March Madness

Here is a collection of my orders for this past month alone, a bit more than usual but hopefully this won't become a trend as i already spent a long more than i've hoped to. Some were bought in a haste some were purchased during this spring sale and finally some were an accumulation of a year long of wait. Overall i'm pretty satisfied with all of them and they will go quite nicely to my RE collection.

Over the years i have accumulated quite a few RE games and books to make a decent collection while it's nothing compared with those guys on the RE forums, it's nice to own almost every game for such a storied and celebrated gaming series.

Plastic Terror

I ordered these Biohazard 4 gashapons a while back from Play-asia but never got around to openning all of them. I was pleasantly surprised with the level of detail and quality of series 1 which i still proudly display on my desk along with my Viewtiful Joe ones, also by Agatsuma. The great thing is i ordered a full box of six for both Biohazard 4 and Viewtiful Joe and managed to received the complete set not withcounting the chase figure and without any duplicates.

Earlier while admiring the virtual figures and bottlecaps in Resident Evil 4 & 5, i got the urge to open the remaining series 2 for Biohazard 4. You see these figure were based on the virtual bottlecaps which you can earned from the shooting range in Biohazard 4, which was carried over to Biohazard 5. This time, i lucked out on the Ashley and merchant figure instead ending up with a duplicate of vertigo, salazar's menacing bodyguard. I did however scored the chase figure which to my disappointment is the rather unremarkable male villager with the axe.

Take A Walk On the Darkside

I was quite surprised when Capcom announce Darkside Chronicles on the eve of RE5 release, because it promises a return to a generation of art style that i thought we would have all said goodbye to with the arrival of RE5. Capcom may not have given fans what they wanted but it's hard to fault them given the encouraging sales and reception of Umbrella Chronicles on the Wii. From the looks of the initial trailer, most of the key staff from Umbrella Chronicles are back for the ride along with some of the staff from the recent CGI production Degeneration and RE5. This follow-up game is of course, touted to be a semi-remake to the fan-favourite RE2 so naturally expectations are high.

Just like Final Fantasy VII, Capcom seems to be milking Resident Evil 2 in the same way by making various different offshoots with varying result, ignoring the very pleas of the fans for a remake. I enjoyed Resident Evil Degeneration a lot, so much in fact i decided to order the limited edition blu-ray box during this spring sale at Play-asia. A bit unexpected considering how much i already spent on the collector edition earlier this month but when i realised i initially wanted to get it had it not come out within a few months of RE5, i thought this is as good as a time as any seeing it's discounted by more than half its original price.

Old Wine in New Bottle

I did a fair bit of research before back-ordering my copy of Outbreak as i was aware of an Resident Evil Essentials box set out which contains Code: Veronica, RE4 and RE Outbreak in one box set and apparently there was also a Greatest Hits reisssue at some point. The version available for back-order was not the Greatest Hits reissue because it would usually say so at Play-asia so i decided to back-order that instead of the Essentials boxset. Being the picky collector that i am, i can't stand reissues and i already have the other two in my collection.

Anyways the copy arrived promptly as i expected and when i pull it out, i was pretty happy to see the musty old shrink-wrap on the box as it was a good indication that this may in fact be a first print black label copy as i hoped. Alas when i flipped over to see the back of the cover, i was disappointed to see an extra barcode sticker covering where the barcode would normally be. As i removed the shrink-warp, it indeed turn out to be a reissue of the game for the RE Essentials boxset! While it's not ethically right for any store to sell contents of boxset individually like this, i have seen this happen a lot in singapore and in this case, i don't think it's entirely Play fault judging from the musty old shrink-warp.

Also i discovered that the disc inside is indeed part of the first print as the SLUS code identical to the original SLUS code without the additional GH (for Greatest Hits) or P3 (for Essentials) prefixed to the end of the SLUS code. So that means this must be old stock which Capcom conveniently re-packaged for their RE Essentials boxset a while back though i suspect this is the only one out of the three to still have the original disc and manual inside as Code: Veronica and RE4 would have sold far better and thus, unlikely had any old stock which Capcom was eager to get rid of. While packing with the rest of my collection, i did noticed i don't have a single reissue copy in my RE collection, be it Greatest Hits or Player's Choice version and that this would probably be my first. In a way it really isn't so maybe that's why i'm at a crossroads at what to do with it, maybe the best i can do is post a review so other collectors might be aware before back-ordering it too at Play-asia.

Violent Outbreak

You gotta love those retrospective features at Gametrailers, the latest one on the Resident Evil series was pretty good all the way until the last part where it sort of frizzles out because let face it, no one can really make sense of the plot for Resident Evil.

The one thing the retrospective did manage to do is spike some interest in me to try out the Outbreak spin-offs which for the longest time i have been avoiding for no particular reason. It's kinda baffling given that i was willing to try all the gun survivors games and enjoyed most of them quite a bit. Seeing Outbreak on the retrospective made me want to go back and play them, especially since most of the scenarios featured familiar locales from the then, Raccoon City. So i actually back-order File 1 during the time when i pre-ordered the Prima guide for Resident Evil 5 and it should be arriving any time now.

I have a pretty good reason of playing this on my ps3 now since i have heard that the game actually loads faster on the ps3 even without installing. This will be the perfect game to jump into once i'm done with Resident Evil 5. If i like it i may decide hunt for file 2 since that is not available for back-order at anywhere i know, heck even if i don't like it i may just have to get it as well for the sake of completion.

Evil Helping

Before my Resident Evil 5 Collector Edition shipped, i made a rather impulse purchase by pre-ordering the limited edition strategy guide for the game. If you haven't been keeping up to date with strategy guides like me, yes they come in limited edition version too now. I don't really know what possessed me to get the guide as well seeing that i don't normally use them, i guess i felt the Collector's Edition was lacking an art book and i have read that the Limited Edition Guide will include some behind-the-scene content. Well if it turns out to be anything like the one Prima did for Metal Gear Solid 4 then i should be pretty please with it.

I remember my first ever strategy guide being a gift from my sister, Tomb Raider 2 not the proudest entry into my collection but it was probably the only guide which i actually made any use of it as i used it quite a lot to collect all the dragon stones that i missed. My subsequent strategy guide to some of my favourite games had been pretty lacklustre, like Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil 2. Games have gotten much more complicated since then so i supposed game guide has also evolve with the time so it would be interesting to see if i'll make any use of it apart from the bonus content included inside the limited edition.

Bloody Friday

Much to my surprise my Resident Evil 5 Collector Edition arrived a couple of days before today's release date, i just refrain from posting so i don't get my favourite online store in trouble for breaking the street date. The overall package is pretty nice, probably not as desirable as the earlier Street Fighter IV CE but taking into consideration this is my first Resident Evil CE, it will certainly do just fine. The first thing i notice is how hollow the box actually is, i think extra space was allocated because they didn't know how big the tri-cell bag would be. I decide to use the extra space to slip my RE: Degeneration blu-ray in with everything else and there is still a little space left for some more. The bad news is the steelbook had one of the plastic hinge which holds the manual broken off so the manual is sort of just hanging in there in the steelbook. All the other knick-knacks inside the box were actually better than i expected, i especially liked the kikuju pendant and the chris figure is not too shabby either.

Well i'm not going to lament to you guys about how many years i have been waiting for this, i always hate it whenever fans say it because it sounds like they did nothing but wait during those years.

Take A Bow

I can be a pretty big geek when it comes to games, for example i love to keep track of whose responsible for my favourite games. As such, i love to view game credits after beating a game especially if it's a hard fought game like Viewtiful Joe. So you can imagine my disappointment when i finished Siren last weekend and didn't get any ending credits apart from the facial/voice actors of the characters. I realised that's probably why their names along with everyone else in the development were featured in the game manual although it isn't of much use for anyone who doesn't read chinese.

I made it a point to finish Siren: New Translation last weekend before my copy of Resident Evil 5 would arrive so i can devote my time to it. I probably would have finish it a lot sooner if i wasn't distracted by the RE5 demo a month ago. I remember there was period of two weeks where i played nothing else but the demo on my ps3, before going back to playing Siren. In the end i was pretty happy with my pace of playing Siren, it was a nice little horror fest before the real nightmare begins.

Mark of A True Hero

I was playing RE: Director's Cut last night and i really liked the new re-designed Beretta in the Advanced Mode which allow players to pull off headshots with a well-aimed beretta shot. I manage to pull off more headshots with Chris than i did with Jill earlier and that's when i remember Chris is supposedly the marksman of the team.

Funny in all his previous outings in the RE series you would never notice that Chris was a marksman if it wasn't for the character profile in the original RE game manual. Hopefully we will get to see some of that talent in the upcoming Resident Evil 5 where Chris makes his much-awaited return. Heck even John Woo make create some depth with the Tequila character in the final moments of Hard Boiled where he used the character's marksmanship to great effect.