When I started playing Resident Evil 5, I was partially in love with it, but hated it about as much as I enjoyed it. As I played, I chronicled my love/hate relationship with what was happening on screen via Twitter. This actually worked really well for giving myself up-to-the-minute feedback on the game.

As the days went on, my enthusiasm for various aspects of the game totally flip-flopped. My opinion of Sheva’s AI, the inventory and controls, and the game as a whole.

Here’s how it went down, from start to finish.

• RE5 update outta the box? Rofl.
• Love: great visuals, AI partner (she’s decent help), tension — Hate: GHETTO ASS CONTROLS and busted ass inventory system #ResidentEvil5
• Don’t like when 6 shotgun shells to the eyeball doesn’t kill an enemy, but the action is still fun. I love/loathe RE5.
• RE5 – more frustrating than fun.
• Also, this “racist” business about RE5 is total nonsense.
• @Jakanden Yeah but I LIKED 4. I DON’T like 5.
• Didn’t play NEARLY enough RE5 today, as I was sidetracked by buddies and TF2. 3 hours of TF2
• Wesker + RE5 backstrory = Code Veronica?
• Despite my issues with its controls (I didn’t think they would be) I am loving RE5. Also strangely engrossed by the story.
• @bradshoemaker AI Sheva doesn’t pull her weight on any difficulty.
• I am destroying sacred vases and looting native villages for personal gain… TREASURE!
• CROCDILES ARE SCAAAAAARRRRRY! :(
• RE5 not scary? Chainsaw guy chasing me = SCARY.
• Having a fucking incredible time in RE5 co-op with @SnavenShake. Unreal.
• Irving: WORST VILLAIN EVER
• I keep fried by death-mirror-light by @snavenshake
• RE5 is GREAT. Unlike Dead Space, it manages to keep objectives, pacing, and environments fresh throughout. Every second is rad.
• How are people still saying RE5’s imagery is racist/uncomfortable? 10 hours in and I see nothing “disturbing”
• RE5’s final boss is BULLSHIT
• RE5’s ending is kinda weak. Still, I SUPER ENJOYED that game.
• Playing as Sheva makes me physically disoriented. Can a look over her other shoulder? This sucks.
• Final thoughts before review: Inventory system/controls/Sheva AI are all fine by me. Love the visuals, level design, settings…and story?!
  

It’s been some time since I’ve blogged here, but hey, I’ve been busy. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Defense Grid: The Awakening Review

Magic Ball Review

Crash Commando Review

Lumines Supernova Review

The Sounds of Street Fightin’ — Street Fighter HD Remix Soundtrack Interview

Here’s what you’d find if you actually read DownWriteFierce.com!

Year One

Reviews Review 2008 – Volume One

Reviews Review 2008 – Volume Two

Sega Does What Nintendon’t — And It Isn’t Working

Rear Review: Shaun White Snowboarding

Contention Question (Or, everyone loves to talk about reviews)

Game, Interrupted

Dear 1up Staff: UGO. We’ll Stay.

Tom Cruise once said in an interview that Valkyrie wasn’t a World War II film, but that it was a thriller set in the period. It’s odd, then, that there are very few thrills to accompany its interesting, but poorly executed premise. The relatively unknown story of the July 20th plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler is a fantastic story to read about, but when translated to the silver screen, it’s not nearly as moving as Schindler’s List, engaging as Saving Private Ryan or entertaining like The Great Escape.

But it starts out well enough. Tom Cruise’s character, whose name isn’t spoken for the better part of an hour, is wounded in Tunisia, forcing him to leave the front lines for good and stick to a tactical position behind a desk. You’re briefly given the impression that a select few Nazi soldiers are plotting to take Hitler down, but from here, the story development is limited. Rather than introducing viewers to the people involved in the conspiracy, director Bryan Singer expects his audience to fully grasp who Cruise’s Stauffenberg, as well as the committee around him, is.

Being thrust in to the middle of a treasonous ploy leaves you confused as you try to decipher which character is playing which part in the plot. Not being able to understand the relationships between Stauffenberg and the people he periodically recruits makes a bigger mess of things, especially when the film, again, expects you to completely understand these folks’ past motives and involvement with various assassination plots.

When Valkyrie isn’t leaving you behind or burying you with new people to keep tabs of, it’s tolerable — engaging, even. The sense of fear and suspense when Hitler enters a room is practically tangible; Stauffenberg’s intense focus and undying dedication to his goal is admirable, and Cruise convincingly plays the part of the patriot; and seeing the final assassination attempt executed, as well as the chaos that comes from the brilliant plan to utilize Hitler’s reserve army to take over Europe in an evening, is a well paced set of scenes. It’s disappointing that these few well done moments are drowned in the film’s flaws, and that the plodding tale sluggishly moves along before anticlimactically concluding with a finale that any high school-educated viewer can see coming.

The lack of exposition and bombardment of unintroduced characters keep you out of the loop for the majority of the movie, but the day that a small squadron of Nazis almost assassinated their leader to topple the Nazi reign is a fantastic tale that people should hear about. It’s just too bad that a history book will more easily hold your interest than the slow paced and anticlimactic adventure that Cruise and crew take part in.

If you want to see more writing from me on the topic of games, videogames and/or gaming, do check out my new blog: http://DownWriteFierce.com

I don’t quite know the direction I want to take yet. I considered doing JUST editorials (similar to http://thenewgamer.com) but I think I’m going to slip those in to blog entries, which I promise I’m going to try to make more interesting than anything you’ll read here. Drop me a line with feedback and suggestions!

http://www.DownWriteFierce.com

I’m currently working on getting another blog set up. I set upa  blogger-blog because WordPress has been bothering me lately, but I still don’t know if I’m going to use it.

Regardless, the new blog will be used wherever I decide to set it up, and it’s going to be more focused on writing about games. I blabber here, and that’s what I’ll continue to do, but it’ll be a more personal affair on this MitchellDyer.com than it was before. I mean, sure I write about some dumb personal things from time to time. So that’s what you’ll be getting here. General life stuff, whether it’s goings-on that I deem worthy enough to talk about, movies, stupid cartoons… All that. But I think gaming will be limited to non-existent here unless it’s passing chatter. The new blog is going to be more of a “new games journalism” thing, I guess they call it.

It’ll be more about personal experience in games, maybe the odd review (quality — experimenting with styles is something I’ll do here with anime write ups, but that site will be me sitting down and editing reviews that I don’t submit to any publications) and other stuff that I can think of that will make me feel smart. I want to take a stab at something besides reviews and fun features. Maybe I’ll take a more analytical look at development, reviews vs criticism (since that’s a hot topic these days) and other stuff to bloat my ego. It’ll be serious, and, in theory, smart.

At least smarter than the goofy shit you’ll suffer through here.

More to come.