I had sung the praises quite vocally and publicly of the Super Mario Bros. movie when it released in theaters last year. I acknowledged it was imperfect, sure, but I didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on this imperfections. I instead emphasized and even exaggerated the good qualities, decrying critics for either being out of touch or simply too biased in their tastes.
However, going back to its home video release, I couldn’t help but feel like there was something lacking. I often have podcasts or movies playing in the background while I complete work tasks, but some movies just do not carry as strongly when you lose the ability to focus on the visual element. When a film can only be carried by its script, you start to realize just how lacking that script may be.
Such was the case with the Super Mario Bros. movie. A lot of that joy was gone once the visual element was taken away.
The second part of the year in review is now done! I apologize for the delay, as things were busy not only during December, but throughout much of January as well. I also got sick during the holiday break, preventing me from being able to record the necessary audio to even begin video editing.
However, I managed to push through and beat the latest deadline I made for myself: end of January.
I’ve gotta say, working on these two videos back-to-back with a deadline on each was quite the learning experience. At the very least, I am far more comfortable working in Adobe Premiere Elements now, enough so that I am surprised it took me so long to make the jump. I was very attached to my process with Windows Movie Maker 6, but it was clear that it was time to move on to something more modern and far more capable. Premiere Elements still doesn’t have the full suite of options most content creators are utilizing, but it certainly allows for more control over what I can do in a video and how I can integrate sound than before.
However, I’ve been learning a lot of other lessons working on these.
The first part of the 2023 year in review is now live! I must admit, I’ve been having a lot of fun working on this, even if it’s meant little in the way of gaming time has been done the past couple of weeks. It’s really revitalized my enjoyment of video editing after Alan Wake nearly destroyed it. I’ve also been rethinking my approach to content creation as a whole, as doing an anthology video like this and doing smaller little reviews has been quite a blast. There may be a lot of big changes coming in 2024.
But, before I endeavor to outline those thoughts and plans, I need to finish part two. Unfortunately, I still have two games to complete that are going to be in that video. Fortunately, most of the script is already finished save for those two games, and I am nearly done with one of those titles. This means starting next week I can begin recording audio and cutting video together even while completing the rest of the titles.
Which is, perhaps, the greatest benefit to this Year in Review project: it has confirmed that the work flow I had begun experimenting with on the now shelved Alan Wake video not only works, but has increased my enjoyment of making videos by a great amount.
Resident Evil 5 was not satisfied with its boss-rush conclusion we would be forced to endure. It had to throw in A.I. glitches and broken net code to prolong our suffering.
Though in our final write-ups, both Shamus and I reflected generally positively on the experience. On Shamus’ part, his is ultimately more positive though less in-depth due to his lacking history on the franchise. He does, however, include one of his wonderful Stolen Pixels strips and its impeccable comedic writing.
My write-up, on the other hand, was far more in-depth and still captures many of my thoughts on the game. Even looking back and rewatching, there’s a lot of elements to the final fight that leave me confused. “Wait, I remember there were a lot of steps, but… which steps did I need to follow and in what order…?” The boss design is poor in that it requires very specific rail-roading without clear sign-posting.
Still, it’s a fun game, and I’ve even found a new source of joy.
The fifth is also the shortest episode Shamus and I recorded for our Resident Evil 5stream series. He hadn’t been feeling well and, in hindsight, it is quite obvious he was having a more miserable time than usual as a result. It’s good we cut the stream short.
While his write-up on the episode was quite short and focused primarily on recovering long-lost files of his Stolen Pixels comic series (of which he shared one of his best in said post), I feel like this sixty minutes is also a nice vertical slice of the game’s problems. The environmental inconsistency, where you’ll go from high-tech laboratory to old ruins in an instant without any sense of continuity. It’s almost as if they randomly shuffled environments and set-pieces during development after they’d already styled and textured them rather than before. The pointless and clumsy cover mechanics compared to the superior Gears of War cover system. The absolutely terrible dialogue and story.
One element that only occurred to me watching this time was the Licker horde, however. I recall playing the first Resident Evil: Revelations on the Nintendo 3DS and thinking the limited enemy types in a single level was in part due to the limitations of being a handheld. One level had nothing but Hunters, for example, only for another to exclusively pit you against wolves. Later levels would better mix said enemies up, however. Here, the only time you ever face Lickers is when there’s a whole crowd of them.
Perhaps on my next playthrough I’ll try and observe the dynamics within the human opponents that feel natural and appropriate while waves of Lickers feel like a cheap, hasty development trick.
Comments