I love rail shooters, and I love Umbrella Chronicles. I also have a zapper (suck on that).

One of the funniest ZPs in a while, almost wall to wall giggling.

Nice one again Yahtzee. I like the fact that you didn't really complain about the game, just a subtle thrashing for an ok game.

billy-j:
did anyone notice he nearly ran out of breath at about 1.35?

Yes! I thought so! Getting old, Yahtzee! Or it's all that Valve spunk.

Yahtzee, you are a god among men!

Thanks for the lunchtime laughs, bud.

-SS

Also please contact us if you liked the Painkiller short I did last week because apparently you are a deviant and must be culled

Does it count if you smirked (although in pain) it because it reminded you of depressing interview sessions where you've had to put up with candidates who very nearly did exactly what happened in the short?

Muhmorpehger!

Bang on the issues there... Some of that game is so bad it's hilarious yet they got the important things right.

Thanks Yahtzee, you saved my day from those ridiculous "Jedi vs penis" threads. Im so fucking sick of them.

Yahtzee back to his best after the dull witcher review :) bravo!

Thank you, Yahtzee, for stating what I've always said about the Resident Evil series: Abysmal play control (the entire series except for 4), unintentionally hilarious dialogue (INCLUDING 4), and Umbrella's formulaic flatness as villainy. Chronicles, at least, cut out SOME of the play control issues by not having you move around, but still, it makes up for that by demanding superhuman reflexes (if the person who is actually GOOD at this game were a computer, s/he'd be a computer capable of running Crysis at full graphics, s/he'd be THAT fast). 100% true, Yahtzee, except I disagree that it's not the same game over an over again, I think it is. Maybe the first couple sequels had some variety, but every game since then up till 4 has about as much variety as one Zelda installment from the next.

Not the best, but excellent none the less. Go you.

I loved the bit on Captain Planet. I've actually thought the same thing about that show, when reflecting on it. I remember the bad guys dumping toxic waste in rainforest, not because it would save them money, but because they really had it in for the environment, which makes absolutely no sense when I think about it now. However, who here didn't play with cheap plastic toy rings after watching this show? I thought so.

Great review, though.

Alcari:
Nice one as usual.
And don't bother with the zapper, it's like it's custom made to annoy the hell out of you, and make every game more complex and bothersome.

Liked the picture of our hometown Brisbane, but Yahtzee's right. Can't get a bloody thing here unless you order it in. Fun review as usual...can't beat BioShock for me yet, though (Guitar Hero III came close as did Crysis).

This was pretty cool, this time he sounded like he actually PLAYED THE GAME. Funny stuff.

Nice review as always.

You mispronounced "contrivance", mate. That and "inventory" makes two, Yahtzee. For a nitpicking git (albeit funny as shit), you should work on your language skills.

Main Entry: in·ven·to·ry
Pronunciation: 'in-v&n-"tor-E

Main Entry: con·triv·ance
Pronunciation: \kən-ˈtrī-vən(t)s\

As the original RE would put it "fast...talky....man...be...............fun...ny."

To put my two cents on the Zapper:

Its like fingering a fat woman back to front with chopsticks. Its so fucking irritating until you find a comfortable position and get your trigger finger and thumb to coordinate.

Haven't watched the review yet, (school comps don't have flash....or speakers) but I will say I enjoyed the game. The only part that annoys me is how damn hard it is to land critical hits. I love how it's not just like a shooting range, you actually interact with the level to find hidden items and paths.

Dammit, Yahtzee, what's the matter whitCHA? (Sorry, I love Chrono Cross) You had the chance to review another Wii game and you pick UMBRELLA CHRONICLES?!

I don't want to see you review another Wii game until you get your hands on No More Heroes. It'll take everything that you thought had a sense of believability and strangle it above a pool of boiling LUNACY.

Got it?! Get yer hands on that game NAO! ...Though... now that I think about it, it might be another game that has been banned in Australia due to its explicit content... in which case, you'd better import it!

Careful or you will fall into Zombie Kitten Corrosive Piddle after a rousing game of Twing Twang after you take a full load of Nazi Bullet Bum Rape.

Good review, although the "rail shooter" game is, agreeably, annoying.

Duck hunt on a cart.

What would work better, if you toddle on over to Penny-Arcade, you will see a link (posted last week I believe) about this guy that tweaked the Wii locater to make a 3D perspective shifter. It would locate your head and move the screen accordingly.

THIS would be perfect for a game like this. How many times have you been playing a rail-type-shooter and physically DUCK when something swings at you or is shot/thrown/vomited at you?

This would make you dance around the living room like Barishnakov after one too many McDonald's Espressos dodging stuff as you point a remote-control looking device at your screen trying to hit zombies that are either to stupid to move out of the way, or are somehow superhuman and don't need to.

Side note, I am looking forward to his review of COD4. I have liked many of his reviews here, and whether or not I agree with his overall assessments, his criticisms are usually spot-on. TF2/Orange box was great, so was Arse-Creed, Heavenly Sword and a bunch of the others (me is jealous of Valve excursion).

Question though. The current batch of reviews have all been FPS, RPG or similar first person type adventures. Are there any plans in the works for an RTS game? I know there are not as many out today as there used to be, but games like Company of Heroes or Dawn of War might be fun to hear about.

Starcraft 2 is in the works, and it might be a good time to, um, fluff the pillows before any, um, "reviews" take place..... ;)

Sounds like excellent bargain-bin fodder. The rail-shooter is a thing of the past, sure, but it's also a thing of mindlessly shooting legions of zombies in the face, and sometimes that's exactly what the doctor ordered. combined with the Wiimote actually working for that kind of interface, it'd be like a console version of Serious Sam, only without the shit-tastic controls that that actual console version of Serious Sam had.

Great review, like always. I found the game to be pretty much what yahtzee did, albeit not as hard as he made it out to be. Though i cant help but agree on them still giving out the below average 90's teenage horror movie and trying to act like its something to be shocked and amazed at.

"...Only to have your last millimeter of health lost to a zombie kitten's corrosive piddle" Hilarious review, can't wait for the Call of Duty 4 video.

Personally I like mowing down hordes of zombies and wetb-...ricks (SAVED) So I rather enjoyed RE4 and this game was kind of fun obnoxious difficulty at times put aside. As always this one was funny as hell, I still don't get that painkiller video at the end of last weeks cartoon.

Edit: Good luck with CoD 4 Yahtzee, another FPS. Whoop-De-Shit.

Crap_haT:
"and Valve employees" I was in histerics. And COD4 to be reviewed, xD. Just goes to show that annoyance does prevail. "Twat blankets."

If you want Yahtzee to review a game, NAG HIM TO FUCKING DEATH!!!

NeoSpriggan:
Though i cant help but agree on them still giving out the below average 90's teenage horror movie and trying to act like its something to be shocked and amazed at.

Has anyone considered that the entire game series is a parody of every horrible zombie movie ever made? The dialog is the first game was obviously parody. I mean, there's no other way to interpret it in my eyes. From what I can gather, Capcom takes their graphics and gameplay seriously, but really use their story as little more than something to get from the Spanish village to the Spanish castle (in the case of Resident Evil 4).

Seems to me that Capcom has done a great job of screwing with all of your heads if you actually think that they take themselves seriously when it comes to dialog. For fuck's sake, "Barry, Where's Barry."

Oh wow xD That was the funniest one yet!

Resident Evil plot/dialogue as parody of horror movie conventions is an interesting idea, wrong, but interesting. At any rate, if it is parody it's poorly done. It seems more that Capcom insists on believing their audience is all 10 years old and writes down to that level.

And a transcript:

Now here's something that hasn't graced the home console market in a snarling zombie dog's age - the rail shooter, also known as the FPS for the bone-idle. This is exactly the sort of thing the Wii was tailor-made for, but some might say that a mindless infinite-ammo approach is a betrayal of Resident Evil's survival-horror roots - until, that is, you remember that the series officially kicked survival-horror in the head around the time Resident Evil 4 was letting you mow down your first legion of unruly Spanish peasants.

Umbrella Chronicles is a difficult game to comprehend. It appears to be a celebration of Resident Evil's storyline, which to my mind is like celebrating Andrew Lloyd Webber's devilish handsomeness. Part of Resident Evil's charm is that it still takes itself seriously, despite having the most atricously written story and dialogue of any product of human endeavour since Hulk Hogan took one too many clotheslines to the head and decided he could act.

For the uninitiated, the Umbrella Corporation is a bioweapons giant with very gullible investors, a bizarre obsessive-compulsive tendency to build secret research labs under things, and a policy for exclusively hiring one-armed stroke victims to handle all their dangerous viruses. Do you remember what the villains from Captain Planet were like? How they'd steal an oil tanker, and deliberately run smack into a beach to teach all the sea lions a lesson in complacency? Do you remember wondering why they didn't just sell the oil at huge profits and not have to get beaten up by a big blue man in little red pants? Well, that's basically the Umbrella Corporation. It's controlled by a handful of people who, in any sane world, would have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act before they could even finish presenting their proposal to murder 90% of their research staff. A villain whose only motivation is a total commitment to being a bastard is not good storytelling. It leaves plot holes the size of a catamite's rectum, like where they keep finding investment, despite their inability to work out the rather glaring design flaw in a supersoldier with an enormous herniated major organ.

Umbrella Chronicles is a heavily cut-down retread of three of the major Resident Evil games, starring Johnny Bravo, a prostitute, an idiot, a mullet, a nine-year-old boy, a brick shithouse, and Carlos. And despite being given this opportunity to revise things, it's gratifying to see Capcom continue their proud tradition of unintentionally hilarious dialogue. "I have a bad feeling about this," announces Jill Valentine, after having been repeatedly savaged by the undead, demonstrating her vital intuitive ability to sense danger about an hour after it has commenced. "Where did all these webs come from?" wonders Chris Redfield aloud, while staring directly at a giant spider. And then there's the recurring series baddy (and backstabbing enthusiast) Albert Wesker, whose every line of dialogue is solid gold, because he sounds like Loyd Grossman with throat cancer.

As for the gameplay, what do you want me to say? It's a rail shooter; you point at something you want dead, and keep pressing the button. There aren't many ways you can cock it up. Okay, my old nemesis Quick Time Events make an appearance, but this is really one of the few kinds of games where they might be appropriate, since you're already being prompted to mash buttons with the response time of a paranoid gnat. On the whole, the experience has this charming retro feel to it; it's exactly the sort of thing you used to play on holiday, in some seaside amusement arcade, where your Mum and Dad would leave you, while they walked around a nearby maritime museum, pretending they were enjoying themselves.

It seems, however, that Capcom absent-mindedly forgot that they weren't actually making an arcade game, and didn't have to relentlessly bilk us for coins. The difficulty is very unforgiving at times, with far too many unreasonably brief windows between a monster appearing on screen, and them helping themselves to a Jill sandwich. There's one measly checkpoint in each episode, not counting the boss fight, and when you've fought through a horde by the skin of your teeth only to lose your final millimetre of health to a zombie kitten's corrosive piddle, getting warped back to half an hour ago will not do much to slow the launching of Wiimotes through TV screens. And while I'm complaining, I wanted to try this game out with the Wii Zapper, but those bastards might as well be carved from the wood of the True Cross, for how easy they are to get hold of in this fucking city. But I can't blame Capcom for that, so I'll just blame God, like I usually do.

I admire the spirit of Umbrella Chronicles because, as my Silent Hill: Origins review implied, I admire a series that tries to mix things up, not just release the same game every bloody year, in what is known as "The EA Strategy". And I'm sure Nintendo appreacite having another entry for the critically small list of games where the Wiimote controls are actually appropriate, and not a gimmicky contrivance. But why a rail shooter, of all things? The rail shooter is a thing of yesteryear, a backward step down Anachronism Avenue. And let's not forget that the Resident Evil story isn't so complex that it needs reiteration.

All in all, it's a very unnecessary game, which gaming history will swiftly forget. If you like the prospect of Capcom wanking off in your face for a few hours, then knock yourself out, but personally, I preserve the privilege of wanking off in my face for only my closest friends and Valve employees.

Hilarious. Whatever the escapist is paying you it isn't enough ;)

Edit: Nice transcript by myopiczeal

Nice reference at the end.

Know any stories about squirrels?

Great review. In fact, my favorite in a while. Didn't much care for the Silent Hill review as much as others, but this one made me laugh pretty hard.

Nice job Yaht.