This is my review of Resident Evil 2. As seen on RoninKengo's House of Pain and Empiremovies.com.

It's not game related per se, but the movie is based on the video game series.

REVIEW
RESIDENT EVIL : APOCALYPSE
6/10 STARS


Alright... I'll watch your movie... But only if you put the gun down.

Milla Jovovich returns as Alice in Resident Evil : Apocalypse, sequel to the surprisingly successful Resident Evil. Both films have been adapted from the popular Capcom video game series of the same name. Apocalypse starts off right where the first film ended, having survived the Raccoon Forest incident Alice finds herself in downtown Raccoon City, now seemingly devoid of anything living. There are plenty of zombies roaming the streets though. As it turns out the mega-conglomerate Umbrella Corporation accidentally unleashed the T-Virus on the unsuspecting citizens of Raccoon City. The T-Virus is a bio-weapon, it re-animates dead cells; which invariable results in hordes of zombies. What would a zombie movie be without a rag-tag band of heavily armed survivors? Not much of a zombie movie. A mysterious Umbrella scientist, Dr Ashford (Jared Harris) enlists the help of the survivors in an effort to find his young daughter. Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) a beautiful and hard-as-nails cop. Carlos Olivera an abandoned Umbrella mercenary. Terri Morales (Sandrine Holt) a TV weather reporter, and L.J. (Mike Epps) a wise-cracking criminal. Alice and company fight off wave after wave of zombies throughout the city in their search for Dr. Ashford's daughter. All the while the group is being stalked by Umbrella's ultimate bio-weapon: Nemesis, a hulking, mutant behemoth armed with a minigun and rocket launcher. Things get interesting to say the least.

Resident Evil : Apocalypse is better than it's predecessor, but that isn't really saying much. The film is more akin to the Capcom video games, which fans of the series will appreciate. The movie doesn't revolutionize the zombie-movie genre by any means, but it's still a fun ride. I did actually find myself caring about what happened to some of the characters, because for the most part they were generally likeable. Milla Jovovich, having played Alice twice now, really knows her character and does a good job with the role. Mike Epps as L.J., the film's comic relief will have you laughing throughout. The movie doesn't take itself too seriously, so you can laugh at many of the ridiculous and implausible situations the characters find themselves in. This is a zombie movie after all, you're going to have to suspend your disbelief right from the get-go.

Almost all of the movie takes place at night, this can make it difficult to make out exactly what's going on in some scenes. This problem was especially present in the fight scenes. The shaky cameras combined with the blindingly fast martial arts (Yes, karate works on zombies) make it hard enough to tell friend from foe, and the darkness just compounds the problem. The script was written by Paul W.S. Anderson, director of the first Resident Evil, and it's actually pretty good for what it is. Anderson was busy directing Alien vs Predator, so this time the directorial reigns go to Alexander Witt. Witt succeeds with Apocalypse, where the first one failed... Actually making you care to a certain degree. The characters had some time to develop, instead of becoming zombie fodder instantly. No effort was made to disguise the city of Toronto where the film was shot, the cities famous landmark the CN Tower is seen in 2 scenes but never shown again in distant shots of the city. Toronto's City Hall also stood in for Raccoon City Hall. Toronto is the sixth largest city in North America, give people some credit.

If you liked the first film, or you're a fan of the games you'll enjoy this movie. If you didn't see the first one you'll probably be at a loss, though it's not too hard to follow, just a typical zombie flick. Didn't like the first one? Don't see the sequel, it's more of the same. Resident Evil : Apocalypse is a fun zombie movie, that doesn't take itself too seriously. You're in for a good time if you go in with low expectations.

By Will Perkins

Let's try this again.

I had assumed these journals were just for the GS staff. I was just made aware that I was mistaken.

I decided to move my Log of a Gamer blog here. It was a special interest blog and more suited for this kind of environment. I'll also be more likely to update it now, since I visit Gamespot daily.

Posted all my past bloggings(All five... wow.) and hope to continue them here.

Let's hope my ramblings don't fall on deaf ears... Though technically they're typed.... so no blind people!

Everyone has their own personal Alamo. A seemingly un-winnable fight, against insurmountable odds. Until, a few weeks ago I never thought I would overcome my, personal Alamo.

Now you're thinking, Wow, "Personal Alamo"? What could he be talking about? It must be something serious, something life changing. Most would think otherwise, but I took this battle very seriously. It raged for 15 long years, and was fought on many battlefields. At every turn, something prevented my victory. As Shakespeare best put it in Hamlet,

"How all occasions do inform against me."

What am I talking about?

The Legend of Zelda. For the Nintendo Entertainment System. That's right... A video game.

The eternal struggle first began, in 1989. With the death of my dog Gator, I was consoled with the gift of an NES. Zelda and Cobra Triangle were my first games. I was more into Cobra Triangle at the time, a gunboat the drives around blowing up giant sea dragons? Oh yes, life was good.

My dad was the one who was really into Zelda at first. But after a short lived obsession with the game, that nearly saw him beat it... He decided he should stop playing, and has to the best of my knowledge; never touched another game since.

Shortly, thereafter I started getting into the game. I had just read The Hobbit, so I named my character Bilbo and not the traditional Link. It was grade one, and at the time, Mario had been my forte. So Zelda was like a whole new dimension for my small Mario-warped mind. After probably weeks of playing on and off, I was able to surpass my Dad in terms of completion of the game, Level 8; a proud achievement for a kid in grade one.

However, Level 8 would be as far as I could get on the rickety old Nintendo at that time. At one point in the dungeon, you are locked in a room with 10 Darknuts. These armoured bastards block all frontal attacks with their shield so you have to get behind them to kill them. The only downside of this of course, was that it was nearly impossible!!! The Nintendo's framerate would drop to a snails pace with so many enemies on the screen at once. I would have been able to beat them eventually...

Of course I lost the save file. The saving system on the NES was unreliable at best, it involved pressing the power and reset button at the same time, and then praying.

Our family moved to Halifax in 1990, over the next few years I would continue my quest to retrieve the triforce, vanquish Ganon and save the titular Princess Zelda. As others graduated to Super Nintendo, I was still chilling with my NES and Zelda. I would get far, lose the save file, get far in the game again, to the last dungeon in fact and lose the save file. My progress continued like this until one weekend in 1994.

My parents won a trip to New York City. It happened to be on the same weekend as my 10th Birthday, so guess who got to come a long? That's a hell of a 10th birthday present, a weekend in NYC. We did all the touristy stuff, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, saw some Broadway shows (Blue Man Group and Guys and Dolls), visited The World Trade Center(Sad to think about in retrospect) etc. Little did I know that while I was enjoying myself in The Big Apple, my NES was crying in agony at home.

My brother, who was staying with friends while we were away had killed my NES. He left it on. With no game in the system, wide open, for 3 days. This killed the NES, it was never the same after that. The battery had been fried, which made saving games impossible. That was the last time I would play Zelda until the advent of Emulators.

Skip ahead to 2000. Six long, Zelda-less years later. I discovered the joys of emulation. Windows programs that mimic the video game consoles of yore, and let you play all your favourite games on the PC!

It was now same shiat, different system. Between the computer screwing up, formats, and corrupted save files, I wasn't having any luck.

So I took my rage out on other Zelda games. And as a result I became something of a pro. Completing almost every Zelda game, except the elusive original.

Then back in May I saw something from E3, that spurred me on. Nintendo had unveiled their new Zelda game at this years expo. But I had a slight problem.

In the summer of 2003, I had played through the original, and got as close as I'd ever come to beating it. I got to Ganon, but he whooped my ass. So I quit playing for the day, and went out to my friend's going away party. I met a girl there, so Zelda was the last thing on my mind for the next little while.

During my Zelda hiatus(and bachelor hiatus), my computer screwed up. This time though, I was determined not to lose the Zelda save file. So I backed up all my data on my friends computer. There it sat, for 10 months.

Neither my friend or I had the time or the inclination to return the data to it's original owner up until that point. Spurred by visions of Zelda future, I retrieved the spirit of Zelda past, and sat down to play it one last time.

The save was at the entrance to the 9th Dungeon. After a year of not playing a game, you'd think I'd be rusty... But no. From my years of experience, I know the map like the back of my hand, and every dungeon in minute detail. I went straight to Ganon's lair, and on my first try felled the mighty beast.

I felt like I could have died right then. It was a feeling of such accomplishment and elation. 15 years of effort, coming to fruition instantly. I had rescued the Princess, and returned peace to Hyrule. As the credits began to roll, I couldn't stop smiling. The stirring 8-bit score, brought joy to my heart. Life was good.

It was sad at the same time though, my quest had been more about the journey, and less about the arrival. Though when it finally happened, I was glad to be there.

The Legend of Zelda will always hold a special place in my heart, the game that beat me for so long was finally conquered. Or was it? Once you beat the game, you unlock a second quest. I guess I'll have to beat that now.

By Will Perkins
Toronto
May 16, 2004

E3 has come and gone, and once again I missed it. Next year!

Today I'll go over a few of my favourites, the games I'm looking forward to in the near future.

As was expected, many previously announced sequels were unveiled at this years show. Tekken 5, Metal Gear Solid 3, Final Fantasy XII, Devil May Cry 3 etc. However a few came right out of left field. For instance... The new Legend of Zelda game.

The previously unannounced Legend of Zelda(working title) game for the Gamecube, surprised many E3 attendees. Nintendo has dropped the cartoony look of The Wind Waker, and brought back the teenage Link we know and love from Ocarina of Time. In fact, this updated version of the Hero of Time looks strikingly similar to his Gamecube appearance in Soul Calibur 2. If Nintendo comes through, we're in for a treat.

My personal favourite from the show was expected by all however. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. In this sequel/prequel, set in the 1960's at the height of the cold war. Little is known of the plot, only that your mission is to infiltrate a remote jungle controlled by the Soviets and rescue a defecting scientist. The scientist in question is in charge of the development of a new kind of weapon, one that could tip the balance of the Cold War. The first generation of Metal Gear. In the words of the vaunted Solid Snake "A nuclear equipped, walking death mobile." or in this case wheeled death mobile.

The main character is not the same Solid Snake we're used to. He's more likely Big Boss, clone father of the Solid Snake we all know and love. The eye patch is a dead give away.
As for MGS characters seen in previous games, expect to see at least one. A young Russian Spetsnaz officer with an affinity for revolvers. Anyone who has played the last two Metal Gear Solid games knows who I'm talking about.

Convoluted, and crazy story lines aside though, Hideo Kojima has yet to disappoint me when it comes to a Metal Gear game. I expect no less from him this time.

Behold the goodness that is Metal Gear Solid 3 : Snake Eater Don't forget to check out the trailer.

Finally, the King of fighting games in my esteem, is getting another sequel. Tekken 5. What's different this time? Well for one, the series trade mark character wing-haired, megalomaniac Heihachi Mishima is dead. Hey at least he got a good send off in the PS2 version of Soul Calibur 2!

The most notable difference between this game and say... Tekken 4 is the addition of three new characters. Asuka Kazama, Raven and Feng Wei. Don't know what to tell you about them. Asuka would seem to be related to Jin and Jun Kazama in some way, Raven seems to have something to do with the death of Heihachi, and Feng just looks like an angry Chinese gung fu artist.

To top it all off, Tekken 5 features a new graphics engine. The Tekken series has always been known to be the prettiest of fighting games and this fifth installment seems to be no exception. Now if NAMCO decides to revamp the fighting system, then we'll be in for a real treat.

I barely scratched the surface.
So many games, so little time.

By Will Perkins
Toronto
May 12, 2004

For those of you that don't know, there is a week in May unlike any other. This week is like Christmas, Easter and Kwanza all wrapped into one, minus the love thy neighbour and do good unto others crap. Yes, this week in May is a great time for Gamers of all shapes and sizes, E3 takes place.

E3 is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and unlike it's bastard cousin The Tokyo Game Show, E3 features all the trappings of a convention held in Los Angeles.

For this one week, game industry professionals, journalists, and gamers alike flock in throngs to the L.A. Convention Center. If a terrorist were to attack E3, it would cripple the gaming industry... Don't even think about it!

The convention is where all the game companies and hardware companies, come to show off there new stuff. New games, new hardware, new consoles, new peripherals and so on.

For the average Gamer, going to this convention is like a drug. You're like a kid in a candy store.

I unfortunately have not gone yet. I've had the opportunity to go twice now. There was a media pass waiting for me and everything, and of course... it fell through. The little issue of getting to L.A. got in the way. It requires more planning in advance, and I couldn't get a cheap enough flight.

2005 will be the year. I'm going, come Hell or high water.

If you ever get a chance to go, GO. All the people I know that have been, dug the hell out of it.

By Will Perkins
Toronto
May 10, 2004

My aim with this site, is to educate the non-game players out there. I'd like to give them an insight into Gamedom and what it means to be a gamer. I also created the site as a forum for people like myself. Self described gamers.

First let us clear something up. What is a gamer?
The Internet defines a gamer as the following,

Gamer

1.)someone who plays video games as a primary means of entertainment ...Usually very
good at them.
2.) someone who plays video games as a hobby

frank:: "Dude I can't believe you got your ass kicked in Halo by a fricking 10 year old....Jesus Christ man I thought you were a gamer."

No longer is the role of gamer in society relegated to that of children and/or nerds. In fact more games these days are marketed and designed for adults. The Nintendo Generation of the 1980's has grown up, and so have their tastes.

However a gamer these days can be anyone, from any social strata, or economic background. Stay at home Mom's, our Uncle Fred, College students, business professionals, celebrities and everyone in between. Yes we're among you.

Now that's not to say that everyone who plays video games are automatically gamers. Most can be considered casual gamers. Nay, it takes a special breed to take up the mantle of true Gamer.

Someone unsatisfied with leaving a game half beaten.
Someone who plays through a level of difficulty just to unlock a greater challenge.
Someone who laughs when a newbie makes an ass of himself, but then shows the newbie what to do.
Someone who turns off their respective system in a rage after being defeated by a tough boss, only to come back 10 minutes later to try again.
Individuals of quality, and determination.

Now you might be saying, "Well I fall into all of the above categories, but I still don't think I'm a gamer."

Just answer these 3 simple questions.

1) Do you in an average week spend more than 6 hours playing video games, reading about video games, or talking about video games?
2) Do you own 1 or More next generation consoles (ie. PS2, Gamecube, Xbox) and/or is your computer used primarily for gaming?
3) Have you completed/attempted to complete and/or mastered 1 or More games in the past 6 months?

If you answered Yes to any or all of the above questions you're probably a Gamer.
If you answered No to any or all of the above... Well then, it appears you have some catching up to do... Poser!

That's not to say that if you're an aficionado of classic games you aren't a Gamer, classic games are what we all grew up on. Like old movies, the classics always seem better with age.

It's an exciting time for us. Games and the technology that drive them are getting more advanced every year. My generation will go from playing 8 bit console games in the mid 1980's to fully immersive gaming experiences sometime in the near future.

If you are a Gamer now, or have been in the past count yourself lucky. 30 years from now you'll be able to look back and say "I was there, I lived it, I played it."

The best is yet to come my friends.

By Daniel Rubin
Philadelphia
May 7, 2004

It was six in the morning when Karen Kosoy discovered her kindergarten-aged son still glued to the Nintendo game - he'd stayed up all night trying to rescue a legendary princess named Zelda.

"My God, he's addicted," she remembers thinking.

Jamie Kosoy has his own memory: His mother pulled the plug and threw the video game player in the garbage.

"The most traumatic moment of my life," he said.

By late primary school, while friends were playing street hockey outside, Kosoy was rushing indoors to chart their stats on his computer. By high school, he'd bought a brand new car from ads he sold on a fantasy wrestling league he administered online.

Now, as Kosoy, 22, finishes his final year in multimedia design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, his mother says all that screen time may not have been for naught.

"It turns out," she says, "he was teaching himself."

For him and others in his generation it can be said: Everything they know, they learned from video games.

And that might not be so bad.

While much parental sleep has been lost over whether video games are a colossal waste, a growing body of work looks at games as serious, educative, even key to success in an information age.

Researchers are finding players can make sharper soldiers, drivers and surgeons. Their reaction time is better, their peripheral vision more acute. They are taking risks, finding themselves at ease in a demanding environment that requires paying attention on several levels at once.

While there are countless examples of children vegetating in front of the box, real learning is going on as well. Children who go online to play the World War II shooter fantasy Medal of Honour: Allied Assault might last all of 14 seconds if they just hit the Normandy beaches with guns blazing. To succeed, they must come up with a plan - either by typing messages or talking through headphones to teammates whom they may never have met.

"It's becoming good at communicating with others in teams and being non-resistant to technology," said James Paul Gee, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of last year's book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. "That is what the army wants. That is what the modern workplace wants. Those are pretty modern skills."

Says Henry Jenkins, director of the comparative media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "In a hunting society, kids learned bows and arrows. In an information society, playing games with resource management - where you need to process massive amounts of information to determine which is important and which you let slide - might be the right kind of play."

In the 30 years since electronic games have conquered computers and television consoles, they've become a $US28 billion ($A38.16 billion) worldwide business. Advertisers pay small fortunes to place their brands in games such as The Sims and Grand Theft Auto, and a song placed in a video game can mean more exposure than a song in a hit movie.

Americans will spend more time gaming this year - 75 hours on average - than watching rented movies, according to Fortune magazine.

And so, with competition fierce for compelling new software, more than 80 colleges have begun offering programs in game design. The study of ludology, or video game theory - from the Latin word ludus, for game - has been taken up at places such as MIT, the University of Chicago, and Princeton, which in February held the Ivy League's first symposium on gaming, where literary and film criticism techniques were trained on Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Super Mario Brothers.

The players have grown up as well. Nearly two-thirds of console gamers - those who play on a machine that plugs into a television, as opposed to a computer game - are 18 or older, according to the Entertainment Software Association. A Pew Internet & American Life study last year found that every college student polled had, at one point, played computer games.

Surprisingly, slightly more college women than men reported playing computer and online games; equal numbers said they played video games.

So what are they learning?

Not just how to drive, say University of Rochester researchers, who found that action games improved players' visual abilities.

And hand-eye coordination, say researchers at New York's Beth Israel Medical Centre. They have found that doctors who spent at least three hours a week playing video games made fewer mistakes and performed laparoscopic surgery faster than their nonplaying peers.

Justin Hall, a gaming consultant who began blogging while studying at Swarthmore in 1994, credits games for teaching him morality. Hall - who once gave an address to game developers titled "How has inventory management in computer role-playing games affected the way I pack?" - says Richard Garriot's Ultima IV game helped him grasp that good behaviour sometimes means choosing between competing virtues.

"Honesty and compassion often stood at odds, as did humility and honour," he writes on the Game Girl Advance blog. "By playing his game, I learned a little bit about ethics."

In a Garriot-designed universe, a person might lose the game by seemingly making all the right moves, but failing to give money to a pauper met along the way.

"Did I waste my time? No, I don't think so," says Greg Lastowka, 35, a Philadelphia intellectual property lawyer who spent countless hours gaming as a boy, and who lectured on virtual crimes at the Princeton conference. "The gaming I did involved working through complicated puzzles... .

"In more complicated games of interactive fiction, like Will Crowther's Adventure, you had to understand the way Crowther thought of the space and the narrative in order to progress."

Lastowka said he learned urban planning from playing Sim City, which he called "a sandbox for creativity".

Games encourage players to take risks that are not allowed in schools - particularly in test-driven curriculums, says Jenkins of MIT.

"What games do very well is the 'You die - so what? - you start over' aspect," Jenkins says. "So trial and error is possible in games in a way almost no longer possible in schools."

Researchers such as Gee credit games for giving experiences to the deskbound that they may never have or be able to afford in real life. With the explosion of online, multiplayer games, "it is nothing to see a 15-year-old leading a group with a 25-year-old and 30-year-old. Unlike in school, they are treated not just as peers but as leaders," he says.

"Kids are reading and writing more than ever because of these games," Gee says, giving the example of his nine-year-old son's favourite, Age of Mythology. "They are confronted with these huge amounts of text, both in the game and on the web."

Ask Kosoy what he has learned, and he grows quiet. He sits at a cafe in Philadelphia, chasing a chocolate croissant with hot chocolate. He is still lean and intense; with his scraggly beard and Dutch Boy cap, he resembles the Bruce Springsteen of Asbury Park days.

Early on at art school, the class was asked to create a project based on a movie, book or record. That reminded him of role-playing games such as the Legend of Zelda, where you start off with a sword and end up saving a princess. What happens in between is unscripted.

Quickly at ease, he designed a game based on the Stanley Kubrick film The Shining, where players found themselves trapped in a series of foreign environments with no apparent way out.

"It worked so well, people hated it," he said.

He is interested in pushing boundaries while still designing games that can be played on the web with the most rudimentary equipment. One computer game required his classmates to actually get up and scavenge around the school for clues.

With graduation looming, and projects due, he's down to gaming a few hours a week, though he continues to spend most of his day thinking about them. But now he's sending out three resumes a day, hoping to nail a position as a game designer - a job that pays $US50,000 to start on average. That means that Jamie Kosoy, who has spent his life playing, might not have to grow up after all.