...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)

The original: Resident Evil

As I mentioned, let's start talking about Resident Evil, the first game of the saga. 

 

I had this game when I was a teenager, for the original PlayStation, but I never played it long enough to finish it, I always got stuck at some point or died and had to redo a lot and abandoned it. The best run I had was when I played till the second snake combat.This game was one of the first popular survival horror games, and I remember seeing it with my cousins or talking about it with classmates, and it had lots of important new concepts. Maybe there's other games that also did the same, but this one for sure was the one that popularized them. 

 I played a remastered version, so it's the same game but with better graphics, and it seems some reshuffled puzzles, sometimes.

 The game starts after a very cheesy live-action video of some soldiers/police being hunted as they try to arrive to the house by strange monsters, which seem to be basically dogs. You can play as Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, and depending on your choice you'll find different allies and the plot will vary slightly. Chris playthrough is harder plus I always like to play as the women in games, so of course I chose Jill. Jill starts with a gun and has more inventory space, which is important. 

The game starts in the house you arrived, which apparently is owned by Umbrella Corporation. As you navigate the place, you find your first zombie, followed by more zombies and other monsters, and you discover that they're this evil organization that creates bioweapons in the form of viruses and the associated monsters. 

You spend a lot of time in the initial house before moving to other areas, and the creepy music, changing camera angles and insane puzzles give it a very nice atmosphere. The voice-acting is quite exaggerated, but considering there's not much cutscenes, it's fine. You keep finding journals of Umbrella employees, some of them quite sadistic, others just workers that got slowly infected and turned into zombies. Plenty of them talk about the weird house that requires emblems to open doors and other such things. During the game you also find occasionally other members of your group, although most of the time they're dead or dying. As you progress you discover that you may have a mole in your team, and that not all is as it seems...since in the end is your own boss, Albert Wesker, one of the bad guys that secretly works for umbrella. He keeps appearing in the series, and keeps being an annoying antagonist, although in this first one you discover this just at the end, when he's apparently killed by the final boss, a humanoid monster with a big claw that you end up killing with a special grenade launcher after surviving some minutes of combat with it.

The gameplay is the original one: You point to raise your weapon, and then you can rotate the character, point higher or lower, and shoot. You run around with a fixed camera showing you the room you're in, and sometimes the camera changes and then you may not know anymore which direction you're moving, which is kind of funny. Also sometimes the angle makes you not see that there's a zombie coming your way, so you also need to pay attention to the sounds around you, since different monsters have different sounds. 

The puzzles are not very hard, you just need to apply some logic, although some of them may take a bit longer than others. There's not a lot of variety in enemies, although soon enough zombies give way to faster and deadlier foes. Once you leave the house the areas manage to still be creepy, with special mention to the section where you meet some type of zombie prototype that is immortal. Related to that, there's an occasional boss fight, although they're not very hard in general but feel more like draining you of resources. The difficulty of the game is based on scarcity, and killing every monster you encounter, while making it easier for you to move, can make you run out of ammo or health items. 

The inventory system where important quest items, weapons and ammo all share the same limited space is a bit of an annoyance, I have to say. Usually it causes you to either go unprepared sometimes or having to backtrack to grab an item, leave in the the storage, go back to grab another one and so on. This extends the game unnecessarily, but well, it's more realistic than carrying everything with you, that's true. This reminds me that the health system deserves a special mention: You use "herbs", the green one heals you, the blue one cures poison and the red one increases the green one potency (1 red + 1 green is the same as 3 greens). How do you use the herbs is never addressed, but when you combine them they look suspiciously...joint-like. You do have also healing sprays though, to heal fully.

The original graphics were quite primitive, although groundbreaking for their time. This remastered version has improved models, but still feels similar in how some elements of the background that you can interact with are clearly more visible because they're a 3d model and not a more realistically painted wall fixture. However the whole thing feels just charming and not bad. 

 The game has a few different endings based on your actions in key moments of the plot. While not very different exactly, I always think more games should have this philosophy, since it makes it more interesting to replay it and try to see what did you miss last time, with the best ones doing it in a way that you get the whole story after finding all the endings. This first resident evil doesn't quite achieve this, but it sure adds an extra layer of wanting to do all the correct steps to get the best one. While i've never played with Chris, the game is almost the same, changing only the companions you find along the way. I also have to say that Jill, even if the protagonist, gets some annoying damsel-in-distress moments where this other big guy has to come and save you, something that feels totally unnecessary.

Overall it's a great first game, a bit long I have to say, that starts in a great creepy tone while putting strong bases for the next ones.

Latest Confinement Games

This past year I've strongly reconnected with my gaming side, since there was not much else to do sometimes.  I'd like to comment on a few of these games that I've played or I'm still playing.

 

 First, there are the Resident Evil saga. With plenty of time and seeing as we were in lock-down, I decided to get myself most of the resident evil saga games, from 1 to 7. There are other spin-offs, of course, but some of them I never really finished or played properly. Others were just re-maked recently, and seemed like a good idea to replay all of them. They have faults, but it's one of the first horror games I played and it's still fun to revisit and check it. For them though, I've decided I'll write a post for each one, and here I'm just mentioning them for the moment. I will just say that it took a while to get through all of them...

Then, Control. I've talked about Control before and it's still awesome, but recently there was some new DLC. I've done the first part and it was as good as the rest, introducing some new mechanics and being overall really good. Now I've heard that the second part of that DLC includes a section that ties with Alan Wake, and I'm very curious to play this soon, as Alan Wake had lot of potential but it was at the end that this potential shined, to then be left hanging and unfinished, with the protagonist still stuck in a nightmare dimension of some type. I don't know what will happpen in the DLC, but I'll be happy to try it soon and see if there's some closure finally.

 A game that I also talked before about but that I left unfinished was Alien Iolation. This game was very very scary, as mentioned, and playing it required a special state of mind. However during this period I finally played it for longer periods and more seriously. Once I got into track, I have to say that it's still scary, but also a bit frustrating and a bit too long in the end. There were sections that felt a bit repetitive, and also there's a limit to "and then things got worse" can happen without being tired about not catching a break ever. Nevertheless the game is still pretty good, and I consider it as a horror masterpiece for sure. I was very glad to finish it I have to say....

For a while now I've heard good things about the Doom remake that was published some years ago. This year Doom Eternal was also published, a continuation of the other one, so I decided to give the first one a try. Doom would correspond, by number, to Doom 4. I've played 1st and 2nd, of course, and they're classics. I didn't play the 3rd one because at the time I didn't feel like playing as much, and what I've heard is that it tried to be more like survival horror, something that Doom should not be. Well, I have to say that this new Doom recuperates very well the spirit of the first ones. It's brutal, it's fast, and it's a lot of fun. Playing it feels like dancing, you don't stand in one place for a second and you transition from enemy to enemy, from gun to gun, in a complicated pattern of jumping/shooting/evading/crushing that feels organic and challenging. It's not an easy game, but it feels rewarding. 

I've started Doom Eternal recently, and it looks amazing and more open, with lots of things to explore, but also the difficulty seems ramped up even more and I'm struggling a bit with that. I didn't get stuck that fast with the previous Doom. I believe this is not ideal in any game, but well, we'll see. It does have even more mobility and tools, so I'd say it's a more complex type of dance. Also, plot-wise it lacks a bit of connection between the two games. I don't know if there were expansions or something that I missed, but original Doom and original Doom Eternal should be enough to understand what has happened in a linear way, and currently they're not, which detracts a bit. Still feels like a good game though.

As part of promoting their new game shop, Epic games have been giving awesome free games, and one of them has been Civilization VI. I didn't play any other Civ games, although I've heard a lot of good things about them, so I gave it a try. I have to say it's quite addictive, quite complicated and well, overall awesome. I understand a lot better now what other people have been saying about them. It's a complex strategy game with different paths to victory (science, military, religion, culture...I feel I'm missing another one. But you get my point), although some seem easier than others. It has a crazy amount of options and combinations, and it's turn based and rather long, I'd say. But well, I've played a couple of games against computer and yeah, definitely recommending it if you like strategy and civilization-building. Reminds me in a good way of the table game 7 Wonders.

For Christmas, in my new place we got some credit to buy in amazon as part of a Christmas basket. I took the chance to get some of the games I comment here, plus I also got Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2, a remake of the skateboarding games. I played 2 and 3 when I was a teenager and I really loved them, 2 more than 3 I have to say but 3 was still rather good. I know that after 3 it got all weird, but the original idea was simple, amazing and good. You just have different scenarios with goals, and 2 minutes to do them. This version has much better graphics, although I remember the scenarios as if they were the same, because of how immersive the original was. You have a selection of skaters to use, you can max up their stats, and in the end you get a video of the real-life skater doing cool stuff. The things you do inside the game are quite unrealistic, but it's still really enjoyable to do different tricks, combine combos and mess around. One thing that helps a lot is that the soundtrack of the games was quite amazing, and it motivated you into doing tricks. It's a game where you keep learning how to do increasingly more complex goals, and while simple it's strangely compelling. I've finished all the main goals already of all the stages, but there's still plenty of secret goals, and skater videos to unlock, and it feels relaxing and fun to play it.

Finally, I'd like to talk about Hades. Hades is a rogue-like slash-them-up game, similar to Bastion. It has an isometric perspective, you control the son of Hades, Zagreus, trying to escape the greek Underworld, armed with a sword or some other special weapon, and you find random rooms with random monsters. When you die, which is normal, you appear again in the underworld where you can interact with the people there before trying to escape again. Every time you may recollect certain items and experience that may make your life easier, unlock new weapons and in general get better, so next time you get further. What's more, that's a bit of a spoiler but even when you finish the escape successfully, you end up dying again and having to repeat the whole thing, around 10 times to reach a point where the main plot is "complete", while leaving subplots and branches to investigate. That may seem tedious but it's not. It has amazing art, great voice acting, the gameplay is intuitive and fast and never boring, and every time a number of gods give you special boons to help you and the different combinations are quite interesting and change things quite a lot. The plot is developed between escape attempts, and characters are rich and interesting. This game is an independent game that has received quite a lot of praise, and it's very well deserved. Also, the developers of this game have folowed rather ethical practices, so I'm more than happy to support such things. I really recommend it.

 

That's all for the moment, I'll try to write posts for the Resident Evil games soon :)

Declaration of War

 We're at war and we don't know it. 

 For a long while now we've been at war. And it's a world war. And we're losing it. It's a war with casualties from mostly one side only, but it's a very civic war. In this war, most of the time, it's not like someone will come to us and shoot us, oh no. That's not polite. In this war we lose little by little, our lives and our time. Although in some areas you do get shot, where the fight is in its worse shape. It's an asymetrical war, both sides are rather different in numbers and power. But it's a war nonetheless. 

This war has been raging for all our history. Sometimes there's calm periods and truces. Sometimes there's small victories. But lately it's going worse for us, after a period where it seemed we could achieve some level of victory, or at least a reasonable truce. 

 We've had recent battles in plenty of places. In Brazil, we lost to ignorance and stupidity, and because of its current culture it may take some time before any victories can be achieved. In Chile there was a recent stand off that gives us hope after a long period of darkness, but it needs to be developed and to grow into a victory, and it may not be one just yet. In Bolivia we won after almost losing an important battle. Hong Kong seems lost, the battle continues but the enemy is too brutal in there. In USA we were defeated so long ago nobody remembers our side, but lately there's been some movements towards a change, although it's still in its infancy, and the latest results are not really a victory. Poland was never in our side but maybe after the latest abuse some reaction will be triggered. I'm not informed enough to talk about countries in Africa but it seems there's been an ongoing change in there too, little by little, in some of them small victories for us. Turkey has been conquered after a period of hope, and we need to recover it but won't be easy. Russia had some chances but the opportunity was not taken. Most religious-based countries mark a huge defeat for us.

Spain was lost since 1939, and is still lost to this day. Catalunya has a chance to be a small win, but Spain will fight us to the death. 

One side is always the same: Fascism, dictatorships, unchecked corruption, economic power, religious power. The other is just the average person. 

The war is simple: Average people want to have nice lives. Lives where you do work, but you also have free time, health, friends, and where you can work with what you like. Lives where you can allow yourself presents, for you and your friends and family. Where you can have vacations and visit places. Where you can have moments of rest and calmness. Where you can believe whatever you want and no one imposes their views on you. Where you can retire and you don't need to die right away. Where people help each other. and where we can collectively decide things for ourselves. Then we have internal struggles about how to achieve these objectives, but that's the idea.

The other side wants to have these things only for a few of themselves, the chosen ones, and everyone else should suffer and die slowly to provide these things to them, It's a simple as that.

 Maybe this seems simplistic or evident. But what I want to remark, is that this is WAR. When people get kicked out of their houses, people DIE. When factories are closed down, people DIE. When hospitals are privatized and medicine is not affordable, people DIE. Those are casualties. When some rich or powerful bastard takes a decision to withheld resources for the common people, this person is PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for the impoverishment, misery and death of these people. Same way I would be accused of not helping someone that was bleeding to death in my house if I ignored them and didn't call an ambulance nor did anything at all.

All this was to explain a few things regarding the current struggles:

 1-This war is all the same war. Catalan people wanting to vote and getting beaten by police is the same war as Hong Kong people wanting to decide for themselves and getting beaten by police. It's the same war as BLM in USA. Its the same war as medical professionals asking for more resources. It's the same war as workers asking for better conditions. It's the same war. So, support all of them and don't be blinded.

2-A lot of idiots are supporting the wrong side because in their little evil minds, they think they're part of the powerful side and that they will get better lives through it. The reality is that they will be squashed and discarded with all the rest, but since they will not be the first ones and the first ones are a group they don't like, they think this is good and later they'll be spared. 

3-Being neutral or equidistant, or "centrist" here means support to the powerful. As they say in Germany, a table with 1 Nazi and 9 people that let them be there is a table with 10 Nazis. And thinking the one doing the beating is the same as the one being beaten is morally abhorrent. 

4-Civility is not an option when it results in one side always winning because they're the only ones that can be nasty and violent and brutal while the other side is expected to put the other cheek and accept their fate and "be nice". Doing a "smart" economic operation that can force a building full of people to be kicked out to the streets should be responded with the same rage and pain that it has caused and the person responsible should suffer horrible consequences for it.

5-The current health crisis is making everything on hold, but we should not forget that we're at war, and you can see whose lives have been the most affected and who's reaping benefits from all this, and understand then who needs to be defeated. 

Any approach that doesn't take this into consideration, that doesn't understand this is a war, that doesn't understand that we're all going to suffer and die unless we turn the tide strongly to the other side will not succeed. To go back to USA, the current election results will not achieve anything at all, things will just get worse a bit more slowly in there, the important defeat there was in the democratic primaries and after that one the end result would be bad or horrible, but never good.

The "agree to disagree" and moderation is for cake, not for the worth of human lives. And Nazi Germany was not defeated with hugs and good intentions.

Minecrafting

My son loves Minecraft

During this pandemic, we had extended periods of time when it was not possible to leave the house nor do any activities outside, so I went to videogames, because I like them and they work great to pass the time at home.

The idea was good, and I managed to spend most of April doing an indoors activity that me and my son enjoyed without getting too nervous about meeting friends and going out. For sure it's not good to do this all the time, but during this period it was nice to do so.

With my son I've played together some games. When he was little he was obsessed with helicopters, so I played Just Cause 2 without being violent, just grabbing vehicles, and he liked that. This moved later to Sonic 4, which was probably the first one where he actually played, with the 2 players mode in part 2. This made him interested in other Sonics and other platformers like Cuphead, and well, we just kept trying different ones and different options.

In this way he has learned how to use the basic controllers, plus it has always been a nice bonding activity. I love video games and it's fun to introduce some of them to him and to try new ones together, when they're age-appropriate. For example, I think Nintendo is over-hyped because they tend to repeat themselves way too much and this pathological need to fit their same famous characters with same plot (rescue the princess) everywhere is detrimental, but it's true that their games are rather good for children. Getting the switch has allowed us to play great games, like Luigi's Mansion (that's a good example of detrimental, the game is great but King Boo as the ultimate bad guy really kills the scary but child-appropriate tones because Boos are too cartoonish), Towerfall or Untitled Goose Game.

However, for a while now he has asked to play Minecraft after trying it  a few times as a demo I had on the Xbox. And since I was curious as well, it was cheap, and we were confined, I ended up buying it.

And minecraft is great.

First, while there is combat, this is optional: You can pass the time in creative mode where you cannot die or be attacked, and in this way you have a relaxed atmosphere that allowed him to understand the usual control setting of camera/movement using both joysticks. In other games there was too much action or they required too much fine control right away of this mechanic for him to learn without getting frustrated, but in Minecraft you're allowed time.

Then, the game itself is incredibly detailed. The graphics are what they are, but this allows for a game engine that focus on functionalities rather than in showing off. And by doing that, the game offers a lot of items and different uses you can make of them. It's impressive how can you make castles, rollercoasters, traps, automatic processes and more complex stuff, like basically functional siege cannons,  RAM memories or even basic computers.

The game itself has no point whatsoever, but letting you create and move around freely gives you the tools to let your imagination create your own objectives: Building a house. Then building a tower. Then building something more complex, and so on, and so on, and in this way it stimulates a lot of creativity.

Basically, Minecraft is a computerized Lego with infinite pieces, so of course it stimulates creativity and it's quite addictive. And this made me also try, on my own, the survival mode. This is a bit too hard for him still, he prefers to be able to create things at will even if sometimes activates survival on creative worlds, but it's still interesting.

Survival mode is not that hard, but it forces you to create a home and slowly build things up from there. Very early on you realize you will need a lot of iron, so you start mining, and then you want to improve things, make a better home and a better mine, create new equipment, personalize things, and so on. It's also quite addictive and fun, even if there's no purpose either and you're just passing the time and trying to go a bit deeper and achieving an easily sustainable situation. 

The way he plays sometimes can be quite, just repeating actions or spawning lots of mobs, but he also creates more complex things like houses connected to rollercoasters, fish tanks, tunnels, structures, traps, etc., and it's quite cool to see what he thinks and makes, some of them are quite complex and cool. 

 

If the original game is not enough, they sell extra worlds that offer retexturing, new fucnionalities, new models, etc. You have to pay for most of them, but some of them are quite original and give new opportunities to create new things or play with a new concept. 

Overall it has been a great finding and it's really cool to have an infinte lego-like world to explore our creativity.

It's the end of the world (as we know it)

So, we're again in Interesting Times. And maybe we have had enough for a while.

Nevertheless, this has created an opportunity at least. Yeah, it's a horrible thing what's happening and it would be better if it didn't, but it's giving us lessons, really important ones. And I'd like to mention some of them, as I think about them.

1-In lots of workplaces, it is possible to work from home. This one is written from a privileged standpoint, of course, shops and industries and the primary sector is not included in this. But there's currently a lot of new jobs, based on services, where we have been forced to go there every day and stay there for a lot of hours, to be present just out of a certain old fashioned panic that if we don't have someone breathing on our neck, we won't work. Well, not the case, clearly. At the same time, there's meetings and such things that in the end were not as necessary as we thought and can be shortened or eliminated without that much problem. For sure in-person contact has its advantages too, but this should really made us rethink how we work, and try a more balanced system where maybe we can easily be home at least half of our time.

2-Really essential services are the primary sector, the food shops and the cleaners. Jobs like working in a supermarket or cleaning offices and houses should be better valued and paid nicely. Also better considered.

3-Healtchare must be public. Private healthcare that depends on profit has no advantage in dealing with this, because it requires a lot of resources and hours and it's overall too expensive. Also, public healthcare must be well-funded and have enough resources. And given this learning, I would go further: Just straight up ban and nationalize private healthcare companies. Also, if you're all for private healthcare and vote for parties that are against public one, it's only fair you refute any treatment nor help in public hospitals and facilities. Or reconsider your vote next time.

4-Capitalsim doesn't work. The system is totally broken and this crisis is showing its worst sides. Under pure capitalism, we would need to continue working right now, as we die left and right. Under pure capitalism, now people should just go hungry and starve and die out as they cannot work. Under pure capitalism, any business that was unable to function for this period should just close and disappear, or leave its employees to die out at least. This is neither a sustainable model nor a model we should want to keep. This needs to go. I'm not advocating for communism, but we must get rid of the idea that the market is great, when the truth is the market would see humankind destroyed in order to keep benefits. We have seen this before, in the people that lose track of the real world and require workers to do extra hours to finish a project that will ultimately have no meaning 2 weeks after completion. Well, I'm exaggerating a bit on this example, but this same attitude is the one where some manager considers that maybe people should just work, because the company needs it, without realizing this means people will die.

5-Related to this, we need to make people in power responsible for their actions. Managers who have disregarded warnings and asked people to work have killed people. Governments who haven't taken action once it was clear how serious the situation was and have not followed medical expert's recommendations are guilty of personally killing people. One thing is not knowing what to do, another very different is thinking that since your friend the banker prefers people to die than to close some of his business, you can allow it. Or allowing it out of some political agenda. This means you are killing people. And this is not the only situation when this happens: when a government allows banks to kick people out of their homes from unpaid mortgages, both the bank and the government are directly killing people. When a manager over stresses their workforce to the point of people having nervous breakdowns, they are directly killing people. When a rich bastard not only doesn't pay their taxes but also pressures the government to close public hospitals, they're directly killing people. No more fucking euphemism, if you do these things you're a killer, and you should not be allowed to get away with it.

6-Centralism doesn't work. Look, I think Spain is a failed project and I'd rather be left out of it. Maybe you don't think the same, that's fine. But what is undeniable, as we've seen in companies, countries and other organizations, is that when you centralize everything, when you try to manage personally more and more and more things, when you're further away from the real action separated by layers of responsible people, well, you have a less clear image of what is happening. In this crisis, hospitals and small towns or neighborhoods can know better what's the best actions to take. They can know better what resources they have, what do they lack, what to do. So you leave them be, unless they prove to be doing a bad job out of it. Then, if they lack things, if you have organizations over them you can manage that from such a higher level, and so on. But when you try to, basically, micromanage everywhere, that doesn't work. So let's not do that. From a government point of view, I believe regions should be more independent and able to take their own decisions, since they tend to know better their own needs. For example, now Spain has declared we can go back to work. This is idiotic and will cause deaths as the experts are saying (see point 5), but I'd say that for some regions it may be OK. However, should be managed region by region as I said, to see which ones can do it and which ones cannot.

7-Spain's traditional parties plus the right wing parties are useless. Right wing, we know, they're here to steal and lick their rich friend's anuses, and people can die as far as they care, we all know that. However, I hope it also helps to show that PSOE is almost as bad: they militarized the crisis instead of giving funds to healthcare, and since their members are professional politicians that don't know how to do things but know how to get paid from public funds, we've had the situation were resources are not reaching the people, or they buy the wrong things and millions are wasted, plus time is lost.

8-Left-wing parties do not deserve special protection just because they're considered left-wing. We made this mistake before with PSOE, letting it do things that were not left-wing just because we labelled it as the left-wing party. So, the same applies now to Podemos. They're part of the government even if they're not big enough to make some changes. I understand they're not able to criticize some of the government actions without creating a conflict, but that doesn't make them untouchable. We should criticize the fact that they let military to lead this crisis. We should criticize that they're not protecting workers by allowing people to work. And we should criticize their silence or their praise to the current government, when it's not right.

9-USA, UK and Brazil, as very capitalist and right-wing countries, are far from the worst of it, and it will be a massacre in there. Spain is already one because of several of the mentioned points, and forcing people back to work now will kill and numbers will grow again.

10-Catalunya's proposals have been a bit more smart than Spain's (because duh, it's not very hard to be), but far from effective, and one of the involved parties has also been de-funding public healthcare, and that's something we should not forget either.

There's plenty more things I could say, but politically speaking I find these are quite relevant...