Tag: Capcom

Cinema Dispatch: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City and all the images you see in this review are owned by Sony Pictures Releasing

Directed by Johannes Roberts

Say what you will about the Paul WS Anderson Resident Evil movies, they were popular, there were at least a few good entries in it, and Milla Jovovich carried them; an impressive feat as I believe she was the first woman to be the lead of a billion-dollar film franchise.  It was kind of the MCU before the MCU was really a thing; a series that came out almost every year and made a boatload of cash based on a property that most in the mainstream had dismissed as juvenile and (cheap?).  Now that Jovovich has finished her run as Alice and Anderson is stepping back to a producing role, it’s time to see if the franchise can be brought back to life so that Sony doesn’t have to rely on Spider-Man movies to stay profitable!  Does this capture the essence of the games in a way the Anderson films never quite did, or will we be begging him to come back to the series by the time someone does a Jill Sandwich joke? Let’s find out!!

Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) left Raccoon City a long time ago and it’s the last place she ever wanted to return to, but she has some information from the INTER-WEB that is compelling her to return and see her brother.  Of course, since this is a more faithful adaptation, the whole thing is set in the nineties which means she can’t just text him to get out of the city; instead he has to hitch a ride there and show him a VHS tape of someone who claims that the Umbrella Corporation has poisoned the city’s water supply and that something big is going to happen very soon!  Her brother Chris (Robbie Amell) is not impressed and has to go to work on the dreariest and rainiest night imaginable which of course is also the night that all heck breaks loose in the city!  There are officers at the nearby Spencer Mansion who haven’t reported in so Chris, Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen), Albert Wesker (Tom Hooper), and a guy who ISN’T Barry (Chad Rook) head there to find out what’s going on, which leaves the new guy Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia) alone to watch the police station with the crotchety captain (Donald Logue).  It probably doesn’t come as a shock to you that both groups find zombies roaming around, and the city is put on lockdown by Umbrella soldiers who intend to keep this all a secret while one of their scientists (Neal McDonough) collects whatever research he can before extracting him and his family from this nightmare.  Will the Redfields and all their buddies find a way to escape the city that is slowly rotting away around them?  How does Umbrella plan to sweep this catastrophe under the rug, and is there someone among the survivors who knows more than they’re letting on?  They set the movie in the nineties, but can they truly recreate the feeling of playing the original game for the first time all over again?  Well not if they’re shooting this with HD cameras!

“It looks a lot smaller than I remember.” “That’s nostalgia goggles for you!”
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Jumping the Soapbox: Games of 2018 (Part 2)

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

We’re back with Part 2 of this list!  Let’s not waste any time and jump right into the games!!

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Spider-Man (PS4)

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Developed by Insomniac Games

Am I getting too old for this?  I might be getting too old for this.  As I’m sure is a common consensus among those of us over twenty-five playing this game, I still feel a stronger connection to Spider-Man 2 from all the way back in the stone age than this one despite it still managing to be one of the best games I’ve played this year even if it can’t quite surpass my nostalgia for the one with Bruce Campbell in it.  I don’t know, I just feel that the new game is guiding me too much in my web swings; pulling visual tricks or redirecting my momentum to minimize mistakes, and while I will never claim that harder games are inherently better (or that players just need to “git gud”), I found the hectic and less controlled web slinging in Spider-Man 2 to be more rewarding and much more engaging on long trips to far off objective markers.  Other than that, the game is an improvement in every way.  The combat is fluid and allows for lots of varied combos, I LOVE it whenever a level has multiple levels so you can swoop in, kick butt, swing away, and come back to smash some faces one floor below, and even though the stealth sections are pretty unengaging, they at least function well enough.  That said, it can get a bit monotonous with some of the combat sections and I would have gladly traded all the battle challenges on the map for just one more fine-tuned and well-crafted story stages like the skyscraper one that was shown in the trailer.  Also, it felt a bit… anachronistic I guess to have the bad guys be SO defined by their Asian culture especially since the game doesn’t have much to counterbalance that.  When a minority group of people is almost exclusively shown to be terrorist (Yuri Watanabe is the only other Asian character of note), well at that point you’re basically recreating that one episode of Sherlock that’s always gonna be a bit uncomfortable to watch.  Still, this is a Spider-Man game that, at least for the modern era, will define what it means to be a Super-Hero game, and while I’ll always carry a torch for the PS2 game I won’t begrudge the new generation for having a version made for them to enjoy.

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Jumping the Soapbox: Games of 2018 (Part 1)

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Now that we’ve got the movies of 2018 out of the way, it’s time to tackle a subject I very much enjoy but have much less experience in.  Very rarely will I talk about video games on this site as my focus is almost exclusively on movies and television, but I do play a lot of games throughout the year and as a critic I can’t help but have opinions on them, so what I do is I save up ALL those thoughts and put them right here for you to enjoy!  Well, either enjoy or utterly detest me for.  I’ll take either one!  Let’s get started!!

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Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (PC)

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Developed by Techland

Man, was THIS a fun little surprise!  The only thing I know about the Call of Juarez series is that it was as series of ho-hum cowboy shooters that eventually jumped the shark when they went to modern day and made it SUPER racist.  This game on the other hand, while admitting that there is a level where you track down a Native American, seems to have been a total course correction or at least something of a soft reboot; a la when they did that 2D Blood Rayne Side Scroller or when Sonic the Hedgehog took a brief respite from being awful in Sonic Mania.  From what I saw of the other Juarez games, they were mostly drag and went for an authentic aesthetic where this game is all about charm, wit, and stylistic excess.  The character designs are bright and colorful which is not only more appealing but a practical improve since it makes them stand out more prominently against the landscapes, and the overall feel is that of an over the top spaghetti western; encouraging you to make the big moves and go in guns-a-blazing just to see if it’ll work.  That’s actually something I think game developers should explore a bit more; how aesthetics and style can change the way that players make decisions in the game which may be a more powerful incentive than more straightforward gameplay design incentives.  In something less fantastical and more serious I probably wouldn’t have even bothered dual wielding pistols and unloading them into a group of enemies when my trusty rifle can do the job with fewer bullets and at a safer distance.  With the visual design, the UI interface, and ESPECIALLY the story which is a series of flashbacks conveying a story that your player character is narrating as you play through it made me feel more inclined to try and be the BIG HEROTM than play practically.  It can be a bit buggy at times as I’m pretty sure I ran into one enemy who was shooting me through a wall, but despite its modest scale it’s still one of the most enjoyable First Person shooters I’ve played in a while!

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Jumping the Soapbox: 10 characters that should be in Marvel vs Capcom Infinite

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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Marvel vs Capcom Infinite and all the images you see in this editorial are owned by Disney, Marvel, and Capcom

So with the announcement of a new fighting game, particularly one that has as much fan service potential as this one, the number one question on everyone’s mind is who they’ll be adding to the roster.  Well, since I have my own little platform to scream from, here’s my list of the ten characters they should add to the new game!  Oh, and if you notice a lack of Capcom characters on this list, well you should probably read what I wrote about the game’s reveal trailer.

Honorable Mention: Agents of Shield Stage

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Look, I love Coulson too, but the characters in this show don’t have enough going for them to take up a spot in this game.  All together though, there’s definitely enough there for a really cool stage on the Globemaster where you could have Coulson and Melinda cheering on the action while Leo and Jemma are doing science stuff or whatever.  That’d be pretty cool to see, and they’d be able to fit all sorts of Easter Eggs in the background for the big Agents of Shield fans out there!  You’re not gonna be able to fit everyone from the MCU in here as playable characters, nor should you, but there are still plenty of ways for them to be a part of this game otherwise.

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Jumping the Soapbox: Marvel vs Capcom Infinite – Reveal Trailer

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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Marvel vs Capcom Infinite and all the images you see in this editorial are owned by Disney, Marvel, and Capcom

So earlier this month and without much warning, Capcom revealed to the world that they are working on the latest entry in their massively popular Marvel vs Capcom series with the release of a cinematic trailer and a short gameplay video.  Now that we’ve had a bit of time to come down from the hype, what can we learn from the two clips released so far?  Well first, let’s look at the history.

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Back to a time long forgotten!  All the way back in 2011!

We’re not gonna try to dissect this series going back to the first one because frankly I don’t know nearly enough to speak on the matter, but also because the last game came out at a very interesting time.  A time that many of us have already forgotten existed!  See, in 2011 the MCU was still in its early stages when all these films were more of an ambitious experiment than the omnipresent multimedia giant it is now (starting more or less with The Avengers in 2012), and when Marvel vs Capcom 3 came out we only had the first two Iron Man movies and the more or less non-canonical Incredible Hulk.  Hell, the game began development ALL the way back in 2008 which was prior to Disney buying up Marvel!  Basically, that game was released right before Marvel became the biggest thing in entertainment; begging the question of how that monumental shift is going to affect Infinite.  Well it’s still fairly early but we can tell already that they’re going for the MCU costuming with Captain America looking much more like his counterpart in the movie than he did last time around (albeit still with completely cartoony proportions), and Captain Marvel looking very much like Brie Larson.  Now whether or not the resemblance is due to Capcom (or Marvel or Disney) wanting to make Captain Marvel in this game look like the film actor or if Brie Larson was casted because of her resemblance to her, the larger point still stands that the MCU interpretation of the Marvel universe is already having an influence on this game.  Remember what Thor looked like in Marvel vs Capcom 3, or Hawkeye?  Maybe I’m inferring too much from these trailers, but to me it seems like a given that we’re gonna be seeing some serious redesigns as we learn more in the coming months.

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