Back to Ordinary Decent Gaming roots.

As you may have figured out by now, Ordinary Decent Gamer isn’t always about gaming. In fact, it might feature less than almost every other topic. Food seems to sneak in more often than not. Drinks. Even electric cars. Life seems to get in the way of sitting down to play games.

Until you play them again, that is.

Resident Evil 4

I enjoy a mild horror game. Not intensely psychologically damaging like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but traditional survival horror like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. I’ve talked a lot about Resident Evil on here in the past. It’s safe to say I’m a fan of the games and the series has continued to stay with recent installments and the modern remakes. It’s a series I have been aware of since playing demos of the first two games when we first got our PlayStation in the 90s. Nothing quite affected me like Nemesis in Resident Evil 3, though, as I had actual nightmares about being stalked by him. Looking back at the blocky graphics it’s hard to see why, but the imagination is incredibly powerful when it comes to this sort of thing.

Resident Evil 4 was a big leap forward and completely changed the direction of the games. The first 3 were relatively slow moving with tank controls and fixed perspectives. RE4 was action-packed throwing you into the midst of hordes of angry villagers in rural Spain, requiring a steady hand to aim guns with any level of accuracy. It was first released for the Gamecube in 2005, but I played a PC port much later (around 2012/13) for the first time and was hooked. The translation of controller to keyboard was awful and got me killed during several quick time events (QTEs). The addition of QTEs was a little bizarre and very reflective of the time it came out. If you want to see real QTEs though, play Shenmue.

The remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 made sense, but when I heard about 4, as excited as I was, there wasn’t a huge gulf between the 2005 hit and the games we have today. Sure they polished it up and added a few nice features, but my first impressions weren’t as mindblowing as with RE2. I’ve since got back into it and have been enjoying the modern additions but it took me a while to settle in. The graphics on the PS5 version are incredible.

The Merchant was one of the most memorable parts of RE4 for me, and I was never not delighted by hearing the call “Welcome!”, followed by “Got a selection of good things on sale, stranger”. And he certainly did. A flaming purple torch meant you were safe and in good company. The Duke served as his replacement in RE8 although it was never quite the same.

Food and Drink

The recent excellent weather inspired a few more cocktails. The first was a mojito with a variety of different mint leaves from the garden and the classic Bacardi Carta Blanca white rum. Making crushed ice without a proper blender didn’t go terribly well, but it worked out in the end. It’s a little faffier than some other drinks with a lot of muddling, but it does make for a really refreshing drink.

The other spring-y cocktail I attempted was a Herbal Siciliano from my Tokyo Cocktails book. It was a tad more involved requiring the gin to be muddled with kumquats then simmered, followed by the addition of a bar spoon of olive oil. Once the mixture cooled down, it was shaken with egg white, simple syrup, and lemon juice. I only made a small amount as I wasn’t sure how successful it would be but it was pleasant and lightly fragrant. I might try again and make it properly this weekend.

Saturday morning is usually filled with some sort of easy baking, and this past weekend was no different. I made a batch of no-knead bagels again which worked really well and made for a delicious sausage and duck egg breakfast bagel.