I have loved the Resident Evil series ever since I played the first game on PS1 in the late-90s (the Director’s Cut to be exact). I tend to think of the mainline games as distinct eras: original (the first game through Zero), action (4 through Revelations 2), and RE Engine (VII, VIII, and the recent remakes). Even with nostalgia intact and despite a couple of small missteps, I believe the RE Engine era is the best Resident Evil has ever been.
(more…)My Bloodlines journey has taken me from the boardwalk of Santa Monica to the underbelly of Los Angeles.
I installed VtM:B on my WinXP PC, and there’s some pretty sick art to be found during the process.
I’ve been continuing my playthrough of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, which inspired me to revisit one of my favorite films, Interview with the Vampire.
I was not prepared for VtM: B. I probably should have read a guide or something before jumping in, but instead I’m figuring out the systems and mechanics as I go. Case in point: I was working on a quest where I needed to talk to homeless characters, and my only dialogue options were incredibly Patrick Bateman-esque.
I don’t know why this took me so long. I knew the game was a classic in one of my favorite genres (messy ambitious action CRPG) and I knew I’d probably love it. I’m a casual VtM fan- never played the TTRPG but I do own a VHS boxset of Kindred: The Embraced (and more recently I’ve really enjoyed the New York visual novels and the comic series from Vault).
I’m a CRPG-loving Elder Goth, what did it take for me to finally play Bloodlines? A one-click mod. I knew unmodded Bloodlines was a nightmare on modern (or vintage) hardware, but I had never done the proper research to get the right mod(s). Then along come GOG with their ultra simple curated mods, which are (literally) game-changing for a kinda dumb and very lazy retro PC gaming enthusiast like myself.
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I had very little in common with my late father, hobby-wise. He was into guns and bodybuilding, and I was someone who would go on to have a blog about retro computer stuff. We both made attempts to understand each other, and one of my most notable was purchasing the 2000 Raven-developed Soldier of Fortune PC game.
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I played through the phenomenal 2021 enhanced version of Quake last week and something that stood out to me was the storytelling. Similar to Doom, Quake’s sci-fi/dark fantasy/Lovecraftian story is delivered in text crawls at the end of each episode. I wouldn’t say it’s high art or anything, but it’s kind of a perfect way to deliver lore and story. The narrative never interrupts the gameplay, instead punctuating the end of a series of levels, communicating to the player where you’ve been and where you’re going.
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