Resident Evil is the most successful video game movie yet, and should…

In case you haven't heard, the Resident Evil movie rocks. Zach Cregger's singular adaptation of the beloved Capcom video games is a 95-minute shot of t-Virus adrenaline that does a better job of adapting the series to film than any of the previous seven movies, despite telling an original story and failing to include a single game character. iwanktv.club

This caused something of a backlash ahead of release, leading Cregger to embark on a self-professed "apology tour" during interviews. But I'm here to tell you all that Cregger was right: more filmmakers need to be brave enough to tell their own stories when adapting video games, and stay true to the source material in other ways, even if it means leaving fan-favorite figures behind.

Despite taking place "on the periphery" of Resident Evil 2, on the day of the t-Virus outbreak, Cregger's Resident Evil movie doesn't feature the iconic likes of Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Jill Valentine, Nemesis or any of the myriad characters and monsters we know are running around the streets of Raccoon City at this exact time. Instead, it focuses on medical courier Bryan, an average Joe who's comically out of his depth when faced with seemingly unkillable zombies and even gnarlier mutated creatures. His simple goal: to get the basis of an antidote for the infection from A to B.

The movie's only acknowledgement of Resident Evil's outrageously convoluted lore is a brief moment of exposition revealing that (who else but) the Umbrella Corporation is behind the t-Virus outbreak. This side of Resident Evil, along with the well-explored characters, evidently wasn't of interest to Cregger.

And who can blame him – we had six Milla Jovovich-led movies featuring cosplay versions of familiar Resident Evil figures in daft fan-fiction scenarios that sort of looked a bit like the games if you squinted. These movies were at least fun, which can't really be said about the disastrous 2021 movie Welcome to Raccoon City – an adaptation so misguided in its efforts to please fans that it featured originally cut character Lisa Trevor, but was somehow the worst of the lot.

Instead, Cregger, a clearly passionate Resident Evil fan who also happens to be one of the most accomplished and exciting contemporary filmmakers, has adapted Resident Evil in the ways that matter: translating the tone, atmosphere, structure, absurdity, and the you-know-it-if-you-see-it feel of the games to film in a way that feels practically groundbreaking.

Lone survivor

Everyman Bryan might be a new kind of protagonist for a Resident Evil story (more akin to Ethan at the start of 7 than one-man-army Leon), but the idea of following a single isolated character through a nightmare gauntlet is standard operating procedure for the series. No time for idle chit-chat when you've got mutated beasties to kill and arcane sub-objectives to complete.

There's also the undeniable fact that most of the games simply aren't suited for a 1:1 translation to film. Resident Evil 2 might be an all-time classic, but Leon or Claire running laps around the RPD building to stay out of Mr. X's reach is unlikely to lend itself to compelling cinema. And the less said about the B-movie stories and dialogue, the better.

Despite his passion for the series, Cregger is smart enough to know that if you want to experience Resident Evil 4, the best way to do that will always be to play the game. This has long been the case for video game adaptations – particularly on the big screen – which have typically loosely adapted the stories and the characters out of necessity in a way that satisfies no one. Beyond a handful of specific examples – The Last of Us on TV among them – that truly lend themselves to faithful adaptation, it's almost always going to be the case that using the worlds as a jumping-off point for new stories, while honoring the ethos of the games, will yield more satisfying results for fans and newcomers.

We're living through the golden age of video game adaptations, akin to the position superhero cinema was in around the early days of the MCU. And just like superhero cinema was no longer treated purely as disposable kids' fare by a generation of filmmakers who grew up reading comics, as a generation of filmmakers who grew up playing video games move into positions of power in Hollywood, the approach to adapting them has become increasingly sophisticated. There have already been a number of successful examples on TV, including Fallout and Arcane, neither of which adapts specific stories from the games, but still manage to stay true to their respective worlds. Resident Evil is the first true success story on film, at least one put out by a major studio.

Of course, there are examples of this approach not working out in the past. 2016's Assassin's Creed, starring Michael Fassbender, wasn't a million miles away from Cregger's Resident Evil in its use of a new cast of characters in a familiar setting and scenario. But without casting aspersions, it's fair to say that Assassin's Creed director Justin Kurzel – the extremely accomplished filmmaker behind the likes of Snowtown and The True History of the Kelly Gang – probably didn't understand Assassin's Creed in the same way that Cregger does Resident Evil, and it showed.

A new way forward

The discourse around Resident Evil has been a bummer to see as a long-serving fan of the games and an equally big fan of Cregger. Here, at long last, a series as storied and full of potential as Resident Evil has enlisted a filmmaker with the vision and talent to craft something that lives up to the legacy of the games – which he accomplished and then some – and the instinct of many is to tear the movie down because it isn't a 1:1 translation. I, for one, don't want to see the same thing again, simply in live action; that experience is open to me again anytime by booting up my PlayStation. I'll always opt for something new, as long as it feels true to the world it's bringing to the screen.

It's too early to say whether or not filmmakers will learn the lessons of Cregger's Resident Evil. We've yet to get a proper glimpse of Wes Ball's The Legend of Zelda movie, though given comments from Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto recently that the movie would be inspired by the history of the whole series, and some sneaky set photos that appear to feature a mix of costumes from different eras, I'll be surprised if it's a faithful rendering of a specific entry. Better it captures the spirit of the series first and foremost, followed by any specifics which support that.

As for Resident Evil, despite saying he's had ideas for a sequel, it doesn't seem all that likely Cregger will return – and who can blame him. While many consider the ending abrupt, you can't deny that it closes the loop on Bryan as a character, and serves as a tragic origin story for a hulking Raccoon City sub-boss; you could almost imagine Leon stumbling across his voice message for Michelle in Raccoon City General Hospital's subterranean car park before going on to take him out with a few well-placed magnum shots to that bulging eye. As far as adapting a video game goes, Cregger has achieved an easy S+ rank.

Resident Evil is out now. For more, check out our ranking of the best Resident Evil movies and our spoiler-filled Resident Evil movie ending explained.

I decided to finally take fate into my own hands. Bloodborne is one of my favorite games of all time, and it is the only one I have spent a significant amount of time playing on the Sony PlayStation 4. I resent that. I hate that horrible little box under my TV with a passion. I think it's only good for watching Gilmore Girls⁠—I don't like playing videogames on it. I am a PC man through and through.

Enter the shadPS4 emulator and BB Launcher, two wonderful tools for running this wonderful game on PC. I followed YouTuber Retro Renew's guide to emulating Bloodborne, and we were off to the races.

Blood boy

Sekiro, Elden Ring, and Armored Core 6 are all-timer games for me. Crucially, they've demonstrated continued growth and a willingness to experiment on the part of FromSoftware. I don't think the studio "peaked" with Bloodborne by any means, or that its best days are behind it, but there is nothing else out there like it.

The atmosphere and aesthetics of Yharnam are still so striking and odd, like if Nosferatu (pick your version) and Lovecraft were chopped and screwed into black metal album art. It applies the surreal, mythic sensibility of FromSoftware to the modern world, resulting in the most dreamlike, alienating narrative the studio has yet created.

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The Healing Church and Byrgenwerth are simultaneously ancient and right there. Master Willem, the primeval progenitor of Cthulhu Studies in this world, is still chilling in a rocking chair on his front porch. Byrgenwerth, a distinctly modern-feeling Cthulhu University, predates the Healing Church. There's this feeling Yharnam regressed from science and study into religious dogmatism, clad in modernity and enlightenment the entire time. But the scientists who created this sickened modernity are hardly blameless, no matter their intentions. Does this remind you of anything?

One reading I had never heard before tuning into the recent Chapo Trap House Players Club episode about Bloodborne is that it's a game about motherhood and mothers, and men ruining the world by doing terrible things to them. It seems so obvious to me now. Kos and her orphan, Queen Yharnam and her child Mergo: The crimes committed against these mothers are the inciting events of the story. You can do the same to Ariana and her child, in the hopes of becoming a god.

God the combat. I fought Ludwig the Accursed earlier than I ever have this playthrough, and it taxed me like little else I've played recently⁠—I felt weirdly shaken afterward. While this is the smallest arsenal of the post-Demon's Souls FromSoft catalogue, every weapon is fully distinct from one another⁠—with the exception of one baffling, fighting game-style moveset clone. Nobody playing Elden Ring would go to the mat for the Highland Axe or Torchpole, but every weapon in Bloodborne has at least one freak out there who will say it's their favorite⁠—I'm a Chikage/Saw Cleaver man, myself.

Madman's Escort

Bloodborne emulation has been better than the original console experience for some time, but it's still slightly janky. I find "unpatched multiplatform Unreal Engine 5 triple-A port" to be a good comparison point: Basically, the hitches and glitches reminded me of playing Jedi Survivor.

You'll need a beefier rig than for other PS4-era games, and it isn't like there are minimum and recommended specs online anywhere. But I've been surprised at the GPUs I've seen people running Bloodborne on, with one Reddit commenter claiming it was playable on a GTX 1650. I don't have a way of testing, but my wager would be that the RTX 3070 (or equivalent) is the point where you could start expecting reliable 1080p 60fps gameplay.

Digital Foundry demonstrated 4k 60fps gameplay on an RTX 4080 earlier this year, while I've had a pleasant experience at 1440p 60 on an RX 9070 XT from AMD. There's only one glitch that has really spat in my coffee, and I don't have a fix. I've run into two loading zones⁠—the entrance to Yharnam's Grand Cathedral and the elevator depot shortcut in the Forbidden Woods⁠—where, seven out of 10 times, stepping through a doorway turns my field of view into a neon nightmare until I quit and reload.

Reader, I have tried nearly everything to troubleshoot: Tweaking resolution, VRAM use, shadPS4 versions, lighting settings, FSR use, the gamut. I don't know if it's a Bloodborne on PC thing, or a fromsoftserve BB Remaster mod thing. The only option left is doing a full reinstall, and that just doesn't feel worth the effort for this edge case annoyance. I simply choose to accept it as a quirky old friend now, like having to slam the dashboard of an old car just so to get it to run.

Poison Chalice

I have always refused to be the kind of sucker who pays Sony to let me use the internet I already pay for (the PlayStation Network), so I never really interacted with Bloodborne's online-only procedurally generated dungeons. The PC BB Launcher has a function to force-add procgen dungeons to your save file, and comes with a library of popular ones for loot/experience farming.

I didn't even realize there was a whole sequence of story-based, set Chalice dungeons to explore prior to now⁠—it's possibly FromSoftware's least intuitive, most poorly explained system in any of its games, putting Demon's Souls world tendency to shame.

I'm conflicted: This is an astounding bit of nontraditional, asynchronous, and ephemeral online game design like nothing else out there. Swapping tips about choice dungeons on forums and the collective mapping out of optimal seeds is the sort of schoolyard rumor, collective discovery experience FromSoftware is so good at cultivating. I'm sorry I missed it in 2015. But they also really muck up what is otherwise one of the tightest itemization and upgrade systems FromSoftware has ever made.

I got a little bit hooked on some of the more difficult dungeons, and have grinded out the most powerful character I've yet made in Bloodborne⁠. I'm worried the final story areas will be a little too easy with all these extra levels. But hey: At least it's more Bloodborne.

Free Bloodborne

You can play Bloodborne on PC right now, and I recommend the experience. It's a difficult ask for a layman (much less a normie), and accessing the game files of your legally purchased copy is the biggest hurdle in the process. Playing Bloodborne at acceptable framerates and resolutions on a modern system should not be so needlessly challenging and potentially DMCA-infringing, but it's difficult to imagine the situation improving in the near future.

Sony has largely turned its back on PC gaming after a brief, early 2020s dalliance, and it also recently put down remaster studio Bluepoint for no good reason. While that has spared us from anything like the Demon's Souls Remake being inflicted on Bloodborne, the commonsense, light touch PC port it should have received at any point in the last decade has never felt further away—even though Miyazaki himself told us he isn't against the idea.