Over Thanksgiving break, I saw Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. I’d been looking forward to this movie for a while because it was going to be more faithful to the original games, as opposed to Paul W.S. Anderson’s film series, which spawned six movies and was very loosely based on the games. While Anderson’s Resident Evil series is a guilty pleasure of mine, it was time the iconic video game series got a faithful movie adaptation. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a 2021 action horror movie written and directed by Johannes Roberts and stars Kaya Scodelario, Hannah John-Kamen, Robbie Amell, Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, and Neal McDonough. The movie begins with Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) hitching a ride in a truck to Raccoon City, where she grew up with her brother, Chris. The driver she is riding with accidentally runs into a woman, who is actually a zombie. Sensing that something is seriously wrong, Claire rushes into the city, hoping to find Chris. There, she meets a variety of people, both alive and undead, and learns the dark truth about the zombie outbreak and Umbrella, the pharmaceutical company responsible for it. A reboot of the original film series, and based on the first two Resident Evil games, this movie was clearly made for fans of the game series. While not a “good” movie by any means, Welcome to Raccoon City perfectly captures the first two games’ campiness and foreboding atmosphere, and even makes some changes that I feel the original games would have benefitted from.
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Britt’s Anime and Gaming Adventures: Lycans, Vampires, Giant Babies, Oh My! A Look at Resident Evil Village
Welcome back, readers! Over the summer I played some great games and watched some excellent anime that I am absolutely thrilled to cover this semester. I would like to kick off this semester of blogging by reviewing the first game I played this summer: the highly anticipated Resident Evil Village.
I vividly remember how ecstatic I was on release day, and I have a feeling I’ll remember my giddy excitement for years to come. This being a game I and countless other fans had been waiting over a year for, I preordered it the day the game was available for pre-order, way back in winter 2020. (Technically the day after because the website was acting weird with everyone and their mother pre-ordering a copy). A few agonizing months later, release day–May 7th, 2021–arrived. I’d been tracking my package all week, and every time I saw a UPS truck in my area I’d get all jumpy, thinking my copy was on the truck. It was an excitement I hadn’t experienced in literal years, which is kinda depressing now that I think about it. Anyway, when I got an alert on my phone saying my copy had been delivered, I sped home, popped the disc into my Xbox, and waited (ugh, MORE waiting) for the game to install. I spent the next few days playing it, then replaying it. I could not have asked for a more perfect start to my summer.
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