WildStorm's Resident Evil #1 (Part 1)

Welcome back to The 31 Days of Biohazard 2! Today, we continue our reviews of the official Resident Evil tie-in comics.
Now, considering the first official comic was published by Marvel, you'd think that they would continue publishing them, right?
Wrong. The license was taken over by Jim Lee's company, WildStorm, and the first issue of their series was published in March of 1998, almost a full two years after the publication of Marvel's Resident Evil #1 (And likewise, about the same amount of time after the original game), and about a month-and-a-half after the release of Resident Evil 2.
The official title of the series is Resident Evil: The Official Comic Book Magazine, but it's usually just referred to as Resident Evil Volume #1, since WildStorm continued their ongoing Resident Evil comics in 2009 with a series titled Resident Evil Volume #2.
Here's a funny bit of trivia, the first four issues of this series were published by Image Comics, who would go on to publish The Walking Dead. Another interesting bit of trivia is that in 1999, WildStorm was acquired by DC Comics, who would go on to publish original and localized Resident Evil comics until 2014, when Viz started adapting "The Marhawa Desire", which is apparently set between Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6. Now that Revelations 2 is out, one must wonder when it actually takes place now, but I'm getting ahead of myself. We probably won't be getting into those comics for a few years now. Today, let's crack open WildStorm's Resident Evil: The Official Comic Book Magazine #1!
Before we get to analyzing the cover, I'd like to address the title. See, the reason it's called "The Official Comic Book Magazine" is because it's not just a comic-book. It includes behind-the-scenes details on the development of the games, interviews with Shinji Mikami and the rest of the creative staff, and concept artwork, among other things.
There was also a promotional trading-card series put out by WildStorm to promote the comic, consisting of ninety cards. Unfortunately, rather than having details for locations, characters, monsters, and weapons on them, it was mostly just pictures of Leon and Claire taken from Resident Evil 2, with some concept artwork of various creatures and monsters within the game.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get ahold of any of the cards this year. I might give them a full review if I can find them somewhere, but don't hold your breath for it. Besides, the deck-building game is much higher on my priorities list.
At the top of the cover, we see the classic Resident Evil logo above Chris and Jill holding guns. Chris has what looks like a shotgun which looks like in-game Remington M870 (Minus the sight fin on the barrel), but Jill is holding a revolver that doesn't look anything like the Colt Python, the only revolver available in the original game. The body of the gun is black, and while it shares some barrel vents with the Python, the barrel itself it too small, short and thin to actually be the Python. It looks more like a revolver you'd see in a western, or an old war movie than something that's police-issue. And there's no way it can be her standard side-arm, because the S.T.A.R.S.-issue handgun is a modified Beretta 92F Custom, otherwise known as the Samurai Edge. But that's just in modern continuity, it was just a Beretta M92FS in the original game, but either way, they're both mag-fed semi-automatics, and neither of them resemble the gun Jill is holding on the cover!
Besides, her standard side-arm appears to be holstered on her left hip (Which we'll get to later on). So I don't know what this revolver is supposed to be.
The positioning of the holster is weird too, since Jill holds the gun in her right hand in the intro to the game and the game itself, and every other appearance since then. Plus, her holster is positioned for her to draw the gun with her left hand, not her right. And her knife is sheathed on her right hip instead of her pistol.
As touted in the mid-left, this cover was drawn by Jim Lee himself, and it looks really good at first glance. It captures the likenesses of Chris and Jill very well, with details matching the in-game models and actors almost to a tee.
At least, until you start to look at Jill's waist. While Chris looks normal, Jill seems to have an hourglass figure to rival that of Jessica Rabbit.
No, seriously. Look at her body. I didn't notice this a few years ago when I wrote my original draft of this review, but after watching a lot of Linkara's comic reviews, I've learned to analyze the covers of comic-books in great detail.
I went back and watched some of my playthrough of the original game, and I was able to confirm that neither the in-game model, nor the actual actress have this ridiculous a body.
For one thing, the waistband on Jill's pants is way too high on her stomach compared to her actress and 3D model. Plus, for some reason her hips are swayed off to the left in such a way that would probably be hurting her spine. It'd make more sense if she was leaning against a wall in this picture, and peering around a corner. But she's free-standing, which is part of why her pose doesn't make any sense.
Even if we assume that part of the strange proportions can be explained by the fact that she's partially turned away from the reader, her pants are still too high up on her body, and I could still probably get my hands most of the way around what passes for her waist. Seriously, there doesn't look to be much separating her spine from the outside world.
Jim Lee is a legendary artist in comics, from what I've been told. Compare this to Lee's drawings of Wonder Woman in All-Star Batman and Robin,. Sure, it's not the most realistic for how muscular she's supposed to be, but it still looks more realistic than Jill's body does on this cover.
Plus, I didn't notice this until just now, but Jill's lips seem to be a little puffy upon closer inspection, and her right leg looks a lot smaller than her left leg is. Plus, look at the massive nails on her left hand. Jill Valentine is a former Delta Force operative, she's not supposed to have nails that long!
This is why I mentioned that this cover is good at first glance. It starts falling apart the more you look at it.
Now we move onto Chris, who seems to have less issues with his body. I say seems because if you look at the bottom of the page, next to Jill's leg, you can see the edge of Chris's pants, which leads me to wonder how long Chris's legs are. This looks especially weird since the place where you'd think Chris's leg would be (In that little spot behind Jill's legs) is taken up by the background. Seriously, Chris just needs to be a little lower and further to the left on the page for his leg to be in the right place.
Otherwise, the cover is actually pretty good. You can see a collection of enemies from the game, giant spiders, a hunter slaughtering a zombie, and a few intact zombies around the corner. It evokes the spirit of the game, and shows the tension of the situation. While our two main protagonists look a little strange, it's a good cover at first glance, and I would be immediately interested if I saw this cover in a comic-store.
The first page of the comic is titled "Introduction to Resident Evil" and is written by Kris Oprisko, one of the two writers of the comic.
It essentially attempts to explain the origin of WildStorm's run on the Resident Evil Comics, with Kris explaining that he and Ted Adams (The other writer of this comic) fanboyed out when they played the original game back in 1996, and they wanted to work on turning the game into a comic almost immediately.
The authors note starts off by saying that "The magazine you hold in your hands is the result of a unique collaboration between the worlds of comics and videogames, creating something we hope is totally new"
Considering this isn't the first Resident Evil comic, it's not that new or unique. Especially since Nintendo Power had been putting out comic tie-ins to games for years before the game this comic is based on was even conceived! And some were really good too!
Not to mention the fact that there were other comics based on games throughout the years, not to mention games based on comics as well. Space Quest comics, Mortal Kombat komics, the Atari Force comics, the Mobile Suit Gundam: Side Story comics, Pokémon‎ comics, and probably the most famous video-game comics of them all, Sonic The Hedgehog comics!
So no, not really all that unique from the perspective of comics based on videogames. But what about as accurate adaptations of the source-material?
Well, let's move on from the authors note and into the actual comic. Please not that this magazine is 44 pages long, including the cover and authors note, so this review is going to be pretty lengthy.
Something interesting to note is that this is an anthology book, which contains multiple stories set around the Resident Evil universe. The first one is "S.T.A.R.S. Files"
We open to a mysterious, Kingpin-esque figure who appears to be in command of S.T.A.R.S. is giving Wesker a new assignment. There's been a series of mysterious murders and disappearances around the city, and Wesker is being put in charge of the S.T.A.R.S. team investigating it. It's mentioned that the only S.T.A.R.S. agent that's in Raccoon City at the moment is Joseph Frost.
We'll get to the plot in a bit, the first thing I wanted to comment on in this panel is the fact that Wesker looks a little too gaunt, when he's supposed to be a muscular guy. Plus, his head is tiny in this panel!
Now, in the game Wesker wears a black Kevlar vest over a dark blue shirt, but Wesker's vest is blue in this. Plus, because his shirt and his vest are the same color, they sort of run into each other. It doesn't help that his lapels and collar are outside of his vest.
It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense for an off-duty cop to still be wearing part of his riot-gear.
Of course, that vest doesn't protect the center of Wesker's chest. I've actually worn a Kevlar vest, and they don't have that massive gap on the upper chest that Wesker's vest has.
Fortunately they've gotten the general shape and color of Wesker's glasses right this time, if not his general proportions.
In the next panel, Wesker is in a phone-booth talking to a guy named Holden. Who if you'll recall, originally appeared in Marvel's Resident Evil comic, and whose only other appearance that I can find was in a script George A. Romero wrote for his Resident Evil movie which was never actually made.
So yeah, this character has been lifted straight from the Marvel comic, because he never actually appeared in the games. Either by being mentioned or actually showing up. He wasn't even integrated into the plot of The Umbrella Chronicles the way elements of the Anderson movies were. But, we'll get to that when I review The Umbrella Chronicles.
He says to Holden that Umbrella can expect a full report once he's rounded up a few S.T.A.R.S. operatives for the Alpha and Bravo teams.
On the next page, Wesker is writing his report to Umbrella on who he's picked for his team, mentioning that he's picked them according to Umbrella's specifications. He also mentions that Umbrella controls the chief of the RCPD, Brian Irons.
Umbrella's interest in having S.T.A.R.S. in Raccoon City is to have a cover for their official damage control.
The next couple of pages list off the members of the two teams Wesker has picked out, with pictures of the characters shown on a mockup of a Windows 98 laptop.
Wesker's first pick for the S.T.A.R.S. team he's going to take into Raccoon City is Barry Burton, a weapons expert and family man. Due to his status as a husband and father, Wesker knows how to manipulate him if he needs to (As he will in the game)
Bravo's commander is Enrico Marini, who's apparently known for being fearless in the face of danger.
That's actually consistent with how he was portrayed in the games.
Next up is Richard Aiken, team communications expert. Wesker comments that he could probably reach China with a CB radio. That's consistent with the games as well.
Bravo's medic is Rebecca Chambers, who Wesker mentions isn't the best fighter, but she's a hell of a medic.
And as their on-call chemist in case there's a T-Virus outbreak, Kenneth J. Sullivan. He's actually got a Ph.D in Chemistry in the games, so I'd say that this is a wise choice, since I'd figure if anyone could whip up an antidote real fast, it would probably be him. It's a shame he was among the first to die in the original game, It would have been cool to see him in action.
Finally, the team marksman is Forest Speyer, who's one of the best snipers in S.T.A.R.S. Not a lot of details are given about him, so I would presume he's about the same as he is in the games.
Next up is the rest of Alpha team. Joseph Frost is the only one in this continuity who knows anything about Raccoon City, and he's also the team mechanic. The latter is consistent with the canon of the games, the former not so much. But we'll get to that.
Brad Vickers is mentioned as being a coward and a computer expert. No mention is made of his status as a pilot. Brad isn't actually mentioned as being a computer expert in the games to the best of my knowledge.
Chris Redfield is mentioned as being an old friend of Barry Burton (He served in the US Air Force with him) and as having been kicked out of the air-force for insubordination. This is the only version of the story where they actually mention what Chris did to get himself kicked out, and that's part of what I like about this comic.
You see, Chris was on a top-secret mission (Presumably as the pilot, since he's usually referred to as an ace pilot in the same breath as when he's mentioned as being a great marksman.) and during that mission, a member of his team was injured (Presumably in a crash or explosion, since the background is all smoke and fire) and Chris was ordered to leave him behind, but Chris went back and got him.
I really like this, because it establishes the kind of person Chris Redfield is.
Mind you, we never actually find out what the mission was, or any further details about it, which is a shame, because I was hankering for more stories about Chris and Barry in the air-force. Hey Capcom, if you ever want to make a prequel game, or novel or comic to Resident Evil that's all about how the S.T.A.R.S. team in Raccoon City met, I'm available to write the story! I've had some ideas kicking around in my head for a while that I think would work pretty well in the canon!
Now, they don't actually mention that Chris is a championship marksman, or the fact that he's a pilot. All they mention is the fact that he's a war-hero who was kicked out of the Air Force for the very thing that made him a hero. This is a part of the comic I like to pretend is actually a part of the games.
Finally, there's Jill Valentine. Recommended to Wesker by Barry, she's known as "The Master of Unlocking" which is a little less elegant that Marvel's description of her as the team B&E expert.
The RCPD decides to send in Bravo to investigate the forest, due to public demand that the police do something.
Another thing they lift from the Marvel comic is the mentioning of Bravo as being mostly green, which we've already pointed out wasn't actually true. The only green member of the team was Rebecca Chambers.
And right here on the sixth page, Wesker contradicts what he just said a few pages ago when he mentions that he's made sure that they'll have engine trouble to keep them from discovering anything, even though their entire purpose in the city was to contain the outbreak without drawing attention to the fact that it was related to Umbrella. They were supposed to discover things.
Maybe Wesker just rigged their engine because he hadn't finished scrubbing the mansion of evidence linking it to Umbrella.

Now that we've summed up the first six pages of story, let's see how they compare to the series as it was then, and as it is now, as well as analyzing the art.
First off, Wesker is supposed to be in charge of S.T.A.R.S. He answers to the RCPD officially, and to Umbrella unofficially. There's no national coordination center.
S.T.A.R.S. was founded in Raccoon City in 1996 (The year the original game was released) as part of the "Bright Raccoon 21" redevelopment program. Their purpose was to combat the increase in gang-violence and terrorism in the city. You know, the stuff I speculated about in the last review when I talked about the heavy ordnance Alpha was packing.
Now, while the members of S.T.A.R.S. aren't specifically mentioned as being Raccoon City natives, it's fairly easy to presume so about a few of them. For instance, Chris Redfield and Forest Speyer have been best friends for a very long time as far as I can tell, and when Chris left the air-force, he traveled the country before landing in Raccon City. He's also good friends with Jill Valentine, so I'd say that it would be incredibly convenient for them to not all be from Raccoon City.
Plus the fact that Chris's sister, Claire, rides into town on a motorcycle a short while after her brother goes missing, so I'd have to reckon that they're all from the town. This is backed up by the fact that, in Resident Evil, Barry refers to Chris as "Our old partner" which implies a bit of back-story between himself and Jill as well.
In the end, them not being from Raccoon City would be too big of a coincidence. I could possibly see Barry, Brad, Kenneth, Enrico and Rebecca not being from Raccoon City, but Richard's girlfriend lived in Raccoon City.
Plus, as you can tell in Resident Evil 2, S.T.A.R.S. has an office inside the RCPD, with personal effects from Chris, Barry, Jill, Wesker, and Rebecca strewn about the office.
Now, let's talk about the artwork, starting with page two.
The first panel on the second page shows Wesker at a desk, hunched over an old laptop. Aside from the fact that Wesker is still wearing his bullet-proof vest even while he's in his office, and the fact that his arms are still a little too bony to be accurate, there's not a much I can pick on.
I say not much, because his laptop screen goes from green with lines on it in the first panel to having a newspaper scan on it in another. The big problem with the second panel is that the newspaper is rotated to the left a bit for some reason, which doesn't make sense, because this is the '90s, and they hadn't quite figured out how to make webpages "Do a barrel roll!"
The next panel shows a picture of the Tyrant T-002 in suspended animation. It looks pretty good.
The fourth panel on the page is a picture of Barry firing his Colt Python. And it's looking mighty black in this shot. Even though the Python in the game is rather clearly silver. And like I mentioned on the cover, the gun Jill was holding looks nothing like the Colt Python.
Also, even though Barry's belly-holster is obviously set up for him to draw it with his right hand, and the fact that he holds the gun with his right hand in-game, he's holding the Python in his left hand for some reason. This seems to be becoming a pattern in this comic. Otherwise, the panel is actually pretty good. Barry looks like Barry is supposed to.
The final panel on the page is Wesker looking at Barry's file. Nothing much else to say, except that Wesker is still wearing his glasses and vest in his office. Not to mention the rest of his tactical gear. Also, take a look at Weskers thumb in this panel if you have the comic. It looks strangely angular. Hmmm, I wonder if that's going to become a pattern?
Page 4 is a single panel of Wesker's computer, which appears to be running Windows 98. He has five windows open, one with each of the members of the S.T.A.R.S. Bravo team, with their names on the window above them.
Let's start at the top and work out way down, shall we?
Enrico's picture is of him holding a tactical shotgun and dashing away from someone who's shooting at him. God only knows how this picture was captured, since Enrico appears to be in a hallway while this is happening. It's possible this came from training, or an operation, but it's unlikely they could get this good a shot with the VHS cameras the RCPD use to record their missions. Not to mention the fact that Bravo's cameraman, Kenneth, would have had to be slightly above Enrico to capture this.
Enrico's face is missing a lot of details too. I can barely make out his eyes. Not to mention the fact that I don't think anyone actually runs the way Enrico is in this panel. He just seems to be displaying too much of a target to his pursuers. Not to mention the fact that he'd not wearing a protective helmet in this shot.
The second window is a shot of Richard in the RCPD command center at the communications array. This is actually something they could have gotten as a photograph in some kind of newpaper coverage.
Now, even though he's obviously in the RCPD command-center in this picture, he's also still wearing his tactical gloved and Kevlar vest. But at least his vest isn't done up as neatly as Wesker's is. And as I mentioned before, this was probably a picture taken for the local newspaper as part of a piece on S.T.A.R.S.
Plus, Richard's head looks kind weird in this shot. Plus, his hair looks a little bit grey, not to mention the fact that it's sticking straight up in the air, even though he's wearing a headset. Also, note the angular joints to his fingers.
The third window is of Rebecca kneeling next to a S.T.A.R.S. member who's lying on the ground.
One must wonder who this is, since he's wearing a blue outfit, like Wesker and Forest do in this comic, but has pure black hair, whereas Forest has brown hair and Wesker has brown hair. It could be some other S.T.A.R.S. member, but Rebecca Chambers was on her first mission in Resident Evil, so maybe this is just some promotional shot they took for the paper. That would explain why she doesn't appear to be doing much in this picture.
The fourth window depicts Forest Speyer holding a rifle in what looks to be a really uncomfortable position, with his vest halfway open. The strange this is that in the background you can clearly see a person walking their dog, and someone else calmly strolling along, next to a car, which leads me to wonder what the hell is going on in this panel.
Also, the fingers on Forest's left hand seem more arranged to be holding a guitar that a gun to me.
The final window shows Kevin pouring the contents of one test-tube into the other, which would pretty much have to be a promotional picture, because there's no way they'd get this shot any other way.
I'd just like to point out that his forearms are freaking massive. So are his hands. It looks kind of weird compared to the rest of the characters who have incredibly gaunt builds.
Kenneth looks really intent in this picture, like he's pouring something incredibly dangerous. But if he was, he'd be wearing more protective gear than just his bullet-proof vest. And what kind of room is he in? I see a black wall and a pair of red-lights, but I can't tell where he's supposed to be. Maybe inside the RCPD blackroom?
Moving onto page five, we see four pictures of the remaining S.T.A.R.S. members, this time with Alpha Team. For some reason the windows we see here have the last name of the characters pictured with a jpeg file extension, which is something we didn't see on the last pages' windows.
We start off with a picture of Joseph Frost fixing a S.T.A.R.S. chopper. While his arms seem a little strange, his outfit is pretty much accurate to his appearance in the game. Except for the fact that his bandanna is blue, rather than red. His face looks about the way he did in the official artwork. The camo pattern on his pants is a little off, but aside from that, he actually looks like Joseph. Based on the picture, he looks like he's working on a chopper in the sun, which would mean he should just be wearing his S.T.A.R.S. t-shirt, and not his tactical vest. Like I've said before, I've worn Kevlar in the past, and it's not particularly pleasant when the sun is beating down on you.
Anyways, the second window is a picture of Brad Vickers sitting at a computer. You can tell this is the '90s, because he's got a massive CRT monitor in front of him. Like everyone who doesn't appear to be in much danger in these photos, Brad is also wearing his Kevlar vest, even though he's obviously sitting at his desk in the RCPD building. Even though he's not supposed to be stationed at the RCPD in this timeline. There's not much to complain about in this picture. He looks like Brad Vickers, what more do you want?
The fourth panel shows Chris Redfield carrying someone out of a blazing fire. The caption below seems to imply that this picture is from the secret mission he was on in the air-force, but that doesn't make any sense.
Chris is wearing his S.T.A.R.S.uniform, as is the man he's pulling out of the fire, not United States Air Force fatigues. But he doesn't have his knife on his shoulder, or his holster on his leg.
Also, for some reason, most of the characters have their S.T.A.R.S. emblem on the left shoulder of their T-shirt. Everyone except for whoever Rebecca was tending to back on page 4, whose emblem was on the right shoulder of his shirt. I mention this because the guy Chris is carrying doesn't appear to have a S.T.A.R.S. emblem on either shoulder. You could say that he's supposed to be the guy Rebecca was tending to, but that guys shirt was blue. And it's possible he could be Joseph, but his face is a little too square to be Joseph. Plus, he's not wearing Joseph's camouflage pants, or (red) bandanna.
Chris essentially looks fine from the neck-down in this shot, but as soon as we hit his face we notice that he doesn't look a whole lot like the in-game model, the concept art or the actor who portrayed Chris in the live-action bits of the game. They've got the hair that sticks straight up down pat, but his face only vaguely resembles what he looked like in the art for the original game, and it doesn't resemble his current depiction at all. They've got all the other little details of his outfit correct though, so that's a plus.
The major problem is that the other guys arm which Chris has slung across his shoulders looks like it has an extra joint to it. It really doesn't look healthy the way it's positioned. Not to mention the fact that Chris's is facing the camera sidelong, while the guy he's carrying is facing it head-on. If you look at the place where that guys legs are supposed to be, you see that they're not visible. For his left leg it makes sense, since it's blocked by Chris's leg, but for his right leg it doesn't, since his right hip is in such a place where you'd think his leg would come down right into the gap in the background between Chris's legs, but it doesn't. It's possible that his legs could both be limp behind him in a place where they're blocked out by Chris's body, but even if they are, it's still drawn weirdly. One of my standards for graphic-novel art is that it always make sense at first glance, but it should also make sense upon all subsequent viewings, otherwise it all falls apart.
The final window on this page is a picture of the lovely Jill Valentine. While her face seems a little too anime styled for how she's supposed to look, it's actually pretty good. It looks like it's somewhere in-between the modern depictions of Jill and her original concept art. The big problem in this picture is her left arm looks strange. Her left hand is a bit massive, but that could be explained by the fact that it's closer to the camera than her right. The main issue with her arm is that her left bicep looks too skinny for a former Delta Force operative. It's also in direct contrast to her massive left forearm, which looks too big, even considering the fact that it's closer to the camera. Her muscle-tone is a bit lacking for someone who's supposed to be the first woman accepted into the United States Army's Delta Force training program. I know she's not supposed to be as strong as Chris (Considering how much iron he pumps, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who is) but she shouldn't be completely lacking in any muscle definition, especially when Kenneth has obviously got so much to spare.
Also, when you really look at it, her left hand doesn't quite seem to actually be bracing her weight on the wall, more like it's hovering above it. The background seems like it was draw by a completely different artist than the one who drew Jill. And for that matter, it looks incredibly out of place. Jill seems to be picking a lock, but this wall looks like it came out of a System Shock 2 comic. The panel she's looking at seems to be mostly buttons, like it's a keypad. But for some reason it's got a keyhole in the middle of it.
Speaking of looking, Jill's eyes don't seem to be focusing on her work, and her head isn't exactly aimed in the right direction for what she's doing.
Moving onto the next page, we're shown Bravo team getting into their helicopter as they're ready to take off in a full-page spread. This main panel has all five of the original members of Bravo Team in a line on their way to the chopper. Unfortunately, nobody seems to be carrying any equipment. Maybe it's already loaded into the chopper, but nobody seems to be carrying their sidearms either. Richard's not carrying his shotgun or his radio, Forest doesn't have his rifle, and Rebecca doesn't have her first-aid kit either.
I've been looking at the original art, and I noticed that almost everyone is missing sidearm holsters, which would explain why everyone who's not on the cover doesn't have theirs on.
Also, when you get beyond Rebecca in the background, everyone seems to lose a lot of detail, specifically in their hands. Richard's arms also seem to be as long as his legs.
The second panel and the narration captions from Wesker imply that they started having engine trouble right after they took off. I know that's not the case, but if you hadn't actually played the first and second games you might be a little confused by this.
With that, we come to the end of the first story. This review has already clocked in at about five thousand words, so I should probably stop and break this up.
I say story, but this was more like a seven page introduction sequence, and the job of an intro sequence is to get us interested in the plot and the characters. I might not be the best judge of how interesting this is to an outsider, since I'm already invested in the characters and the story. But I remember what I thought when I originally read the comic two years ago, and I really liked the ideas it brings to the table. They've fleshed out the characters a bit more than they were in the original game, and that's pretty nice.
But in the end, it does little more than retread what the Marvel comic did. I have a feeling that if you combine the unique elements of the Marvel comic and the first story in this comic, edit it to include background details from the rest of the canon and hand it to a better artist then you'd have a pretty damn good comic.
Although I'm disappointed that this first story gives away the Wesker twist on the first page. I know the twist is legendary now, and it was fairly well-known inside the fandom (Since you pretty much had to see it when you finished the game) it spoils a great twist for someone who's just being introduced to the series. Yes, the game was two years old when this comic was released, and yes, since Wesker is essentially the series main villain at this point, it's essentially pointless to complain, since the twist is essentially spoiled by all of the media surrounding the games, but it's something I thought I should bring up.
Anyways, while this didn't really do much to tell the story of the first game, it was still decent, and like I said, it introduces a lot of background elements I like, even if the art isn't so good.
All in all, I liked this story when I first read it, and I still like it now, even though there's a lot left to be desired with the art. I give this story a 7.6* rating. It gains a lot of points for fleshing out the backgrounds of some of the characters, but loses some for not fleshing out others as much. Then it loses a few more points for the issues I mentioned with the art. I'll try and get my review of the next story out tomorrow. Hopefully I won't have to spend so much time picking apart the art as I did in this review.
Part 2 Part 3

Marvel Comics' Resident Evil #1

Happy Halloween everyone, and welcome to the 2015 installment of The 31 Days of Biohazard!
Unfortunately, I won't be reviewing any videogames this year, since my recording setup is in desperate need of a massive overhaul, and I'm determined to not record any more Let's Plays by pointing a camera at my television.
So, this year we're changing things up a bit. The good thing about reviewing an entertainment franchise is that they usually span a wide variety of media, and Resident Evil is by no means an exception. Capcom has made live-action movies, CGI animated movies, novels, board-games, restaurants, a theme-park attraction, an upcoming stage play of all things, and comics out of the game that defined survival-horror. For the last nineteen years, they've been licensing Resident Evil into every single medium they possibly can.
But for now, we're going to be looking at the very first Resident Evil comic ever published. The rest of this month, I'm going to be looking at the novels and comics based on games in the series I've already covered.
So, if you'll pardon me borrowing something from Linkara, let's dig into Marvel Comics' Resident Evil #1!
As you can see from the above image, this was a free comic. It was published back in April of 1996 by Capcom, in cooperation with Marvel, and was given away with copies of the game. At least, that's what the inside of the comic tells me. Wikipedia, and the Marvel wiki says that the comic was published in April of 1997. I've also found a lot of conflicting information as to how to comic was distributed. Some sources I've found say that it was a pack-in with the original longbox version of the game, some just say it was given away in an unspecified manner.
But no matter how it was published, this comic was still pretty hard to track down. I couldn't even find a copy myself, unfortunately. A fan sent me a digitized copy of the comic after much hunting sometime last year If I could remember your name, I'd give you a shout-out!
The only physical copies I could find on eBay were in the thirty-to-forty dollar range, and even so-called "Complete in Box" longbox copies of the game don't come with the comic. I've had a few of my friends pick up CIB longbox copies of the game, and the first question I always ask them is "Did it come with the comic?" and the answer is always no.
Plus, to the best of my knowledge, this comic was never reprinted. There have been plenty of trade collections of Wildstorm's Resident Evil comics, the Hong Kong manhua, the recent Viz comics. But as far as I can tell, the one-shot we're looking at today has never been reprinted.
Before we get into the comic, I'm going to lay down my criteria for reviewing these comics and novels.
First, I'll be looking at the material as it stands on its own. Second, I'll be looking at it as it ties into the franchise at the time. And finally, I'll look at it as it fits into the franchise as it is today.
Taking a look at the cover, it's essentially identical to that of the English cover of the original game, but with a few changes.
For one thing, they've added a big white box in the upper left, with the Marvel Comics and Capcom logos plastered above what appears to be Wesker's face. But for some reason he's wearing orange sunglasses rather than his standard black ones, and he's standing in front of a featureless blue background. Plus, his normally neat hair is sticking straight up in the air. And really, the only reason I know why this is supposed to be Wesker is because he sort-of looks like the Wesker in the actual comic.
I can't tell if this is just because of the scan, but the logo appears to be a lot darker than it was on the original cover. Plus, they've added some dripping blood from the "N", and they've shoved a giant eye behind the title, catching some of the blood, and ruining the perfectly efficient visual design of the cover.
Now, let's talk about the cover in general. Chris appears to be wearing grey camouflage pants, and a brown STARS vest, which is kind of weird, since that's not how Chris actually dresses in either the game, or the comics.
He's surrounded by surreal imagery, with two massive spiders appearing behind his legs, and transparent skulls, birds, and human faces on the ceiling above him. Plus, he's holding a rifle that I'm pretty sure never actually appears in the game, and certainly doesn't appear in the comic itself.
The opening narration boxes essentially describe exactly what Chris does in the opening of the game. STARS Bravo Team's helicopter crashed in the Raccoon City mountains when they were out investigating the recent rash of deaths and disappearances in and around the forest zone.
Except the narration suggests that they crash-landed in the mansions courtyard, when they actually crashed pretty far away from the mansion in the game. Plus, they also say that Bravo was fairly inexperienced, which isn't really the case. The only new member of the team was Rebecca Chambers, while the rest of the team were all fairly experienced.
The character pictured on the first page is one Richard Aiken, Bravo's communications expert and backup man. Right off the bat, I can see something wrong with the art. The actual radio you get from Richard in the game is a walkie-talkie,  but in the comic he's hauling around a suitcase-sized radio that looks like he pulled it out of Bravo's chopper.
Now, it's been a while since I played the original Resident Evil, but I don't think the room Richard is in on the opening panel is actually in the game.
Plus, he's doing that really annoying "Thinking out loud" thing that characters sometimes do in comics. All you have to do is shape the word balloon like a cloud and everyone will know they're supposed to be thinking, not speaking.
Then we move down the page and see what Linkara would refer to as an "Art Attack". Richard's face looks all out of whack in that panel. There are teal highlights here and there on the right-hand side of his face, which is also almost completely shrouded in darkness. This darkness also covers his left eye, making him look like Two-Face, as if the expression he's holding doesn't do that enough already. Then we get to his right eye, which looks massive.
Onto the next page, we see Richard running through a hallway, with a bunch of poorly-drawn fat zombies in the background, and some decently well-drawn ones in the foreground, even if they are silhouettes. The problem is, that two of them seem to be missing massive chunks of their heads, and one is missing all of the flesh on its left arm. As is established in the games, a zombie cannot function if it's missing most of its brain. Not to mention the fact that I've never seen a skeleton move in any of the games.
The zombie in the middle doesn't appear to be missing part of its skull and brain, fortunately. It's just got a screwdriver stuck into its head. I don't know if that's actually possible in any of the games, but at least it's capable of functioning within series logic.
Richard's dialogue in this panel is actually pretty good, conveying the urgency of his situation, while not insulting the readers intelligence by explaining something plainly obvious, and by having a good reason for him to be saying what he is.
The next panel is a silhouette of Richard on a black background, yelling into the radio, telling Wesker he needs to send backup. This is right before he notices that most of the wires on the radio-handset have come loose.
Back at the S.T.A.R.S. headquarters in Raccoon City, we confirm that the dude in the upper left of the cover was, in fact, Wesker. For some reason, he's wearing bright-orange sports shades, even though he's shown wearing jet-black ones in the opening FMV, not to mention in all versions of the opening cutscenes.
Fortunately, his hair isn't sticking straight up in the air, anymore!
The red phone on Wesker's desk rings, and he answers it. He also appears to be holding a massive knife in his right hand.
The call is from a cigar-smoking man named Holden, who never actually appears in the Resident Evil games, to my knowledge. He berates Wesker for giving in to public pressure and sending Bravo off to investigate. Wesker replies, stating that he arranged for Bravo to have a lethal transportation accident.
Yes, they literally gave away the ending twist in a pack-in comic. And as if that wasn't enough, Holden has a mug with "UMB" written on top of a parasol. No, it's not the classic Umbrella Corporation logo, it's literally just a drawing of an umbrella with the letters "UMB" on top of it.
Speaking of the art, the panel to the left of Holden is another bit of "art attack", because Wesker's mouth looks huge, and implies that he's shouting.
But apparently he wasn't, because Barry Burton opens Wesker's office door and didn't hear any of the conversation. Wesker hangs up the phone and starts telling Barry what the situation is.
In the very first panel on Page 4, Barry looks a lot like Billy Blazes, and in the next panel, Wesker's shades inexplicably turn red, before changing back to orange immediately after.
I'd just like to point out that S.T.A.R.S. Alpha had one office, with desks for each team-member, and a big one for Wesker. God only knows what Bravo did. Maybe they were housed in another building on-site.
So, in the third panel on page 4, Wesker's mouth disappears entirely, and his jaw just takes up his entire face, like he was The Maxx or something.
Again, he states that Bravo was too green to go out alone. To which I reply that if they were, they should have had Alpha as backup. Or better yet, don't send them out at night, if at all! It'd be less suspicious to just do nothing than to send out the Special Tactics and Rescue Service to sort things out and have them all killed, even if they were all green! Mark my words, people would as a lot less questions if they didn't have a bunch of dead special-forces operatives on their hands. But as we've already established, Bravo wasn't green, they were actually pretty well-trained, and were almost all veteran officers. Not exactly something that was immediately established in the first game, but the point still stands.
So, Barry asks what the plan is, and Wesker tells him that they're assembling The Avengers and going after them. Sorry, I meant Alpha Team.
See, this makes even less sense, because when Bravo goes missing, you obviously have to do something about it. Because of how events happened in the games, Wesker didn't really have a choice but to act fast and try and get a cover in place. In this scenario, it seems like they have a lot more time, in which case, Umbrella should send a cleanup crew to the Mansion to destroy all the evidence linking them and Wesker to the site, and then send in S.T.A.R.S. to deal with it.
Again, the comic seems to be running on different internal logic than the games are, because it once again references Bravo being green, even though that literally doesn't make a lick of sense.
Barry brings that up to Wesker, and Wesker says that he already told Barry that "They" insisted that Bravo get the assignment. This must have happened before the comic actually started, because it certainly doesn't happen on-panel. Also, I'd guess that the "They" Wesker is referring to is supposed to be Umbrella, but that doesn't really make sense, because Barry supposedly knows about it, even though Barry wasn't actually involved with Wesker's doings until Alpha arrived on-site at the mansion. This panel seems to imply that Barry's been under Wesker's thumb for a while now. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because Wesker likes to work alone when possible and only takes on partners in crime when he absolutely has to. Plus, he's saying all of this out in the open, where anyone could hear it and leak it.
In the next panel, Wesker's mouth disappears again, and they state that the "They" Wesker was referring to insisted he lead the rescue mission. And that doesn't really make sense either. S.T.A.R.S. answers to the RCPD, otherwise the Chief of Police couldn't have disbanded S.T.A.R.S. after the events of the mansion incident. Wesker might actually be the one in charge of the police, but as far as official business is concerned, he's just the Alpha Team field commander, it's not like he's Captain Picard.
So, Wesker kicks the barracks door in and starts shouting at the rest of Alpha Team, telling them what's happened, and to get ready to fly gear up and fly out.
This little speech is incredibly out of character for Wesker, who's always controller and cultured about the way he speaks. In this, however, he's speaking like he's an army drill-sergeant!
Also, the Raccoon City Police Department didn't have bunks in it to the best of my recollection. Come to think of it, they didn't have a shower-room either, but that's irrelevant to this review.
The comic cuts back to Richard, trying to rewire the radio with his knife, as the captions state that he's furiously trying to rewire the handset.
The problem with that is that the frayed wires are clearly shown on page 2, and they appear as if they'd be fairly easy to reconnect. I mean come on, only three of the wires are disconnected, and they already look like they have the ends stripped off! It'd be fairly simple to just twist each wire back onto its mate and then tape it back up. And because Richard is the electronics guy, he should have some kind of tape on him. Be it duct-tape, or electrical tape. I mean come one, that's a thirty-second rewire job at the most!
I'd also like to point out that Richard isn't holding his knife properly for someone dealing with electronics.
But apparently the spot he found to rest isn't safe, because he's set upon by a pair of zombies. One of which is missing most of its' skull.
You know, maybe Richard should slash at their ankles with his knife, I hear that works well on zombies!
He runs away into a white void, and winds up in the room with the chess-pieces. He comments about how dark the room is, even though it's obviously well lit!
He backs into one of the chess-pieces, and the room begins to fill with toxic gas. He runs out (Presumably past the zombies blocking his way on the last page) and starts down a flight of stairs.
On the next page, Wesker is giving Alpha their final briefing before they head out, and it's on this page where we're introduced to the rest of the cast.
Jill Valentine is listed as the teams demolition expert, which doesn't make sense in the context of the original game, or the rest of the series. Jill never displays a particular talent with explosives in Resident Evil, rather being shown as skilled with lock-picks and medicine, which would make her the teams medic and B&E specialist, in addition to her post as rear security.
Up next is Brad "Chickenheart" Vickers, who's described as extremely timid, but one hell of a pilot, which is pretty accurate as far as the games go.
Then comes Joseph Frost, he's listed as the teams vehicle specialist, a bright and enthusiastic guy, and as the newest member of the team. The former two facts are true as far as I can tell, but I can't get any confirmation on the last one. There aren't really that many details on Joseph, since he didn't get a whole lot of screentime in either the original game, or the remake.
Finally is Chris Redfield, described as a former US Air-Force pilot who was dismissed for insubordination, and as a renegade, and a great marksman. Pretty much everything they say about Chris is correct. We'll see later on that Chris seems to be the one character whose details don't change a whole lot from one version of the story to the next.
Something I need to mention about the art is that there seem to be a lot of splotches on Chris's clothing and equipment. Richard had this same thing going on, but it actually made sense in his case, since he'd been fighting the undead. Chris just seems to have random splotches on his S.T.A.R.S. vest and his knife sheath, which don't seem to fit at all. Nobody else in this panel has that same issue either.
Onto the next page, where Wesker tells Chris to load the chopper up with as much firepower as it can hold, just in case they run into anything dangerous. This includes rocket-launchers. And this is all supposed to be happening in 1998! Three years before 9/11 happened!
This is what sort of led me to believe that Raccoon City had some sort of massive gang problem, and that S.T.A.R.S. was formed to deal with that. Militant gang warfare would explain why they seem to have such heavy ordnance on hand in the 90s.
Jill asks Wesker if he's serious about thinking there's something in the woods they can't handle, but Wesker says that they can't afford to make any judgement errors, saying that even though this version of Bravo Team was green, they were still good, and that if they've been cut off from communications, they should prepare for the worst.
The art for the final panel on page 9 is just bad. Jill's face looks all derpy, and Wesker is baring his teeth again, looking straight at the reader as if to say "Drop, and give me twenty!" I know he's supposed to be looking at Jill, but the way his head is angled towards the reader, plus the fact that we can't see his eyes behind his sunglasses leads to visual problem where it seems like he's looking right at the reader. Also, Wesker looks like Duke Nukem in this panel.
On the next page, we cut back to Richard attempting to rewire his radio in a room that I absolutely do know was in the game.
Now, instead of whispering, Richard is speaking at full voice, when he should probably be thinking all of this. Narrating aloud to himself winds up biting him in the ass quite literally when The Yawn (That massive snake in the first game) sneaks up behind him. How a massive snake can sneak around is anyone's guess. Maybe this Snake's code-name is Solid.
The next page cuts back to Alpha Team approaching the last-known coordinates of Bravo Team. The first panel is an outside shot of the Alpha Team helicopter, and the second panel is a shot of Jill's face, but rather than detailing her head, it's just her basic facial features slapped onto an off-white square panel. It makes her look like Cassandra O'Brien from Doctor Who. In the next panel, Jill's face looks fine, but the coloring on Chris's face is just a white on brown gradient. Plus, he speaks in that panel, but doesn't actually move his mouth. Jill does the same thing in the next panel speaking without her jaw actually opening.
Jill brings up that something is bugging her. She doesn't think he's telling Alpha the whole truth.
This isn't even a problem within the continuity of the games, it just doesn't make any sense in general, since on the next page, it's shown that Wesker is in the same freaking cabin as they are!
Anyways, Barry tells her to lighten up, because he knows Bravo can handle themselves. Chris says that Barry is being too optimistic, and Jill reiterates the fact that she's getting a bad feeling about the situation, and Barry tells them both that they need to relax. Brad tells them that they're about to land and the creative team of this comic finally display that they know how to use thought balloons. Chris thinks to himself that all Brad needs to do is get them on the ground, and the rest of Alpha Team can handle it from there on out.
On the final page, they show a pair of Cerberus's in the foreground as Alpha's chopper hovers about twelve feet above the ground. In the next panel, they show Chris, Jill and Wesker leaping out of the helicopter with Barry and Joseph following.
On this page, only Chris, Barry and Joseph actually look like who they're supposed to. Jill looks almost like she's supposed to, but she's missing a lot of detailing. And Wesker doesn't look much like Wesker is supposed to in this last panel.
Plus, there's their posing. Jill is leaping like Spider-Man, and Wesker seems to have leaped out heard-first.
Chris seems like the only one who actually dropped out of the chopper properly.
Mind you, none of them should be jumping out of the helicopter from that height with their guns drawn. Much less without safety ropes and harnesses. Would it really have been that hard to draw the chopper on the ground and have them walking out of it like a SWAT team would in real life? Why does it have to be so *EXTREME!*?
This closes out the comic, as the box in the lower right says "TO BE CONTINUED IN THE GAME!"
Before I start broad analysis of the comic, I'd just like to point out one more issue with the art. Alpha Team's helicopter appears to be splattered in mud, or partially coated in rust. It really doesn't make sense, either from the perspective of the comic, or the game. The helicopter was completely clean in the game, and even though you can't really see too many details on previous pages, it still looks pretty dang clean.
The last two pages of the comic are just ads for the game, featuring screenshots and a picture of the game-box.
A game-box which apparently has the eye behind the logo and the bleeding E. I can't actually find a final version of the game cover that looks like that, so I'd assume that it's just a test cover that never actually made it to print.
So, does this comic suck? I wouldn't think so. It's entertaining, and while it's got plenty of issues with the art, and a few issues with continuity with the game it supposedly leads up to, but I actually kinda like it. It's a shame that Marvel's run on Resident Evil ended with this comic, because I really like where I think they were taking this. They sort of make out that Wesker isn't a willing participant in the Umbrella Conspiracy, which could make for an interesting divergence of plot from that of the games. The art could certainly use a massive improvement, like I said before, but it's not a bad comic by any means. It had some potential, and I would have loved to see the cast of Resident Evil meet up with, say, ROM: Space Knight or The Transformers, like every other tie-in comic Marvel produced. It would have been kinda cool to see the S.T.A.R.S. members in Civil War.
All in all, while it has plenty of flaws, it's also a decent read for a fifteen page comic. If you can find a copy of the comic, it's a nice little piece of Resident Evil history if you want to own it. I know I'd love to find a copy for a decent price.
It doesn't really fit into modern Resident Evil continuity, since a lot of what they've established in this comic has been contradicted as early as Resident Evil 2 and 3: Nemesis, and then further contradicted by further sequels and the lone prequel.
In the end, I give the Marvel Comics' Resident Evil #1 oneshot a 6.3* rating. I'll see you next time with the first issue of the Wildstorm magazine!

An unscheduled break.

I'd like to apologize for this weeks lack of an article, I've had a few things come up, and I couldn't get either of the articles I was considering publishing this week finished in time.
But I have some good new! This October, The 31 Days of Biohazard returns!
Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any Let's Play content recorded this year, because unfortunately, my studio is under renovation. With the necessary restructuring of my equipment, I was unable to record gameplay footage of Resident Evil 3, Survivor, Code: Veronica, and Survivor 2 like I'd planned.
But fear not! I still have reviews planned for October! Resident Evil is a multimedia franchise, and this year we'll be covering the first series of Resident Evil comics!
After October ends, we'll be back to regularly scheduled articles. I hope to see you guys in October!

Brandish: The Dark Revenant

Yes, it took me about seven months to finish Brandish: The Dark Revenant. In my defense, however, I've been adding games and other material to my review schedule almost constantly since January. And I've been trying to balance my currently hectic home-life while playing four games at once and putting out a review every Sunday. The good thing is that I haven't missed more than one or two weeks of reviews, and I also haven't missed two weeks in a row.
The unfortunate thing is that it was about two months between my Legend of Zelda review and part 2 of my Fire Emblem Awakening review. (Stay tuned for June of 2016 when I finally finish that game) There were far too many movie reviews and not nearly enough game reviews this year. I'd like to try and fix that if I can.
I know I say that immediately following a movie review, but the thing about that was: A) It was a recent release. B) I hadn't finished Brandish yet. and C) I'm the Editor in Chief around this corner of the internet, and I decide what goes out on this site. I'm the admin, so I don't have to explain it!
Ha. Ha ha. Let me know if that was funny.
Anyways, let's start talking about the game.
As I mentioned in the first episode of my Let's Play series, Brandish: The Dark Revenant is a PSP remake of the 1991 NEC PC-9801 and FM Towns game by Nihon Falcom titled Brandish: Unlock The Underworld. It was ported to the TurboGrafx-CD/PC Engine CD-ROM² on June 17th of 1994, and then for the SNES/Super Famicom on the 25th of June in 1994 in Japan and in February in The United States.
Then you have this game. Released for the PSP on March 19th, 2009 in Japan and on January 13th this year in America (And still no release date for Europe or Australia) The Dark Revenant was developed by Nihon Falcom, and published by XSeed (at least in the NTSC regions).
The very first issue is the fact that The Dark Revenant only got a real release in Japan. Everyone else got a PSN release, unfortunately.
Not that I can really blame XSeed, considering their financial situation and the need to turn a profit off of their projects, and it's hard to do that when you're having to spend money pressing discs for a PSP game, when it's easier to try and bank on the combined audiences of the Vita and the PSP.
That doesn't mean I'm any less disappointed we didn't get a real release, nor does it excuse the lack of a European PSN release at this times.
Now, as you can tell, there was a massive gulf between the Japanese release-date for this game and the American one. As best I can tell, this was due in-part to a struggle between Atlus and XSeed as to who would be localizing the game, which apparently lasted until sometime in 2013. And the release was announced at E3 2014, and then the game was finally released in 2015.
Apparently Atlus was working on their Brandish: The Dark Revenant English release sometime between the initial release of the game in 2008 and the budget re-release in 2010. One must wonder how far they got, and if any prototype units of the Atlus production exist.
Anyways, now that we've finished talking about the really boring stuff that I find interesting, let's talk about the game itself.
Brandish: The Dark Revenant is an action-RPG for Sony's PSP handheld gaming system that was recklessly and needlessly abandoned by Sony in a rush to release the Vita when there were still plenty of games being developed and localized for it. I blame Sony for the lack of physical releases outside of Japan for a lot of PSP games.
But then again, pretty much everything about the eighth generation of systems is based on reckless and needless abandoning of technology everyone has in favor of overly expensive and imperfect new technology that everyone wants to like, but can't, because they've ditched backwards and sideways compatibility between generations and platforms for absolutely no reason.
No, instead we've gotten further into the depths of digital distribution hell, because it's cheaper to publish games on PSN, Nintendo eShop, Steam, or XBLA than it is to put out a real game. Instead of, you know, putting out a bunch of games in a single physical collection like we used to. All the way back to the freaking SNES!

So, you play as an adventurer named Ares Toraernos, who is pursued by Dela Delon, a sorceress who is out for Ares' blood because he killed her master who was apparently some evil sorcerer dude. None of this is actually mentioned on-screen, mind you. It's all stuff that I've found out by reading the Wikipedia article. The lore you actually experience in the game is almost entirely centered around the dungeon you fall into.
So in the opening sequence of the game you get a massive lore-dump about a kingdom called Vittoria, and a king who wanted to harness the power of a magical dragon who was the guardian of the land. The guardian dragon shuts the king away in the tower at the center of the kingdom and builds an entire planet on top of the rest of the kingdom and then pisses off to go do something else.
A thousand years later, Ares and Dela do battle over a thin part of the planets crust. Dela busts a hole in the surface of the planet, and both of them fall down a rather ridiculous height to the surface of the original planet.
Seriously, the amount of levels that you climb in this game have to add up to freaking miles. But, then again, falling between levels in this game doesn't damage you, so I suppose it makes sense from a mechanics perspective as opposed to a logical sense.

Anyways, I wound up taking 64,317 steps in my playthrough. Assuming each step is about five feet (Using Dungeons and Dragons logic to divide up the maps into 5 foot squares) that means that I walked about 60 miles and 1,595 yards in my entire playthrough.
Sounds like a lot, but think about this. From the dialogue, I figure the game must take place over the course of a few years at least. And considering I walk at least a mile a day via excercise alone, that adds up to over 365 miles a year at the very least. So that opens up a rather strange plot-hole, wherein the estimated length of travel doesn't match up with the apparent time-scale, even taking into account the amount of puzzles you have to solve.

Here's the other weird thing. You meet NPC's and other obviously sentient creatures that have been living in this weird underworld for centuries, but none of them have managed to get to the surface. And you can tell that because all of the traps and puzzles in your way haven't been set-off or solved, respectively. Even if you assume that people haven't been living here for the full thousand years it's been sealed off, human-beings have been living there long enough that they should have figured out how to get through these puzzles by sheer accident. And I know how tough some of the monsters have to be, but what are the odds that literally nobody of our prowess has fallen into Vittoria in the past thousand years and survived long enough to solve all the puzzles?
So the set-up could use some work. For instance, if they'd reduced the amount of time between when the story starts and when the actual game starts. Or if they'd mentioned something about Vittoria changing its layout every now and again.
Then again, maybe they did and I just forgot. It's a bloody long game, and I took a bloody long time to finish it.
So anyways, the controls consist of using the L and R buttons to rotate, the directional-pad to move, the X button to jump, circle to attack, triangle as the general action button, and square to open your inventory. Select lets your rest to regain your health and mana, and start to pause the game, save, view the map, view your status, configure the controls, and quit to the main menu.
You configuration options include changing whether your stats display all the time, whether camera rotation is normal or inverted, and the ability to swap the functions of the L/R buttons and left and right on the D-pad.
There are also three Zelda-style quick-select slots, for three items. Except it's implemented a lot worst than it was in Ocarina of Time. You can sometimes accidentally activate an item when you're trying to attack or block, and that tended to get me killed in my playthrough.
Here's the thing, there's no dedicated block button in the game. Circle is block when you're not in immediate range of an enemy, it's attack when you're adjacent to an enemy, and it's the use key when you're holding a direction on the analog stick. That's a fairly big issue when you're trying to block a ranged attack after having used an item and you accidentally use that item again. So depending on what item you were using, you could either waste a potion, waste some mana, or waste a valuable item, on top of possibly getting yourself killed.

You can also change the volume of the music and sound-effects, as well as changing the music between the music composed for the remake, or the original music.
Personally I prefer the remake music, because the original music seems to lack much variety.
That's not to say that the remake music didn't get on my nerves eventually. Because it does. There's not enough music in the game to keep me from tiring of it, and had I not been Let's Playing the game for my YouTube channel, I would have been listening to a podcast or just different music while I was playing, like I did for Fire Emblem Awakening and Story of Seasons. That's not to say the music is bad, Falcom just didn't put enough variety into the music, especially considering that there seems to be less musical tracks than there are levels.
There's a reason why Sonic The Hedgehog had a new song for every level, because the same song played over and over gets old fast.
So, the level-design can be a bit irritating at times, and the puzzles are sometimes a pain to solve too. A member of the XSeed localization team said that The Dark Revenant was like a combination of Dark Souls and Etrian Odyssey on the official blog, and I can see why. There's a heavy focus on mapping out each level, like in Etrian Odyssey. The whole purpose of mapping out each level is so you can get an item at the end of each level, but the items aren't anything special, and I usually wound up leaving the levels partially unexplored at the end because I couldn't be bothered to traipse around the whole level again, because movement speed is pretty slow compared to the size of the levels.
Plus, I didn't do any backtracking because there's no fast-travel system.
The closest thing to a fast-travel function is a warp spell, which only lets you travel around on the same level that you're already on, which is helpful on some occasions, but I only remember using it a few times in the entire game. Plus, it's expensive, and you don't get it until about halfway through the game if I remember correctly.
Some of the bosses are fairly easy to beat, since enemies don't follow you out of the room they're in. You can easily go into the room, take a few shots at them, and then hightail it out of there. Then you rest, save the game, rinse and repeat. This is actually mentioned on the official XSeed blog, by the way.
This is a fairly decent tactic for most enemies, in fact. You clear out one room, open a new door and then stand in the doorway until an enemy starts to attack you.
This is especially useful when you're attempting to grind certain stats, like when you run into an enemy that jacks up your magical resistance when it hits you, or enemies that you get a lot of strength from hitting, or the like.
That is when the game doesn't just throw you into a locked room with a bunch of heavy-hitters, or if you don't stumble across a room full of ranged-hitters. In which case, you have to whip out the fireball spell and blast them.
Unless of course those monsters are immune to magic, in which case you gotta get into the room and hit them with your sword.

And there's this one spider-monster that spits web on you and freezes you in place that ambuses you out of nowhere at one point. It's immune to magic, and since you don't have a bow in this game (At least that I found, and I'm not about to play through a game this long more than once in the same year), magic is literally your only ranged attack. So you gotta be quick with your jumping and maneuvering to keep from being frozen in place.
And if you happen to be accessing your inventory at the time, you can't even get out of the web. Which means that you just gotta die and respawn.
You see, you get out of paralysis by wiggling the D-pad around, and you can't do that from inside the inventory menu.
Yes, you read that right. Accessing your inventory doesn't pause the game. I should also mention at this point in time that there's an equipment set that is all extremely powerful, but causes very negative side-effects for using it. It's the Demon Equipment, and this was where I first ran into the issue with the paralysis thing, because the Demon armor can freeze you in place. In order to take it off, you gotta access your inventory. But you can't do that when you're frozen. And the time you're unfrozen for is fairly short. So it's entirely possible for you to get frozen in place long enough that you wind up getting killed, and you can't do anything about it.
I wouldn't exactly call it a glitch that you can't access your inventory while frozen, but I would say that not being able to exit your inventory while paralyzed is a massive design flaw.
Anyways, there's basically no good reason to use the Demon Set in game, because the downsides are so big. Except on one level where you can use it without consequence. I sold the entire set (Sans shield, because I left that behind on an early level) for more inventory space.
Speaking of which, I missed an inventory expansion (Known as an Otherworld Box) at some point and I never felt like going back for it.
Speaking of which, I was reading on the XSeed localization blog, and apparently there's a casino that's hidden early on in the game that I never managed to find. Partially because I didn't know it existed until I sat down to write this review.
Now, you'll notice that I tend to refer to monsters by descriptions, accompanied by an occasional screenshot a lot in this review. The reason for that is the fact that the game doesn't actually tell you what the name of the monsters are unless you hit the triangle button while adjacent to them. And considering the games pace, it's not a good idea to waste time trying to figure out what the names of the monsters are.
Plus, I can't find a complete bestiary anywhere. The one on the official American website is incomplete, and the official Japanese website doesn't even have a bestiary!
Plus, the Wikipedia page for Brandish only has a basic summary of the plot and mechanics of the games, listing The Dark Revenant on the same page. And I can't find an XSeed wiki, a Brandish wiki, or a complete Nihon Falcom wiki anywhere. I also looked on GameFaqs and IGN and nobody had a complete bestiary that I could find.
Anyways, they've got a pretty good selection of monsters. Mind you, they could do with spacing them out a bit better, maybe with more variety of enemies around. It's the same problem I had with the music, they don't really change up the monsters all that often, and they could do with shaking things up more often than every now and again.
On the whole, I think Brandish is well worth the twenty bucks XSeed is charging for it on the PSN. I just wish I felt more compelled to explore the levels.
The problem is that unlike the only other PSP game I've beaten, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, I don't feel particularly compelled to go back to any of the levels, due in part to it being a massive chore to trek back to the entrance of most levels. Plus, there's the fact that some levels are mazes that connect to other levels which are also mazes. In addition to that, the closest thing you've got to a fast-travel system is fairly difficult to use. For one thing, the maps can be kind of confusing, as a lot of the later levels have multiple exits and entrances, and the map doesn't actually tell you which is which.
The other is that it uses a massive amount of mana to transport you across the map, and mana takes forever to regenerate. And considering I like to save my mana potions for when I need them, I never really used the teleportation spell more than a couple of times towards the end of the main game, like I said earlier.
The other problem is that the map in this game isn't as good as SotN's map.
I know the map in SotN could be a little obtuse, and not tell you where certain things were, but this map is even worse.
See, even though this map marks off doors, holes in the floor, water, walls, entrances and exits to a level, treasure-chests, and item-shops, there are some issues.
For instance, it only marks a door on the map when you open it, and marks it as a piece of wall when you walk by it. And it doesn't differentiate opened treasure-chests from closed ones, which led to a lot of confusion on my part.
Plus, while you can scroll through the maps of the levels, there's no clear connections between any of the maps, which makes it a real pain to try and backtrack. Which is why I didn't bother going back to explore any of the levels I skipped.
If it had been easier to backtrack, and if there were more clearly defined benefits to backtracking, it would make Brandish: The Dark Revenant a much better game. As it is though, it's still pretty a good game, if a bit drawn out.
Now, after you beat the main games as Ares Toraernos, you unlock a secondary part of the game where you play as Dela Delon. Fortunately, all of the levels in Dela's part of the game are original, they don't reuse any of the level design or puzzles from Ares' part of the game.
What they did reuse is all of the enemies and all of the music, so if you got tired of those a long time ago, you're not in for much in the way of new combat mechanics, or soundtrack-wise.
As Dela, you can't use shields, regular armor or swords. But you can still block attacks with your staff. Plus, you start off with a fireball spell in your inventory, since Dela is a mage, after all.
What passes for a shield is a set of ridiculous costumes, and inventory-filling special items.
I remember seeing a statement from someone who worked on the game (Either from XSeed or Falcom, can't remember who) saying that they estimated the main campaign of Brandish: The Dark Revenant to take about twenty hours to complete, and that Dela Mode would take about ten hours to complete.
I know that the screenshot I posted earlier of the ending screen of the game showed a twenty-one hour completion time, but the sum of all the footage I recorded comes up to about thirty hours, in the main game.
As of writing, I haven't actually finished Dela Mode, but I'll follow up on it later if there's anything I haven't already covered.
Now, Dela Mode is supposed to be a lot tougher than the main campaign, but I can't really see that so far. There are certainly a few puzzles that are tougher than the ones in the main game, but the enemies don't seem a whole lot tougher. They use a few boss monsters as standard enemies, but other than that, I don't think it's too much more difficult than the main game. It might just be that I've gotten used to its difficulty, and that this seems like a natural continuation of the difficulty level in the first part of the game.
I have to applaud Nihon Falcom for having Dela Mode as an unlockable part of the game as opposed to being DLC or putting it out as a standalone expansion. And they easily could have, let me tell you.
But I'll take a standalone expansion released on a physical disc over Gaiden DLC. And unlockable extras are always great.
Before I end the article, I'd like to mention that the artwork on Dela is kinda weird, at least in-game. The drawing of her on the cover is perfectly fine, but everywhere else she looks a little off. The detailing on her torso is what gets it for me, because while she's fairly skinny, she doesn't have much in the way of muscle definition on her stomach, even though her abs should be visible, if not a six-pack.
Plus, despite her rather voluptuous figure, she appears fairly flat-chested at certain angles due to the weird way she's drawn, with very little in the way of shading on her chest. She's essentially made up of a single shade of slightly off-white, with a few pink highlights around. She almost looks like she was drawn by a completely different artist than that of the other characters you meet in the game.
Plus, the model styling on Ares and everything else in the game looks fine, but the way Dela's model is rendered just looks a little weird. Especially given the way she's dressed. It's the same kind of problem that Anna in Fire Emblem: Awakening had, where her somewhat exaggerated features make her look kinda ridiculous.
Dela looks especially weird when she's at somewhat of an angle. Since there's not much visible definition to her breasts, it sometimes looks like she has one massive shoulder and one really tiny one.
But that's just an aesthetics quibble. I would have preferred slightly more detailed portraits for her, and possibly a different, less strange-looking model, but what we've got works just fine.
So all in all, I liked Brandish: The Dark Revenant. For twenty bucks on the PSN, I'd say it's well worth it, and for the amount of time and fun you can get out of it, it's a great deal. And who knows? Maybe we could try and get a physical release here in the States!
In the end, I'll give it an 8.3* rating. I'll see you next week guys!
If you want to buy Brandish: The Dark Revenant, check out the PSN store page: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/brandish-the-dark-revenant-psvita/

Blood Punch

This movie is another thing I stumbled across by complete accident. I was scrolling through my Twitter feed when I saw that one of the Power Rangers related Twitter accounts I follow shared a video from Bluff Road Productions, with a few images from Power Rangers RPM alongside it. So I looked into it, and found out that the movie starred three members of the cast of RPM.
The video in question was this one, and I decided to watch the whole thing. And it pretty much sold me on the movie, so I spent the entire intervening time between the release of that video and the release of the movie attempting to do like they suggested in the video, and pre-order the movie on iTunes.
But for some reason, iTunes just outright refused to connect to the iTunes store. I updated it, uninstalled it, and then reinstalled it, and it still didn't want to connect to the store.
So what did I do? I contacted Ari Boyland, who was running their pre-order rewards program and asked if I could talk to their PR guy, and they hooked me up with a review screener of the movie.
And bloody hell, oh bloody hell. I didn't know what I was expecting when I went into the film, but whatever it was, this movie just demolished all of them.
So, what kind of movie do you expect when you see the title, Blood Punch? It seems like the kind of title you give to a low-budget, direct to DVD action-schlock movie that winds up becoming popular in the kind of circles that like Asylum movies, populated exclusively by bad actors.
But that's not what we got. Not anywhere near that. At all.
One of the things I like about Blood Punch is that it feels very self-contained, and natural. It's a rarity to see a movie that doesn't have some sort of massive issue that sticks with me throughout the entire movie, annoying me. Either with pacing, character development, terrible special-effects, or just by leaving some massive bit of plot unaddressed.
I'm glad to see someone getting the art of film-making executed extremely well, and from an indie studio, and a first-time director no less! And I'm glad to see that it's making some headway, even if it's just in the Power Rangers community at the moment. And hopefully it'll go far beyond that, because it is a really good film!
IMDB and Wikipedia conflict a bit on this, but Blood Punch appears to have won about ten awards since its release. It's a shame that it's probably not gonna be in the running for an Academy Award, because I feel like this is best-picture material.
And no, I'm not just saying that because the cast is made up of my childhood heroes.
I've always thought that Power Rangers RPM was the all-time best series of the franchise, and that was due in part to the chemistry and strength of the cast. That chemistry carries over into this movie with the main trio of Milo Cawthorne, Olivia Tennet and Ari Boyland.
They play Ziggy, Dr. K, and Flynn in Power Rangers RPM, and Milton, Skyler and Russel in Blood Punch respectively. And they work oh-so-well together in this film.
The funny thing is they're all from New Zealand, but have got perfect Midwestern American accents in this movie. That's especially jarring coming from Ari Boyland, since I've only heard him speak in a Scottish accent previously. I always find it somewhat astonishing when I hear a person speak in one accent in one production, and then a different one in another. But it shows off a range of abilities.
So, since this is a horror film, I suppose I should talk about the atmosphere. And let me just say this.
Brilliant. It's amazing how this film manages to keeps its tense and slowly creeping, unsettling atmosphere alongside the funny bits they have. I suppose I'd liken the atmosphere to that of Alien Isolation, or the original Alien, but with a bit more levity. The fact that it manages to keep up its tense tone, and still have a few good black comedy moments without destroying the unsettling nature of the horror is pretty artful.
The placement of the comedic peaks helps contribute to the sheer impact of the sickening moment, and that's part of what makes for good horror. Like how the moments where you felt safe in Alien Isolation helped contribute to how scary the dangerous moments were.
Now, I won't give away specifics in this review, but I will say this: The way the movie starts, and is presented is in a way that I normally don't care for, but the way they use it is just perfect.
And the best thing about the whole film is that it feels like a complete story. There's no clunky exposition that makes you feel like there should be a few more scenes where they show, don't tell. There's no massive plot-holes left untouched that could have easily been fixed with a single line of dialogue. And there's nothing that I feel should have been expanded upon during the course of the film. The entire thing feels pretty much perfect.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about sound design.
For the most part, the sound of the film is brilliant. The music is almost entirely comprised of string instruments, with a woodwind thrown in for good measure, and they contribute to the atmosphere amazingly.
Then we come to the pair of Kevin MacLeod tracks they used in the background. I wouldn't exactly say they're out of place, just that it's somewhat strange to hear them show up in a movie like this, with vocals added in that just sound creepy.
The only songs that are actually name-checked in the credits are the two Kevin MacLeod tracks and a pair of public-domain traditional songs. I'm not entirely sure based on the very limited sample I've had from this movie, but Olivia Tennet seems to have a decent singing voice. Or, at the very least, a singing voice that contributes to the atmosphere of the movie.
But now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about the sound-effects. In the beginning of the film, the sound-effects are a little bit weird.
Sometimes when a gun fires it sounds like the effect they used came from The General Series 6000 Sound Effects Library. The reason I know this is because I know that Doom used that sound-effects collection, and some of the gunshot effects in Blood Punch have the same kind of muted tone that the ones in Doom had.
Another small issue is that there are times where they put in sound-effects that don't seem to fit the action or situation attached to them. Sort of like the effects either weren't mixed into the rest of the audio properly, or like they just couldn't find the right kind of effect, so they just used whatever.
In a lot of cases, they would have been better off just not dubbing a sound-effect in, or just by recording the effect on-set, when the actors actually performed the real action.
But I will say this: The weird, out-of-place nature of certain sound-effects helps contribute to a somewhat uneasy feeling in the background that I actually think enhances the atmosphere.
There's also a point in time where the sound editors placed full-auto machine-gun sound-effects alongside the firing of a pair of semi-automatic pistols, and the visual-effects guy also put rapidly pulsing muzzle-flashes over them, when I'm pretty sure that the prop-gun they were using was modeled after a police-issue Beretta handgun, which isn't capable of firing that many shots at that high a rate. That's not too big an issue, since it flashes by fairly quickly.
But there's a much bigger problem with a scene towards the end of the movie, with a firefight that seems extremely poorly directed and edited. It seems a bit odd, considering how well-directed the rest of the film is.
There are sound-effects that are out of place, there are visual-effects out of place, and nobody seems to be aiming at anyone else. There are hundreds, if not thousands of bullets being fired off in that scene, and nobody seems to be aiming at a target. The entire scene just seems out-of-place, and bizarre.
Plus, the camera just stays still in one place for that little bit. Fortunately the shot is short, so it goes away fast. But I can't imagine a reason it would need to be there at all, considering that it seems to be rendered completely moot by all of the scenes that immediately precede and follow it.
So, without spoiling I'm just going to mention that I liked how the ending seemed like a pretty natural conclusion to the film. Like I've said before, it's a very self-contained narrative with a fairly logical conclusion. I didn't like how it ended, but I don't think I was supposed to like how it ended. The ending made me really uncomfortable, but I sort of liked the irony of the ending.
So, all in all, I liked Blood Punch. I think it's a great horror film, and I think it's a very good movie with a lot of very good moments. In the end, I'll give it a 10.0* rating. I'm knocking a point off for the sound-effects failures and rather bizarre gunfight near the end.
If you want to purchase Blood Punch on DVD, click on this link. If you want to purchase it on iTunes, click here.

Blood Punch provided for review by Bluff Road Productions. No employee of BDVR was paid to provide coverage of this movie by anyone. At all. No, not even you Jonah.
Image from www.bloodpunchthemovie.com

August!

Well, August has been the all-time best month for the site! With the help of the Google+ Gaming and cinema communities, we've managed to break the all-time record!
With 2,877 views, August of 2015 absolutely SHATTERED the previous record for views on the site, set in October of 2012 with 2,060 views. July almost broke the record, but not quite, clocking in at 2,059 views for the month!
And this month is off to a great start, with 99 views only two days in!
This has been a big year for the site so far! I've been getting more games and a movie in for review, plus I signed on our first guest critic, Nathan Green! I just want to thank all of you for your support, and I can't wait to see what this next month has in store!

Danganronpa (Guest Article)

Editors note: This week it going to be slightly different from normal. I haven't finished Brandish: The Dark Revenant yet, and I haven't got anything else lined up for this week, so I'm introducing a guest author. Say hello to my good friend and colleague from New Zealand, Nathan Green! He'll be writing this weeks article, and I'll be attempting to set him up as a regular poster on the site soon!

Don't worry, he's not taking my place on Sundays, this is just temporary. We'll be figuring out when Nathan's articles get published in the future.

-Alex Shannon

We westerners really do end up missing out on a lot of cool stuff when it comes to video games. Granted a handful of games can sometimes cross the regional gap and escape Japan, but with most games we can be left out in the dark. However, the specific game I'm going to be talking about today did make its way over to the west on the PS Vita. However since I don’t actually own a PS Vita I instead decided to play the PSP version, which has been fully translated by Project Zetsubou. Thank goodness for fan translations.

I stumbled across Danganronpa after finishing the exceptional RPG persona 3 portable. I had recently picked up a PSP and was looking for a new game to play to fill that void you get after finishing a game (you probably know what I’m talking about). Out of pure curiosity, I downloaded and applied the patch… and was pulled into a game that I couldn’t put down until the end.

Danganronpa was released originally in 2011 by Spike (now known as Spike Chunsoft) on the PSP. It was a Japanese exclusive game. but received high enough praise for a sequel to be made and for both the first and second games to receive official western releases on the PS Vita in updated form. For this review I will be looking at the original PSP version with the fan patch applied, as I don’t own a Vita at the time of writing (although I will revisit this game when I get my hands on a Vita, and can comment on the remake). Please bear in mind that there may be translation differences between the fan patched version and the official version. Just throwing that out there. Anyways, I’d say it is about time to take a trip to despair academy. Let’s begin

Story:

Now I will try to keep this section as spoiler free as possible, since Danganronpa is a heavily story driven game. So to avoid spoilers I’ll only talk about the starting plot and setup.

You play as Makoto Naegi, an ordinary student who has been selected out of a ballot to attend Hope High School, a school which takes on the extremely talented and hopeful and has been said to give students a hopeful future when they graduate.

However, upon taking your first step through the gate you fall unconscious, and find yourself trapped inside Hope High with fourteen other students and no way out. Well, ok there is a way out… Meet Monokuma, the big bad of the game. Monokuma says that the only way to get out of this school is to successfully murder someone and get away with the murder. If the rest of the students correctly identify the murderer then they get punished, otherwise the murderer will “graduate” and be allowed to leave the school and everyone else will be punished. And by punished I mean executed.

The story doesn’t screw around. It throws you right into the heat of it pretty quickly and is paced brilliantly. The writing for each of the characters is also excellent, and you get quite close to them, even the ones that get offed quite quickly.

The tail end of the game is where the story really starts spiraling and is by far the most entertaining part of the game storywise. Overall, it's a very nicely done plot that is both interesting and well-paced.

10/10

Gameplay:

Now, the gameplay by far is the most interesting part of the game. Danganronpa is one of those games which seems to take bits and pieces from other games, and throws them into a blender to make one extremely fun game. You’ve got the evidence gathering and trials from Ace Attorney, a social link system similar to Persona 3 and 4, plus first person exploration and some mini games thrown in for good measure. Because of all of that stuff this section is going to be quite long, but I am going to split it up into 2 sections. Class Trial gameplay and Exploration/Clue Finding gameplay.

So, let’s start with the exploration gameplay.

You explore the academy from a first person perspective, moving and turning on the spot with the circle pad, running with the circle button, strafing with L and R, moving the camera with the D-pad and interacting with things with the Cross button (Editors note, that's the X button). Objects you can interact with (usually doors) will be highlighted when you move in front of them. It’s standard stuff. When you enter rooms, however things take a more Ace Attorney approach.

Inside rooms, you're fixed on the spot and can move your crosshair with the circle pad (Editors note, that's the joystick on the PSP). Again, objects you can interact with will be highlighted, and have a sound cue when you hover over them. The D-pad still moves the camera, except the camera can only pan to the left or right a specific amount due to the lack of free movement. Probably the most useful feature in this game that I wish was in Ace aAttorney is when you hit the Triangle button the game will highlight all the objects you can interact with in the room with a blue circle. This doesn’t give you any form of penalty, and is extremely useful when you are trying to find that last item to examine.

Now, before you actually go around looking for evidence, you're in a segment called Everyday Life. There is one of these sections each chapter, and you can use them to interact with your peers who have been locked up with you, and earn skill points and skills that can be used in the trials. (I’ll touch more on this later)

Everyday Life usually goes on for a few days. Once a murder happens and the body is discovered, then the game shifts into Neveryday life. This is the part of the game where you do the detective work. Every time you find a new piece of info you get “New Ammo”. Yes, evidence is called ammo in Danganronpa (you’ll see why later). You can check your ammo from the Ammunition Menu on your electroiD. “ElectroiD? What’s that?” I hear you ask. Well, basically it's a really fancy pantsy student ID, where you can view a map and teleport around the school floors at will, (useful for navigating around the rather large school) view your ammunition as mentioned before, view student profiles, view school rules, and save your game. You can open your electroiD almost everywhere by hitting the square button.

Anyways, your goal in Neveryday Life is to find all the evidence you need for the school trial. Once you have found everything, the game will automatically advance to the Class Trial, the other part of the game.

Bout time we cover the class trials then!

Class trials are the part of the game where you need to find out who is the murderer. This is done by playing a selection of minigames, yes minigames. Don’t flip out though, as these are pretty fun. I’ll cover these one by one in order of how often they appear.

Nonstop debate

This one pops up the most by far. You are thrown into a sort of testimony debate between the surviving members and you, quite literally have to shoot down weak points you see in their debate with your ammunition aka evidence (hence why it is called ammunition). You move your crosshair with the circle pad, fire with the triangle button, fast forward with the circle button and switch ammunition with the L button.

On higher difficulties, more ammunition is loaded into the chamber, meaning you have to figure out the correct piece of ammunition to fire at a weak point. Weak points are pieces of yellow text that you can see throughout statements. The higher you set the difficulty, the more weak points are present. But only one is the correct weak point. Once you find the correct ammo to fire at the correct weak point you just point and shoot. Easy right? WRONG. The game throws a bit of a monkey wrench in if you set the difficulty for the action sequences at normal or malicious. Firstly you have random chit chat that invades the debate. This is purple text that usually flies right in the bloody way of weak points. To clear this text you need to aim your crosshair at the purple text and hit the cross button. You receive a time bonus for each piece of chit chat you knock away, but if you hit a statement that is part of the debate you’ll receive a time penalty (usually around 20 odd seconds).

Secondly, sometimes the ammunition you have collected actually won't work against any of the present weak points. So what do you do there? Well if you hold down the triangle button while your crosshair is above a weak point you can actually load that weak point as AMMO and fire that at another weak point to break it. It’s a clever system and really increases the number of possible answers especially if you are playing on malicious. Only slight annoyance about this is that if you happen to miss the weak point you had to load, or you end up missing, then you have to fast forward through the rest of the debate, wasting time just to load the weak point in again. However, in my entire playthrough I never actually ran out of time.

To combat all of this crazy crap the game throws at you the game is kind enough to give you the ability to concentrate. Concentrating is done by holding the R button and it slows down the flow of time as well as stopping your crosshair from drifting around like it’s tripping on something. However, using concentration drains a gauge at the top right of the screen below your health (which I’ll get to later). If this gauge runs out then concentration stops, so you gotta be quick.

So that pretty much covers nonstop debate, so it's time to move on to…

Epiphany Anagram

This is probably the least interesting of the mini games, to be honest. It's basically hangman. Shoot the letters flying towards you by aiming and hitting triangle. Concentrate to slow down time with R, and that's about it. Moving on

Machine Gun Talk Battle

This one is quite interesting. Machine gun talk battles are basically a sort of rhythm game. Yes, a rhythm game. Hit the cross button in time with the beat markers scrolling along the bottom of the screen to lock onto verbal insults thrown at you by your opponent, before hitting the triangle button to fire and destroy them. Deplete their life gauge, and then fire the killshot at their statement to destroy it and prove them wrong. Easy right? WRONG AGAIN. If you're playing on normal or higher then at one point in the game you will be introduced to the fact that you have to reload. This is done by hitting the square button in time with the beat. If you run out of bullets, then you can’t lock onto anything. On top of that, you now have more than one killshot loaded into your barrel, meaning you have to cycle through to find the right one to shoot at your opponent’s statement. Finally, a new concentration power is introduced, but this time your opponent has one as well. Your opponent can, at any time hide the beat line that scrolls at the bottom of the screen meaning you have to go by ear. However, to even the playing field you can hit the R button to immediately bump up the tempo and give yourself unlimited ammo for a limited period. However, if you're like me then you will rarely have to use it, as I have a good ear for detecting beats in music. If you're able to detect timing in music ,then you will have no problems here.

Finally it is time to move onto the final mini game;

Climax Logic

This one is the most interesting I think. You have to reconstruct the entire murder case from start to finish in manga format (Editors note; from right to left, like in Japanese comics). The bottom of the screen has a bunch of circles which correspond to panels. The Circle Pad moves your crosshair, and you hold Cross to pick up and drop panels. By hitting cross over a question mark you can get a hint about what panel goes there. Simple but fun.

Now, I think it's about time I cover the health bar. You start with a total of 7 hearts, which drain if you mess up somewhere. Such as firing the wrong ammo at a weak point/firing at the wrong weak point, picking the wrong letter to fill in the word in the hangman game, letting the verbal insults get too close so they explode in machine gun talk battle, or misplacing a panel in Climax logic. Health is also depleted if you end up presenting the wrong ammo or pick the wrong option when asked a question during the class trial. If the health bar drops fully you fail.

BUT. But but but but BUUUUUTTTT. You are allowed to try again from the exact mini game or question you failed at with a full life bar with NO penalty whatsoever except for a small point drop, no matter what the difficulty. The game is EXTREMELY forgiving with failure (which will happen a lot, trust me) and I honestly don’t mind. I was playing on malicious difficulty and failed many times, but being able to restart right off the bat with a full life bar was nice and kept the pace going. The game isn’t brutally hard and you won’t find yourself rage quitting unless you aren’t good at logic puzzles, and set the logic puzzle difficulty on malicious for some daft reason.

In summary, Danganronpas gameplay is quite varied and interesting. I like the exploration and clue finding, and the class trials are really fun and tense. However there is the odd dud mini game here and there, namely the hangman one.

9/10

Graphics and sound:

Bout time we moved on. Let’s start with the graphics

The graphics for Danganronpa, for a PSP game are really damn impressive. Textures look nice and detailed for the PSP, and nothing looks extremely jarring or out of place. Character portraits are nicely detailed and well designed, with some characters having designs that are out of this world (namely Genocider Syo). When you’re exploring the academy, characters will appear as paper cut-outs for lack of a better word and will pivot to face you head on, doom style. Sounds odd but it looks perfectly fine. To top it off the game runs silky smooth with no frame drops in sight. I’d say it pushes the PSP to its limits. The cherry on the cake are the execution cutscenes which are animated REALLY well and have an amazing art style to them.

Now the soundtrack. In a word. Awesome. The soundtrack was composed by Masafumi Takada and it fits the game really well. From the kick-ass jazzy opening theme, to the epic sounding theme that kicks in near the second half of the game, to the awesome and strange track played during nonstop debates with samples of gibberish for some reason. This whole soundtrack is just AWESOME and it fits the game really well.

Voice acting is spot on too. Quite a few characters have unique voices to them which really make their personalities all the more interesting. By far though the best performance again has to come from Genocider Syo. I would link a voice clip but that might throw in spoilers, so feel free to look it up if you want but be aware, possible spoilers.

Overall Danganronpa is a gorgeous looking game with a great soundtrack and awesome voice acting to boot. It’s hard to find a fault in this area apart from the fact that a few of the songs are a little meh. Then we have the elephant in the room… The colour of the blood. They coloured the blood… PINK. Yes you read that right, pink. Out of all of the things in Danganronpa the pink blood I think is the most interesting. However, I found I got over it pretty quickly. Just be aware that despite the pretty morbid murders the pink blood can kinda drop the shock value a little.

(EDITORS NOTE. Nathan originally had a passage in the previous section about the presentation, and he had his facts a little wrong. He thought the blood was pink because the developers wanted to bring down the rating of the game. But I looked into that, and I found out that the pink blood was actually a deliberate stylistic choice by the designer to contrast with the morbidity of the subject matter. I pointed this out to him, but he didn't have time to rewrite the passage, so I figured I'd mention that in a note -Alex Shannon)

Despite that minor issue with the presentation however the game does look great overall.

9/10

Enjoyment:

Time for the most important section. How much did I enjoy the game?

Well, I started playing Danganronpa last Sunday evening at 8 pm, and I finished it on Tuesday at 5pm. So I clocked it at about twenty hours in around 2 and a half days. That should give you an idea on how addicting it was for me.

I had a blast playing through it. When I started I took the plunge and jacked the difficulty of both the logic puzzles, and action sequences up to malicious, and really I highly recommend you do that as well. Danganronpa is sadly one of those games where the first experience is the best one, as the answers will always be the same each time you play. To get the most satisfying experience you really need to play on malicious, as the feeling you get when solving a puzzle or calling someone out is just amazing. Danganronpa gave me a feeling of satisfaction when I solved a murder, or successfully figured out a puzzle which is something that can only really be done with a game like this. The story is very well done, and keeps you on the hook. Couple that with the gameplay, and you’ve got a game that is basically the entertainment equivalent of superglue. You won’t wanna put it down until the very end. Incredibly addicting, extremely satisfying and most importantly, fun.

10/10

Final verdict:

As you have probably guessed. I highly recommend this game. If you have a PSP then play the English patched version (Editors note: Be sure to import the game from Japan first!). If you have a PS Vita buy the official translation with extras, and then play the sequel straight after (which never got a PSP translation). Just play it. I don’t care what method you use, if you like games like Ace Attorney, and love logic puzzles then you will LOVE this game.

Danganronpa gets a Highly Recommended

Thank you very much for reading (this was a really long review I know), I hope you enjoyed it!

BDVR Guest author Nathan Green signing off.

Age Ratings:

CERO: D

OFLC: M (Unrestricted)

ESRB M

PEGI 16

Cover image from http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/