New Resident Evil 5 TGS Trailer

Another great trailer for you guys! This of course comes courtesy of Capcom in honor of Tokyo Game Show and it's quite epic. It gives us a little insight on how the plot is going to develop in Resident Evil 5 around Chris Redfield. But that's not all, there are plenty of other shotgun toting favorites, old and new, that make an appearance.

Resident Evil 5 will be hitting PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on March 13th, 2009. Yes, that's a Friday.

Western Developers Are Good At Music, Yo

And another episode of Japanese-Devs-Being-Down-On-Themselves, Resident Evil 5 composer Kota Suzuki think American game music has surpassed Japanese game music — especially regarding post-production elements like recording and mixing:

I get the impression that production at western, particularly American developers is ahead of those in Japan. But, I think that more and more in Japan, the process of making video game music is becoming specialized.

...More and more Japanese production companies are working together with foreign companies, and sound production quality in Japan is approaching that of the west.

Stuff like this doesn't just make Japanese development, it makes game development better. Interesting side note: Capcom recorded the RE5 parts of the soundtrack at Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox with a hundred plus Hollywood Studio Symphony Orchestra. This was the first time Capcom has ever recorded a live orchestra for a Resident Evil game.

Interview with Resident Evil 5 [Music 4 Games via Develop]

A new salvo's been levied at the now-infamous Resident Evil 5 trailer by Tolu Olarunda at the Your Black Writers blog, who was upset by the trailer's imagery.

A couple weeks ago, a friend sent me a A couple of weeks ago, a friend sent me a YouTube link. He described it as “African genocide.” Not knowing what to expect, I clicked on it. What I witnessed for those next 3 minutes, was nerve-wrecking, painful, mind-numbing and heart-racing. It was a trailer for a Video Game called “Resident Evil.”

Yahtzee Skewers Heavenly Sword Demo

Yahtzee Croshaw is my hero. Having been discovered by The Escapist via his "Fully Ramblomatic" reviews of Fable: The Lost Chapters and the PS3 demo of The Darkness. He's a British-born writer living in Australia whose flash animations were among the best things on YouTube and now, by extension, The Escapist. This week in their Zero Punctuation segment he manages to cover everything I wanted to cover in my stories on the miniature Heavenly Sword(s) demo and Resident Evil 5 racism, only much more amusing than I could ever hope to be. I hate him. I love him. Just go look for yourself, and report back to me your findings.

Zero Punctuation: Heavenly Sword and Other Stuff [The Escapist]

Totilo Weighs in on RE5 Debate, It's About Poverty not Race

My problem is that it presents a fantasy I don't desire. It looks like it's an advertisement to virtually shoot poor people. I know "Resident Evil" games are supposed to be about hiding from and shooting zombies — this one probably is too. Shooting zombies is something I can get behind...But when I see a town of what looks like impoverished African villagers — the very image of global poverty, the very spectacle that since my youth has been coded in me to evoke sympathy and charity — I don't want to pull the trigger.

This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults. Start them young... fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.