Review of Resident Evil 3 Remake

I've played very few computer games in the past 15 years. I played some of Far Cry 3. Played both Left4Dead games (but they were just multiplayer games). And I also played some of the Resident Evil 2 remake. And that's about it, I think. I also over 20 years ago played the original Resident Evil and the remake of it, and the original Resident Evil 2 in its entirety. But I never played the original Resident Evil 3.

First thing to note is that this Resident Evil 3 Remake is extremely short. I think the median playthrough time on first attempt is slightly less than 6 hours. It took me over 12 hours though. Why did it take me over twice as long? Well, I didn't attempt to do it quickly at all and just had my characters walking unless running away from enemies. Also, as I said, I scarcely play any computer games. I remember when I played the first resident evil game (not the longer remake), that it took me 12 hours 45 mins. But that was in 1998 and was the first computer game I'd played since the early 1980's when I used to play space invaders and the like. But I digress...

So, it's very short, and it has no additional missions either.

Infuriatingly, control is sometimes wrestled away from you where it simply plays a pre-recorded sequence where you have no control over your character (I think people refer to them as "cut scenes"). Indeed, for the first 20 mins, it was more like watching a film than playing a computer game! Are most computer games like that now? If I wanted to watch a film I'd do precisely that! Moreover, sometimes, in the midst of these pre-recorded sequences it tells you to hold the stick in a certain direction, or press button A on the controller. I have no idea of the purpose of making people do this, it's just a pain and also means you can't go off to make yourself a coffee when the pre-recorded sequence starts.

Also, sometimes the character pulls out her (and his) radio, and then you can't run or interact with anything. This happens constantly and is a complete pain.


And the boss battles (I think that's what they're referred to). There's 4 of them! I think when I used to play computer games there was only the one boss battle right at the end of the game. Is it a problem that there's 4 boss battles? Yes, for one thing the boss -- Nemesis in this case -- is vastly disproportionately more difficult to defeat than any of the other enemies. So I was doing fine on the normal difficulty, until the 2nd Boss battle. I kept having to play that same damn boss battle over and over and over again. It was tedious! Although now I feel I've finally got the hang of it. 

I'd much prefer a game where there are no pre-recorded sequences and no boss battles. Then I might get into playing computer games again. 

And the controller. I'm using an xbox controller. It uses 2 sticks, which I think is now standard in game consoles? But I'm not used to it and I find it extraordinarily difficult to aim at zombies heads since they constantly sway side to side as they approach you.

Also, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to look behind me when my character is walking or running without changing the direction in which my character is moving. I presume other people just know how to do it as this won't be the first time they've used this type of controller. I've spent some considerable time trying to work this out and also by Googling and asking beneath youtube videos, but all to no avail. But I know it's possible since I've seen other people do it on youtube playing this game. So I'm at a considerable disadvantage when being chased by Nemesis. I need to be able to see behind me when running away so I know when he is about to unleash an attack!

OK, now for some more positive comments. It has a staggering 5 levels of difficulty, and more importantly, each of these levels is significantly different from each other. The first difficulty, the so-called "assisted" level, is extremely easy. Then there's the normal level, then hard, then nightmare, then inferno. The latter 2 levels of difficulty are different in that the zombies have a much greater reach, and the items are placed in different areas compared to the other 3 levels. I've played some of the nightmare level and it's absurdly difficult. You can, though, apply what are effectively cheats i.e you accumulate points for killing a certain number of enemies and can buy guns with infinite ammo etc. I've never previously used a cheat before in a computer game but I see no alternative if I want to get through the nightmare level (the video shows me playing a small part of the nightmare level, and also testing out my microphone).

Oh yes, and the graphics are gorgeous. And despite the fact I bought my computer 8 years ago back in 2012 (for £1400 minus monitor, so very expensive) the game runs fine.

In conclusion, despite all the detractions I've listed, I quite like this game. I just wish it were longer and had some mini-games at the end!



Edited to add:  I tried to submit this review to Amazon UK under the xbox1 version.  It was rejected.  I asked why.  The response states:

Hello, 

We encourage reviews, video and images on Amazon, both positive and negative. However, the video on your review titled "Many detractions, but worth playing" for "Resident Evil 3 (Xbox One)" doesn’t comply with our guidelines. 

Your video includes Guns and Firearms. We restrict videos with inappropriate content because audiences within our Community may be sensitive to that content.

Hmm . .this is surreal.   I fired 1 shot at a electricity box to momentarily electrocute the zombies.  I never shot at the zombies, and they didn't bite me. But, even if it had contained any violence, it's a resident evil game for heavens sake! 

Comments on a guest essay about Materialism and Idealism

I've just read this guest essay by a certain Stephen Davies on Bernardo Kastrup's blog. I'm not particularly keen on his strategy of comparing the hard problem of consciousness with Zeno's paradoxes, but I'd like to comment and expand on some of his more direct points and arguments.

He says: 

[W]e need to briefly explore what the hard problem of consciousness is, and to do that we need to look at the metaphysical philosophy of materialism. Simply stated, this asserts that everything is made of matter, of physical stuff. You may wonder why such a seemingly obvious and self-explanatory statement requires the title of a metaphysical philosophy. The reason is that materialism isn’t just saying that there are physical things, it is saying everything is physical. Materialism is saying that the thoughts you are having now are physical; it is saying that the curious and unique mix of emotions you are subjectively experiencing at this very moment are purely and solely physical material things. And it is saying that the awareness that witnesses all these subjective feelings is physical. This no longer seems so obvious, does it?

I'm in agreement with all of this. They are saying the material stuff out there -- trees, rocks, stars etc -- is the same type of stuff as toothache, feeling angry, or indeed the experience of seeing said trees, rocks and stars. And the experiencer or self who undergoes all these experiences is also material! But what is the cash value of this, what does it actually mean? My experiences, emotions, thoughts etc don't have any attributes we conceive the material world as having -- so no shape, no size, no mass, no electric charge etc. Moreover, our consciousness appears to be invisible. I cannot see your consciousness, you cannot see mine. It can only be inferred from our behaviour, not directly detected.

Not only does it perhaps seem a little strange to assume that all our mental, emotional and spiritual experiences, and the subjective experiencer, are actually objective, external and physical, materialists have absolutely no idea, even in principle, how matter could possibly create our rich inner life of conscious awareness and experience. This is what is referred to as the hard problem of consciousness.

Their solution is often to identify consciousness with neural processes or, alternatively, what such processes do NB it is not being said here that neural processes cause or elicit conscious experiences, but rather our conscious experiences are nothing but such neural processes. If you think this is utterly nonsensical, then you get it, it is. A bit like saying ice cream is literally one and the same thing as sand, or identifying any 2 completely different objects as being one and the very same object.

So, even though it might be true that conscious experiences are inevitably correlated with neural processes, this doesn't justify materialism. At the very most, this might lead us to say the neural processes cause or elicit [non-material] conscious experiences. But then we get the problem that the author of this essay states; namely "how matter could possibly create our rich inner life of conscious awareness and experience". I myself try to explain this problem in my Brains affecting Minds do not rule out an Afterlife and I also explain there that even if there were no such problem, this still fails to show that such correlations compel the conclusion that the brain creates consciousness.

But what of science? Isn’t the indisputable and phenomenal success of science and technology proof that materialism is an extremely successful theory? No. Science is agnostic on metaphysical philosophy. The scientific method and all the advances and technological breakthroughs that follow, work perfectly well regardless of your philosophical beliefs. That is, in fact, its strength: it relies on empirical data, not belief.

Yes, material reality exhibits patterns, science describes such patterns using mathematics. How could that possibly connote that consciousness is material? It seems to me to be similar to someone exclaiming that given how successful metal detectors are at finding metal objects, anything that is not registered by the detector, such as plastic objects, must be really metal in disguise or else illusory. It's that silly.

The metaphysical theory that everything is matter is a philosophy, not a scientific fact. But we can go further and say that even the assumption that there is any matter at all, is equally a theory and a philosophical assumption, not a scientific fact. The idea that there is physical matter outside of our conscious experience is just that, an idea. We only know for sure that we have subjective experience; we cannot know for sure what constitutes that experience. The only thing we know for sure is our immediate experience of being subjectively aware. Everything we can ever possibly know can only be known by us within and via the medium of our subjective experience.

Yes, we cannot know that a material reality exists at all if what we mean by a material reality is material stuff having a full-blooded existence entirely independently of consciousness. One alternative is Berkeley's Idealism otherwise known as subjective idealism. I talk about Berkeley's subjective idealism here (this isn't quite the same as Kastrup's idealism).

In contrast to this idealist view of the world, a materialist philosophy posits an external and objective physical world that is not directly knowable. Our only experience of such a world, if it exists at all, is through our subjective experiences. The idea that there is such an objective external physical world is an abstraction thought up by consciousness. And it is an abstract theory that is becoming less and less supported by the results of our best scientific experiments in quantum mechanics.

Yes, for example, is this material external world coloured? Are there sounds and smells out there? In other words, is this material reality similar to our perceptions of it? Not according to the standard scientific story. To be honest, I do not think you have to be an idealist to emphatically reject this scientific story. I regard it as preposterous this notion that objects are not really coloured but are a creation of the mind.

The alleged deleterious effect of the virus on education

From here.

Children’s commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, said:

"children had made a huge sacrifice during the pandemic"

A huge sacrifice not having to attend school and having a 4 month holiday? 😮😄 Yeah, and black is now white.

She also said:

“The government needs to be bold ... to make sure no child is left behind. If not, they risk losing a generation for good. The stakes are simply that high”

Does she mean like all the ones that leave school who think 1/3 divided by a 1/9 equals 1/27, who think "your" means "you are", lose is spelt loose, people get hung not hanged etc? Not to mention being brainwashed into subscribing to preposterous beliefs like colours, sounds and smells don't exist out there but are creations of the mind etc.

The Birth of Modern Science

Just read this blog post by Edward Feser.

Like so many other superficial materialists, Greene thinks the problem merely has to do with its being intuitively difficult to see how conscious experiences could be material. No, the problem is much deeper than that – it is that modern physics essentially defines the physical world in a way that entails that consciousness is non-physical. The problem has less to do with consciousness than with matter as physics conceives of it.

Yes, absolutely spot on.  I've often talked about this myself e.g. in my Why the existence of consciousness rules modern materialism out.  Indeed, the philosopher  Keith Augustine (one of the editors and by far the most prolific contributor to The Myth of an Afterlife and which I reviewed here) has said that I should get myself a parrot in order to save myself repeating this "birth of modern science" (as he labels it) point. 

The fact is that the conception of matter that arose with the birth of modern science in the 17th Century by definition rules out the existence of experiences, and indeed intentionality.  Yet so may scientists insist that this modern materialism is obviously correct and that dualism has many problems.  But, really, they don't know what they're talking about.  They just lack the knowledge of the history and philosophy of science.  But this doesn't stop them writing pop science books, spouting forth their nonsense, brainwashing young males in the process who inevitably just lap up these books.   

The Horse and his Boy

The horse and his boy was the most unusual of the 7 Narnia books. The main characters weren't people from our world. It was set entirely in Narnia . .well . .not Narnia but set entirely in the Narnia Universe. Someone once said to me that they didn't like it for this reason, but I loved it. Seems meant for slightly older children than the other Narnia books, can't remember really as years since read it. Have read them as an adult though.

One of the customer reviews on USA Amazon says:

I scanned through the one-star reviews and found that very few adequately conveyed the naked racism and sexism that taints this book. If this book were written today, it would rightfully fail to even find a publisher without serious revisions. Our society has progressed beyond Lewis's worst prejudices which he gives free rein (ha! Pun!) in this silly and--quite frankly--offensive story.

At least it doesn't suffer from speciesism as it would have done if called the boy and his horse.

Grammar Schools

In the UK, up until the 1970's, we had both what are called Grammar schools and Secondary Modern schools that children attended from the ages of 11-16 years old.  Those who passed a test called the 11+ attended the Grammar schools, the rest attended the Secondary Modern schools.  I believe it was only around 20-25% of children went to Grammar school.  

From the following article, the author Allison Pearson says:

I’m spitting mad. For 40 years, since the 1976 Education Act compelled local authorities to introduce comprehensive education, we have had to put up with the nonsense that grammar schools are evil and that a kid like Adam will do as well in an average comp as a child in a select pool of motivated high achievers. Well, he won’t. Far too often, such a child will drown. For four shameful decades, our country has sunk down the international education league tables, social mobility has stalled and hundreds of thousands of our brightest children have been betrayed.

...

By contrast, if you’re a brainy British kid who could seriously do with being plucked from their background, selection is a dirty word.

By "brainy" I assume she means intelligent.  Although intelligence might be a pre-requisite for passing the test, it'll obviously involve more than that.  A child who rarely listens in class or/and who has no interest in school and the knowledge it can impart (myself for example) will be highly unlikely to pass such a test, no matter how intelligent they are.    

But I agree with the author that an intelligent child won't generally do as well in a secondary modern. Indeed, I think that most people will agree that grammar schools are better in terms of instilling an education.  Presumably very few think of them as being "evil".  The problem is that their existence necessitates the existence of secondary modern schools, which will be worse than comprehensives (no selection at 11 years old, I attended such a Comprehensive school).

Another issue is that I doubt that one's education actually increases one's intelligence, at least not in one's innate capacity to understand various issues.

Note I'm not saying I'm opposed to grammar schools -- I don't know whether I am or not. But to simply focus on how great grammar schools are and ignore how poor secondary modern schools were, is not to provide an impartial view.

Existential thoughts and Depression

I've noticed since first coming on the Internet (back in 1999), that when I express certain existential thoughts e.g. what does it all mean etc, people think I'm depressed.

Nothing could be further from the truth! It's because I'm excited. My thoughts are bubbling to the surface. I'm fascinated by what it all means (if anything).

Either the Universe and our lives are absurd. Or there is some ultimate purpose (which suggests a "life after death" and all that might entail). But either possibility is mind blowing. 

In my heart of hearts, I'm convinced there's an ultimate purpose to it all.

But I assure people I'm not depressed when I express such thoughts. In fact, if anything, I'm feeling pleasantly . .umm . . wistful . . awed by it all?? Certainly not depressed though!