Ok im 3 chapters in and my initial thoughts are that Resident Evil 5 feels different very different.

Concntrating on polishing RE 4′s combat further, RE5 has forgone item carrying stratergy, puzzle solving, baroque/industrial flavour and yellow herbs in favour of a more run and gun approach that personally, i feel, make it lose some of what made RE in the first place.

But realistically what could capcom do with the franchise.?? Dead rising is another take on the zombie apocalypse theme are there are plenty zombie light gun games on the Wii. So, racist controversy aside, i really like the setting, plenty of scope for some nice set pieces with globalisation bioterrrorism and power conflict in the area making for interesting themes. The core gunplay and combat is great, the 30 second snapshot of how a game should be fun is spot on and the mass zombie battles and boss fights are still exciting as ever. It just a shame some of the ideas are recycled so much from past set pieces in the series or dont quite offer anything new compared to other action/shooter games.

5 Things id change:-

The switch to real time menu organisation has it’s flaws. While fine for preparing and using objects during quiet moments it really is ridiculously difficult to tend to your character in tense crowd control moments and frentic bossfights, this would be fine if the game was designed to give you a chance to prepare even on your first run through. However one instance of its failings was apprent on the scorpion/bat boss where periodically i had to collect and equip a particular weapon to weaken it, switching into menu while my character stood idley by. Every time i was close to equiping, the boss, who is much more mobile with singleminded AI hellbent on knocking a third off my life, would drive me to shear frustration.

OTT bosses – It was great when it was just obese snakes or spiders, and all the humanoid tyrant variations were memorable, but the mutated horrors in this RE are straight out of  a anime horror illustator’s O level scrap book (i’m looking at you bat-scorpion)

More plot exposition through the game world.  Ok so the story in Resident Evils are not exactly shakespere but the way these accidents were unravelled by hacking into computers and looking through notes and files left in the zombies wake, added to the sense of exploration and build towards the final climatic scenes throughout past titles in the series. However these occurances are now rare and brief, perhaps to deliberately focus on gunplay.

Change the control method – if your going to go more action than survival horror, Capcom, go all the way. Make the lead characters react like trained combatants, not make me feel like a tank with legs. 180′ing to face a boss then shooting running past it then 180′ing again and shooting etc meakes me feel like charlie chaplin rather than a member of stars. There will be ways to make firefights tense while empowering the characters a little more. And this would make more sense with the announcement of the controversial downloadable mutiplayer mode.
I enjoy the ammo saving, context sensitive combat, from Resi 4 (Leon suplex ftw) so how about trading true multidirectional controls and more agile abilities like a sidestep or roll when you are brawling if you dont have a gun equipt, the drawback being you’re a more vunerable from large groups, or its harder to get the stun without a firearm??

Bring back the typewriter!

With the launch of Street figter 4 and HD remix on PS3 (finally) I decided to complete work on a custom ps2 sanwa joystick..however after many soldering attempts after my ps2 joypad pcb refused to work

I am now attempting build of a wireless joystick for ps3.

Parts

1 sanwa ball stick ordered – gremlinsolutions
6 happ concave buttons – gremlinsolutions
2 happ convex buttons – gremlinsolutions
Cherry microswitchs – gremlinsolutions
4 countersunk bolts/washers/nuts  - local hardware store
1 dvd storage box – from Debenhams
1 PS3 wireless control pad, came free with my machine

Tools

Phillips screwdriver
Superglue
Razor blade
15W Soldering iron – Thanks Dad
Lead free solder – Maplin
Electrical tape – wilkos
Satin finish black spray paint -  wilkos

Optional but gets the job done

Fluxing pen – Maplin
Solder mop – Maplin
Masking tape

I started by disassembling and gutting a  wireless PS3 pad. Then strip and tin the ends of all your wires

PRO TIP: get as thin wire as you can find, i had been using a horribly thick 0.3 wire from maplin which kept disconnecting from the soldering points, id been using superglue to secure the solder and then have to burn the glue off when i found out it wasnt making contact properly. The nasty chemicals and heat literally burnt my first board.  away and the fumes are horrendous! This all changed once i used finer wire. It was so easy to solder!

PRO TIP 2: use a 15W soldering iron, this is a low heat for a soldering iron, it will stop your solder from getting too liquid  and will cool quicker while you’re holding the fiddly wires.

PRO TIP 3: use a fluxing pen if you prefer to help create a more adhesive bond to beween points

On the board you should see where the digital pad and button contacts are just by the shape. There is usually two small copper areas where normally when you press a button on a joypad the button makes contact between these two points. So what i did was solder one end of the wire to one of the two contacts to one end of a microswitch and the other end of the microswitch to the other copper contact, this will allow the microswitch to complete the circuit

Rinse and repeat x as many microswitches you have for the joystick and buttons, I usually had street fighter training mode on while soldering to check the buttons and stick were functioning as expected after every succesful solder.

I obtained a HRAP3 template from srk shoryuken.com which can be found here: http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=164245

I bought a cheap 99p picture frame from wikos and removed the mdf back panel and superglued this onto the bottm of the dvd container lid to give it some needed depth for mounting the joystick. The happ buttons are screw in not snap in so depth didnt really affect them. I used the HRAP template and dremelled the holes through the mdf and case.

I undermounted the joystick with 4 countersunk nuts and bolts so they would sit flush with the top surface. I added two more push to make switches for start and select and a bigger one for the PS Home guide button, they all sit in the top right corner. The free 3rd party joypad pcb had a on/off switch as it requires batteries and does not charge like an official ps3 pad via usb. (I didnt want to risk ruining an official £35 pad on my first go!) So i rewired the contacts to another switch on the right hand side to allow me turn the stick on.

Next up on a trip down to London to see my folks i had the chance to finish spraying off the top panel satin black (i had an Akuma theme in mind…) And with that put the whole thing back together

And there we have it – Sanwa JLF Wireless PS3 Stick, is probably much cheaper than the MadCatz TE sticks but took some hardcore modding work to get it to where it is now, Next step is some art i think. Stay tuned. And any comments appreciated!