Review: Resident Evil Origins Collection

If you read my Game of the Year 2015 list, you know roughly how I feel about the Resident Evil franchise. One of the first survival horror titles in gaming and a formative title in the Fifth Generation of consoles, the series has gone on to produce several games of wildly varying quality. The Gamecube titles, which this HD remaster compiles, are the final games in the series to use the fixed camera angle style of gameplay. While the much better game, Resident Evil REmake, has been available on all last- and current-gen consoles as well as PC since last year, this will mark the first release of Resident Evil 0 on a non-Nintendo console, a significant title as it is the most contentious game in the series outside of Resident Evil 5. Be warned, this review comes from a fairly biased self-described fanboy of the series.

The Premise

Take one of the most influential games of all time, completely recreate it with stunning hand-painted backgrounds, add a ton of new locations and puzzles, and flip many conventions of the series. For Resident Evil 0, create a backstory that didn't exist (or need to) and fill it with one of the last and most forgettable traditional survival horror games that still manages to be somewhat striking. Years pass and Capcom decides these highly-reviewed Nintendo exclusives need to see a wider release because who cares about Shinji Mikami's wishes? A quick HD fix-up and these gorgeous titles look even better...with some caveats.

Resident Evil (REmake)

It's truly impressive that Capcom could take a game oozing with personality like the first Resident Evil and develop an entirely new game around it, one which is so good it makes the original entirely obsolete. This isn't merely a case of "some purists prefer the original," there is absolutely nothing outside of some funny voice acting that the original Resident Evil does better than its Gamecube (and now modern console and PC) counterpart. REmake, as it's been dubbed by fans, adds several new areas, new monsters, and a tragic subplot that paints the experiments of the Umbrella Corporation in a horrifying new light.

But you know that already. REmake released on the Gamecube in 2002 and later on the Nintendo Wii in 2009, although that version had no real changes aside from a control scheme on the Wii Remote that matched Resident Evil 4 in many ways. This game, along with the original and Resident Evil 4, mark the only titles in which Shinji Mikami was lead director--and it shows. While Resident Evil 2, directed by Hideki Kamiya, is my favorite of the franchise, there's something utterly fascinating about REmake that allows it to hold up to this day, thanks in no small part to the incredible vision of its director.

Very few games still leave me terrified of zombies, but REmake's Crimson Head enemies lead to some of the most tense, unscripted moments of terror that has yet to be replicated in a survival horror title. For the uninitiated: in previous Resident Evil games the zombies would disappear completely after you left a room. In REmake, not only do the bodies persist but they will only stay down on a limited timer. After killing a zombie normally and allowing its body to sit, the body will leap up and attack with much more strength and speed than most other enemies in the game. The only way to kill them permanently before this happens is to use a fire grenade, getting a lucky shot and blowing the head apart, or by using a limited fuel canister to burn the body before it can turn. This gives the game a unique take on fleeing from enemies or killing one in your way: if you kill a zombie, there's a very real possibility you won't get a headshot and it will come back later, leaving you with much less ammo you may need for more difficult situations and the very real threat of a difficult monster waiting for you in an important hallway. Even coming back with the fuel canister might not be a guarantee, as they might just wait for you to come near before surprising you.

Aside from unique monsters, REmake introduces Lisa Trevor, a test subject for Umbrella's experiments and one of the franchise's few recurring enemies, alongside others such as Mister X and Nemesis. Her story offers a cryptic look at the foundations of the Umbrella corporation while shedding light on the creation of the mansion. Everything about Lisa is terrifying, from her appearance to how the characters handle her in-game. She doesn't exactly roam around, but she does appear in some locations that require patience and planning to get around her. Like much of the new additions to REmake, one can make a strong argument that her inclusion elevates the remake to one of the better, possibly one of the best, titles in the Resident Evil series.

To take a simple concept like the first Resident Evil and add such in-depth changes is a testament to the quality of the remake. Puzzle items are typically in different places and with different functions, most of which are cleaner than the original counterpart while adding additional content for returning players. Different difficulty modes test your skill at the game, and the two characters have different gameplay properties in subtle ways which change your approach to how you play. While there is no series staple Mercenaries challenge, beating the game unlocks a large amount of new modes such as a mode where all monsters in the game are invisible, a mode where none of the item boxes are linked, or a mode where a special surprise zombie will explode and give you an instant game over if you attack it.

Even if you have no intentions of picking up the Origins Collection, go get this game immediately. It's available on Playstation 3 and 4, Xbox One and Xbox 360, and PC.

Resident Evil 0

In the original Resident Evil, Bravo Team of the Raccoon City STARS unit is sent to the Arklay Mountains to investigate a rash of murders wherein "victims were apparently eaten." Bravo's helicopter crashes in the forest and sends a distress call back to the police department; Alpha Team (your player characters in the first game) steps in to investigate, which causes them to flee into the game's mansion. In the Gamecube remake of Resident Evil, STARS waits for a day after the distress call before their investigation. In that time, Rebecca Chambers--a character from Chris Redfield's campaign in the original--goes on a long train ride to find a prisoner nobody has ever heard of before and somehow, despite traveling most of the entire night, ends up outside the mansion in time for the first Resident Evil. Sound convoluted? It is!

Resident Evil 0 is not an easy game to recommend, mostly because very little of the talent behind the series up to the fourth game had nothing to do with it. You may not be aware of this fact, but Resident Evil 0 was not in fact intended to launch on the Gamecube--in actuality, it was first designed as a Nintendo 64 title.

Source: Unseen64

The magazine Nintendo Power even had a very small screenshot of the game and had advertised it as releasing in 2000, a year after the Nintendo 64 port of Resident Evil 2 (as well as the Playstation original Resident Evil 3) and the same year Resident Evil: Code Veronica released on the Sega Dreamcast. In the screenshots we can clearly see the zombies even closely resembled some of the ones found in Resident Evil 2, suggesting it would have shared assets with it. I was excited to play the game, but after hearing nothing about it I assumed it was quietly canceled.

The Gamecube version of Resident Evil 0 released in the same year as the remake of the first and was also a Nintendo exclusive, leading many to skip both as the Gamecube was infamously unpopular at the time. While I don't dislike 0 in the same way I do Code Veronica, I also don't have the same take-it-or-leave-it feelings as I do toward Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.

Basically, you are controlling Rebecca and Billy at the same time--a system which worked very well in Resident Evil 2, and one that I'm not very sure why they would trash for the zapping system seen in 0. Rather than playing through a scenario and coming together at the end, you press a button to switch between the two, which also means you control the inventory space of two people. This wouldn't be so bad if the game had kept item boxes, but instead you are forced to leave items on the ground like some kind of punk to pick up later. This wouldn't be so frustrating if the game wasn't so linear, especially given that you are forced into new areas with points-of-no-return all over the place, meaning you may have to leave behind ammo permanently. One can argue that this demands more attention and strategy out of the player, but given that the game is a survival horror it already demands plenty of attention. Don't fix what isn't broken, and this game did that in spades. I can only hope the Resident Evil 2 remake doesn't take cues from Resident Evil 0, if only because it can be very frustrating.

This is also the title where Resident Evil went from some cops surviving a biohazard (as its Japanese title states) outbreak to corporate conspiracies with super-humans. Code Veronica began the trend with a certain important character ninja-teleporting around and having telekinetic fireball comic book fights with a mutant demon bug lady in Antarctica, but there's just so much wrong with that game that it can be written off as a failed experiment without much of a fuss. It's wholly different to have a game that looks, plays, and feels like a classic Resident Evil that devolves into pretty dudes in dresses turning into leech monsters while corporate espionage occurs off-screen. It's jarring, but at this point in the series history it's all par-for-the-course. It's just a shame that in the same year we got a harrowing character like Lisa Trevor in the same series we have to go back to overbearing anime tropes. If you told me that this game belonged to a series inspired by horror B-movies, I'd probably not believe you.

That said, it's still a traditional Resident Evil in gameplay. Narrow corridors, different types of monsters, and puzzles litter the game. It's much more polished than the complete waste of time Code Veronica was, so if you have to choose one at least you won't be getting a bad experience. If you can get past the terrible story and the gameplay problems that should never have existed in the first place, you'll find a fairly enjoyable traditional survival horror title. Aside from that, Resident Evil 0 has an alternate mode very similar to Mercenaries as well as the normal difficulty options you've come to expect. While not as fully-featured as REmake, 0 has more than enough to set itself apart.

So what's new?

Aside from upscaling to higher resolutions, Capcom put in a lot of work to create better textures for the two games. Some moving effects have been touched up and in general, despite the age and resolution of the older backgrounds they hold up shockingly well today. The HD remasters allow players to play in the original 4:3 as well as a new, cropped 16:9 display. To account for the resolution of the backgrounds Capcom has instead decided to crop the image and pan around the room, having the camera follow your character. It's a pretty smart decision that doesn't hurt the presentation at all, though it leaves a bit to be desired. Aside from that, the new releases heavily alleviate cutscene load times that plagued the Gamecube releases. Moving to a new camera angle during a cutscene could take up to three seconds, heavily breaking the flow of many scenes. This new version eradicates every instance of load times in cutscenes, leading to a much more refined experience. Despite this, both games have longer overall saving and loading times than the Gamecube originals, but the experience isn't entirely dampened by them.

If you were around during the "orange brick" DVD releases of Dragon Ball Z, you might have come across the argument that in presenting the series in widescreen, FUNimation inadvertently ended up cropping some of the screen and causing some scenes to come off as too narrow--for example, full shots of character faces might just be half of the eyes and a nose (before you point out that I just criticized Resident Evil 0 for being too anime while now using anime as an example, I just want you to know that shut up).While Capcom did their best to make sure every individual camera angle covered the most important character movement, some characters or objects in focus might be cropped unnaturally or shoved off the screen entirely.

It's very weird and I find it hard to recommend the 16:9 display because of that, but if the side-bars distract you enough in 4:3 then it's not the worst thing in the world. Just be prepared for some of the image to be cropped if you do choose that option. The in-engine cutscenes from the Gamecube releases were already in widescreen, so only a very small part of the top and bottom of the screen is cropped to accommodate the presentation. As mentioned it's not always a problem, but if some scenes appear unfocused to you that's the reason why.

In terms of content, nothing new was added to REmake, although Resident Evil 0 adds a clever new mode in which you play as a certain super-powered character who can ninja teleport and blast all enemies onscreen. It's tongue-in-cheek and honestly very funny, and if you've seen everything in the game there's no reason not to try it out as it's mostly a palette swap.

Something to take note of, if you're planning on picking any of these games on consoles: The PC versions have a framerate capped at 60 frames per second, whereas all the console versions are capped at 30. This means the PC will have a smoother presentation and higher response time in comparison, but given that every version of these games prior to the HD remaster played at 30 FPS and considering the generally slow speed of the game, it's not as much of an issue than it would be if it were more action-oriented. Still, it's a bummer that Capcom couldn't get the console versions at full parity with PC.

Tank controls.

As a long-time survival horror fan I want to address the elephant in the room: tank controls. To be clear, I do not understand the complaints and I feel like most of the detractors tried it out for all of a few seconds, noticed that the controls weren't ubiquitous with other 3D games, and immediately hated it. 3D graphics were relatively new when the first Resident Evil was released so to have a new control scheme on top of that might be a bit frustrating, but the game was designed around them for a good reason.

Unlike earlier 3D games that have graphically aged horribly, much of the initial Resident Evil titles still look fairly striking given their meticulously-drawn 2D backgrounds. Unlike Final Fantasy VII where you had distinct loading times between many of the 2D screens, Resident Evil instead placed several camera angles in a room and loaded a new area whenever you entered a new room. Camera angles shift at set moments to give the player a distinct view of the room, which helps in maneuvering around monsters and solving puzzles. Capcom could not have released a better game than they did at the time, and to dismiss the work put into these historical video games (which is not an oxymoron) because of a control scheme is ignorant. Sadly, many reviews for the HD remasters of these games have lauded the new controls as "more accessible" and "much better" and "I'm a stupid neanderthal." It's a bit disheartening to see that people who trust these reviews might agree with these ideas and even champion the new controls as the "true way" to play the games.

As an example of the benefits to tank controls, I've prepared crudely-drawn MS Paint comics to demonstrate the benefits of tank controls with a changing camera angle. In the first image, the character, Jill, is being moved "up" into a new room. The screen and the player's cardinal directions are the same, as are the new movement options and tank controls. Please observe:

As the camera angle transitions, however, the cardinal direction (let's just say 'north') is rotated, giving a better view of the room being entered. However, because of this sudden change the player using the new movement options is suddenly pressing the button moving him in the cardinal direction 'east' because of the shifted perspective. The player using tank controls is moving in the same, fixed direction: forward. Up and forward are ubiquitous with tank controls, after all:

Even with the extra power of his zombie skateboard, the monster is unable to keep up with the player using the old control scheme. Zombies are slow and stupid, but not nearly as stupid as the lunch that ran right into his open embrace using the "new and accessible" control options.

Idiot.

That's not to say tank controls are perfect for every occasion. Some games, like Resident Evil 4 and God Hand, also directed by Shinji Mikami, utilize tank controls very well, but those are very special (and very perfect) cases. You don't want all of your shooters and brawlers to have tank controls, and you don't want all of your static camera games to have them either--take my Final Fantasy VII example from earlier. However, when playing a tense survival horror with a slow pace and multiple angles in a single location, tank controls should be accepted as the norm rather than ostracized as they've become over the years.

That's not to say the new control scheme is bad: in fact, I'm using them myself. There's a very big disclaimer here: the new controls assign the left stick to 2D--or "normal"--movement while the directional buttons stay assigned to 3D--or tank--controls. What this means is that a player can navigate through the tight hallways of the games using the intended control scheme and immediately swap over to the left stick when confronted by an enemy. The new controls allow players to run around in any direction they want; with 3D controls, you'd need to re-position yourself or use the game's very slow quick-turn mechanic, which is back on the D-pad while holding the run button.

Even this comes with its own problem: while it's easier to run around enemies with this control scheme, it also means certain confrontations are rendered completely trivial. You can bait zombies into grabbing and then just run past them while they're reaching out into nothing by just changing directions. The games were clearly designed in a way that free movement would hurt the challenge, and the new movement options being praised as the way to go only send the message that players want an easier experience; with the Resident Evil 2 remake looming over the horizon I for one am terrified this is the biggest message Capcom will take away from reviews of these remasters. If the game is built around utilizing the alternate control method in its favor that might be one thing, but the idea of a fully-3D shooter like some people seem to prefer rather than the perfection that is the Playstation original is even more terrifying than anything seen in these horror masterpieces.

The Verdict

Resident Evil REmake has always been a good game. It was a good game on the Gamecube and it's a good game today. I honestly have never understood the arguments that some elements are "archaic," because video games should always have their own unique design. That said, this version of Resident Evil is the way to go. No annoying loading in cutscenes, being able to reload your weapon in real time outside of a menu, touched up visuals, and new costumes for those interested give it a distinct advantage over the Gamecube and Wii releases. Resident Evil 0 was not a very good game, one that was mostly hype that led to a disappointing prequel many have forgotten about. It's certainly not the worst Resident Evil, not even the worst "classic" title, but it leaves much to be desired. If you can look past its flaws there's a neat little game in there, and there's even a new game mode for returning players.

Neither of these games have been released outside of a Nintendo console, which also means many of the series faithful have not played them until now. The Origins Collection is a great physical bundle, and though I would have preferred individual boxes for these games, it's well worth double-dipping if you've played them before and if you haven't, these are the best versions of some of the best survival horror games ever made.

If you'd like to see me slapping around the PS4 versions of these games, head on over to my Youtube channel where I will be uploading a full playthrough of the entire collection. You can find the first part here:

Review: The Hateful Eight

The first Quentin Tarantino movie I was exposed to was his first major film, Reservoir Dogs. A friend had written a toned-down version of the script for our theater class with all swearing removed and cigarettes turned into lollipops. I was cast as Tarantino himself. When I "obtained" a copy of the movie for "research," I was completely blown away with the film's style and tense atmosphere, and it definitely shaped part of my taste in film. Needless to say the project failed almost immediately, but I'm forever grateful for that experience. So maybe I'm a bit biased when I say that The Hateful Eight is now among my favorite Tarantino films, not in the least due to the fact that the film is quite literally Reservoir Dogs in a cabin with an even more reprehensible cast of characters.

The Premise

Major Marquis Warren, a former US Marshal-turned-bounty-hunter, comes across a fellow bounty hunter John Ruth as he transports high-bounty target Daisy Domergue to Red Rock, Wyoming to hang; he convinces Ruth and the coach driver, O.B., to help him carry his bounty with them. Barely a step ahead of a massive blizzard, the group reluctantly allows Chris Mannix, son of a Lost Cause Confederate gang leader, to join them after he threatens them with the revelation that he is the new sheriff of Red Rock and will have them hanged if he is left behind. Warren's group takes shelter from the storm in a small cabin called Minnie's Haberdashery, which is being taken care of by strangers while the owner is away. Tensions grow and the lodgers become suspicious of one another, unsure of each other's motives as they reveal their questionable morals.

H8FUL

In true Tarantino style, The Hateful Eight is at its best when characters interact. As in most of his movies, Tarantino has created a cast so morbidly repugnant it's hard to really root for anyone, but that's not entirely a negative point and this film gleefully plays with the notion of anti-heroism. Some of the finest parts of the movie come from the conflict between Warren and Mannix, two men with vastly different ideals--Warren's hatred of the white race who tried to kill him and Mannix's Confederate roots drilled into him his entire life--as they're forced to share the small cabin which most of the film takes place. Ruth seems to have a deep-seated hate for Daisy and finds joy in swearing at her and beating her senseless, but at the same time there's a strange, almost paternal attitude he gives her at some points. He helps feed her, cleans her face, and goes out of his way to make sure she stays alive until he can see her ultimate punishment at the hands of the hangman.

As its name implies, the most defining characteristic of the lodgers is that they are, shockingly, hateful people. After arriving at Minnie's Haberdashery Ruth grows suspicious of the lodgers already there, deducing that at least one of them might in fact be attempting to free Daisy. Warren backs up with his own suspicions about Minnie's mysterious absence. The viewer has no reason to side with the lodgers, but at the same time it's very difficult to cheer for Warren's group given Ruth's habit of beating Daisy senseless and the constant back-and-forth between Warren and Mannix, who have no problem one-upping each other in their complete disregard for people. The only person in the entire movie who isn't a complete psychopath is the buggy driver O.B., who serves a role between audience surrogate and quiet narrator, a tired Ishmael who would really rather be somewhere else.

If you've kept in mind my earlier comparisons to Reservoir Dogs then it might seem easy to picture this as a lazy nostalgia trip, but this is Quentin Tarantino we're talking about. Nothing can be taken for granted, and I'd say The Hateful Eight is bolstered by its tonal similarities with his first film. The biggest difference with the presentation is that in Reservoir Dogs, the bulk of the film has already happened. Characters reference the heist gone awry and much of the film is spent with the regrouped gang piecing together who exactly sold them out. The conflict of that movie is mostly the characters being on the lam and they could be caught by the cops at any time, whereas with The Hateful Eight the conflict is less "whodunit" and more "who's going to do it?" The film offers plenty of evidence to make it abundantly clear that something wrong is happening and the entire cabin could go up in a hail of gunfire at any moment. That powderkeg of tension gives The Hateful Eight a very unique atmosphere while taking clear nods to other Tarantino's previous films, and by the time the answer is revealed the suspense is at a breaking point.

Style Over Subtlety

The biggest complaint I can aim at The Hateful Eight is that it feels like Tarantino has an insatiable urge to shower his films with gore and viscera. Don't get me wrong here, I like gore as much as the next person--you couldn't find a less elated person to tell people to go watch last year's grotesque exploitation horror The Green Inferno than yours truly--but The Hateful Eight feels like a much more subtle experience for the majority of its runtime. And just saying "there's a lot of gore and that's it" would really be throwing this film under the bus--Tarantino has had some pretty breathtaking sweeping shots since Inglorious Basterds and this movie is no exception. Gorgeous wildlife shots are peppered throughout and the intimate nature of the cabin is captured in almost its full view in most shots, serving as a reminder of the cramped location by showing much of the entire building at once. And that doesn't even begin to describe how much I loved the lighting of The Hateful Eight: some may be annoyed by the brightly-lit cabin, but the blinding lights pooring into the cabin from seemingly nowhere as well as the omnipresent blue hovering over the cabin in some outdoor shots gives the movie an oppressive atmosphere, as if the cabin itself is being watched from without. It's a monument to Tarantino's distinct visual style as a director that really has to be seen to be appreciated.

If you've seen your share of Tarantino films you probably know that his over-the-top violence didn't really begin until the masterpiece duology Kill Bill, a Samurai-themed spaghetti Western with some anime sprinkled in--literally, I should add. I don't know why I'm speaking to you as if you haven't seen those films, because you, my beloved and well-read reader, have surely seen such a master work of fiction. Right? Anyway, violence has always been part of Tarantino's style, just take a look at the usage of katanas in Pulp Fiction and the bloody aftermath of ears in Reservoir Dogs. Jackie Brown, Tarantino's most subdued (and most contentious) film, was very subdued in its violence--yes, people are murdered with relative nonchalance, but there are no bits and pieces flying across the screen at any moment. It wasn't until Kill Bill when we really got to see Tarantino go all-out with gory dismemberments, executions, and more shots of viscera than you know what to do with. Kill Bill was a turning point in Tarantino's career because it was the moment he firmly committed to being over-the-top.

Like I said, I enjoy gory action and Tarantino's films are always some of the most enjoyable experiences in the years they're released. And with his seeming embrace of historical settings, it's pretty gratifying to be a fan of his films knowing that he can completely nail multiple genres of movies as well as time periods. For a director as established as he is, it's weird to say that I anticipate to see where he plans to go from here but really, there's nowhere to go but up.


I'm going to get into some mild spoilers, so skip ahead if you want to go in blind.


All that aside, when people's heads start exploding I can't help but think the gore could have been toned down just a bit. There brutal face-punches and bloody shoot-outs work well within the tone of the movie, but as soon as chunks begin to fly all I can think is "this is the point when Tarantino realized pieces of human weren't being flung across the room enough." Tone is an important factor in all of fiction, and most of his movies manage to establish tone early on. Django begins with the violent beating of slave runners, Pulp Fiction begins with a weird dialogue about feet and cheeseburgers leading to a violent shooting rampage, Reservoir Dogs opens with its characters arguing followed by the gang's panicked flight from the scene--see where I'm going with this? The Hateful Eight begins with talk of bounty hunting and civil unrest, some fairly pointed racial conflict, and an uncomfortable amount of intimate beating. If you went in expecting hyper-violent insanity, it's because you saw the name attached to the film and just decided that was what was in store. I know Tarantino loves this kind of stuff, but with just a bit of the over-the-top gore toned down this movie would have been elevated higher than without it.

The Verdict

The Hateful Eight is one of Tarantino's best, blending the tense atmosphere of his previous works while overflowing with the style and writing we've come to expect from him. While it does feel at times like a retreat of the themes and claustrophobic nature of his first film, Reservoir Dogs, it feels more like a celebration of his maturation of a director taking on a familiar concept with childlike glee. Some parts feel a bit too over-the-top, which might seem like a very weird complaint from someone like myself, but it's a bit out of place for the type of movie it's going for. Nevertheless, if you don't mind that this is one of the best films I've seen in a while and a great indication of the quality we should expect from 2016 in film.

Recommended

Top Ten Games of 2015

2015 was a pretty stellar year for video games while somehow delivering some of the most flaccid entries in several beloved series. Despite that, even the most disappointing games of the year were a step above many titles in recent years, and somehow in the same year as a 4-hour indie game and a level editor we also saw a dozen large-scale open world titles full of hundreds of hours of content apiece. So without further ado, here's a list that will please absolutely nobody.

Honorable Mentions

I'd love to have put these games on my top list, but each one has some big nitpick that I would feel very guilty about snubbing a game that deserves to be on the list for one of these.

Yoshi's Woolly World

Oh, how I wish I could make a place for Yoshi's Woolly World. The game is beautiful, with an aesthetic that completely destroys Nintendo's previous yarn-based title with Kirby's Epic Yarn. The game is incredibly cozy and well-made, but the game is simply too easy in some parts while being unbelievably frustrating with its hidden collectibles. I'll be playing this for a while, but there's not enough to set it apart from the amazing spectacle that is Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Most of the game feels like a yarn-based redux of the previous entry without enough teeth. Unless you count jumping around looking for hidden clouds, but that's hardly difficult as much as it is frustrating.

Shadow Complex

I only had an Xbox 360 for a little while, but in that time I never managed to pick up Shadow Complex. What a fantastic Metroidvania--I completely understand why it was spoken of so highly after its release. That said, my PC is a toaster and could barely run the new Remastered version at a decent framerate so I feel this isn't the best way of playing the game. Also, Shadow Complex is several years old and I don't feel very comfortable putting it on the top ten when taking that into consideration, especially since I didn't play it in an ideal setting. I even had it on my top ten at one point, but I can't in good conscience put it over this year's new games. Shadow Complex Remastered will very likely be one of my favorite games when it releases next year on current-gen consoles, but I can't help but feel I missed the boat on this one.

Mortal Kombat X

Of all the games I wished could be on my top ten, Mortal Kombat X hurts the most. In-depth mechanics, different styles that change characters in very subtle ways, a complex story mode that utilizes every single character meaningfully while developing both the old and new--for a fighting game, there's way more here than in most. For everything positive there's something negative right away. The new characters feel very much like rehashes of some old ones, the roster is disappointingly small, the story mode doesn't feel nearly as expansive in both tone and scale as the previous entry in the series, and in the same vein there are so many fewer gameplay modes in favor of shallow multiplayer faction silliness. Why is there no challenge tower? Where are my character trial modes? Why does the character select screen try to shake me down for money? The inclusions of micro-transactions are sleazy at best and the DLC characters were absolutely not worth the money. Mortal Kombat X is a great game with a lot of baggage and most of the impressive features were done better in the Mortal Kombat reboot from a few years ago.

The Top Ten Games of 2015

I'm very picky about the games I funnel time into, and aside from that I have neither a decent PC nor do I own either Xbox console. These are the games I loved putting time into and will likely continue playing, especially since half of them are hundreds of hours long and I actually couldn't finish some of them this year.

Number Ten - Undertale

I heavily considered replacing Undertale with Shadow Complex. The Earthbound inspirations do nothing for me but want to play that game--even more given that I finally finished Earthbound earlier this year. The character design is forgettable at best, and don't give me your stupid "but they're skeletons!" bit. I don't care. I actually turned off the game at one point to just play Cave Story because Toriel and Asgore look disturbingly similar to the Mimiga race, and that game actually had a color palette. The EPIC FEELS moments made me feel absolutely nothing--even more than usual for me. I've heard the word "twee" thrown around in describing Undertale and I can't agree more. Every single moment of Undertale is the cutest and sweetest and most precious special adorable thing you've ever seen in your life and I was annoyed by it in the first hour. This might be a complaint many people won't share, but the run time is far too thin. I never felt a real connection with these characters I was supposed to have some sort of emotions toward; they just start being silly and then we're all best friends. This hurts the unique boss fights even more: in one boss you're expected to run away after spending the entire game talking down and sparing every encounter, while in another you're supposed to attack the boss despite the fact that you're told rather explicitly you'll never have to fight anybody. With a longer runtime I feel these encounters could be introduced better, because as it is I'd even call them counter-intuitive in the way they reverse the way the player is taught. Undertale's five hours feel like fanmade tourism of Earthbound full of dad jokes, which makes its ravenous fanbase all the more confusing. Seriously, some of the fans of this game are actually crazy and act like this game is their gospel. The fanart is legitimately terrifying and I couldn't open a single website for over a month after the game's release without seeing the protagonist hugging every character in the most over-indulgent fan drawing I haven't seen since Sonic or My Little Pony hooked...those people.

All the complaints I have are basically meaningless by saying Undertale is actually very fun to play. The jokes--while being groaners most of the time--are actually pretty fresh, the gameplay is an interesting take on 16-bit era turn-based games, and the many ways the game checks your choices to use them later is very interesting, especially in an era when "your choices matter!" never seems to pan out. And the soundtrack! If I had to give the best soundtrack to a game it would be Undertale without a second guess. To have such an incredible soundtrack accompanying every unique encounter and every track feeling so full of life and energy would be difficult in any game, especially considering it was done entirely by the developer, but this one pulls it off so well that I've had it on repeat several times after finishing the game. I'd love to have played Undertale in an aesthetic and story that wasn't actually Undertale: the gameplay mechanics and soundtrack are subversive and interesting, the jokes have a tendency to be clever, and it's nice to see a game promising multiple endings actually deliver on that. Divorce yourself from the fanbase and any knowledge of the game and go in blind, and you will likely enjoy yourself. But as it is now, I feel Undertale has been dried up by the people who love it the most.

Number Nine - Resident Evil Revelations 2

It's been very difficult as a Resident Evil fan in the last few years, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to call myself a massive fan of the series. In middle school I did nothing but play Resident Evil 2 and in high school, that title was replaced by the absolute masterpiece that is Resident Evil Remake. When I said "did nothing," I mean that very close to literally. I invited a friend to hang out one day and neglected to offer him food, and after an hour into my Resident Evil 2 run I had completely forgotten I invited him to my house at all. I don't care if he ate that night or not, because I cleared ClaireA/LeonB in an hour and a half. I love Resident Evil and you should too, but if you weren't aware of the series until after the wet splat of Resident Evil 5 then I don't blame you for being weary. This innocent take on B-horror movies did not deserve the likes of Operation Raccoon City, Mercenaries 3D, Outbreak, Resident Evil 6, and the light-gun Wii games, and now the series has a near-decade of utter trash weighing down the same legacy as titles like Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil Remake, and the game responsible for revolutionizing 3D aiming: the masterpiece action-horror Resident Evil 4.

The Revelations series is the exact breath of fresh air Resident Evil needs, but the first game had a few missteps. Some of the character swapping was annoying and I really wish I could never see Chris Redfield again in my life. That said, for a 3DS game the original Revelations was pretty nice, and the later HD versions complimented the title's action very well with more intuitive controls. Resident Evil Revelations 2 fixes many of the issues of the first game and brings new additions that finally feel like the newer action style of the series has found a great middle ground with tense horror. The same game that can give one of the most exhilarating bosses in the series can also have some of the most desolate, creepy locales. This is helped by the return of objectively the best characters in the series: Barry Burton and Claire Redfield. Aside from that, Capcom seems to have finally realized the tone for these games works better as cheesy horror; I laughed out loud several times from many of the corny quips, including a certain one in the opening cutscene that involves every character onscreen turning to the camera and winking. The new crafting system feels right at home here, and for the first time in years I'm actually excited to see where Resident Evil is headed.

Number Eight - Until Dawn

I was not excited about Until Dawn. A Playstation Move-exclusive horror game from a largely untested studio? No thanks. I appreciated the premise--a video game of every single cheesy '80s slasher movie cliches with horny teens willing to sacrifice safety to get laid. I can't think of many video games that have attempted that kind of story, unless you want to count the NES Friday the 13th game. So when Sony revealed that Until Dawn had been bumped up to a fully-fledged Playstation 4 title with controller support my ears pricked up right away. And boy, am I glad that this change was made. Until Dawn was one of my surprise hits of the year, flawless in execution and absolutely gorgeous to look at. Sure, it's no beefy PC game, but for what it is Until Dawn is beautiful. Whether you're playing by yourself or hosting this game for your friends, Until Dawn works on every level. Having a game in the style of Quantic Dream's games, like Heavy Rain or Indigo Prophecy, actually fulfill the promise of branching paths and choices with real consequences is a joy to behold, especially when people are arguing over which choice will ensure you don't get killed. For a game that I had absolutely no feelings toward before, I'm now completely onboard the hype train to see what Supermassive Games has in store next.

Number Seven - Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

I've never gotten my Hunter Rank up in the four Monster Hunter titles I've played. I'm so sorry. You can have my "hardcore" card if you want, I don't care really. Despite that, I've spent hours upon hours just going through the single player Village quests in all of the games I played, and the new Caravan quest line is the best single player content the series has ever offered. Fun new weapons, changes to existing weapons, and a great mixture of revamped old monsters and brand new ones alongside much-needed mobility options make this both the most accessible and the most fun Monster Hunter entry. Sure, I won't be G rank any time soon--and probably not even after Monster Hunter X finds a stateside release--but even if it's just for a few minutes or long playing sessions there's always something to enjoy about this game. Now, where's our Monster Hunter 4G HD Ver., Capcom?

Number Six - Super Mario Maker

I can basically sum up my enjoyment of this entire game with a suggestion from a friend while making a throwaway level: "You can probably fit more Hammer Bros. over in the corner there." Super Mario Maker isn't the first level editor and it certainly isn't the most affordable at a whopping full $60, but it's just so accessible while full of tricks to create levels so challenging I doubt Nintendo's playtesters could penetrate them. This game could have been ruined in so many ways: if it didn't ship with online sharing, if it had just a few less options, if it only had one or two tilesets--really, it could have been screwed up on so many levels and it's just such a perfect package. Add in curated levels, new event modes, and constant updates with new features and you have one of the best Mario games of all time.

Number Five - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

I wish I could show you, beloved reader, some of the speculative conversations I've had about this title. I envisioned a dark tale of self-destruction, one of the first Metal Gear games grounded in relative reality without nanomachines or singing AI robots. Everything to be seen of The Phantom Pain in pre-release videos and content shown to the press made it look like the best title in the series and one of the greatest games of all time. For reference, much like Resident Evil I played Metal Gear Solid for the first time when I was very young. Playing a demo disc of Solid Snake sneaking into Shadow Moses is one of my most breathless game memories, and seeing so much of that game (much of which went over my head, I mean I was like nine so can you blame me?) after being an outspoken Nintendo fanboy for my entire life up to that point completely shifted my perspective. I played every single title in the series as they came out, stood in line for Guns of the Patriots, and replayed all the games in the series--including the MSX and PSP games--in the year leading up to this game's predecessor, Ground Zeroes.

Much like Mass Effect 3 and L O S T, The Phantom Pain wagged its finger at me while reminding me that hype is a very dangerous thing. The troubled development time, absolute bonkers story, a twist that went nowhere, a completely lifeless main character, the ending just happening with no real lead-in, micro-transactions (especially some introduced after the game's release) really, really marred my enjoyment of this game, and as far as Metal Gear games go this is one of the worst. The story is worse than even Portable Ops and I will fist-fight you in the street if you say it's better than the masterpiece that is Sons of Liberty or MGS1. Or Snake Eater, even. That's a good game, and we all remember the teardrop at the end. What do we remember about The Phantom Pain? Nanoma--er, parasites? A cute half-hour of hamburger discussion? I want to forget the story of this game even happened, and now it's forever canon and I cannot escape wolbachia talk.

But you know what? This is one of the most fun games I've ever played. Not a single part of my 130-hour playtime was wasted, and I still haven't finished all the Extreme levels. That 74% is going to be chipped away at with glee, but if this was a different series or even a different part of the Metal Gear timeline I wouldn't be so upset--yet, like Undertale, I'd be lying if I said actually playing the game wasn't one of my best experiences of the year.

Number Four - Xenoblade Chronicles X

I can tell you every last detail about the Xenogears Perfect Works story without batting an eye. I played it for the first time three years ago and it has actually kept me up at night thinking about some of the outstanding moments that game presents. Go play it right now. Don't go play Xenosaga, Tetsuya Takahashi's re-imagining of Xenogears Perfect Works with his new studio, unless you're willing to dig through some actual bad games to reach the shining beacon that is Xenosaga Episode III. Even the best parts of that game are callbacks to Xenogears. To say the least, the Xeno- series had some problems. As much as I love the game, even Xenogears is a bit of a mess--the second disc is largely unfinished, and the rumors surrounding it are horrifying at best.

Then, something beautiful happened. Something incredible and unbelievable occurred: Takahashi's Monolith Software was bought by Nintendo. Their new title, Xenoblade, finally showed off what Takahashi could dish out without budget or time constraints. And with the Wii U, Monolith's new game Xenoblade Chronicles X steps up the scale and world of the previous game while creating a grand science fiction story of intergalactic war, of mankind being stranded without a home. X is one of the most breathtaking open worlds ever made, and to think it's coming from a console as underpowered as the Wii U without breaking a sweat is even more impressive. The story beats sound gleefully similar to Xenogears Perfect Works and the new mythology surrounding events of the series is engrossing; I cannot wait to see where the series goes from here, but for now I just want to jump back in my giant mech and fly over the beautiful world of Mira.

Number Three - Yakuza 5

I can't believe this game came out. Up until now it really seemed like Sega had given up on Yakuza--or as it's known in its home country Like a Dragon (a much better name for the series)--in the West. The last entry released here, Yakuza Dead Souls, was an absolutely dreadful experiment in third-person horror shooters. Yakuza 4 is a great game, but that game came out in 2011 here and it really seemed like that was the last of this amazing franchise we would ever see. There are walkthroughs for the entire game to translate the script, and now that I've gotten my hands on it I can see why.

If you're unfamiliar with the series, here's a rundown: take a third-person beat-'em-up, drop it into a roleplaying game system complete with character inventories and random encounters, and throw in a ton of side activities like arcades, restaurant hopping, karaoke, hostess clubs, and basically all the stuff that made Shenmue fun without the baggage of sailors or places they hang out. Yakuza 5 expands the series even more with rhythm games, great new characters, and even more side content including the new Another Drama system, a complete sidestory for every single character alongside their main story and sub quests. This isn't the best Yakuza released in the West--that honor belongs to the ungodly rare Yakuza 2--but it's very high in the running and I can't wait to get the full completion for it. Now that Yakuza 0 is coming out here I don't have to urge people to drop into the series with 4 or 5, but I'd still recommend you try any of the games you can.

Number Two - The Witcher 3

While this is the first game in the Witcher series to go open world, the attention to detail alongside the sheer scope of the world absolutely humiliates other developers with higher budgets. There's really not much to say about this that others haven't: the writing is sublime, the acting is on-point, and even on PS4 the graphical quality is second-to-none. No, I haven't finished it yet. Sorry. My in-game time counter says I've spent a total of ten actual days exploring the world and I really desperately hope that's wrong, but even if it's half that I wouldn't be surprised. There is so much content and the developer just throw out free DLC for months to show appreciation for their fans, much in the same way they did for the second game which is also excellent. This is one of the best open world games of all time thanks in part to having the detail of a much smaller game, and it revels in that intimacy while showering the enormous landscape in points of interest. I'm still up in the air over whether or not this game trumps Red Dead Redemption as my favorite open world game, especially given that game's heart-wrenching ending, but the game's RPG roots with character building and customization might just push it over the edge by the time I see the game's ending in 2018.

Number One - Bloodborne

I've spent three hundred hours on the first Dark Souls and I'm completely okay with that. FromSoftware knows how to create a world seeped in history that is just beyond your reach, begging  you to dig up the world's dirty secrets. I loved that game so much I finally finished Demon's Souls after being completely destroyed in my original run, and even though I spent less time on that game there are very serious arguments about which of those games is better. Bloodborne, while not bursting with content like Dark Souls or even Demon's Souls, instead focuses on complex systems, a horrifying world, and a story that belongs right alongside the creepiest works of H.P. Lovecraft. Bloodborne hooked me in its first trailer and I'm still playing through New Game+ on several characters. Its mechanically complex history is reflected in its mechanics, with some of the most rewarding fast-paced combat seen in years. Go buy a PS4 for this game. Succumb to the nightmare of having no other exclusives and hunt...whatever, this metaphor sucks. Game of the year.

Review: Krampus

Seeing trailers for Krampus, the new film by the director of the 2007 cult classic Trick 'r Treat, I immediately thought it would be a forgettable horror movie cashing in on the holiday season. What I wasn't expecting was one of the most enjoyable films I've seen this year, and one of the most surprisingly heartfelt Christmas movies in a while--easily a top contender for "best Christmas films featuring Hell."

THE PREMISE

It's Christmas and, naturally, everyone is miserable and crabby. The lead character, Tom, is forced to deal with his in-laws whose children torment his own and whine about his wife's meticulous cooking. Tom's son Max and his elderly mother are the only people who seem to be hyped for Christmas and a visit from Santa, but after a fight with his bratty cousins Max becomes downtrodden and tears up his heartfelt letter to Santa Claus. This somehow causes the town to turn into Silent Hill and the family tries to survive through Christmas while a terrifying demon haunts their town.

THE GOOD

Nearly everything about this movie is oozing with detail and spirit, and before getting into specifics you should know that this movie is worth every penny. Go see it immediately, you will not regret it. That being said, I can't sing Krampus's praise enough. The dialogue is charming and gives every character a well-rounded feeling; despite its running time of less than two hours, I felt every last member of the cast had an important part to play and there's a great balance of character development, tense moments, actual horror, and genuinely funny moments. The pacing is just where it needs to be, and more than just enjoying the movie itself I was stunned by how well it blended all of its elements without it feeling drawn out.

The children are annoying, as children are. There's no good child, and I don't say that in the context of the movie but just as a fact of life. That being said, the five children (and one baby) in this movie don't clog up the plot like you might think. When I think child actors the first image that pops up is Anakin Skywalker trying out his spinning trick, but thankfully that's entirely absent here. David Koechner's bratty kids actually cause much of the tension in the plot, and the movie never shies away from treating children like cannon fodder. At no point did I think "this kid needs to please go away and never be in a movie again" like most of the movies I watch (even the ones without them at all) but instead felt a bit of remorse for the sheer terror they're thrown into.

Like I said earlier, there's some seriously unnerving horror in Krampus. You remember when horror films had build-up and tension? Much of the first half of the movie is pure build-up with some fairly terrifying imagery--not to give too much away, but I'll never feel the same way about snowmen again. The titular monster, a creature from an obscure European folktale, only shows up a few times and it's almost always as a way to escalate an already tense moment. This thing might be one of the best horror monsters in recent memory: imposing, threatening, and when he appears it really does feel like all hope is lost. You won't see his face until the very end, but at that point you probably won't want to see him on screen again.

I'll be frank, a major reason the movie is so frightening is because many of the monsters are practical effects and men in costumes, aside from the ones that are simply too small. I'd have like to see some of them as animatronics, but the way they're animated gives life to the monsters that would have been difficult with practical effects. CG is used sparingly and the rest looks absolutely phenomenal, with some of the overall best creature designs I've seen in years. There's one scene in particular I don't want to spoil, but it involves stop-motion cartoons that I simply fell in love with. The entire scene is done in CG, but you really need to be nitpicking to find a flaw in its presentation.

Sure it's scary enough, but this film is billed as "comedy horror" and it absolutely deserves that classification. David Koechner and Allison Tolman bring a great deal of life to the movie, but Conchata Ferrell completely steals the scene when she's featured--not a surprise really, but it needs to be reiterated. As the dysfunctional in-laws they should by all means be completely irritating, but paired up with the charming and down-to-earth Adam Scott and Toni Collette everyone bashes heads to a point where you really appreciate all of them coming together as family, despite being polar opposites. There aren't many cloying moments of family bonding, but by the end you really want to see all of these stressed-out weirdos make it out just to see if they can ever gel outside of a terrifying situation.

To only give the cast credit to the film's humor would be severely downplaying just how charming and terrifying the monsters can be. I really don't want to spoil much of the movie because you need to go see it right now before Christmas, so instead I'll try to compare it with another classic comedy-horror it takes many inspirations from: remember the scene in Gremlins when a monster is thrown into a microwave and explodes? Go see this movie.

The ending had me a bit worried in that I expected a little "everything was saved by the power of love," but you don't need to worry about that. Krampus knows its audience and plays with your expectations at every turn. It is a bit cliche, but it's pulled off in such a way that I can't think of a better way to tie up the story.

THE BAD

There aren't too many moments that stood out as being too terrible, but I do have some nitpicks. Of course, because I specifically mentioned this as a nitpick earlier, I really wish the CG stop-motion scene had tried being a little more faithful to the style. It's not much, but there are a few moments where the framerate is a bit too fast to keep up with the aesthetic and it's a bit weird. Much of the scene mimics the low-framerate element that gives stop motion its particular style, and when it breaks that it took me out of the moment just a bit. For a small movie that I found myself loving this much, it was heartbreaking that I had to find such a tiny complaint that anyone else would just hand wave as a concession. The film has a very small budget and it's very hard to tell, so having a complaint that there's too much budget here is something you shouldn't view as a negative, because it takes a cracked, morbid heart to find fault in something like this.

Also kids. I hate kids. As far as the movie is concerned though, I thought Max was a little too "smart" at times. Like he's just a bit too eloquent for his age and it took me out of some of his scenes, but the weird thing is that it's not perpetual. He's not always saying things that are too intelligent for a kid like him. It feels like this kid is reading a script, but he's a fine actor so maybe the problem is that kids are impossible to write well. And it's just him. It's just this one kid who feels like he's saying a line rather than being a human talking to other people. Maybe I'm just looking too close at something like this--possibly. Let me know if you found this kid to be overly eloquent, send me an AOL chat when I don't have my icon set to "busy." I have to look at my web pages and can't be distracted while writing my ultra-timely movie review blog.

THE VERDICT

I adore Krampus. I adore every last second of this weird little movie. Go see it as soon as you can, preferably before Christmas so you can get really in the mood. There's something for everybody, it's tight and well-made with a lot of love in every aspect. This is the first movie all year (outside of Mad Max, maybe) that I wanted to watch again.

Highly Recommended

Review: The Judge

You've been there before: standing around in a movie rental store, a Redbox, looking through your Netflix queue—whatever—and sometimes you just know you need to walk out with more than one little movie in your hand. I don't know. Maybe you had fears your first movie isn't going to be so hot. Maybe you have company. Maybe you and your girlfriend couldn't agree on a second movie for your date night and she picked something neither of you had heard of. And maybe, just maybe, you both regretted it immediately and she's still being heckled over such a poor decision.

I started writing this review in June. There's so little to comment on with this movie that it's taken this long for me to get the motivation to even finish this thing. I'm so sorry.

The Premise

Robert Downey Jr. plays Hank, a palette swap of Tony Stark—er, I mean, a wise-cracking attorney whose life is suddenly flipped out of control. In the middle of divorce proceedings and subsequent custody battle, Hank is requested to come back to his rural home following the death of his mother. Hijinks abound and Hank, his father, and two brothers are embroiled in a long-standing family feud that could tear their fragile family balance apart. Subplots occur. The film indeed ends.

Objectively...

There's so very little to actually discuss with The Judge; in fact, it might just be the most cliche movie I have ever seen in my entire life. Just look at the reviews: 7.5 on IMDB, 48 on Rotten Tomatoes, 47 on Metacritic, and 7.2 from users on both of the latter sites. Just a look at the critical response to this movie should give one important takeaway: no matter what your expectations may be, The Judge exudes some sort of overwhelming mediocrity like a force field. Even the box office returns were completely average, overall 1.5 times that of the budget almost exactly.

Future generations will look at The Judge with a confused melancholy while film professors present this as a movie that has been manufactured to an exact science, a product that resembles a movie with no inherent flaws but absolutely zero soul or personality. A star-studded cast of Robert Downey Jr, Robert Duvall, Billy Bob Thornton, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dax Shepherd and more mill about, drink, and reminisce about their terrible relationships for more than two hours.

Every last character is a stereotype. Downey Jr's character is wise-cracking but has all the answers. Duvall is both an angry, unlikable old curmudgeon and the sympathetic, disease-stricken patriarch of the family. D'Onofrio is a former high school football star who works at a car shop (or something, it's really not expanded on), the main character's love interest is his childhood friend who works at a bar, Thornton is a ruthless prosecutor, Shepherd is the nervous amateur lawyer—the character tropes are so ubiquitous that as soon as a character steps on screen you know exactly what he's going to do and say for the entire movie.

No character is more confusingly misused than Jeremy Strong's character, Downey Jr's younger brother with autism. Because the writers of this movie have no understanding of subtlety and the script is so cliche, this character falls under the unfortunate trope of being the I Am Sam sympathetic mentally retarded figure. More than a few scenes are dedicated to this character's love of filming as his family chews the scenery and some sad licensed music plays to make you feel things like a puppet. More disappointing than creating this heartstring-tugging character is that he's used to defuse serious moments by having him repeat a double entendre or someone swearing and the character innocuously repeating it. All I got out of this actor playing a severely impaired character is that The Judge is horribly mean-spirited for the sake of having a weird all-in-one film with every last stereotype possible. You're not What's Eating Gilbert Grape, you're a commercialized product.

Subjectively . . .

All this is to lead to the biggest flaw of this reeking pile of film refuse: subplots. Every last character in this movie exist to fluff out the running time for a completely bland, useless subplot. Hank's daughter at the beginning? Yep, better cram her into a subplot. The father character's lawyer? Let's just have a weird comparison between him and Hank. The father character played by Robert Duvall, aside from being the focus of the main plot, swings from being a remorseless monster to a lovable grandfather between scenes. Of course, because it's hard to really sympathize with a character so heavily steeped in contradiction, The Judge throws in a very heavy-handed subplot about Duvall's character somehow hiding the fact that he is suffering from a severe and very advanced form of cancer.

All I felt out of this was that The Judge is trying too hard to be too many things, and depicting a horrible disease with the tact of a high school kid in a movie with more mood swings than one just felt exploitative and cheap. I'd go so far as to say some of the ways Duvall's disease is portrayed is just tasteless. I didn't get anything out of this movie other than a sense that this C-grade movie was wasting my time.

Speaking of time, The Judge is nearly two and a half hours long.

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O N E H U N D R E D F O R T Y O N E M I N U T E S O F Y O U R T I M E

Because every single subplot demands to be given time to flesh out, The Judge doesn't feel like it respects your time. In fact, I got the opposite out of it. And because I don't respect The Judge, here's an example of one of the thrilling stories the movie shoves on you:

Hank's love interest, who works at a bar, is introduced early on and at first serves to unnecessarily expand on their childhood. Later, in a seemingly unrelated note, Hank picks up a girl at the same bar and the two make out, then nothing happens at all. A few scenes later Hank and his love interest (I can't believe her name escapes me so much, but that should be indicative of how memorable any of these characters are) are driving wherever and she introduces her daughter--the girl Hank made out with! Uh oh! And then nothing happens, again. The two drop it and the daughter never appears again...on screen. A few scenes later Barwoman mentions that she got pregnant right after Hank left town, and the implication is that her daughter is also Hank's. The issue, however, isn't that the protagonist made out with his own daughter, the focus is instead placed on his fear that he's been a bad parent to two daughters rather than the groan-inducing typical little girl who of course has her own subplot with Robert Duvall and it's terrible. Near the end of the movie Hank brings up the matter of his daughter to Barwoman who says "oh I was just messing with you, she's your brother's kid." What a relief, he only made out with his niece! Oh, but they forgot about that plot point already, so if the writers aren't worried about it you shouldn't be either.

I can go on but I'd basically have to complain and bellyache about the entire movie. That's about the level of writing you can expect out of it, and no, it doesn't get any better. The main plot is made entirely of legal thriller cliches, there is absolutely nothing original here and it's so crass and tasteless that it feels immediately like a bargain bin version of better movies. And that might just be the worse thing here: with such high production values and one of the most impressive casts in recent years, The Judge meanders until it lands with a big wet plop.

The Verdict

Please do yourself a favor and skip this movie. Tell your friends to skip The Judge. All I want to do is shame everyone involved with this movie and just brood over the time I wasted with it. It's taken me like five months to force myself to put how much I hate this movie into words and, as you can see, I couldn't. I can't possibly write a review long enough to properly describe how much I dislike this travesty. It's crass, it's tasteless, IT'S A MILLION HOURS LONG, even Billy Bob Thornton phones it in here. Please don't watch this movie. If you see it in Red Box, nudge the person beside you to say "oh man, that movie is so stupid and pointless, don't you hate it? That Subjective Objective review was so good and on-point and awesome and I love that guy." Don't let them avert your heated gaze full of determination. You're better than them. You're better than The Judge--that might not be a high bar of excellence but I believe in you.

Terrible.

Review and Analysis: Go Set a Watchman

The unearthing of a lost work of literature is an event which should, by all means, be met with celebration. Letters involving authors give glimpses into their intimate lives we would never have seen (James Joyce, anyone?). On the flip side, lost manuscripts can resurface which can theoretically augment an author's body of work. Some things should probably remain lost; in this case, 'lost' might just mean 'thrown directly into the garbage and not intended for public consumption.'

This is both a review of the work as well as an analysis of the plot. There will be spoilers for the entire novel.

The Premise

Scout, the protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird and now an adult, returns to her home of Maycomb, a fictional town in Alabama. While Scout initially approaches her old home as an unchanging entity—a bastion of familiarity to which she can always return—she quickly discovers that her home, and some people, are not as they seem. Scout then mopes for over a hundred pages until the abrupt ending.

Objectively . . .

Before I smite this book with holy outrage, one first needs to be fully aware of Go Set a Watchman's history, its identity as a lost manuscript, and how exactly it fits into the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird. This book isn't the sequel the publishers would have you believe, nor was it 'once thought lost.' More on that later. I encourage you to speculate on your own, but what is presented here is what I assume to be the most factual account of events.

Go Set a Watchman was supposedly discovered at an appraisal of Harper Lee's estate as early as 2011 as a manuscript locked away in a safe deposit box. In this account, Lee's agent apparently took a fairly long time to realize the manuscript was not in fact a draft of Mockingbird but actually a completely separate book; Lee later fired this agent for attempting to transfer the copyright to him. Later, in 2014 (and after the death of Lee's sister, also her manager), Lee's publisher suddenly decided to reevaluate the contents of the safe deposit box, was impressed by Go Set a Watchman, and went ahead to present the work to Lee to ask her permission for publication. As a side note, conflicting reports (many, many conflicting reports) have stated that Harper Lee has been infirmed for years, is nearly completely blind and deaf, and "will sign just about anything you put in front of her." In short, she had a manager for a pretty good reason.

Worse than those facts, than the possible criminal element involved in the novels' publication and the implication of money-hungry scheming, is the dreadful outcome that Go Set a Watchman is simply not a well-written or interesting novel. And that's just to say the novel on its own is merely bad; when compared to Mockingbird, Watchman is many degrees poorer in nearly every way: pacing, characters, even the novel's action is an objective step down.

Nothing much of note really happens—the dramatic action is almost entirely the personal anguish Jean Louise suffers through as she comes to terms with the fact that her small Southern town is, in fact, a small Southern town, with all of its inherent flaws and prejudices.

I have some bad news for people who may find the novel's big reveal shocking: this wasn't a surprise in the '50s. It's not a surprise now. Jean Louise even makes a comment that she only assumed Maycomb wouldn't have a Citizens' Council simply on the basis that she grew up there. The biggest flaw here is that the most interesting parts of the book are flashbacks to Jean Louise as a child and coping with revelations about her impending fate as an adult; as an actual adult, Jean Louise is horrifyingly ignorant of Southern life. She's supposed to be 26, not 16.

To backtrack a lot, one major flaw of Watchman is its terribly extended exposition.  Exposition in a story is generally gradual and serves to introduce the reader to the characters, their flaws, the setting, and sub-plots that may occur. By the one hundred-page mark in Mockingbird, the reader has a fairly intimate knowledge of Maycomb, the main characters, the side characters, Tom Robinson's trial, the gravity of said trial, and most importantly, the novel's antagonist: Bob Ewell, a character who embodies the very ignorance and dirtiness Lee took notice of in the South. We care about Scout growing up but we're reminded of childhood ourselves in her naivete much the same way we begin to cheer for Atticus as a symbol of hope and progress in a town consumed by an ancient and irrevocable hatred, where lynchings still occur and families are living in abject poverty.

At this same pace in Watchman, nothing of significance occurs. The only villainous or antagonistic character, Alexandra, is such a non-threat that her actual threats are presented as jokes. Nothing is truly set up as conflict because the characters are all adults and nothing presents itself as a credible threat either physically or emotionally. Jean Louise gets a little aggravated by Alexandra, but that's not much of a basis for a dramatic character arc. So naturally, when the narrative conflict does arrive, it does so with the subtlety and grace of a sledgehammer.

At exactly the 100-page count Jean Louise discovers a white nationalist pamphlet Atticus had been reading and somehow, at that exact moment, knows exactly that Atticus and her suitor, Hank, are at a Citizens' Council meeting—if you're unaware, these meetings were more or less the anti-Civil Rights movement, where disgruntled whites would gather to discuss such topics as the promotion of segregation or the spreading of racist propaganda. This all happens in the span of one chapter, but more than the abrupt shift in tone, this chapter highlights the emotional immaturity of the writer.

With Mockingbird, themes such as race would come into play with the characters and their interactions. Bob Ewell is hateful, bigoted, dirty, and overall not a very charming figure. We're shown the depths of his hatred through the events of the story; indeed, the themes are presented to readers in a way that we can take away what we want. Ewell is such a memorable antagonist because he's not simply a threat to the main characters—although he does indeed threaten their lives in the novel's climax—but because his victory in court symbolizes a victory for all the negative traits he represents. We don't have to be told what these traits are, they're shown to us through development of his character.

Watchman does not have the sensibilities of Mockingbird, so when a character much like Ewell appears, Jean Louise immediately begins to call him, among other things, "trash." Even more off-putting than being told something like this is the fact that, unlike Mockingbird, Watchman is presented entirely through third-person narration. Despite Mockingbird being written in a far more intimate first-person style, it never explicitly vilifies a character in this way—in fact, I'm going to justify putting this here as a complaint because telling the reader what to think is objectively bad writing. There's no excuse for it, and Mockingbird being so drastically different showcases exactly why this was a poor choice. It's not a very big part of the book, but having the entire thing full of small problems like this certainly adds up.

From here the novel begins a frankly odd and, again, off-putting trend of having every single antagonistic character reciting bigoted thoughts as if they were reading off of a script. These are all long paragraphs and they're almost entirely white supremacist bullet points, told in such a way you'd think Lee just transcribed one of the aforementioned pamphlets. The method in which these scenes are even told is mind-boggling, to say the least. I don't have the book with me (or at all, anymore) so I can't print it verbatim, but an example would be a character saying "all blacks have smaller brains...degenerate...go back to Africa..." and so on with that exact sort of detached grammatical brevity. And these paragraphs just go on and on; I'm sure if it was published in the era it was written that sort of language might be considered shocking much in the way The Jungle impacted readers with its revelations, but to read it now with the hindsight of the Civil Rights movement behind us, this hateful rhetoric is a well-known artifact that should come as a surprise to nobody, and the swathes of page space dedicated to these moments drag on far past their welcome.

This chapter also hits us with the revelation that Go Set a Watchman is in fact not a sequel at all. Not because it was written first; no, even if To Kill a Mockingbird is intended as a prequel to this book, one extremely important fact is noted that completely changes the landscape of the story in the space of a single flashback:

"Atticus took his career in his hands, made good use of a careless indictment, took his stand before a jury, and accomplished what was never before or afterwards done in Maycomb County: he won an acquittal for a colored boy on a rape charge. The chief witness for the prosecution was a white girl."

That is simply not what occurred in Mockingbird. In fact, it weakens the dramatic swerve and thematic injustice of that novel's key conflict: despite the evidence being overwhelmingly in his favor, Atticus loses that case for his defendant (a man, not a boy) and shows the audience an ugly side of racial bigotry: that of the uncaring, unflinching reality of apathy. By being published in such a state that contradicts the drama of To Kill a Mockingbird's key scene, Go Set a Watchman in turn weakens it by indicating to the reader that the trial could honestly have gone either way, and it didn't matter in the long run because it was no more than a footnote in Scout's memory.

Jean Louise then spends over a hundred pages moping. She talks about being sad, throwing up, sleeping for several hours, and in general doing nothing of note but wasting pages upon pages by being a completely uninteresting blob. Basically, being me.

I've heard, however, that the climax of the novel emotionally impacted some readers. Therefore, I'd love to tell you how you're all wrong.

Subjectively . . .

After running away from the meeting, as well as some time after Scout's unbearable moping, the plot moves again as slow as it possibly can. Her aunt sets up a "Coffee" for her where her childhood friends are invited to her house for coffee and cake—a coming-of-age ritual of sorts. More paragraphs of disjointed thoughts (not stream-of-consciousness, it's not coherent or written well enough to be that) and blatantly evil discussion of race crops up from her contemporaries with little to no context. Scout becomes a flawless representation of progress by spouting college-level observations and smirking when her brainless friends are too stupid to pick up on it because every last person who is a bigot is also very stupid and can't think for themselves. It's such a huge strawman argument that it comes off as the author not actually knowing the thought process of a bigoted person and just made them as outright villainous as possible, despite how poorly it is told. Scout then pouts a little more.

Near the end of the novel Scout pretty much breaks and confronts her hopeful bride-to-be about the meeting, who more or less tells her the hard truth that—as a former member of one of Maycomb's very real impoverished families—he is forced to assume the role of a social chameleon, being something of a Yes-man to his mentor, Atticus, as well as the governing party of Maycomb. While this should come as no surprise to anyone who has had to grow up around a majority they do not agree with, for some reason this shakes Scout to her core as she ruthlessly denounces Hank as a spineless coward in front of the entire town. While I don't disagree with her assessment, her reasoning for doing so is that of an emotionally stunted child; I didn't feel Scout's dejected outrage, all I felt during these scenes was that Scout, in all her sudden revelations about life, neglected to look inwardly to reflect on whether or not she herself was thinking critically as an adult.

Don't misunderstand, she was totally justified in her horror upon realizing her quaint hometown was something of a bastion for bigotry, but the method in which she deals with it doesn't give me the impression of an individual standing up for truth and justice. Instead, for the entire last two thirds of the book Scout is just a screaming child, lashing out at the world for an injustice that should not have come as a surprise whatsoever. She's twenty-six, did she really believe a small town in Alabama would be some sort of beacon of progress, just because Atticus lives there? This should have been an epiphany for Scout during one of her very many flashbacks, and the novel should have instead dealt with her coming to terms with and acknowledging that fact rather than her disgust and anger at being so slow on the uptake.

What follows is perhaps the most cringe-worthy excuse for a climax I've read in a very long time. Scout confronts Atticus, who espouses some very out-of-character rhetoric about how horrifying it would be to see Scout's children going to mixed schools and other segregationist talking points, but while doing so he attempts to explain why exactly he attended the Council meetings. Truth be told, I was expecting it to be a twist like Atticus was only there as a mediator or something, and in truth that's a part of it. It's revealed he even went to Klan meetings not because he supported the cause, but instead because he feared the concept of anonymity within a hateful backdrop like the KKK. Much with that same fear Atticus attends the Council meetings partly because he wants to know exactly who is on either "side" with the argument of Civil Rights, but at points he mysteriously backpedals and goes back to being a fairly hateful bigot, talking about the "negro race" being in its infancy, that they can't be trusted to make informed decisions on their own.

Part of his fears about the NAACP, however, are still being argued about to this day. The legitimacy of the group's causes, perceived race-baiting, and faux-scientific claims are nothing new, especially now with the prevalence of the internet to allow this sort of discussion with complete anonymity. Said arguments are wrong, but Atticus isn't just some progressive beacon who has notions to wave away this sort of rhetoric. He was born in the 19th century in the South; how is there any surprise that he harbors bigoted thoughts? But that's more or less the climax of the novel: Jean Louise shouts at Atticus like a petulant brat, telling him that she hates his guts and that she never wants to see him again and that he destroyed her. It doesn't read like a mid-twenties adult coming to terms with her surroundings, but instead like a child who can't handle being told they can't have a toy—not a very good analogy, but some of the things she says to Atticus while denouncing him are downright uncalled for. She whines and cries and shouts but in the end, I only felt sorry for Atticus: a man who, despite being so flawed in this novel, calmly states his beliefs (his opinions) and tells Scout that, no matter what, he will always love her. I felt sympathy for this old man who didn't even put up a fight when his daughter, who he raised as a single parent and led her to her own maturity by himself, told him she never wanted to see him again because she couldn't handle his faults.

And this ties into an objective fault of the book: This is not the Atticus of Mockingbird because this takes place in a world where the events of that book did not occur! As much as people want to throw around that this is a sequel, that this is a continuation of To Kill a Mockingbird, if the book contradicts prior story elements then it is objectively a different story entirely. There's no additional depth or nuance to the character; it's impossible to tell whether or not he truly had an emotional attachment to the case because, in this world at least, Atticus successfully defended Tom Robinson. That trial is the single-most important plot detail in either book, and not only is it glossed over like nothing in Watchman but it's given such little importance that it was never even edited after the publication of Mockingbird.

I want you, the reader, to think about that fact a bit. Despite the changed outcome of the story, Lee never thought to go back and change the Go Set a Watchman manuscript. It never occurred to her this novel would ever see the light of day; it was such a low priority that, in the span of FIFTY YEARS, the single word "won" was not altered. That's because this book is a rough draft. It was never intended to be published because rough drafts are merely an additional step in publication. To Kill a Mockingbird is the perfected version of this novel to such a degree, in fact, that the original manuscript for Go Set a Watchman was entirely discarded.

That's not to say the book is entirely not worth your time; rather, I would encourage any hopeful amateur writer to pick this up and then read To Kill a Mockingbird. It's not because one is objectively better (although that is true); a direct comparison is fruitless because these are very different books. Rather, a writer who has yet to suffer through a rough draft might be unaware of just how differently an author's original vision might change over the course of writing a story. Characters may change, events may change, even the dramatic twists and revelations may be entirely different. Regardless of this, a writer may just come to discover their unique voice in a way that the original work couldn't necessarily allow. The best parts of Go Set a Watchman are the intimate flashbacks to Scout as a child, no doubt the biggest inspiration to the change of tone in To Kill a Mockingbird. You might be surprised at how closely the two novels support one another in unique ways, despite being fairly dissimilar in tone and structure.

The Verdict

Go Set a Watchman is not a good book. Even despite its contradictory nature to Harper Lee's claim to fame To Kill a Mockingbird, there really isn't enough here that stands out. The protagonist is insufferable; the dramatic conflict is that she can't handle opinions that are different to her own, even if they are negative or harmful, there's no real villain aside from an enfeebled old man the protagonist has a disagreement with and her crotchety aunt; there is a boatload of exposition that doesn't really pay off—in one example, the novel goes into a long description of an old family and the payoff is that Scout goes to a shop one of the family works at, a pretty annoying detour for a completely irrelevant destination.

That being said, if you're an aspiring writer, then please give it a read. Get it from your local library to compare and contrast Lee's work and you will truly appreciate her growth as a writer. That said, do not buy this book. Don't reward the shady business practices that went behind the publication of this unfinished draft of a better novel; I implore you, rent the book if you want to read it. This is not a sequel, nor is it worth the thirty dollar price tag. A better example of this sort of work was last year's The Haunted Life by American author Jack Kerouac; that novel was correctly labeled as a found, unfinished manuscript with letters by the author, and I found it to be far more interesting taking that element into consideration. With Go Set a Watchman being pushed as a sequel, the only thing that's going to be set is your soon-to-be crushed expectations.

Flawed