Who guards the guardians?

In the last days, Spain has again done something repressive (big surprise) by jailing a rap singer. 

Let's not focus on that right now, although it's worth mentioning Spain is the country that has the biggest number of artist in prison. Yeah, ahead of Iran or Saudi Arabia or other places that are repressive dictatorships. And the European Union is not doing anything about it. 

Anyway, there has been protests in defence of freedom of expression, in Barcelona and other cities of Spain. And the police has answered with charges. In front of that, protestors have created fires and barricades to defend themselves, and now the main TV channels and newspapers that support the elites are crying for burned trash containers and making it equal than being beaten with sticks or losing an eye, something that has happened to a protestor when she was shot in the face with a special foam bullet.And I'll redirect attention to my other post of Declaration of War, and say that they expect people to just silently comply to everything bad and we're past that phase, and you can either support the repressed or be part of the problem.

In Valencia for example you could see that a protest was ongoing in a peaceful manner and police with riot gear just went against it at full force all of a sudden. And actually these images are similar to what happened during 1st of October in Catalunya when the referendum took place. 

In all these, police can do whatever they want. There's never any repercussions for them. They're supposed to avoid hitting heads, to avoid shooting in the face, to avoid creating panics or making situations more dangerous, they're not supposed to insult or say racist or sexist crap, etc. And they do, and nothing happens. 

Police is a problem. Society does need some type of mechanism to guarantee that you will not be robbed, raped, murdered, attacked,etc. and when these things do happen there needs to be a mechanism to follow them up, find the authors and deal with them, by re-educating/re-inserting them or, if that's not possible, locking them up. Society does need some type of protection against abuse. In most countries, it has been decided that there's a security force, like a small army, that should take care of that, the police.

However, then you have several other problems. First of the issues is what is a crime. There's evident ones, like if you are on a street and randomly decide to murder the next person that crosses you. Yes, that's a crime. But then, there's a lot of grey areas, like what if you were defending yourself from said murder and ended up murdering the attacker? It was self-defence, right? Well, some countries decide this is allowed, and some others say this is still a crime. And that's just an example that things are never that clear-cut and usually they need to be analysed in detail to understand context. Then there's the matter than robbing a food shop because you don't have food is considered a crime but raising rent to the point where your tenants cannot afford to eat is not, which also shows that crime can be quite subjective and the big powers can make it so their activities, while more damaging to society, are considered not a crime. 

Second of the issues thought, is that, who's going to check that this force is not committing crimes themselves? This is a very old philosophical question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who guards the guardians? If a police officer is a piece of shit that hits his wife, their comrades and friends will gladly stop him from doing so and arrest him, or will they cover for him? If the police decides to beat people up for fun and revenge, who's going to stop them from doing this? If the police is full of bastards, how do we clean  them from the system if we need the same police to arrest them or protect us from them?

In theory police itself should try to find its worse elements inside it and remove them, but why should they? They're being trained to support each other, trust each other and work together. Especially in sections like the riot police, they're trained to act like an army, like soldiers, and you cannot expect that this training does not produce a certain brainwash against reporting your fellow officers. Plus there's the fact that most people that join these sections are more than happy about not reporting them even before the training, but we'll get back to that too.

So, what are solutions to this? Sometimes police departments have what in movies call "Internal Affairs", which is a side that investigates police officers themselves and, of course, in most cultural works they're painted as "the bad guys" from preventing "good officers" from doing their job. Only that will tell you that they're probably not popular if they work well, and that they have huge pressures against them. Plus in the end they're part of the same force, they may have started working with the same people and have friends in there. 

In Spain, I'm not sure internal affairs exist, I think most forces just investigate themselves, but there's a curious kind-of alternative: We have different branches of forces. We have national police, sometimes regional police, and then we also have Guardia Civil, which is like a different force entirely that works also at national level. This solution was initially implemented to have an alternative force from the military, for all the wrong reasons (at the time the military had turned more progressive). 

This idea could work, if implemented properly: You have two forces that are independent, with different uniforms, different training, different circles. You divide the forced by region, so depending on the region one applies or the other, and you then make any crime that one does to be investigated by the other, plus having each other in checks so no one gets corrupted or does something bad, some type of friendly rivalry for being the best and more clean. Since they're not connected or part of each other, this would reduce the feeling of "betraying one of us" that lots of them seem to have. Spain hasn't implemented this correctly, of course, but it's something that could help. 

However, Police has also another problem, a third one, that is in the end the root of everything that's wrong with it: The profiles of the people that want to join and are accepted. In theory and in an ideal world, police should be formed by people that want to defend society from bad elements that live in it. Compassionate strong people, with a high moral compass, that even if they're not a judge, they can decide when someone is worth arresting or if it's better, for example, to pay for their meal once, or just warn, or well, really understand the situation and do what's best for society in the long run.

That's not the case at all, at least in Spain and in plenty of other places. Here the main focus is to find people that will obey commands. That's the most important detail. Then, people that will uphold laws regardless of if they're unjust or not. So it's better if they're not too bright or moral or they may see the problems in persecuting poverty without addressing the root causes. They have to be loyal people, loyal to their partners and bosses, not loyal to real legality or morality, but to the force. And in the case of the riot police, they have to be people that are happy to hit others. 

So, who then applies to these positions? Well, bullies. Fascists. Military fanatics. Violent people. And then you end up with forces made up of sexist neo-nazis that are quite happy to beat these progressive protesters, grope women as they arrest them and bully pacific people into submission. Or they're quite happy to ignore the openly neo-nazi that works with them because he's a "nice guy" and they have beers together later and he's a companion. And then it happens that when real dangers to society, when actual fascists are marching around saying we should kill all jews and leftists, these police officers are happy to defend them, because they're their friends. Hell, in Spain lots of times with different forces, in these fascist marches one force is defending the other force, because the other is marching but without the uniform, not officially.

And it's not me saying this. It's lots of ex-cops, ex-military, ex-security forces. There are people that joined these professions with real care and, when they protested about the situation, were directly expelled because they didn't "fit in" and such things. Which means that any good people left in there may disagree with these things but they're not willing to say it out loud either and accept it as something that just happens inside police. 

The power that these positions offer corrupts, and attracts corrupted and violent people, apart from people that just want to defend others. And for very long the elites have accepted the bad ones because it was useful for them to have mindless violent guard dogs that they could send to anyone that bothered them.

Not every police officer is like this and it also depends on what they do, if they investigate murders, are just information analysts, or are patrolling or riot police. However, there's way too many, it's not just a few, it's a big majority inside that prevents any real change. Most Spanish police worker unions are openly supporters of VOX, for example. Another example: a lot of domestic violence cases are caused by police officers themselves, in a proportion much superior to any other profession.

Recently two police officers in a bar decided to say sexual things to a 14-year-old, and when his dad protested they put him in the hospital. This case was so evident, so bad, that they have been arrested, but we'll see if they're really condemned. And when a similar thing happened in Euskadi, the police officers said the others were terrorists and they're currently in jail for terrorism, when they just defended themselves in a bar fight. 

The worst offenders are Riot Police, as I said. Riot police should be there to defend us from, for example, the fascists groups that were roaming the streets recently and hitting people. But the reality is that it's impossible for them to do so, for the same reason Spiderman can never be seen saving Peter Parker. Riot police shot live ammo against protesters, after the 14-year-old incident I mentioned before caused locals to go to the police station to protest. Riot police shot to the face a girl and she lost an eye, this week. Riot police hit people voting on 1st of October during the referendum. And riot police have again and again been abusive, violent, brutal without reason, not following laws themselves at all. And they've faced very little repercussion, or even being awarded for their "brave" service of hitting people in groups while wearing full-body armour.

Riot police as it is, should be disbanded in Spain. And the profile and philosophy of  police needs to be reassessed in order to have proper democracy, otherwise we'll keep having huge problems with them. 

Any party that says they're progressive should defend that and do it if they have the chance. Otherwise, they're not.

...and the results are in

 Let's comment on the results of the elections for a moment here now.

The results are...not bad. Could be better, but well. 

First of all, more than 50% of the total votes went directly to parties that support independence. This is a big deal, because Spanish unionist never got tired of saying that independence supporters were never winning by counting the total votes and not the total representatives, and ignoring that there was a party were the votes could go either way. Now, even without counting that party, it's clear than more than half of the people voted for independence. 

Of course now unionist will say participation was low, at only 53%, compared to the previous 80% which was a record. While participation was lower, it's true, the fact remains that we're in the middle of a pandemic and it wasn't the best moment to vote, we were forced by the Spanish tribunals thinking the results would be "good" for unionism. They were not, so yeah, fuck them, that's a problem they created in the first place. And make no mistake, if they had won, participation would have never been commented as an issue. 

Then, the "winner" party: PSC, with 33 representatives and a bit more votes but barely, than ERC, and they both have the same amount of representatives. Here we can see the lack of democratic culture so often found in Spain: They claim PSC won. And while PSC did get more votes than any other, they got less than 25% of the total votes. This means it's irrelevant which party has more votes, what matters is which parties can work together. And unless ERC betrays all they've said during the campaign, PSC just doesn't have enough support among the other parties to win or rule.  

The independentist parties won, with 74 representatives, out of 135. ERC has 33 representatives, barely had more votes than JxCat, but JxCat has 32 representatives and has conceded, ERC will have the presidency. CUP has managed to get a respectable amount of representatives, 9, and they can condition the government and its actions, which is always good. In summary, it seems like these three forces could rule. However, negotiating may be difficult, since they tend to be very aggressive with each other. 

Ciutadans has crashed beautifully to only 6 representatives. PP is even worse, with 3 representatives. This is amazing news, because these two parties are a bunch of lying fascists. However what's not so good is that VOX has gotten 11 representatives. People are crying about this, and for sure it's bad, but as I keep saying, Ciutadans and PP are also fascist. It just happens that, when your voting base is fascists idiots, they tend to prefer the party that is openly fascist. So, fascism didn't grow, it's still there at the same level as before. And make no mistake, a lot of VOX votes come from rich areas, that's the elites defending the fascist control over Spain. However overall, these extremist parties are doing so much worse than before: Last time they had 40 representatives in total, and this time they have 20.

PDCAT disappeared and has no representation, which I also think it's beautiful. This party privatized a lot of healthcare in Catalunya, voted against protecting the vote of people living outside Spain and are guilty of destroying public education and healthcare, which means they're guilty of plenty of deaths during this pandemic. Their support was inflated, and now that they had to defend themselves with no protection under some other name or cause, the real result has shown nobody wants them anymore.

En Comú Podem (ECP) didn't do very well and has only 8 representatives. As I said, their problem is that they don't get at all Catalunya, they say things like independentism is racist and excludes people, which are not true (apart from some idiots on twitter, and all sides always have a minimum of them, no side is free of that) , and because they don't get how society works here very well, they keep losing votes and support. What is a shame is that PSC voters should vote them instead, they defend much better the people that are voting PSC than what PSC will ever be able to do. Having said that, they insist again and again that PSC is left-wing, when it's not, and they're not considering CUP as another left-wing option, and they keep being quite hypocritical and misunderstanding everything. As long as they make these serious mistakes and they keep some questionable people inside the party, they deserve this too. 

So, the possible combinations are as follows: 

1-ERC+JxCat+CUP: The "easiest" option and more reasonable, with these it's possible to control the parliament and the government. 

2-ERC+JxCat+ECP+CUP: That would be weird, but ERC wanted to "open their hand" to ECP. Problem is ECP keeps repeating JxCat are right-wing extremists and cannot pact with them, but then again this is not true at all, JxCat are center-right at max, and more to the left than PSC actually. 

3-ERC+PSC+ECP: The preferred option for ECP and probably PSC too, ERC has given doubts they could accept this but lately they repeated they would never pact with PSC, so to do that now would be quite damaging to their image. 

4-PSC+ECP+C+PP+VOX: This one is the nightmare situation where the independentist parties would fight enough that they didn't agree to rule, and then ERC didn't vote against this for some reason/allied with this somehow and let this happen. Highly unlikely because it needs an independentist party to betray all their voters and that would be suicidal. This would also be damaging for ECP and PSC, since they would have to ally themselves with VOX, although they have allied themselves with Cs other times and they're also pretty fascists...

Overall, not bad results. Catalunya is moving towards a strong independentist center-left, where the Catalan "right-wing" is actually left from the "leftist" traditional parties in Spain.

Now expect the Spanish tribunals to start bullshitting and creating charges against the independentist politicians, it will happen soon enough...

Elections Once More

I'd like to make a little break from Resident Evil posts to talk again about Catalunya's elections. 

So, as usual, a judge decided that the previous Catalan President was unfit to rule because he put up a sign talking about freeing political prisoners before the Spanish general elections. Because apparently this was giving support to some specific parties and wasn't allowed. The whole thing is ridiculous but that's what happened. 

So, new elections had to be organized to select a new president, earlier than it should have happened and while in the middle of a pandemic, but these judges don't give a crap about that and would be happier if all Catalans just died, so yeah, they did this anyway. They will occur on 14th of February, but with the pandemic every party said to adjourn them till later. But again a judge decided that this was not legal and they had to take place. This is presumably because there's a candidate that the Spanish government is backing that has chances to have good results right now, while it's unclear if he will also have good results later, and Spanish judges are so corrupted that they're happy to oblige with actions that help the unionists and the status quo of Spain, still ruled by Franco's heirs in lots of positions of authority, like the higher tribunals of the Spanish judicial system. 

All quite normal for Spain, really. I think that the tribunals that decided it was ok to vote in a pandemic should be part of the organizers that sit and take the votes of people at the election points, since it's a very safe activity, yes? Of course they won't, but they totally should...

Anyway, people are tired, from the pandemic and from the constant struggle, plus of the fact that traditional parties that were supposed to advance in independence work have not done anything in 3 years. I believe independence is possible but it's clear some of these parties don't believe it anymore or are not willing to do what they say they will do, at least. In this situation a lot of people are afraid to vote or don't know who to vote or want to punish the parties and will not vote. 

This is bad. 

We must always remember that the most right-wing and conservative, because of their nature, will not doubt. They will go to vote thinking the pandemic is a scam. Or they will go to vote just because their leader has asked them to. Or they will go to vote for some other reason, but since right-wing is big about accepting authority without question, they will just go and vote for bastards. So if people that do try to think a bit don't vote, there will be an over-representation of idiots. And this is bad. 

So yes, go to vote. It sucks, it's dangerous, and the parties don't convince you. Doesn't matter, go to vote. Just pick your less bad choice. Or you'll be responsible for all the bad that the really worse parties can do.  

Now, a little summary of the parties involved:

VOX: The far-right wing party, they're openly fascist. Fascists should not be part of elections but in Spain they won and they're allowed. 

PP: The far-right wing traditional party that is not openly fascist but are fascist anyway. Founded by fascists, ruled by the children of fascists after some of them died, and used to steal public money without shame and maintaining status-quo. Again, in a civilized country they wouldn't be allowed to run either.

Ciutadans: Another far-righ wing party, not openly fascist but fascist anyway, although their focus is more on being ultra-neoliberals and fucking with workers as much as possible. Basically PP with a cleaner record in corruption, just because they didn't control much power yet and then it's hard to be corrupted if you don't have any, but would do the same as PP if they could. 

Now, wait a sec, you may say, you cannot accuse everyone, that is not following your ideals, of being fascist! 

Well, of course not. But these three are. Like, really. As I said, the members of these three parties and the founders very often had ties with Franco's old government, by being part of it or being friends with part of it or being relatives. These parties have again and again defended Franco's dictatorship, monuments and legacy, and have been again and again saying it was not that bad during this time and the real problem was the republic before that. And they pact together and rule together every time they can do so, in every region and city hall in Spain where they had enough votes for this. They're fascist, as clear as day, and they're in it together, just fighting to see who's at the top and can control the others and steal the most.

Let's talk about the not-fascists ones:

PSOE: Traditional Spanish party that is center-right. The problem is that they say they're center-left and progressive, and they're not. They're happy with certain authoritarianism, with helping the big companies and fucking medium and little ones, to support the king of Spain, and they've been for too long ruling too so they also have corruption, but in subtler ways. They have no word, have not fulfilled lots of pacts and acted on self-interest and for the benefit of the elites. And occasionally, they've given support to social causes, nothing too problematic for the elites but enough that they may appear as "progressive". PP-VOX-Ciutadans will punch you in the mouth and spit on you when you're down. PSOE will instead clap you in the back and stab you oh-so-politely when you don't expect it. In the end you're still hurt, but yeah, the style is different. The current Spanish regime and elite is maintained thanks to PSOE, giving legitimacy to them by defending them the same as the fascist trio but without being as over-the-top evil as them.

Unidas Podemos/En Comú Podem: New party that appeared as the counter for the traditional ones, but has been slightly corrupted by power and by including people from an old party too, Izquierda Unida. They're the best that Spain as a country can offer, but they're simply not enough. They have good ideas and good proposals, but they lack power to implement real changes without more votes in the rest of Spain. They have two big faults: 1-They want to pact with PSOE as if it was center-left when it's not, and PSOE will fuck them constantly because that's what they do with anything that is left-wing. 2-They do not understand Catalunya's situation nor understand that the right-wing parties in Catalunya are, at max, as bad as PSOE and in the same ideological compass regarding economy, if not more left-wing than PSOE. I wouldn't mind them ruling Spain, I think they would do a much better job than anyone else available with chances, but they're not perfect and fault 2 makes them not ideal at all for Catalunya. 

ERC: Traditional Catalan party, in theory left-wing but in reality very very very much center more than left at this time. They are in theory independentist, but lately they've been forgiving too much to PSOE's government, thinking that by being moderate they can attract more support to independence, but by doing this also recognizing that they don't want independence right away and something in the middle would work for them. This may attract some voters, but lots of other voters may feel repelled and betrayed by them now. Also, as I said, they're trusting they can pact with PSOE, but PSOE has shown again and again that whatever they pact, then they decide to ignore if it fits them better or protects the elites.

JxCat: Kind-of new party that resulted from a division inside the old Catalan party Convergencia. Convergencia ruled for many years here, was right-wing, corrupt and did quite bad things to the average person, especially when it comes to healthcare. When independence became popular they joined the train and tried to steer it towards more power for them. This failed because of the aforementioned corruption, I think. Since then they changed names several times (last official one was PDECat) while keeping the same people, with mixed results. In the end, a group inside that defended more democracy, transparency and real independence made a "coup" and stole this name, that they had used in the past, to create a new party. The old Convergencia is still participating but they've been forced to use their proper name, PDECat, and this other group now has the people that were more committed and more open to changes. This new party seems in the center, and it has defended proposals that are more to the left than PSOE (although this is not very hard). Still, it tends towards a more conservative vision of politics, that is true. 

PDECat: The party mentioned before. They may end up with no representation in these elections, and I have no sympathy for them. Their party did quite horrible things in Catalunya. They tried to hide under other names and ride the independence train to keep relevant but finally they've been forced out in the open and to go as they are, and I'm quite happy if they don't get results, as long as the voters go to some better independent party.

CUP: Left-wing party in favor of independence. They're called "radicals" in this current world where not putting your tongue up the market's ass as deep as you can is considered to be extreme and anti-system. They're irregular and change opinion often, but that's to be expected because they're based in voting things instead of having a single leader that decides everything. They're not perfect by far and some of their actions could have been better, but seems to me they're the less bad option of the bunch, if you favor independence and want society to improve somewhat.

So, they don't feel exciting elections but there's also this detail: Maybe clear independence votes will surpass 50% of the total votes for the first time. Other times the votes for Unidas Podemos could be counted either way, and unionists always considered them to be in favor of remaining in Spain, although the people voting them had a mixed opinion. IF the other independent parties get more than 50%, some people won't be able to say anymore that this is not something that a majority of voters want. I'm not sure anything else will be achieved, but it's something...

Resident Evil 4: The Shame

 So. It's time for the controversy. 

As I said, in this period I finally played through all of Resident Evil 4. Before that, I played together with university friends, but I missed sections and things. The game has been ported to other consoles by now, but it launched in the GameCube, which again was a strange move since Nintendo seems to focus on child games, and RE4 seems to be for an older audience. I did play through most of it in the past, but I wanted a 100% proper playthrough done by myself (and without the infinite rocket launcher I had last time I played sections) to see what was my real opinion of the game.

After having done that, I've confirmed what I already knew, but now can properly say: I think RE4 is one of the worst RE games by far. This is in direct conflict with the public opinion, that praised this game as a great reinvention of RE, with high technical quality, great gameplay, reinvention of the characters, etc. 

So let's compare its different aspects, and let's start with something that is good:The game indeed has much better graphics than previous ones, it's a big step up from Code Veronica (the latest before this one). It's a lot more detailed, with bigger maps, longer sections, and overall more modern look. By its time, it was indeed revolutionary. This, however, was a bit wasted by making everything brownish/grayish, which was a tendency of that time when making "realistically-looking" games, making them all quite boring to look at by using these tones that made all scenarios look similar, brown/black/grayish. The game didn't introduce this fashion and was just a victim of it, so we can excuse this, and recognize that technically is quite advanced. 

Then, the gameplay: RE4 introduces the 3rd-person view where you aim and shoot enemies and the camera follows you. This makes it more similar to a shooter, with the advantages this has: Combat becomes more personal and immediate, more tense, where you move from location to another, aim at different enemies, keep moving...Also I have to recognize this is a lot more fun than the previous gameplay, although more difficult too. The way they implemented the movement doesn't make it easy and it takes a bit of adaptation time, but once you understand it it's fine and it's enjoyable. The enemies this time are more mobile (we'll get back to this) and sometimes they launch things at you, so you need to keep moving and changing position and it's interesting.

Regarding puzzles, this game reduced the complexity quite a lot. Because of the gameplay, they put emphasis in the action and puzzles do stop the action, so they left some very basic ones, and then for the rest it felt totally linear: You find a key and immediately after you find a door that requires that key. Inventory space is limited, but only for weapons and health items, so anything puzzle or plot related is stored apart, which simplifies things of course but adds a lot of linearity, no backtracking to open a door that had something hidden or to unlock some box that had a secret code, you move from area to area and there's no need to ever go back, usually. I think that's clearly a downgrade from previous games where you had to think a bit about these things, and being in an area that has a door and making you grab two emblems from some box and just put them there and continue feels....cheap. I guess this is because of the previously mentioned linearity: If your map feels more like a maze or a real building or area, even if where to use the key is evident it still feels different, you go through same areas and feel a certain familiarity. 

Let's talk about the items. The scarcity of previous games is gone, and usually you keep finding plenty of ammo and resources as you advance. What's more, enemies drop items now when you kill them, and there's usually money or money related items, or ammo and health recovery items. Ammo and health occupy the real inventory space, that you have limited and need to reorganize to fit everything. The new inventory in this case feels nice and it's a bit of fun to reorganize everything so it's properly ordered and looks good. Money is then used to buy certain new weapons or upgrade them. There's a merchant now, a guy that offers to buy and sell you things, and that's how you can spend the money for these upgrades. Apart from the pistol, the magnum, the shotgun and the machine gun, this game introduces the rifle and the sniper rifle, a favorite of mine I have to say, which I have to admit is fun to use. There's a few options of each weapon, but sometimes the newest model may not be as good as the previous one in gun and shotgun cases, you need to look at the max values after a full upgrade that you can reach with the weapon to understand if, after upgrading it, you'll end up with a better or worse one. All weapons have laser sights that facilitate shooting a lot. Then, about the money objects, in the game you can find gems and art artifacts. You can sell those for plenty of money, and big enemies tend to drop big jewels and such. This way you can help finance the weapon upgrades.

Then, let's talk about monsters: In this game, zombies disappear. Instead, we have what they call "Las Plagas", which are parasites that turn people into monsters, slowly, from inside. At first they just control the people, but as they progress people turn more stupid, more violent, and big parasites start appearing inside them. It seems some of the infected have better control of the parasites and are able to command others, resulting in a situation where a town has been converted into some weird cult. These parasites resemble normal people and move quite faster than zombies, although some look ill. Since they're normal people, they can hold weapons and throw them to you or shoot you with them in the later stages of the game, which again means the game is more action.oriented because you need to evade more, run away, change positions, etc. More advanced forms, when killed, spawn these big parasites from their bodies. And some extreme examples mutate their bodies into huge monster/parasite kind of hybrid. There's infected people, infected dogs of course, or this giant "Ogre" that basically is a Harry Potter/ Lord of the rings movies' troll, which was a very popular design at that time and has no real explanation as to how it got produced apart from having more than one parasite inside. A new type of disgusting monster called regenerator also appears, which is immortal unless you use a heat vision and kill the parasites inside its body with a sniper rifle, and those turn out to be quite scary. Overall, you feel you're fighting humans mostly and therefore I think it's less scary, with a few exceptions where parasites emerge from the body or when the weirdest/more mutated ones appear.

From what I've explained you can see that this is a totally different experience than in previous games, although with some similarities (mutated eyes appearing in random areas of the body that indicate weak points, for example, or giant mutated monsters), but so far I've mentioned aspects that are fun and others that are more boring but not dramatic. My main concerns so far that I mentioned are that it's less scary, more linear and puzzles are easier, but the gameplay is nicer too, the new inventory is fun and the weapon upgrades and such things feel quite good. So, what's so bad?

The fucking plot and setting and characters. That's what so bad. That's what's unforgivable. This and quick-time events, but we'll get to them after discussing these elements first.

Let's start by the introductory situation: Umbrella has been denounced as a terrorist organization that governments of the world are fighting, including the, of course, glorious government of the US of A. Like, what? Umbrella was always a corrupt organization because they corrupted the government! The government was totally onboard with them! On RE3 they fucking nuked a city to hide the outbreak and all the shady crap that was happening in there! That was one of the main points of the series, that you were like a small rebel group trying to bring them down, David vs Goliath situation! I mean, yes, RE4 reinvents the game, but by making the corrupt governments as the "good guys" totally undermines a basic pillar of the saga, plus its a horrible, horrible way to defend the horrible governments we have around the word, including USA! 

Following this up, the main character is Leon from RE2. But now he's been assigned directly to protect, of course, the fucking president of USA/do his instructions. And now he's all tough and serious and snarky, like a bad boy/boring typical antihero macho-man. He reacts to everything in a bored, condescending tone most of the time, being confrontational with every character, even the ones that are supposed to be allies. In RE2 he was serious but caring and gentle, a rookie, just going through a crisis situation. Here they destroyed his personality and make him totally unlikeable. They fixed him a bit on RE6, which we will discuss later, but the damage done here is really bad. 

More horrible things: The game takes place "somewhere in the south of Europe". Except it's Spain. Clearly spain. They talk Spanish. All enemies have Spanish names, like "Las Plagas" as I mentioned. However, they fucked it up like a lot. I'm not a fan of Spain, but for fuck's sake, do some research. For starters, the people talk in a weird accent, clearly a mix of South-American accents, using some words and expressions that are not really used in Spain. I mean, was it so hard to hire a real Spanish person to do the voices and the lines? Then, the money used is "Pesetas", the old currency, not used by then (we already had euros by then). The place they show is like a horrible small town with grey skies (Spain is sunny as shit! And even rural areas do not look so horrible as the areas shown in there! Poor towns do not look at all like they look in the game!). Finally there's the names: Everywhere, they translated names adding Spanish articles and then using English articles. So, for example, the enemies are "Las Plagas". Not Plagas. "Las Plagas". Therefore, they talk about "the Las Plagas", basically like saying "The the plagues". They do this for EVERYTHING. I mean, Spanish is used in plenty of places, it's not an obscure secret language that you cannot find information about it. How can you mess all these things so badly?

Even more horror: The main plot point is that the bad guys have kidnapped the President's 20-year-old daughter, Ashley. First of all...How?? How security messes up this badly? Secondly, why send only Leon to investigate? And why the hell did they go to some remote location where a weird cult lives? Who found out she's there? They claim "a girl that resembles her was seen in the area". Again, how was she seen if she's been captured and everybody in the almost-deserted area is a cultist/infected person? Then, this means that a big part of the game is an escort mission. Luckily, she gets re-captured several times and during these periods you don't need to worry about protecting her, but the fact that you do need to protect her sometimes and she keeps getting kidnapped is quite annoying. Plus you can kill her by mistake. Plus she's slow and she keeps being typically "girly", in a very sexist way. Plus she's modeled to be "sexy", with a small skirt that prevents her from jumping or something....another character even comments on her big breasts, and she hits on you quite soon at the end (Leon rejects her at least). The whole thing is quite ridiculous.

More stuff: The evil guys are cartoonishly evil,  with evil laugh and evil talk and all that. One of them is especially annoying, keeps appearing and taunting you and then running away and leaving weaker enemies in your presence, so you can conveniently kill them one by one. Their plot apparently is to infect you and the girl so you can "rescue" her and then go to the president and infect him as well or just kill him to destabilize the government or something.And you know? They succeed! They infect both of you, quite early in the game actually! So, what goes wrong? Well, they...just don't keep you locked up. They keep Ashley locked up, but in your case they infect you and let you totally free. The infection takes time to get hold of you, so meanwhile you're just killing people, that they send to kill you? But why are they trying to kill you if they infected you? Or why not kill you the moment you fainted in front of them? It's like, a total mess, there's contradiction after contradiction after contradiction. By the end of the game, of course, you manage to cure yourself and her and kill everyone. And they could have prevented this by simply capturing you properly and locking you up, or well, just killing you, that would have worked too. While waiting for you to be infected they even sacrifice henchmen, that are discarded as "not worthy" or something. Like, why would you do that?? 

More ridiculous stuff:There's a character that helps you for a bit, that dies soon after, in another moment where the evil guy just appears out of nowhere from behind a door and just impales him. Why not do that with you too and solve the issue? Or capture you or something. Then, there's another henchmen, some type of soldier, that appears out of nowhere, talks with you as if you know each other, and you answer as if he was some old enemy or some old comrade or something. The thing is, this guy hasn't been shown anywhere else before that, so I have no idea of who he is, and this apparent rivalry has to be taken at face value. This is of course strange, and you don't feel that invested in defeating him as Leon seems to be, because well, you haven't really interacted with him before that, have you? Maybe there's some comic or some book or something before RE4 where the character appears, but just using the games as reference you're left wondering, which is never a good thing. And it's not like he reappears, you kill him in this game and that's that.

Related to this character, let's talk about the quick-time events. Quick-time events are moments where something happens in the game and you need to react fast and press something, like "press A!" to avoid some scripted danger. Like, pressing "A" usually makes you run, but in this it makes you jump two meters away from a falling rock. Stuff like that. Games that have them by surprise can be nasty, because e if you don't expect it you can just die. This happens in RE4, there are moments like this. If this happens while walking around, that's ok more or less. When you die you don't restart from the latest save but from the latest checkpoint, which tends to be you just entering the room. It's still annoying a bit, but well, it can be excused. However, RE4 does another thing hat is just...wrong: They put quick-time events in cutscenes, and in the worst example they put them in the middle of a conversation between you and the soldier bad guy. This means that you cannot really pay attention properly, because you need to be focused to press the right buttons at the right time. If you fail, you die and need to repeat the cutscene. This gets annoying fast. And it's not the only cutscene where this happens, but it's the worst one by far because there's like 5 of them at different times. They could have done exposition, fight-break with events, and then more exposition, but no, they mix both things and it ends up being messy. 

As a side note, the action of the cutscenes is also ridiculous now, you pull stunts from bad action movies where you seem to be a superhero, no normal person would be able to do this. Ada Wong reappears, by the way, and she also pulls stuff like that She, as usual, helps you but not always but having her own agenda at the same time, ending up being more help than nuisance of course. Her character is pretty similar as before, just cooler, so not as many complains there, but the general tone is still very exaggerated.

So, the game has all this crap. And people loved the game. They said it was an original reinvention of the saga, that it was revolutionary, that it modernized it and abandoned a semi-serious tone to really let itself go, turning into an autocritic, being silly on purpose and not taking itself seriously. And people loved the new interpretations of the character, and thought the plot was decent enough, etc. To that, I say what was said in IT Crowd: "People, what a bunch of bastards". The game "parodies" stupid action so well that it's indistinguishable from real stupid action, and therefore for me it makes no difference even if they did it "on purpose" as some sort of statement on the silliness of the premise. The game follows horrible tropes, stereotypes, sexism, racism, general plot stupidity and its only saving grace is the revamped gameplay, which I will admit is pretty good, but that's about it.  

I played it fully so I could say it with cause, and I can confirm it now: This is the biggest shame of the RE saga, even if it gave it extra life by being successful. This game damaged the next ones and tarnished the experience so much that made me lose interest a lot. 

RE5 and RE6 are heirs of this mess, and as heirs they share lots of issues with RE4. RE7 is different. But we'll get to all that in the following posts.

Resident Evil 3, Code Veronica and 0.

 After talking about the first and second game I will talk about the last "classic" Resident Evils together, with more focus on the 3rd one and its remake. 

 

"Classic" Resident Evil games are those done in the old style, more focused on horror, where items are scarce, atmosphere is creepy and scary, gameplay is based on fixed cameras in each area, where you aim and shoot in straight lines on front of the character and graphics tend to be squared and old fashioned, with low detail still. You have the herbs and sprays to heal, you have similar enemies although some new ones every time, and in general gameplay-wise they're exactly the same, just changing the plot and scenarios.

Resident evil 0 follows this model. This one is a prequel, and I haven't finished it. Prequels for some reason interest me less, maybe because we know more or less what will happen. Also in this case it was weird, because they introduced zombies already ,which would have been reported, and then a new type of monster based in slugs which is pretty disgusting. The game is nice, but it's a bit tiresome, a big chunk of it revolves around limited Inventory and having to share things between two characters back and forth. One character, a girl that appears weak and needing rescues, appeared in Resident Evil 1 in Chris' playthrough, which I haven't done, and the other is a typical macho-man and therefore boring. The game has this strange mode where you have two characters that you alternatively control, and it seems they have eliminated the storage, something I miss quite a lot because it's hard to organize and prepare and you always end up with extra items that you need to get rid of or something. At least in this one you can just drop them on the floor, but still feels bad not being able to store them somewhere safe. The game doesn't seem to add much to the saga to be honest, and feels a bit dated and not as interesting as others for some reason. I guess my main complaint is that it tries to show you something before the mansion incident...but well, before the mansion incident there were no interesting questions left unresolved or anything. If I finish it I may comment more about it. 

Code Veronica, by order,  should be played after Resident Evil 3, but we can discuss it first because it's very independent. I finished it long time ago with university friends, and it still follows the classic model. The game came out only for Dreamcast, in a bold move to promote the console, but that made it more obscure and no remakes have been made for any other platform. You play first as Claire (from RE2) and then as Chris (from RE1), the two siblings. Another virus outbreak happens in an island, and you meet two crazy villains that are controlling the place. While still being a classic RE, the tone is more action-based in general, with the start of the trend of some ridiculous cutscenes. The villains are also more cartoonish and extreme: While in previous games we had some people with self-interests or that had gone mad, here they're directly crazy and flamboyant. It's also the game where Albert Wesker reappears after being left for dead, and showing superhuman speed and strength, although you don't fight him directly and he escapes after this. In summary, while being still the classic style, the game starts to resemble what will become the style for RE4 and RE5 a bit.

Finally let's talk about RE3. 

This game dind't bring much originality to the saga, that is true. The main character is Jill Valentine, a choice I approve strongly but we have seen her in the past. She appears as a tough person that has experience in the outbreak, as it happens in the city, right before the events of RE2. Jill needs to go through the city trying to find escape routes. The setting therefore is the same as RE2, sharing locations with it and reusing maps, which while fun it does seem more repetitive at times. You meet other survivors and a group of mercenaries hired by Umbrella to help contain the outbreak and save citizens. One of them Carlos, is nice and helps you, but some of them are secretly working just to gather data and keep experimenting, betraying you. At the same time, a special bioweapon called Nemesis has been sent to eliminate all mebmers of S.T.A.R.S., raccoon city elite police officers, and sicne you're one of them soon enough this thing keeps appearing and following you. Nemesis is similar to Mr.T from RE2, but stronger, less robot-like and more organic. Defeating it is usually temporary, although you can see it deteriorates as you achieve more wins. Nemesis is different also in the fact that it can wield weapons, like a grenade-launcher that, of course, is used to fuck with helicopters that were about to rescue you.

There's a small section of the game where Jill becomes infected and you play as Carlos while finding a cure, but it's quite reduced and finishes fast. The general tone is that the mercenaries underestimate Jill and then she proves herself again and again to be much better than them at dealing with these things, except for this period after Nemesis infects you. The game has some hard logical puzzles and mysteries, and the feeling that you're in a city overrun by zombies is always quite present, at least during the first half of the game. Hunters reappear and ruin your day plenty of times, but monsters keep being not very original, just iterations of previous ones, including the zombies, mutated giant animals, lickers and so on. The original game also offered some branching at a certain moments, making you choose between two options. Your choice didn't affect much apart from sometimes avoiding being hurt, or exploring different areas, or making your life easier or harder, except in the end where one of the choices gives you an extra cutscene.

In the end you defeat nemesis quite awesomely, especially if you choose the extra cut-scene, and you discover that the US government, president included, has decided to nuke the city and fuck the possible survivors in there. You barely escape the blast together with Carlos, and thousands get killed while it's true that the outbreak gets contained, in an exercise that indicates some collaboration between Umbrella and the government and both of them not caring at all for the people.

The remake of RE3 plays very similar to the RE2 remake. Graphics have been upgraded to the modern level too, so they're pretty awesome, and there's some sections of 1st person that help create a certain tone, darker and scarier, which is nice. The game then plays like RE2, with the 3rd person perspective where you move the camera freely but have to be precise and point at the enemies correctly to do some damage. The game has more action than RE2, with zombies being a bit weaker and finding more ammo in general, and soon enough you also start being followed by Nemesis, although here it looks even bigger and as it receives damages turns into a  more animalistic and huge thing, to the point that the final versions occupy the whole room and you feel like you're an insect compared to it. The game makes puzzles a bit easier while introducing different areas and boss fights than in the original, and sometimes it's hard to tell if you're supposed to run or fight. There's also no choices in this one, although the ending is still pretty awesome. 

The change in this game that did bother me the most is that they made Jill more of a damsel in distress that Carlos had to save. She's still badass, but there's a stupid moment when she's infected that Carlos has to fend an army of zombies and hunters, and she becomes this delicate thing, giving more protagonism to him than in the first game. What also bothered me is that his weapons suck a lot more than her weapons: She could have dealt with the monsters sooo much better than him. What's more, right after this you get to play with her again and she breezes through the areas where Carlos was having issues. In the end it's still established that she's very good, but it feels they damage her more and make her "weaker" than in the original, and this frankly pissed me off a bit, because games have this tendency of abusing the "distressed damsel" trope and I thought we had finished with this.

All in all, I really loved RE3, and I'd say the remake of 3 was also really good and I liked it more than the other one.  

Having finished with the "classic" ones, I'll talk next about RE4, where they renewed the franchise completely and I have pleeeenty to say....

Resident Evil 2: The old version & the remake

 Although the first game was the original and the one I tried first, the second one was the one I played the most when I was little. 

 

Resident Evil 2 seemed to me easier, shorter, more approachable than the first one for some reason. There's also the fact that I played a version that came with an activated "cheat" that let you use powerful weapons with infinite ammo, which made things easier overall. This meant that I played the original several times, back to back, just for fun and to see if I could do it better or to show it to someone else too, playing with friends and relatives, and therefore I have quite good memories with it. 

The old version plays the same way as the 1st one, with weird camera angles and basic block graphics, herbs and sprays to heal, and basically same weapons, with maybe a few new ones like a flamethrower, an electric stunner and a machine gun. That's the standard weapons, of course. The special edition I played also had an infinte rifle, an infinte bazooka and an infine gatling gun, which made things easier of course. The enemies were more modular than before, making it easier to aim for certain areas and maim them or shot their heads off. Enemies were still mostly zombies and zombie dogs. Hunters did not appear again (luckily, probably the reason why it was easier), and lickers were introduced, which are harder than a zombie but not very hard overall, although quite disgusting and more intimidating at first. 

This time around we had a main antagonist, the chief researcher that created the virus, that got infected and mutated worse and worse as we won fights against it. And of course, the setting in this one is also very different: The virus has escaped around the city that was close to the mansion in the first game, and all the city has been infected. This means that the streets are full of zombies and that your only hope is to reach safe places that have been barred shut. 

The game has again two characters, Clarie Redfield (Chris' Sister, that has come to try to visit him or try to find him) and Leon Kennedy (a rookie policemen that has come to join the racoon city police department). They meet by chance while finding the first zombies, and then get separated by accident. You select one of them, but to finish the game you need to play as both, since each has a slightly different plot and they meet different people, although the areas and puzzles are mostly the same. The characters here are likeable and nice, which I mention because Leon in later games downgrades his personality quite a lot. 

The game starts in the streets of the city, which makes the first moments of action probably the hardest overall: You need to evade a lot of zombies with almost no weapons, till you get to the police station where most of the game, the first half, happens. The police station in turns acts like the house of the first game, with weird secrets inside, strange puzzles to open doors and sections requiring special keys. This is explained in-game by the fact that lots of officers are corrupt and working for Umbrella, to the point where part of the station is linked to secret areas and labs. From here you travel to some underground passages and abandoned areas till you reach the central Umbrella lab. The general feeling is that you spend most of the time underground. In the process you met occasionally some people, the most important ones being Sherry Birkin (a child, daughter of the monster that keeps following you) for Claire and Ada Wong (an FBI agent, or so she says, that clearly has other intentions too) for Leon, characters that appear also in later games (Ada is especially good about "dying" to then appear again and save you in some way while being always ambiguous about if she's bad or not). 

 In order to see the proper final ending, you need to play first as one character and then as the second one. The first character has more encounters with the final boss, but the second introduces a new villain: "Mr T.", a huge guy that clearly is some kind of monster, that follows you around and tries to kill you, which is revealed to be a new type of Tyrant (the final boss of the first game), a bioweapon that they dropped on you basically. Mr T. was a lot more annoying than the zombies and it made the game more interesting for the second playthrough, so you don't just repeat the scenarios and puzzles and some bosses. Both stories were matched nicely, making you avoid certain boss fights and just finding the result of them with your second character and the other way around, which was a great idea that forced you to play with both while presenting you with new plot.

The remake changes some things. For starters, the graphics are now amazing and realistic, to the point of being a bit disgusting at times: What before where blocky things now they can show gust and gore. The game is quite gorgeous though, that is true. Also a lot darker because now they can do torch light and show you only what you're looking at. The puzzles have been downgraded I have to say, being easier to do, and although each character has its own story still, there's more overlap, so it's less interesting to play the second character. The game is a bit more action-oriented because now you have a permanent third-person view behind the character, and you need to be accurate and shoot at enemies more like in a shooter, instead of being able to point in their general direction. They've also added some new areas, characters and a bit of new developments inside the plot. I'd say the biggest change is that now Mr T. appears in both playthroughs and he's a lot more mobile, tougher, more annoying, and it is quite scary to hear him walking around. The improvements it has are good to create tension, but it also feels they copied the idea from the 3rd game, which we will comment a bit later. I think the fact that it appears in both games now is not as nice, part of the fun was knowing the other character had no idea what you were going through. Same way as the puzzles are easier, the action part of the game becomes harder, with tougher enemies and more chances to miss your shots because of the new game mechanics. Overall is still really great though, and the new graphics are truly amazing, making you feel like you're in a movie. 

While I prefer some of the game design of the original, I cannot complain with the remake and I hope more older games get this treatment (especially thinking about Dino Crisis and Parasite Eve, which were also classics of the time and amazing games)