Scrimm's Phairy Tales

 "You think that when you die, you go to heaven... you come to us" - The Tall Man, Phantasm 2.

On January 9th 2016 at the age of 89, Angus Scrimm aka Lawrence Rory Guy aka The Tall Man left our pastures for, presumably, his red dimension where he'll preside over an endless stream of "lurkers". This is devastating to "phans" not just of Phantasm but of horror in general. Angus, you see, was one of the Hollywood old guard. When I think of Angus I think of Bella Lugosi and Boris Karloff. The reason for this is, he helped create a horror icon called The Tall Man who may not be the most popular but may very well be the best of all the horror icons. First seen in the 70's (a golden era for horror) in a low budget classic called Phantasm, The Tall Man would go on to show up in a further four Phantasm movies spread across the next four decades. The fifth of which is imminent and I can only hope it is the epitaph this wonderful man deserves.

This blog will be a celebration of the role that he was best known for and the movies that I watched over and over as a kid (and the odd time now).

                                                              PHANTASM
Phantasm came out in 1979 and if you'd seen the movie back then you would have been struck by the visuals and the ingenuity of the movie makers. You'd have thought director, Don Coscarelli was on the verge of becoming a big deal. What you wouldn't realise is the movie took over a year to make, shot over weekends and any free time the cast and crew could get. It was financed by friends, family local business and costumes were made by Coscarelli's mother. She also designed some special fx. This, you see, was a labour of love. Coscarelli cast people he'd worked with before and edited the whole thing himself to save on costs. In total, Phantasm cost $300k. In the US alone on original release it made $12m. A slam dunk by any standard.

So what is it all about? Well, that's kind of open to interpretation but I'll try to write something resembling a "plot". Phantasm is a movie based in a small town (Morningside) where a 13 year old boy, Mike (Michael Baldwin) has just lost both his parents and is being looked after by his older brother, Jodi (Bill Thornbury) and his friend the local ice cream vendor, Reggie (Reggie Bannister). Things take a turn for the mysterious when Jodi and Reggie's friend dies suddenly. At the funeral Mike, who isn't allow attend, watches via binoculars from afar. When everyone clears off, Mike sees the mysterious funeral director (The Tall Man) take the coffin by hand and throw it into the back of his hearse... why? It takes a while but eventually we find out The Tall Man reanimates the corpses, crushes them down to hobbit size, puts them into barrels and enslaves them. For reasons known only to The Tall Man, he then sends some of them off to another dimension (the red dimension) through a dimensional fork (see picture)

As for The Tall Man, he knows his antics are not going to go unchallenged so he keeps some of his hooded hobbits around to fend off intruders. He also has a few henchmen and if you get by those, well see below.

One of the main selling points of Phantasm was the genius design of The Tall man's spheres. These diabolical weapons fly through the air and once they lock on to you they stop at nothing to attach themselves to you, (usually through the head) and drill into your skull... ewww. They are a highlight because their design is pure genius and the results of their attacks are horrifying.

The movie ends on a very odd note. Strangely enough, we see Reggie get stabbed but he's alive and well at the end of the flick. We never see Jodi getting killed but he's reportedly been killed in the fight to bring down The Tall Man... WTF?!! So we're left to believe that it has all been in Mike's head and he's dealing with the loss of his parents and now Jodi by making up this horror story... but then The Tall Man turns up right at the end and attacks Mike yet again... AHHHHH!!! My brain!

I don't know how many times I've watched this movie but it's a lot and I still can't make much sense of it. This is not a complaint... the movie is supposed to leave you wondering if this is all just happening in Mike's head after the trauma of losing his family and if it isn't, there's still no real sense to proceedings other than The Tall Man is evil and our plucky heroes are completely out of their depth. The movie leaves you with a whole lotta why and a what the actual fuck? But I do go back to it from time to time and I think that's partially because it is such a mystery.

Another reason to return is the humour. Phantasm doesn't get enough praise for the laughs it delivers. Maybe it's just me but I always found it hilarious that this guy pisses himself at the end of this scene:

Pacing wise the movie is uneven. It's at its best when Mike starts to unravel the mysterious goings on in Morningside Funeral Home and when Jodi and Reggie decide to help Mike take down The Tall Man. As you may have gathered or already know, this is not a movie for the masses and it hasn't aged particularly well. That being said, it has bag loads of charm, it is a break from the norm and, crucially it is entirely original. Not too many horror movies can say that.

                                                                     PHANTASM 2
After the not too shabby success of Phantasm it was only a matter of time before the studios came sniffing. Oddly enough, it took a lot more time than one would have thought. A movie costing $300k that goes on to make 40 times its budget (domestically) really should have earned a lot more heat. But it took as long as it took and the sequel didn't hit US cinemas until 1988. As a 12 year old boy, I was very excited to see if Phantasm 2 could A. be as much fun as the original or B. start to make some sense out of this world. Bottom line though, I was just very excited!

Universal Studios were the ones who took a chance on Phantasm 2. They wanted a franchise to rival Halloween and Friday The !3th etc and gave the film makers $3m of a budget to make something capable of taking on the big boys. $3m is nothing to a studio like Universal but it was a lot to Don Coscarelli. In fact it was 10 times the cost of the previous movie and Coscarelli set about making good use of the funds. He hired Greg Nicotero and Robert Kurtzman to take care of the make up fx and they did a superb job.

Story wise, Coscarelli was struggling. Given the complete lack of a coherent narrative he had to build on this was hardly a surprise. What he did was quite clever, he started the movie right at the end of Phantasm to give the audience something resembling a back story. This sequence ends with Reggie blowing up his own house filled with The Tall Man's minions with both he and Mike barely escaping. Then we cut to Mike being released from a mental home 8 years after these incidents. Again, this hints at the potential for it all to be in Mike's imagination... Once out, Mike immediately heads to the cemetery and digs up a few graves. All empty. Reggie shows up and is upset to see his long time friend digging up graves mere hours after his release. Reggie and Mike leave the cemetery and in Reggie's car The Tall Man shares a vision with Mike of Reggie's house being blown up with his entire family inside. Mike warns Reggie of what he has just seen but it's too late, they get home in time to see the house exploding... So straight away we are back to wondering if this all isn't just in Mike's head. We've seen Reggie blow up his home already, apparently full of monsters and here is his house blowing up again with his family inside. Is the trauma too much for Mike and is The Tall Man a crutch for him to deal with (another) tragedy? Or has Reggie seen two of his houses blow up? It's impossible to tell as it always is in these movies.

The movie is much better paced than the original and once Mike and Reggie set off on their journey to seek and destroy The Tall Man shit escalates pretty quickly. Mike and Reggie go from town to town and see the same pattern. "Small towns are like people, some get old and die... some are murdered" muses Reggie. And The Tall Man has been doing a lot of murdering. It's in one of these "dead" towns that Reggie and Mike break into a hardware store and make some new weapons. The best of these is Reggie's four barrel shotgun (picture from Phantasm 3)

We're introduced to a couple of new characters too. The most interesting of these is Liz. She shares a sort of psychic link to both Mike and The Tall Man. Now, before you surmise that this couldn't all be in Mike's head as someone else is having a similar experience involving The Tall Man, there is a scene (a pretty funny one actually) before the guys physically meet Liz where Reggie straight up says to Mike "I'm still not sure she's not just a wet dream". This, once again, implies the theory that Mike's imagination has got the better of him. Anyway, the movie floors it and we are treated to some highly inventive scenes one of which involves veteran actor Kenneth Tigar (he's the guy who stands up to Loki in the Avengers). He plays the local priest and he can't stand by and let The Tall Man desecrate the dead any longer. He decides to investigate the local mausoleum for himself and with God on his side (as well as some Dutch courage) he will take the fight to The Tall Man... It doesn't go well:

You can imagine where it goes from there. Great delivery from Angus Scrimm there too. Total conviction. He believes he is The Tall Man therefore we believe it. This scene also introduces the spheres to us in Phantasm 2. As previously mentioned, Coscarelli hired two craftsmen for some truly memorable sequences. The make up fx are excellent and you do get the feeling that these guys really enjoyed being responsible for the havoc wreaked by the spheres. They are by their own admission huge "phans".

It should be noted that the studio stayed very much involved with the making of this movie. Dream sequences were thrown out and they forced Coscarelli to cast James LeGros as Mike this time. This caused some anger among phans but they needn't have worried as LeGros was absolutely fine in the role and Coscarelli got to cast Michael Baldwin again in the next movie. A well known fact among horror fans is that Brad Pitt read for the role of Mike too. Someone really should ask him if he remembers. Usually it doesn't bode well when a studio gets too close to a project but in this case I think it really helped. Phantasm 2 is a great looking movie, it's tightly edited, the acting is solid and they do their best to make it accessible to newbies... a tough ask but I love that they tried.

Phantasm 2 ends with Mike, Liz and Reggie running towards certain death. Reggie takes a slap in the face from The Tall Man that sends him flying through the dimensional fork to the red dimension (see picture). He gets a good look around at the hobbitesque slaves and, for once, is rescued by Mike who pulls him back to this dimension. In a triumph of make up fx they literally melt The Tall Man to pulp to come out on top... until they don't. The Tall Man comes back as you knew he would with barely a scratch on him. This is explained in the later movies and I will get to that but in Phantasm 2 there was a sense of comforting inevitability when The Tall Man got the last word. It all ends, fittingly enough in a hearse with Reggie thrown out and Mike and Liz trapped in the back with The Tall Man driving... Good times ahead.

The movie made over $7m in the US and despite that being over twice the budget and therefore a success, Universal had hoped for more. It was pretty much panned by critics but horror fans enjoyed it, people with a dark sense of humour enjoyed it and Phantasm Phans enjoyed it too. Unlike the previous movie, time has been good to Phantasm 2. It has a huge cult following and when reviewed by today's critics it fares pretty well. I still think it's the best of the lot and I always have a hell of a time when I throw it on.

                                                    PHANTASM 3: Lord of the Dead
After the small success of Phantasm 2, Universal went ahead and gave Don Coscarelli $2.5m to go ahead and make Part 3. They also gave him full creative control and left him to make the movie he wanted to make. Tonally, Phantasm 3 is an odd beast. Yes it is a horror and there are many superb scenes to back this up but there's also an action vibe to it as well as a lot more of that dark humour that is sparingly used in parts 1 and 2.

Story wise, we pick up immediately after the events of Phantasm 2. The Tall Man is driving away with Liz and Mike in a hearse. Reggie picks himself up off the dirt and goes after them on foot. He sees the hearse explode and runs toward it. Liz has been killed but Mike has, presumably, been thrown from the crash. The Tall Man duly arrives to take his prize from Reggie. One of his hooded hobbits hands him the head of Liz, The Tall Man's slight smile is hilarious... Reggie takes out a grenade and says "eight seconds to hell god damn you". The Tall Man responds, "I don't want him in pieces". Clearly he has plans for Mike and so he grants Reggie a reprieve. I expected the movie to slow down at this point but it speeds up. Pacing wise it's just as fucked up as the original movie except where Phantasm took time to build suspense, this one just floors it and doesn't stop.

Anyway, Mike is in a coma in hospital when The Tall Man sends one of his spheres to "visit" and see how he is doing. Rather than attack, this sphere actually produces an eye (pictured below). Whatever it sees, The Tall Man sees. Sitting on a throne (pictured above) surrounded by candles he seems happy enough with Mike's condition and decides to make a play for him. Inside Mike's coma, we see him walking toward the light. There he sees his dead brother, Jodi. He tells Mike to go back but Mike is drawn to the light... The Tall Man, an expert of inter dimensional travel, of course appears. Mike panics but can't move. Meanwhile Reggie walks in on a nurse trying to open Mike's skull, we find out why later. Reggie rescues Mike for the umpteenth time and they run.

As ever with Phantasm, there's a lot of stuff happening that is never explained. Here's a cracker: Mike and Reggie make it to Reggie's home. When they get inside Jodi is there waiting for them. Reggie points out the obvious, "What the hell are you doing here, you're dead". Jodi is apparently there to help but The Tall Man "locks on" to him and emerges through a dimensional fork. Reggie is knocked unconscious, Jodi then turns himself into a sphere and attacks. He is immediately disregarded by The Tall Man who takes Mike through the dimensional fork. Reggie wakes up and Jodi, now a sphere, tells him to go to Holtsville... What. The. FUCK?!!

Still, we mustn't get bogged down in the details now, that'd be insane. So on we go. Reggie stumbles across another dead town, however, he falls afoul of three looters who stick him in the trunk of his Hemi cuda and take it, along with a pink hearse to a nearby house, they've been scoping out. It is here that Phantasm 3's tone shifts to completely fucked up, but in a good way. The three looters enter the house only to find a masked kid (Tim) hiding inside and what's worse is, the kid has booby trapped the place so we get a short but enjoyable sequence where the three looters are picked off in what I have to assume is a darkly hilarious homage to Home Alone... One (a woman) takes an axe in the face, another has his throat slit by a frisbee with razor blades attached and the last falls into an unused grave. Tim simply shoots him. He lets Reggie out of his car and they bond over the losses they've suffered. Reggie tries to dump Tim off at the next town but the kid sneaks into the trunk of Reggie's car.

In the local mausoleum Reggie (thinking he's alone) investigates. Again, he gets captured, this time by two attractive black women both seemingly trained and doing some investigating of their own. Reggie tries to warn them but a sphere comes and kills one of them. It was about to kill the other (named Rocky) when Tim emerges gun in hand and with a perfect shot, takes down the sphere saving both the lady and Reggie. Rocky takes off while Tim has now convinced Reggie he is of use. Later they find Rocky and convince her to help them take on The Tall Man.

Coscarelli brings back the dream sequences jettisoned by the studio from Phantasm 2 and in one of them Jodi takes Reggie to The Tall Man's lair where they rescue Mike and pull him back through to this world through one of those dimensional forks. Everyone together now, they need a place to hold up and they decide on the local mausoleum, the thinking being it's the last place he'd look. Of course things don't go well and while Mike is trying to learn about The Tall Man through Jodi, The Tall Man locks on to him again and comes for him. While in consultation with Jodi, Mike learns that The Tall Man puts the brains of his victims inside the spheres (we knew this from an earlier scene but Mike only finds out now). Mike already knew he was shrinking the bodies and using them as slaves but turning their minds into weapons was another horrible twist.

The Tall Man doesn't come alone, he has already reanimated the three looters from earlier and they are full of fight. Rocky takes on the woman "yo bitch, hands off my boy" she says as she was bashing Reggie. The fight is pretty good and is only ended when a sphere which came out of The Tall Man  flies straight through the reanimated woman's face (pictured above).

Jodi in sphere form takes down another and Reggie shoots the last guy will all barrels of his modified shotgun at close range. Again, a line is apparently required... "if you can keep your head while all about you are losing their's." Thankfully we do not get to see the results of this close range four barreled attack... okay, I'm lying I'd have loved to have seen it but I digress.

Meanwhile, Mike has had a sphere placed in his skull (the nurse tried to do this earlier) by The Tall Man and while he is still human, he is now very different. Reggie and co have trapped The Tall Man in the cold room (he doesn't like the cold) and the ball that came out of him has been placed in a cryogenic tank. Predictably, this doesn't get it done! Mike and Jodi take off leaving Reg to ponder what the fuck he is fighting for. Rocky leaves too "this whuppin' zombie ass just ain't my gig". Reg and Tim head back inside. Reg gets pinned up against the wall by a load of spheres. Another of those pesky dimensional forks has turned up and The Tall Man has come through yet again. Reggie warns Tim, telling him it's all over. The Tall Man's response "it's never over". Tim is taken and presumably killed leaving The tall Man victorious yet again.

I quite like Phantasm 3 but as ever I'm left wondering just what the hell did I just watch? It looks great, the acting is solid but at times I can't decide if it's flirting with genius or if it's just completely taking the piss. In fact that's probably how I feel about the entire series... Test screenings for the movie went very well but, strangely, Universal refused to distribute it and it went dtv back in 1994 (I think). They didn't lose too much money on it but they might have made a few quid if they'd put it in cinemas. I guess they just stopped caring and allowed Coscarelli to take the rights back for the next installment.

                                                              PHANTASM OBLIVION

Where to start with this one? I remember hearing that we'd get answers and explanations in this movie and while there are some, I think it's fair to say the movie raises far more questions and leaves the viewer annoyed more than entertained. Don't get me wrong, it's worth watching but I don't think it's essential to the series.
With no studio involved and a very small budget Phantasm 4 looks like Phantasm 1. This isn't necessarily a good thing because the previous two movies looked really slick and the drop in quality is noticeable. But I can live with that. What I can't live with is the weirdness is taken to places that were never even hinted at in any of the previous three movies. I'll come to some examples of this later but I'll try to put together the pieces of story I can figure out first.

Picking up where Phantasm 3 left off The Tall Man mocks Reggie. He releases him from the grasp of the spheres and tells him his time is at an end but it is not yet. Reggie runs. I presume The Tall Man is either entertained by him or he is using him to find Mike. Meanwhile Mike has taken a hearse and has a plan to take out The Tall Man yet again. This is annoying because at this stage it is clear that even if the plan works, he'll just come through a dimensional fork again. With his sphere in his head, Mike is beginning to embrace his "dark side" and seems much more at peace in this movie. The Tall Man is clearly hoping to use Mike as his new vessel and Mike has accepted he will beat The Tall Man or die.

Those dimensional forks are fucking everywhere in this movie by the way. Mike jumps through so many of them that I found myself just watching and not having any fucking inkling as to what the fuck I was watching. There are discoveries along the way. One, with the help of Jodi is, The Tall Man was a once scientist and very human. He invented inter-dimensional travel via the forks and it is when he goes through the first of these that he is taken by The Tall Man.

So whenever you kill his flesh in this world, he just comes through the dimensional fork again in the form he took all those years ago. So until you get to the root of The Tall Man which I have to assume is somewhere in the red dimension you're not going to get rid of him. But that doesn't stop Mike from trying anyway.

Meanwhile Reggie is still looking for Mike and The Tall Man. It should be noted at this point that Reggie Bannister is a solid actor and his performances in parts 2, 3 and 4 are always enjoyable. Well done that man. Anyway, as ever, The Tall Man leaves snares for Reggie and he falls into them over and over again. One of them is a very attractive blonde girl who gets naked but instead of Reggie finally getting some touch, it turns out she is a minion of The Tall Man and her breasts are actually spheres. In deep shit now, Reggie manages to escape the spheres by banging a tuning fork off a nearby table. Now, of all the fucking crazy bullshit these movies throw at you (an there is a lot) this might be the most fucking ridiculous. I just don't fucking get it. Has anything like this ever happened in the previous movies? No, no it hasn't. The only time I can remember seeing a tuning fork at all is in Phantasm when Reg and Jodi are jamming. See below:


Decent guitar work by the Reg-man there but I do not know how or why this is suddenly a thing in these movies. I have to surmise that it was just shoved in there as a throwback to the original movie without any real idea of how to explain it. What's worse is, at no point was it ever alluded to that it was a weapon to be used in this fight yet Reggie uses it and Mike also uses it later against The Tall Man and Jodi, who it turns out is now fully taken by The Tall Man and is working for him. It freezes them in place for as long as the fork echoes its note and gives Mike time to escape. In short, it's fucking stupid!


Moving on. The movie ends in an explosion next to The Tall Man. Mike's plan to destroy The Tall Man, predictably, fails as once again he emerges from the dimensional fork as we knew he would. Reggie has turned up also but is disregarded by The Tall Man and tellingly he says "Ice cream man, it's all in his head". This is a great line, it either means it is all actually a dream in Mike's imagination or he's talking about the sphere he put in there as part of the process to take him over. The Tall Man takes the ball out of Mikes head and leaves him there. Reggie goes to Mike and hears Mike whisper, "I'm dying". Reggie, in yet another spectacular show of courage, runs toward the dimensional fork and right at The Tall Man. We never see where he ends up. We then cut to the past where Mike, back to being a kid is picked up by Reggie in his ice cream van. They hear someone whisper "I'm dying" (we know it's Mike in the future) but they put it down to the wind and drive off. This ending leaves us so many questions, the biggest of which is what the fuck was all that about? It's not that I hated the movie. Far from it, I quite enjoyed it but there is no excuse or reason for adding to what was already a fucking insane mystery.

                                                             PHINAL THOUGHTS

Phantasm is a tidy and well executed franchise. Sure, I have issues with each of the movies but nobody could ever accuse these movies of not trying to do something interesting. Visually they are unusual and at times strikingly beautiful. Phantasm deserves credit for coming up with something completely different at a time when slasher flicks were two a penny. Performance wise, all of the credit must go to Reggie Bannister and Angus Scrimm. Reggie plays his character with conviction and quite a bit of charm. With Scrimm's Tall Man we also have a genuinely menacing and scary icon of horror. For such a pleasant man to create something so sinister is a testament to his talent and he will certainly be missed. Coscarelli also deserves credit for creating the whole thing and writing a superb score to rival that of Halloween.

Later this year the Fifth and presumably final installment will be unleashed. Having seen the clip my one fear is that the budget simply will not match the scope of the movie. It clearly has some big ideas (and bigger spheres) but it'll have to go some to tie up all the loose ends left by the movies and in particular Phantasm 4. One thing I'm grateful for is they managed to make this movie before Angus Scrimm passed. It is his swan song and he deserves it to be a good one. One thing we can rely on is this: Scrimm's performance will be excellent. He will revel in this role and we will enjoy watching him playing this character one last time. As for me, I'll watch these movies until I no longer can and I'll probably never figure them out. But I will always enjoy hearing The Tall Man announce to Mike that he is in fact right beside him, or behind him or indeed in front of him... "Booooooyyyyyy". So simple, so scary... Cheers Angus.

G.                                    

Witchers, Dragons, Dark Knights and Chris Redfield.

Happy New Year to all and I hope the gaming gods were good to you this Christmas. It has been a while since I game blogged and a lot has happened in that year. Most of it has been baby related which means my gaming has been severely culled but, early on, I did managed to find ways to adapt:

But the baby got bigger (much bigger) and the only time I seem to get to game at all is on the rare occasion that my wife and I share a day off work or when it's her turn to put him to bed and even then that doesn't take very long. But I will endeavour to find a way to make better use of my PS4. When last I blogged about games I had just started Dragon Age Inquisition. I joked I could be 40 before I finished it. As it happened our new born was a really good sleeper (he still is a good sleeper but not so much in the day time) and I got to plough through the game relatively quickly.

Most of you will have played it by now so I won't bore you with the details except to say it's a perfectly decent RPG with solid production values. Dragon Age has always been a team game where you pick the partners that you consider most suitable to a particular quest. Side quests were a mixed bag, the most challenging of these were the dragon quests. Ten of these badasses were to be hunted down and destroyed. When I encountered the first dragon, it fucking annihilated me but, as ever, a little patience and a lot of levelling up was all it took. However, as the dragons got stronger, the right team and the right tactics were hugely important. I liked this aspect of the game. It made you pick and change your team. Sometimes you had to drop your "star player" in order to complete a specific task. The main storyline was the usual fantasy dross but the game was tightly scripted and well acted. Will I go back for the DLC? No, I've had my fill of this universe but it was an enjoyable romp all the same. Trophy count: 80% Score: 8/10.

Quicker gaming thrills were required for a while and I got them in the form of Resident Evil Code Veronica HD and Resident Evil 4 HD which were both on special offer on the PS Store. I had played them on PS2 and had a hell of a time and while I can say Code Veronica holds up really well, I found RE4 ever so slightly disappointing. It's still a hell of a game but the HD upgrade I was expecting never really materialised so it loses a point there. That said if you've never played it or if you want to play it again it's still the same game... exactly the same game so there is fun to be had. Trophy count: 47% Score: 8/10.

Code Veronica, for me at least, is the spiritual successor to the amazing Resident Evil 2. Back in the day Sony had a hold on all things Resident Evil and while the game developers wanted to take RE3 to the Dreamcast (I think) Sony weren't having any of it. So they made a pretty decent game called RE3: Nemesis for Playstation and Code Veronica for Dreamcast. Code Veronica has all the elements that made RE 1 and 2 so wonderful and a couple of graphical improvements are also welcome. All your favourite beasts are in here along with a couple of newbies (the tremors monster is a favourite of mine) and it is a big game by RE standards. There is a sense of it being too big for you to deal with but that just makes it all the more satisfying as you progress through the game. Combat is pretty much as you'd expect though there are a couple of weapons where you have to go POV but that's a fun addition. CV is a greatest hits of the previous two games. I love it for doing that, it's like when you go to see a classic rock band. Yeah you got their new album but really, you just wanna hear the hits. Code Veronica plays all the hits. Trophy Count: 56% Score: 9/10.

Not finished with Resi yet as I absolutely flew through those two games which meant I had time for another hit. Resident Evil Revelations 2. Some people find it annoying that these "revelations" come out "episodically". I just wait for them all to be released and buy them like a normal game... So is it any good? I'm pleased to report, it's a ton of fun. Like it's predecessor the emphasis is as much on action as horror, no bad thing. The action lives and dies on the weapons and they are very satisfying, the horror is beautifully presented with deliciously bleak corridors and claustrophobic outdoor sections. There is a team aspect to this game where you have to protect a kid who may or may not be evil or work in tandem with other characters as you progress. The plot is the usual Resident Evil gubbins but we just wanna kill badass monsters... you'll get to do that here and in very enjoyable ways too. One of the monsters (which some found to be unfair) is invisible to you until you shoot it or you can use the (possibly) evil kid to point them out... I thought it added a huge amount of tension to proceedings and while I was annoyed when it killed me (by puking huge bugs all over me) I also enjoyed going back and killing the fuckers! My trophy count on this game is quite low as I don't play with or against others online. I'm happy to play against someone in the same room as me but never online. I just don't enjoy it and I don't suppose I ever will. So RER2 is another must own for resi fans: Trophy count: 17% Score: 8/10.

Back in April I got The Witcher 3 as a birthday present. I finished it in November. Value for money? Yes but it does not hold a candle to Skyrim for longevity. More on this in a minute. The Witcher 3 is your bog standard Tolkien-esque universe with all manner of creatures to hunt and fiends to fight. There's card game called Gwent which everyone in this world plays (but not me as I never understood it) and there's the usual bonkers storyline, which again I didn't really understand featuring a girl being hunted by a powerful faction called "The Wild Hunt" who want her for her Elder Blood (whatever). The main character, Geralt of Rivia, is her guardian and when she goes on the run from the Wild Hunt your job is to track her and, ultimately, help her fight these evil fuckers. Geralt speaks with a gruff voice so we know he's a badass... he has friends and is at the centre of a love triangle (by far the most interesting of the two women is Yennefer pictured below) and to the game's credit you do grow to like Geralt's gruffness and his "cut to the chase" attitude.

So is it any good? Yes, yes it is... for the most part. It was met with universal acclaim when it came out and the clip had me drooling. I got right into it and I enjoyed it... for a while. The problem with The Witcher 3, for me anyway, is the rinse and repeat of it. The game does try to make you utilize all your skills but once you level up to a certain point, kicking ass becomes quite easy. Did I do all the missions? No. I finished the game on Normal level, I completed all the Witcher contracts, I saved a lot of villages (not all) I killed a lot of assholes, I found a lot of treasure, I blew up a lot of monster nests and I investigated an endless amount of question marks. Ah the question marks! There's too fucking many of them. 99 of them on Skellige alone and the vast majority of those are in the ocean. This leads to you sailing out to sea, jumping into the water, crossbowing a few hapless monsters and raiding a treasure box... over and over and over again. It's not fun, it's not satisfying and it's not worth it. There is fun to be had with The Witcher 3 but make no mistake, there's padding here. It tries hard to bring you all the gameplay of Skyrim but where Skyrim found ways to keep you coming back for more, The Witcher 3 beats you over the head with the same missions and expects you to be happy with the prettiness of it. And some people are happy enough to do the same shit over and over. Not me though. In summary, The Witcher 3 is a great looking game and through a decent surround sound system it packs a fair punch. I enjoyed the main storyline and the Witcher contracts. I enjoyed exploring the game maps to a point too, just not to the point of doing it in my sleep. Trophy count: 61% Score: 7/10.

In my last game blog "Nobody expects the Dragon Age Inquisition!" I had just finished Resident Evil HD with Jill Valentine. I knew I'd complete it with Chris Redfield one day and after investing so much in The Witcher 3 I needed a quicker fix. So I went back to the mansion again and it was just as enjoyable this time around. It's a little harder with Chris as he can't carry as much as Jill and he starts armed only with a survival knife. I've always found the game at its hardest in the early stages of playing. Once the game opens up and you get your weapons sorted it becomes easier to negotiate proceedings. It took me 15 hours to finish it with Jill last time. It took me 11 hours with Chris, I think because it was still fresh in my mind and I knew, more or less, where I was going next. If you're still a Resident Evil HD virgin I think you owe it to yourself to enter the realm of survival horror: Trophy count: 56% Score: 9/10.

Finally I just started Arkham Knight and while I am loving it, I am struggling to find any enjoyment with the Batmobile. When the absolutely stunning Arkham City came out people bemoaned the lack of the Bat tank to which the game developers responded, "Batman is the ultimate vehicle". At the time I felt like that was a cop out but I'm starting to agree with that statement. I only ever travel in the Batmobile when I absolutely have to as I much prefer gliding as the Bat from rooftop to rooftop to get to my destination. Unfortunately for me there is a lot of use for the Batmobile. I've only ever enjoyed a couple of car games in my time and, truth be told, I was never very good at those so I was always going to struggle with this. I'm currently trying to rescue Catwoman from the Riddler and it involves a lot of Batmobile. I'm struggling and it's frustrating... because I suck with cars. I do hope I can get to grips with the Batmobile though as the rest of the game is an absolute blast.

Next up will be the Resident Evil Zero HD update on PS4 which is a couple of weeks away. I hope to get to it soon.

Cheers,

G.