I did not game much in April, my carpal tunnel is flaring up again and I’m getting a little video gamed out again, and I didn’t even notice the month switched over.. :\ I’ve been reading a lot again though, which is a fantastic hobby to switch to while my hands recover! But I did play a few games, and this time I’ve got two that couldn’t be more different: resident evil requiem (hereafter “RE9”) and Tomodachi Life - Living the Dream (“Tomodachi Life”). Both are entries in series I’ve loved in the past, so neither was particularly a new experience, and I actually really appreciated that!

I’ll start with Tomodachi Life, since it’s a lot more chill. It’s basically The Sims but Nintendo. It’s fucking weird as hell and a lot of fun if that’s you’re kind of thing. I’m shocked at how much it turned out to be my wife’s thing! I currently have like 10 hours of time in it, and she has 50! She boots it up multiple times everyday to play with her little Miis and see what weird shit they get up to.

I love how it’s expanded from the 3DS version, where Miis were either in their apartments, or like, teleporting between island locations. In the Switch version, the Miis will actually walk around the island to get from place to place, interact with objects and stores, and interact with other Miis who are out and about. This new freedom they have greatly increases the spontaneity of the game. But perhaps I should back up: Tomodachi Life is a kind of life simulator, similarish to The Sims. You make Miis, Nintendo’s little self-insert guys that were popularized with the Wii (but made their debut in the Japanese only DS game Tomodachi Collection), to populate your island and can interact with them or just watch them do their thing. There are rewards for interacting with them and increasing their happiness, little objects you can give them, personality traits, phrases they will say, or even vacation trips they can take. As you hand these things out to Miis, they will incorporate them into their personality, but they’ll also incorporate them into the relationships, which will cause ideas to spread. Let’s say you give one Mii a UFO pet, others will start talking about it too. Or if you tell one Mii that you think it’s cringey to drink milk from the carton cringey in real life you’ll see more Miis talking about drinking milk from the carton in short order. It’s memetic, to use exactly the right word.

It’s a little hard for me to describe the breadth of what can happen in this game. They can fall in love, get rejected or start dating, get married, have a kid (in my wife’s game, our Miis had a daughter and the Miis chose the name Lee for her!), fight, pretend sword fight, host conferences on why an orange cat is mysterious, yell at the sea about their heartbreak, talk about how little sleep they got, share clothing and food trends,… it goes on and on, and I have barely scratched it because of how little I’ve played. My wife has seen so much more and she’s constantly tilting her Switch towards me so I can see some new unhinged or wacky interaction or dream.

It’s goofy. I’d recommend it if you’re into weird spontaneous shit.

On the other side is RE9. I only have five hours in this one right now and that’s with me getting stuck a few times too. I’m stuck kinda early still I think, when the first blister heads start to show up. A friend has told me there is a way to deal with them, but I just haven’t figured it out yet. But so far, it’s reminding me of everything I love about Resident Evil as a series and horror games too. I really can’t handle horror movies, but games are different, especially when they’re not presented in first person (yes, I set Grace’s point of view to 3rd person over the shoulder - it’s still plenty scary for me!). There’s something really fun about being scared the first time you encounter something horrible and new and then gaining confidence as you deal with the threat multiple times. I could easily see myself having no frights on later replays. It kinda feels empowering in a way.

I also love how fucking goofy Resident Evil can be as a series. The second time you get control of Leon you finally get a chance to parry the chainsaws that plagued him in Resident Evil 4! And then the zombies throw it around and cause absolute chaos and it just becomes a laugh riot. One time, I thought a zombie had died after another zombie had pushed the chainsaw through his torso from behind, so I just ran passed him.. to find out that he had not in fact died. Instead, he grabbed me, pulled me into a hug, and pushed the exposed chainsaw end through Leon’s chest! I fell on to the arm of my couch laughing hysterically and confused the hell out of my wife who had only been paying partial attention (she’s been having a good time watching me play). And the upgrade system, where you find random old coins around the hospital and put them into dispenser machines in a weird gambling/bar room? Hell yeah, just absolute video game shenanigans. I love that about Resident Evil, at least the ones I’ve played anyway: they always know that they’re video games first. But so far I’ve only played REmake, half of 2, half of 0, and 4 like, ten times. I did get the triple pack of 7, 8, and 9 for Switch 2, so I’m keen to check those other two out after I get through 9.

Also, I must call out the first gameplay segment where Grace is walking up to the hotel in downtown Wrenwood. It is CLEARLY Wabash Avenue in the Loop of Chicago. Even the transit signage is 100% modeled after the CTA signage.

Image Description: a young anime girl with brown hair, light skin, and a yellow rain jacket (?) holds up a bottle of Jeppson’s Malört in one hand and a Chicago style hot dog in the other. She’s wearing a blue hat with the text “Please be patient I have autism” on it. Her expression is happy, mouth open, eyes closed. Behind her is a west-facing view taken from the inbound platform of the old State/Lake CTA platform in the Loop (old because it is has recently been torn down and a new station is under construction at the time of this post).