait, but he does. And it says Morbius has a passive healing factor, but he doesn’t. I hope this gets addressed next patch.
The Story & The Enemies
I don’t think I was the only one who felt disappointed when the ‘new story content’ we were promised turned out to just be another difficulty option. After clearing the campaign four times already I wasn’t too motivated to do it a fifth time, but I did it anyway, and I have mixed feelings on it overall.
Disappointingly, Nightmare Mode has no treasure chests or infinity trials to discover and you get no reward for completing it. Its purpose is ultimately just to be a place for players who haven’t purchased the season pass to fight the new vampire enemies and collect SHIELD tokens. Despite that, I did have fun playing through Nightmare. The enemy’s stats rapidly increase in this difficulty more than the rest, starting at level 40 and rising all the way to level 90 by the last stage! Not only that, the new vampiric enemies (Reborn, Infected and Cursed) add an extra layer of strategy to combat, forcing you to adapt your tactics and your team pretty often.
The Reborn come in many different types, each with unique buffs that make them harder to defeat than standard enemies. They might slow you down or poison you if you get too close, heal nearby enemies, magnetically pull you towards them, inflict the damage they take back onto you, explode after being defeated etc. There are also Infected, which may return as Reborn after being defeated (and can Infect you, which will make you rapidly lose HP until cured), and Cursed, which will cure all Infected of their disease when taken down. Its hard to remember all of this at first, but once you’ve memorized what each of the enemy types do it makes Nightmare Mode much more enjoyable in a uniquely challenging way, especially in boss battles.
I do wish we’d gotten a brand new story mode chapter instead though.
The Gauntlets
I expected Gauntlet Mode to be a never-ending wave of enemies, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a lot more innovative and enjoyable. Gauntlet Mode is split into three phases, each with 4-6 Gauntlets. In each Gauntlet, a series of trials must be completed one after another, with the added caveat being that you cannot change your characters or items mid-Gauntlet, and (aside from after completing certain trials) your HP will not recover. After completing a Gauntlet once, you can challenge it again, and this time it will become an Endless Gauntlet where the trials will loop continuously and get harder each time, only ending when you give up or your team is defeated.
Like Nightmare Mode, Gauntlet Mode starts easy and gets progressively more difficult. The first Gauntlet is only level 5 and includes 3 trials, whereas the last Gauntlet is level 120 and includes 10 trials! I must be sounding like a broken record by now but this is the hardest challenge in the game. Gauntlet Mode really puts your endurance to the test, pitting you against continuous waves and bosses, many of which are Reborn, Infected or Cursed, all while under difficult conditions. Many of the optional challenges are also deliberately designed so that they are only achievable on an Endless run, meaning if you want those sweet rewards you have to clear the Gauntlet two, three or even four times in a row without quitting or losing.
I haven’t fully completed Gauntlet Mode just yet. I managed to get 4-stars on all Gauntlets in phase 1 and 2 without much effort due to my over-levelled characters, but on phase 3 the difficulty rose quite considerably. I had to start thinking very carefully about what characters and items I took into the Gauntlet, and I can’t exaggerate enough how incredibly hard Endless can get on these high level Gauntlets after a few loops. There’s a reason they give you 99 revives on Condition: Terminal. They expect you to die. A lot.
Overall, Gauntlet is pretty great! It offers a lot more variety than Infinity Trials, which is perfect if you’re using it to grind or farm items, and phase 3’s Gauntlets are the ideal test of skill and patience for players who enjoy a challenge. That being said, the load times between the trials can be tedious, and the difficulty isn’t for everyone. But I really enjoy Gauntlet Mode, and it’s my favorite part of the expansion!
The Store
The most unexpected part of the update for me was the new SHIELD Depot. Here, you can spend the SHIELD Tokens you collect in Nightmare and Gauntlet Modes for goodies, including new costumes for Black Panther, Captain America, Iron Man and Thor for 400 tokens each. You can also buy voice lines (which I believe may accidentally hint to future DLC characters) and items, some of which are very expensive at 10,000 tokens but look powerful. My favorite part of the Depot is that you can use Credits to buy XP cubes. Up until this point, Credits have been a useless currency. You can spend them to upgrade your items or enhance your alliance, but the sheer rate that you acquire credits means you end up sitting on a pile of 80,000,000 with nothing to spend it on, and that’s not a exaggeration. With this update, my mountain of Credits can finally be put to good use! I bought over 2,000 XP cubes and used them to level up my lesser used characters, so that felt pretty good.
I think the SHIELD Depot is a nice addition to the game, but I am slightly concerned how it will be affected by future updates. Will all future costumes be available for purchase there? If so, does that mean we have to play Gauntlet and Nightmare over and over to get the SHIELD Tokens needed to buy them, since that currency can’t be found anywhere else? I really hope not...
Other Changes
The expansion also made big changes to the level cap and the Alliance Enhancement Grid. Heroes can now reach the lofty heights of level 150, which is absolutely insane. Previously difficult trials like the New Brotherhood and Ultimate Alliance of Evil become a total cakewalk when you’re that overpowered, so anyone willing to put the grinding hours in will be well rewarded. My teams are currently around level 115-125, so I still have a way to go before I hit the new level cap, but I want to reach that stage before I try to 4-star the last phase of Gauntlet Mode because I think I’m gonna need it.
The Alliance Enhancement Grid has also been extended with new upgrades now available. They cost a lot of AEP, but the ones that allow you to heal by attacking stunned enemies are very helpful for Gauntlet Mode. I was close to finishing the original AEG (literally just 7 nodes away from obtaining every upgrade in the game) so my first reaction was: ‘’Damn, I should’ve saved my AEP for this’’. But luckily, the update also added the option to spend void spheres to reset the AEG and refund all AEP spent on it, so you can edit your upgrades. No more buyers remorse! This is one of the features I’ve had on my wishlist for a while so I’m happy they implemented this feature!
Finishing Thoughts
The Curse of the Vampire is a great first expansion for MUA3 overall. It has its let-downs, but it really surpassed my expectations with the amount of new content it contained, and sets the standard for the future expansions pretty high. One thing I am confused by, however, is that they mentioned in a tweet that ‘’players will be able to discover a new Infinity Rift’’. Despite all the new stuff included in the update, an Infinity Rift wasn’t one of them, which gets me thinking: Is this particular expansion really finished? I think we may receive another update on the 31st October, which includes that Rift as well as some spooky costumes. Maybe some free characters as well? Although that might be too optimistic.
Taking my tinfoil hat off for a moment, we know for a fact the next expansion will drop in late 2019 and include characters and features from the X-Men. This is the one I’ve been looking forward to. This is X-23’s (extremely slim) chance to make it in. More than anything else, that’s what I’m wishing for out of the next expansion. Although even if she doesn’t get included, I think if the next update includes as much content as this one, I’ll be more than happy with it.
#MUA3 shitposting#I've been writing this review for like two weeks.#Its 2k words longer than necessary#But I really wanted to talk about this!!#And I really hope the next expansion is as good as this one. Or better!
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