Jan 28 2009
This Spring Is Going To Be Bad For The Nerves And Bowels
The Fear 2 demo has been up for over a week now. If you haven’t already downloaded and played it and crapped your pants, you should probably get to that. The demo features everything you know and love about Fear. Just better graphics and gooier, redder HD blood. And HD Alma screaming in your face. And HD liquefying of people. And HD battle mech gatling guns that tear people into wispy clouds of red. The mech section is actually pretty well done. It isn’t too slow or clunky and you’ll thank your lucky stars you’re in a giant loaded robot and not a dark elementary school hall with crying female children and pissed ghosts. The game is out February 10. So mark your calendar with your shaking hand.
Fear is great and all, but the real reason for this post is Resident Evil 5. The demo just hit XB live and I believe it is hitting the PS3 next week. The game is intense. It is pretty similar to RE4 in terms of atmosphere and interaction. The quasi-zombie crazies are even creepier and they run and you just think, “ah man they’re running at me”. And then you fumble with your rotation (yes, the controls are the same) and stop and raise your gun and fumble again and run. You’ve got your eyes trained on those huge, awful sickles and all the while your heart wants to kill you (all it has to do is stop). Additionally, the bowels will need to eject their waste. While playing, it started to dawn on me that maybe these strange, rigid controls aren’t faithfully there simply because of tradition, but because the developers know that the lack of mobility in the face of a threat really freaks us out by nature and it makes everything even more terrifying in the game when you can’t hop-skip away so easy. It’s possible. But it is very good. Play it if and when you can. I believe that one is due March 13. Mark that one too, if you made it through the Fear marking.
On top of all that, there is that crazy-looking Mirror’s Edge Time Trial Map add-on coming out this Thursday as well. The maps are these crazy floating clusters of abstract shapes that you have to navigate in ridiculous time frames. The game isn’t necessarily scary, but it falls right into the theme of this post, because the game is a friggin’ rush and when you are far into a run and you’re leaping like a freak, your nerves are screaming and your bowels are rumbling as well.
I’m sorry about this fixation on bowels. It doesn’t really happen that bad with video games, but it just makes my post sound more intense.
To summarize, I’ve come up with a nifty formula that I think will characterize this Spring quite well:
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I’m really going to miss the Wii controls when I play Resident Evil 5. Even on the Wii, though, I really think the controls are clunky to add more tension and panic. But I don’t really have a problem with them at all. It’s too fun.
I’ll be playing Fear on the PC for sure. In HD, of course.