Tech: Resident Evil Requiem (Switch 2 review)

Many Resident Evil games have multiple playable protagonists (with some even allowing you to swap between them at will), but the latest and ninth entry in the main series, Resident Evil Requiem, takes that to a new extreme:

Requiem is effectively two games in one.  As Grace Ashcroft, a rookie FBI analyst, you're a nervous Nellie who has trouble holding a handgun steady.  As Leon S. Kennedy, grizzled veteran of multiple Resident Evil games, you're a zombie-killing one-man army who tosses out one-liners. Grace's sections are focused on stealthy first-person exploration (similar to Resident Evil 7 and 8), while Leon's gameplay is bombastic third-person action with big bosses and setpiece battles (much like the fourth, fifth, and sixth games in the franchise).

It's a great mix, because Grace and Leon's sections are palette cleansers for each other.  Just when the anxiety of running from your Nth zombie as Grace reaches its zenith, along comes Leon to open up a can of whoop-ass. And just as you start getting bored of decapitating zombies as Leon, the game turns to Grace and makes you vulnerable again.  As such, about the only major criticism I have of Requiem is its middle third, where the game abandons this dichotomy and makes you spend several somewhat-tedious hours as Leon in a ruined Raccoon City.

I played Resident Evil Requiem on the Nintendo Switch 2, and Capcom did a fantastic job in squeezing the title into the hybrid console.  Through the scalability of the RE Engine and the magic of DLSS, the Switch 2 version looks comparable to those on much more powerful machines, albeit with choppier framerates and worse graphical effects (Grace's hair is a noticeable victim).  Still, it's a minor miracle the game looks as good as it does, and if the Switch 2 is the only system you have, or if you care at all about playing the game away from a TV or computer, then it's a great option.

Rating: 90/100

Miscellany: RIP Chuck Norris

"Chuck Norris actually died 20 years ago - Death just finally worked up the courage to tell him yesterday."

Books: Legends & Lore - Ireland's Folk Tales

For St. Patrick's Day this year, I picked up Legends & Lore, a slim volume of Irish folk tales by Michael Scott. The book is built on all the oral and written stories Scott has collected over the years, going all the way back to his time as an antique book dealer travelling the Emerald Isle.  

As such, the lore in this volume goes well beyond your everyday leprechauns and banshees (though there are plenty of those here, too).  You'll read about legendary characters like the Gobán Saor and Finn mac Cumhaill, who are little known outside of Ireland.  I had never read anything from Scott before (as the cover repeatedly proclaims, he's the author of the Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flemel series), but the book is written in an easy, conversational style perfect for elementary/middle school age children with any interest in Irish mythology.

Music: Rocky Road to Dublin

Sinners did pretty well at the Oscars this year, including a well-deserved win for Ludwig Göransson's original score. That aspect of the movie is also perfect for St. Patrick's Day, since the film includes some rousing versions of traditional Irish folk songs.  Here's my favorite of the bunch - a memorably vampiric rendition of "Rocky Road to Dublin":

Books: Dungeon Crawler Carl

Whenever I have insomnia, I usually do some light reading to ease my mind.  I try not to take on anything too challenging or deep; ideally the book should have some humor and zaniness to help me relax.  Dungeon Crawler Carl, a LitRPG series by Matt Dinniman, fits the bill perfectly.  

In the eponymous first novel, Carl is a fairly average ex-Coast Guardsman in the midst of a depressing breakup with his girlfriend.  When he follows her spoiled show cat Donut outside, he is swept up in a sudden alien invasion that transforms the entire Earth into a giant, multi-level fantasy-themed dungeon, all for a deadly reality show broadcast around the galaxy. 

It's not the world's most original premise (the book can be very accurately described as "Sword Art Online plus The Hunger Games plus The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"), but Dinniman has a breezy first-person style and a knack for drawing likable characters. The series must have struck a chord with fantasy fans, because the books are usually hard to borrow from the library and there's a TV series in the works.

Miscellany: CountyComm Embassy Pen review - The Really Non-Tactical Tactical Pen

For years, my CRKT Williams Tactical Pen passed through airport security without any issue, but nowadays TSA agents know all about these so-called "tactical pens" and won't let them through. Before I caught on to the tightening security, I had to leave several fine pens behind, including the aforementioned Williams Pen and a Tuff Writer ballpoint that the company doesn't even make any more.

I've pivoted to carrying good solid pens, like the Embassy Pen from CountyComm, with no "tactical" features whatsoever.  It's just a pen - there's no glass breaker, no "DNA catcher," nothing about it that could even be remotely construed as a weapon. You unscrew the cap and you can write with it. That's it:

Still, the Embassy Pen is a very solid hunk of metal (mine is the discontinued 2-ounce titanium version, an ideal balance between strength and weight), and it would serve about as well as an improvised weapon as anything else...just don't call it "tactical."

Books: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

I've vowed never to start reading A Song of Ice and Fire unless George R. R. Martin finishes it before he dies (which is looking increasingly unlikely), but I did pick up A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, an anthology of the three previously published novellas in Martin's Tales of Dunk and Egg series. 

Tales of Dunk and Egg predates A Song of Ice and Fire by 90 years, so it is not beholden to the crippling demands of continuity.  Freed of having to follow the thousands of pages in the main saga, Martin focuses the story on his two likable protagonists: Dunk, a lowly but honorable hedge knight scraping around for a living in the backwaters of Westeros, and Egg, his precocious but loyal young squire.  The stakes are small (the second novella is all about a dispute over riparian rights), but it's nice to root for some "good guys" in Martin's otherwise amoral universe.

Tech: Unicorn Overlord

I remember reading about Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen in Nintendo Power magazine back in the '90s. At the time, Ogre Battle was one of the only Japanese strategy RPGs out there, and it was a huge step up in complexity from the battle systems of other 16-bit RPGs.  Instead of controlling a handful of characters, you managed an entire army, and factors like the day/night cycle, terrain, and even moral alignment affected the outcome of battles. 

Ogre Battle became a classic, and the developers made several sequels (Square Enix eventually bought their studio), but true strategy RPGs are still hard to find nowadays.  Vanillaware's Unicorn Overlord is one of the best ones in years:

There's a lot of strategy goodness here - your army consists of up to ten units of five characters each, and there are dozens of classes to choose from.  The start of the game features standard fighters, archers, and knights, but in the back half, you'll recruit and battle against elves, werewolves, and angels.  Most importantly, while battles between units run automatically with no opportunity for player input, you can tweak the individual tactics of each character beforehand, a la Final Fantasy XII's "gambit" system.  That can lead to powerful combos, like having some of your characters buff the initiative of your glass cannon so she can nuke the enemy unit before they have a chance to respond.

Unicorn Overlord's main weakness is its story; you're playing the same blue-haired earnest swordsman you've played in umpteen Fire Emblem games.  While there are some choices to be made (you can recruit or execute certain characters along the way), there aren't any big twists or memorable moments.  The overworld sidequests are also boring and repetitive, though they do provide your brain some "down time" between number crunching and theorycrafting.  If you can deal with those flaws, then this is a must-play for strategy gamers,

Rating: 85/100

Sports: Alysa Liu

I like figure skating as much as the next guy, which means I really only pay attention to it during the Winter Olympics. Luckily, me and everyone around the world were treated to a joyous show by American Alysa Liu, whose gold medal after an incredibly unusual two-year break from skating made for the feel-good story of this year's Games:

Guns: Rangemaster Defensive Shotgun with Tom Givens - class review and report

No matter how much experience with guns you have, it's good to stay in shape.  That's why I took a one-day introductory Defensive Shotgun course with Tom Givens's company, Rangemaster, to polish up my skills with the old Tacticool Remington 870 Wingmaster.  Note that the course is aimed at using a shotgun for home defense, and not for law enforcement or military purposes.

As most firearms classes do, Tom started with lecture.  He talked about the history of the shotgun, the types of shotguns and ammo typically used for self-defense, and the proper stance and technique needed for firing the darn thing.  Every student got a course packet and the lecture was in a comfortable, unintimidating classroom setting with a big TV screen for a visual aid.

After a quick lunch, we moved to the range for the entire afternoon.  Tom took us from the absolute basics (safely loading and shooting one shell, step by step) to drills involving multiple shots and loading under stress.  This was still a beginner-level one-day course, though, so we didn't do anything like slug changeovers, use cover, or move while shooting.

The class went through about 100 rounds of birdshot and 20 rounds of buckshot (the latter used mostly for a patterning test at various distances). The gentleman I was shooting with was pretty experienced, so our target was one ragged hole at the end of the drills (not counting the holes made by the wads).

Despite the entry-level nature of the course, I did learn a few things about myself and my gun. The Esstac shotgun cards I used as a sidesaddle worked like a charm. But the Magpul polymer MLOK rail section I had attached to the foreend broke during a string of fire (see picture below comparing the broken polymer rail to a new metal one), leading to my weaponlight wobbling all over the place. My eyes found the simple bead sight of my shotgun well enough in the daylight, but a ghost ring would probably be better at night. Finally, the Federal Flite Control 8-pellet 00 buckshot patterned fine out of my barrel, though I still prefer the 9-pellet load.

Bottom line - if you want to use a shotgun for home defense and you've never received formal instruction in its use, you should probably sign up for a class with a reputable instructor like Tom Givens.  And even if you've used a shotgun for decades, it's always good to go back to the fundamentals once in awhile.