The game takes a fairly decent stab at replicating Resident Evil 4 & 5's control scheme on the phone, through the use of an on-screen, touch-sensitive d-pad (which you can see pictured). The events of the game are based on those of the recent animated feature of the same name, and players will take control of Leon Kennedy

The game is already out, and will set you back $7.

This comes as Capcom announced the title has shipped over 1.5 million copies.

Resident Evil: Degeneration takes places a year after RE4 and features characters Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield.

The movie was distributed by Sony Pictures and debuted last October at the Tokyo Game Show and was released in late December in Japan and the United States. It was released in Europe the following month.

Currently the movie is up on the Japanese PSN and priced at ¥3900 (US$39). No word yet whether it will be available on the PSN in other regions.

Resident Evil: Degeneration takes places a year after RE4 and features characters Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield.

The movie debuted last October at the Tokyo Game Show and was released in late December in Japan and the United States. It was released in Europe the following month.

It's fun to look at, and the action is pretty absorbing — but ultimately, it's vapid.

Finally, a perfect Resident Evil movie.

Say what you like about Degeneration. I'll say I like it, because for good or for ill, it's actually the ideal reflection of the franchise on which it's based. True, the plot makes little traceable sense – but try and find a Resident Evil plot that does. We're talking games about obscene mutant zombie viruses, here.

I mean, why should a powerful pharmaceutical company invent an obscene mutant zombie virus, anyway? There's never any good reason – and Degeneration stays on point, utterly refusing to offer one. And in the games, when the D-Day biohazard outbreak inevitably occurs, the government tries to cover it up instead of prevent it every time (yep, that happens in Degeneration).

We're talking about games where people leave their top-secret files lying around to helpfully edify interlopers, for example – a high point of Resident Evil 4 is discovering a handwritten note titled "Our Plan." Y'know ,just in case you wanted to know. And no matter how gruesome the viruses get, some power-hungry villain always elects to inject themselves, paradoxically trading away any actual control they had over the situation. Degeneration doesn't break that pattern, either.

Speaking of patterns, are you seeing one here? Yes — Degeneration is utterly faithful to its source material, even admirably so. In the film, Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield team up for the first time since Resident Evil 2, and this time around isn't too different for the pair: Claire still goes to great lengths to protect a little girl, Leon is still too shy to admit he's interested in a tough woman, and the two must split up to pursue separate objectives throughout the story – which again culminates in a fight against a self-injected, large-armed G-Virus mutant villain.

No whining about spoilers. You could have seen it coming a mile away. There's even a seminal self-destruct sequence activated. Of course.

At face value, then, it seems that Degeneration captures the "flavor" of Resident Evil far more than the dissociative Milla Jovovich films that bear only a passing memetic resemblance to the games — fans don't tend to like those films, do they?

So if you dislike Degeneration, maybe you actually dislike the source material.

The more storied a video game franchise, the more challenging it is to create a film based on it. As a matter of fact, instead of challenging, let's go with impossible. We either end up with a decent film that has nothing to do with the game (but have we yet had a good one?); a flick that admirably reflects the game but is utterly unappealing to non-fans (dear Advent Children!) , or, what we most often get – a terrible film that both movie-goers and game fans despise.

If Degeneration was a bad movie, that's because it was faithful to the games – and what makes the games good simply isn't the same kind of thing that makes a good movie. There's obviously a broad schism, then, between the way we experience game stories as players and the way they translate as narrative.

It sure looks like scriptwriters and producers consistently aren't "getting it" when it comes to what's lovable about a video game they're trying to translate to the big screen. On the other side of the canyon, audiences are unlikely to understand Resident Evil or Final Fantasy VII when it's presented as film, outside of its native context.

But is it really that film production is just not taking games seriously enough? That the film industry doesn't understand how sophisticated games really are?

Perhaps to an extent; unfamiliar with the language of games, films often mistranslate a title's appeal. That's what happened with Silent Hill, which might have been successful as a well-acted psychological thriller – but turned out mediocre, if we're being kind. It reproduced the game's visual style and feel almost unsettlingly, even chill-inducingly, going as far as to incorporate pieces of Akira Yamaoka's original soundtrack.

But it completely missed the boat on what makes Silent Hill appealing – its psychological subtlety – and instead zeroed in on the series' most obvious elements, stripping them of their context and highlighting their ridiculousness. It might have been possible to make a complex, mature Silent Hill movie if it had focused on the right things.

The dominant problem, though, is that the narratives of games are unfortunately not nearly as sophisticated, intelligent, affecting or entertaining as we think they are.

Story can be important to games, and sophisticated story is arguably key to advancing the medium beyond toy status. But it's not always necessary to an excellent video game – just look at the strength and success of Resident Evil even despite its ridiculous plot lines. Resident Evil 4 is so good, for example, that it manages to be awesome even though it features an annoying Napoleon-man chasing Leon with a gigantic mechanical version of himself – and he's a lot more appealing than the girl you've got to rescue. That's a seriously solid game, right there.

Similarly, there are some excellent video game stories out there that run alongside really awful games. But a movie is a story – period. It's got no choice. On the big screen, a video game's weird, clumsy narrative doesn't have things like gameplay to hide behind. On film, games can't escape the fact that they're often shallow without their interactivity, their action pacing, or their player-created experience. And ironically enough, it's the major action franchises that end up being made into films – the ones that need story the least.

And yet every time we go to the theater for a video game movie, we're expecting – what? Something that resembles a live-action cut scene from the game? Or a deeply-affecting, sophisticated dramatic journey based on Max Payne? Seriously?

We have high hopes of video game movies because our emotional relationship to games is so strong. Perhaps this love leads us to expect more from a film representation than it's reasonable to expect – and that's the source of our cultural trait of being impossible to please regarding films. But we've also learned the language of games; we've learned to treat broad-stroke stereotypical characters as shorthand for whatever we'd like to fill in.

We've learned to back-shelf absurd plot elements in favor of creating our own story about the joy of the boss fight. We've let our imagination make characters far more exciting and intriguing than they are.

What's to like, really, about Leon Kennedy — besides the fact he does a bad-ass suplex? Albert Wesker's among many people's favorite video game villains of all time, and yet it's true that he's barely even got a consistent characterization from one game to the next. We like him because he talks creepy and he looks cool doing it, and now he's got those red eyes, and that thrust punch thing in RE 4? Amazing.

In fact, you might be getting a rush of enthusiasm just thinking about these characters – hey, I do. Ready to rush to the comments to talk about them, to share your favorite moments from Resident Evil, to explain why you think the stories are really good?

Go for it. But the vitality and adoration you feel around Resident Evil comes from your relationship to it. That's something that will never translate to the big screen – might as well quit hoping.

[Leigh Alexander is news director for Gamasutra, reviews for various outlets, and maintains her gaming blog, Sexy Videogameland. Her monthly column at Kotaku deals with cultural issues surrounding games and gamers. She can be reached at leighalexander1 AT gmail DOT com.]

Playstation Home community manager CydoniaX says that Home-goers will be able to access and explore the island by clicking on the Red Bull Air Race map tile

CydoniaX also laid out the details on a few additions to the Home store:

* Ligne Roset and Diesel are getting their own storefronts in the mall.
* People who pre-order Killzone 2 through Amazon will be getting ISA Soldier and Helghast Assault Trooper outfits for use in Home once the game launches.
* Resident Evil: Degeneration themed t-shirts are coming to Home from Capcom.

PlayStation Home Content Update Coming This Week [Playstation Blog]

Not as much fun as the Milla Jovovich movies and not nearly as well-conceived or written as the games, “Degeneration” feels like an afterthought, stuck between the world of the movie trilogy and the world of some of the best games ever made. Without the B-movie charm of the former or the blockbuster action of the latter, “Resident Evil: Degeneration” ends up as the last thing fans of the “RE” movies or games usually think of their beloved franchise, forgettable.

The Hollywood Chicago critic goes on to say that the script falls apart after an effective opening, quickly becoming "too boring to justify its existence."

The biggest disappointment? That the movie doesn't include a demo of the game, presumably for the Blu-ray toting PS3.

Blu-Ray Review: ‘Resident Evil: Degeneration’ Dead on Arrival

Sony Pictures and CAPCOM® Present an All New CG-Animated Feature Film, RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION

World Premiere October 10th at Tokyo Game Show

North American Premiere November 13th at New York City Horror Film Festival

Fangoria-Sponsored West Coast Premiere in Los Angeles November 18th

CULVER CITY, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Seven years after the destruction of Raccoon City, Leon and Claire are back as the war against the zombies rages on in RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION, a co-production of CAPCOM Co., Ltd. (CAPCOM®) and Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan Co., Ltd. (SPEJ) based on the popular video game franchise.

Making its worldwide theatrical debut in Japan on October 18, 2008, RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION will be exhibited in the US at the New York City Horror Film Festival on November 13th and at a screening in Los Angeles on November 18th hosted by Fangoria.

Produced by renown gaming producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi (associate producer of Resident Evil: Apocalypse and video game producer of Resident Evil® 4 and Devil May Cry® 4) and directed by Makoto Kamiya (special effects director of L: Change The World, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack), RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION is a spectacular, CG-animated thrill-ride that takes the terrifying zombie action of the blockbuster Resident Evil franchise to a whole new level with jaw-dropping visual effects and heart-pounding suspense.

The "Umbrella Incident" that took place in Raccoon City ended with a missile attack ordered by the government intended to wipe out the deadly zombie virus. Following this catastrophe, the Umbrella Corporation’s stock plummeted, bankrupting the business giant. Seven years later, at an airport in the Heartland of America, a commercial airliner unwittingly delivers some deadly cargo. Now, in an airport beginning to fill with the undead, the horrific disaster is about to repeat itself.

More information available at http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/residentevildegeneration/

I'd discuss the whole 1.78:1 1080p AVC video accompanied by a 5.1 Dolby TrueHD soundtrack bit, but quite frankly those words are gibberish to a man who picked up his surround sound system from Walmart while shopping for socks.

Resident Evil: Degeneration Gets Specs [Blu-ray.com via Capcom]

The "Umbrella Incident" that took place in Raccoon City ended with a missile attack ordered by the government intended to wipe out the deadly zombie virus. Following this catastrophe, the Umbrella Corporation’s stock plummeted. This serious blow to the business giant resulted in its complete dissolution. 7 years later, at an airport somewhere in the United States, on an ordinary autumn afternoon, a zombie is unleashed. Now, in an airport beginning to fill with the undead, the horrific disaster is about to repeat itself...

Well that certainly sounds...like every other zombie movie ever created. The difference here? Claire Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy. They really didn't have to go to all this trouble. They could have have just issued a press release that said "Leon. Claire. Zombies. Guns." and we'd be sold.

Sony Pictures and CAPCOM® Introduce RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION
Fans at San Diego’s Comic-Con International Get a Sneak Preview of the All New CGI Animated Feature Film Based on the Popular CAPCOM Video Game Franchise

Comic-Con International 2008
SAN DIEGO & TOKYO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Seven years after the destruction of Raccoon City, the war against the zombies rages on in RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION, a co-production of CAPCOM Co., Ltd. (CAPCOM) and Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan Co., Ltd. (SPEJ) based on the popular video game and film franchise. Making its theatrical debut this fall in Japan and coming to DVD, Blu-ray™ High-Def and PSP in North America later in 2008, this spectacular, all-CGI animated feature takes the zombie action to a whole new level with its ground-breaking visual effects and thrilling new storyline.

SPEJ and CAPCOM hosted a sneak preview of RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION during a panel and press conference, open to the public, at San Diego’s Comic-Con International in San Diego on Friday, July 25 at 1:00 PM P.D.T. in the San Diego Convention Center (Room 2). During this event, producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi (associate producer of Resident Evil: Apocalypse and video game producer of Resident Evil® 4 and Devil May Cry® 4) and director Makoto Kamiya (special effects director of L: Change The World, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack) presented the worldwide debut of the film’s revealing two-minute theatrical trailer and answered questions about RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION.

SYNOPSIS

The "Umbrella Incident" that took place in Raccoon City ended with a missile attack ordered by the government intended to wipe out the deadly zombie virus. Following this catastrophe, the Umbrella Corporation’s stock plummeted. This serious blow to the business giant resulted in its complete dissolution. 7 years later, at an airport somewhere in the United States, on an ordinary autumn afternoon, a zombie is unleashed. Now, in an airport beginning to fill with the undead, the horrific disaster is about to repeat itself...

Image courtesy PSU

Pro Tip: Don't show up for the Resident Evil: Degeneration panel at Comic-Con less than 30 minutes prior to it happening or you won't get in. With the San Diego Con at capacity, getting into the Capcom helmed panel required serious Resident Evil dedication. We were covering Jordan Mechner's panel instead, but thanks to GameTrailers, we have the good stuff — the trailer itself. Enjoy!

Things happen so quickly around here! You post a story about a woman needing a Wii and everyone jumps to help. Put up some images from the upcoming Resident Evil CGI movie and a couple hours later, you have a clip in your mailbox.

Kotakuite cody412 sends in a link to the above trailer that the photos from the last article were taken. Watch in horror as Resident Evil's ubiquitous zombies make their way to a DVD player near you.