I think almost everyone who has Played Zelda: Ocarina of time has, at some time heard of the Hyrule Loach. It is an Eel like creature that is sometimes see, in the fishing pond. I've heard rumours of people who caught this fish, so lately I've decided to try it myself. Needless to say it took quite some time just for the damn thing to even appear in the pond. It seems to be totally random; you just have to get lucky. Once you see the loach, in order to get anywhere close to it, you will need to find the sinking lure, which is easy enough.
Once I found the location of it, I cast the lure out as far ahead of it as I could, I then reeled it in slowly, stopping in front of the loach...nothing happened, it swam away. I tried this several times, and after finally avoiding all the other hungry fish, the Loach grabbed hold! I pulled back as hard as I could, and reeled it in (which was surprisingly easy), I then grabbed my digital Camera and took a few shots, shown below with descriptions, (sorry for the poor quality).
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Also note that I know it isn’t a huge deal. I just think it's cool when you find something extra on one of the best games ever made, so I decided to share it with everyone.
Written By Dan Chubaty
Resident Evil Zero takes you back to the beginning were it all started before the Mansion incident before raccoon city before well technically everything This where everything started.
First in foremost when I booted up RE zero I didn’t know what to aspect, but what I got was phenomenal. The graphics were superb, still static but they look top notch. Even better than what was scene in the remake of RE 1. RE zero still features the same turn based control that the rest of series featured (either you love it or you hate it) but what I think was the coolest part is that you can control two people at the same time, which makes the game more interesting in many different ways especially in the puzzle solving aspects and exploration aspects.
The gameplay is solid something you’ve come to expect from this genre, as well as the story line.The storyline takes you back and explains a whole bunch of answered questions like, how did the virus get spread to raccoon city?, and the mansion?. Its fits the pieces of the puzzle that is resident evil together very nicely, my hats off to you Capcom you have done a excellent job.
The Story line also throws a couple hard punches, what you think happened is not at all what really happened, Re zero technically rewrites the whole story from the ground up and I love it. It takes you more in-depth into the workings of Umbrella disclosing information otherwise unknown. Its brand new insight on the way you view many aspects of this survival horror masterpiece.
One down part of the game is that so far I’ve found it kind of easy, I only have about 4 hours logged into it on my first try and I am about I good half way’s through it. But it still is extremely fun nonetheless, and at least this time Capcom put in enough ammo in, so I am not spending most of my time running from zombies searching for ammo.
Overall I would have to say this is a definite own for any Resident evil fan out their, and if you haven’t previously played a resident evil game this is a good place to start and work your way up the series. Watch for my review coming soon.
Written By Trevor Siemens
Resident Evil Zero
Shut the door, turn off the lights, and experience survival horror at its best.
07/04/02 by Trevor Siemens
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Action Adventure/Horror
Supports: Memory card
Players:1
Number of Discs:2
Esrb Rating: Mature
Overall Score: 9.0/10
The Game: Resident Evil is a re vamped version of the original Resident Evil originally released on “dare I say it” The playstation. Well actually not very much from the playstation version of Resident Evil even exists, Capcom totally re did the game from the bottom up, from the graphics, to the sound, even to how the mansion is laid out, not to worry they increased the crapping your pants factor from fright from once every hour to just about 10.
Gameplay: the story Goes as is: your on a reconnaissance mission to find out what happened to your previous comrades of alpha team, as there chopper crashed into a remote heavily forested area outside raccoon city. Now as your chopper slowly swerves through the air you notice a old mansion so you jump out of the chopper. As the chopper takes off you discover the crashed chopper of alpha team, but what’s kind of weird is that all the supplies are still left in there nothing was taken.
As you peruse the crash site you are attacked by a bunch of dead rabies-infected dogs, with one thing on their mind to kill you and eat your flesh. What to do lets run into that old eerie mansion to take cover from the dogs, and that’s where your visit to hell begins.
As you start the game you can either be Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield. They are members of a special police task force called S.T.A.R.S. Now your probably thinking just another slasher game, well you couldn’t be more wrong. Its main object is to solve the puzzles find stuff and get the hell out of the Mansion. Now saying that, there is a hell of a lot of blood and gore but its not like you have to blast the hell out of everything to move on most of the time you spend it running.
Resident evil was built for one reason and one reason at all TO SCARE THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF YOU!. Weather it be a crimson zombie, which is a zombie your forgot to burn when you killed it the first time, and now it has the ability to run faster than you and is almost impossible to kill unless you have some very heavy artillery or just Lisa coming at you with you’re her horribly disfigured face.
Resident Evil plays on you like a good horror movie, featuring puzzles, characters must solve to continue on. Finding special items such as keys and artifacts while being chased by zombies is quite a regular appearance in RE. Now in some aspects RE wasn’t designed for blood and splatter although it does feature lots of it, you get very little ammo, I find its more about strategy and doing things a hundred times until you get it right, not just going into a zombie infested house and blasting everything that moves although, it does feature lots of that.
Visuals: Some of the most beautiful graphics I have ever seen in any video game to date even with static camera angles, and pre rendered backgrounds. Once you get into it you will realize how good everything really looks. Capcom really emphasized on creating a eerie mood with this game, using some pioneering lighting effects never seen before which featured real time lighting on moving objects. Example if you choose Chris at the beginning you will walk into a hallway on the second level of the mansion, you will start to hear moaning and groaning, you know there are zombies near but you cant see them, then all of a sudden lighting cracks shinning through the window and casting a shadow of a zombie walking on the wall beside you, excellent effect.
The pre rendered backgrounds are so realistic that I actually forget I was playing a game or actually living the experience in real life. The high-resolution backgrounds blend seamlessly in with moving objects making them really realistic. Not just the pre rendered backgrounds are well done but the lighting effects are damn gorgeous, one part of the game you will into a room with a chandelier shaking in the wind from a open window, as the chandelier moves the shadows on everything move with it, using real time lighting, absolutely gorgeous. The lighting also adds a hell of a lot of mood to the game that the psx version didn’t have. It creates a eerie environment while scarring the player senseless
Capcom even re created all the characters from bottom up to, now they are full 3d and made up of hundreds of polygons, actual I have never seen in my whole life character models this detailed and realistic, and the best part is you cant tell the difference between real time and fmv sequences, except that your not playing in the fmv sequences not like in Resident Evil 2 for the 64 where it is clearly visible. Now onto the scary part the zombies and creatures, they are scary as hell, they feature such things as torn clothing cuts scrapes, rotted skin that is peeling away and of course those damn scary as hell eyes. I must say they definitely achieve their goal in this game as the scariest models I’ve ever seen
Resident Evil features some of the most gorgeous particle effects ever seen in a video game, the water is damn sweet, it uses real-time animations. Such as if you step in a puddle you will see your reflection distort as swooshed away from your foot. Also if you drop a object into some water it takes on the characteristics of actual water you can watch the waves ripple across until they calm down. One part in the game features you walking into a big aqua tank with sharks inside it. As the water ripples around a shark comes flying out of the water creating massive waves and foam. So what do you do take out your trusty 9mm and blast the crap out of it, as your wasting it away you can watch the blood disperse into the water and slowly fade away, it’s a beautiful site, even as the shark lays there dead it slowly bleeds to death until all the blood decipitates evenly into the water, now that’s pioneering. Resident evil is chalked full of eye candy.
The cut scenes are absolutely gorgeous. Capcom finally ditched that cheesy intro video that they used in the original RE for psx. Which featured real people with a very crappy dialogue. Now it is fully in fmv and parts of it are redone which add more to the plot. The only problem with some of the cut scenes is that they are somewhat choppy, its like Capcom was trying to push to much stuff to fast and the Gamecube couldn’t handle it. But the slowdown is barley noticeable.
Audio: your location, the sound of there feet caressing the floor, and not to forget the sounds the dogs make as they come running over to you. This along with the lighting effects where the two key elements in making resident evil so damn good, and they were done very well my hats off to you Capcom.
Resident Evil doesn’t feature much music mainly cause the sound of silence adds much more of a dramatic effect then any orchestrated piece would. But there was some music, even though very minimal, but when it was there it was very eerie, and overall well done.
Now the characters voices were done relatively well but I still think that the script could have been written a little better, at times it became very lame, but still not so lame to discourage you from playing on.
Control: The game features the same style that the previous resident evil featured, With this style of control you will either hate or love it there is no happy medium, now for me I loved it because I was used to it after completing resident evil 2 for Nintendo 64.
Replay Value: Well with two characters and more than 3 different endings. Resident Evil has you coming back for more until you found every last artifact, blasted every last zombie, and or completed the game in less than two hours to get the best ending. Which I might add is damn near impossible.
Overall, Resident Evil features some of the best damn visuals around, and brings everything to the plate that you would expect from a game of this caliber. Capcom did a excellent job remaking this master piece and gamers all over the world should have a very hard problem putting this title down. I would just like to thank Capcom for making such a damn good game, which is very rare for being 3rd party developer. Especially for Nintendo. Good job.
Gameplay Visuals Audio Control Replay Value Overall
9 9 7 8 7 9.0/10
Beck Guero Scarecrow is only scaring himself
07/04/02 by Trevor Siemens
Band: Beck
Album: Guero
Released: 2005
Genre: Folk-Rock
Posted By: Trevor
This is the first time I ever gave Beck an actual chance, besides the song loser, which is catchy as hell. Other than that song I have never heard an actual Beck CD in its entirety until this Saturday. Which was when I picked up Guero. First off I am not sure how any of the other Beck album’s sound, but this one was pretty sweet. Folk-Rock infused with a bit of rap and put together with Beck’s semi bland vocals makes a perfect combination. The first thing that dragged me to even consider this album was the song E-Pro which I heard on our local radio station here as part of their top ten at ten radio program. I actually liked it, besides the redundant chorus of nan nana nan nana it’s a pretty decent song. I really liked the overall sound of the album, featuring some nice beats by the dust brothers. It’s a weird combination of mixing rock/folk/rap but for some reason it works for Beck, even on some tracks he plays the harmonica. Creating a sound that is definitely unique. Give it a listen…Beck has definitely gained another fan here.
Current Favourites: E-Pro, Que Onda Guero, Girl, Hell Yes, and Scarecrow.
Album listing
E-Pro
Que Onda Guero
Girl
Missing
Black Tambourine
Earthquake Weather
Hell Yes
Broken Drum
Scarecrow
Go it alone
Farwell ride
Rental Car
Emergency Exit
Written by Trevor Siemens
Kill Bill
Title: Kill Bill: Volume 1
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Released: April 13 2004 (DVD)
Genre: Action
Medium: DVD
Score: 5/5
Posted By: Dan
Right from the get-go a lot of people won’t “get” Kill Bill. Tarantino borrows heavily from the movies he watched growing up. We see elements of Early 70’s Kung Fu, the classic Samurai films of the 80’s and even Anime. Not only does the film borrow from these genres, it pays homage to them in an amazing way. Much like thanking them for paving the way.
Kill Bill follows the actions of a former assassin out looking for Revenge. The bride, or Black Mamba, as we come to know her, is beaten, shot in the head and left for dead on her wedding day. Four years late she wakes from a coma looking for revenge on her former teammates and would be killers.
Make no mistake about it this is a revenge movie, Tarantino wastes little time in letting us know just what the movie is really about and as such, spares us the gimmicks of an ultra deep storyline or the seemingly required character development featured in other films today. And you know what? I wouldn’t want it any other way.
What Kill Bill offers is an incredible ride filled to the brim with classic Tarantino style and flair. For instance, the movie doesn’t move in one linear direction. It jumps from past to present frequently. It’s not used so much to create confusion, as it is to make the audience wonder or allow you to piece things together yourself.
In one of the opening scenes, for instance, we see the bride pull out her “death list five” hit list, and we see the first name is already crossed out. Only much later in the film are we whiteness to exactly what happened. It’s little things like this that give the movie a great feel and keep it moving ahead even when it’s technically moving back A hard thing to pull off and have the audience remain hooked, I’m sure.
The movie works it’s way around, giving some back-story while purposefully leaving some vital information out (this is after all, a two part film). The scenes we see tend to touch every human emotion possible, from sadness to anger to relief to intrigue and all the way back again. Being able to stay in tune with the characters plan of action through narrative parts and the previously mentioned non-sequential style makes the movie an incredibly emotional experience, but never staying trapped on one level for too long.
In the “showdown at house of blue leaves” scene in which the bride slices and dices her way through the samurai sword wielding Crazy 88 gang, we experience some of the greatest images ever captured on film. Chock full of those little genius pieces that a director is known for. In the dance floor scene, viewers are treated to a very long, steady, continuous camera shot. Most directors try and find a way to work such a shot into their films, but ultimately fail in keeping it fresh and unboring. Tarantino, however, pulls it off with ease; the camera actually tracks Uma walking towards the bathroom and pulls upwards to the ceiling giving us a bird’s eye view of the entire area. It’s like shooting several scenes at once and it works amazingly.
Most people wouldn’t even notice, or care, but it is the little things, that add so much style a style you can find nowhere else, simply because Quentin Tarantino does it like nobody else.
Other nuisances include switching to black and white during a good portion of the previously mentioned fight scene. Which, I feel, adds focus on the actual fighting and lessens the viewers fixation on simple gore.
Speaking of gore it is worth noting that, while Kill Bill certainly does have Its share of violent and gory images, they are done in an over the top fashion (again, paying homage to the previously mentioned genres). To see a decapitated body, for instance spray a fountain of blood for several seconds isn’t exactly real, but it is the style Tarantino wants and for a movie like this is works incredibly well to entertain.
Truly, what we have here is not just a movie, director Quentin Tarantino makes art. Every scene, every angle, every close up shot, every technique is pure genius. So much so that one could watch the film as if they were studying it (I have) just to notice more of the little goodies.
This movie will certainly go down in history as my favourite of all time and anyone looking to be entertained by a simple, yet fiercely action packed movie would be right in seeing it as soon as possible.
It is fresh movies like this that keep the film industry from becoming stale. My hat off to Mr. Tarantino, now bring on Volume 2!.