Movie Review: Five Nights at Freddy's 2

This weekend, I saw the sequel to 2023's Five Nights at Freddy's movie!

The story

The film opens on a scene at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza in 1982. It's a bit tough to describe that scene without spoiling a lot of what happens afterwards, so I'll stay vague and say that it shows the start of this film's main antagonist. Once again, the film tries to call back to several elements that were revealed in Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (the game) and featuring the new animatronic characters it introduced, while bringing its own flavor and twists on the original story and its reveals, switching things around.

Back to the present day... well, a year after the events of the first film. Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) still lives with his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio), and seems to have hit some degree of stability in his life. He has kept in touch with Vanessa Shelly (Elizabeth Lail), the police officer he met a year prior; he claims their relationship is just friendly, but even the younger Abby can see right through that excuse. The reality, though, is that due to everything that happened a year earlier, he still has a few doubts about her. Vanessa is still plagued with visions and nightmares of her father.

Speaking of! Due to certain events happening near the end of the first film, the town has seen renewed interest in the myths around the Freddy Fazbear restaurants and a festival is taking place that weekend to celebrate it. Costumes, attractions, all that.

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

The Wii edition of Resident Evil 4 includes all prior DLCs from previous editions of the game, and I felt my coverage wasn’t finished until I discussed all of them, too. This time, we focus on Ada Wong, the mysterious spy that Leon keeps running into. First in Raccoon City, then here… What was she up to? Time to find out.

Separate Ways

    Oh, she knows how to use those just as well as Leon!

Ada’s quest isn't a 1-to-1 adaptation; it follows the events as she witnessed them, and her part in them. She’s responsible for a few problems Leon encounters, and saves his life more times than he knows. She can meet the merchant to buy weapons, upgrades to her attache case, and first aid kits, but the menu to upgrade guns is not available. You remain at a disadvantage since you can get all the guns you want but no improvements in firepower and efficiency. Ada has a knife too, but she starts with a Blacktail and a Shotgun, and can buy a unique weapon, the Bowgun (a crossbow, powerful but its ammo is rare and takes up inventory space). Her unique skill is the grappling hook, which she can use to reach high ledges or jump through windows; it’s only usable in specific places, though.

We see from the start that Ada is working under Albert Wesker. Does she know about his plans? That he wants to create a virus that will wipe out several billion people? She sneaks into the village from the first two chapters of the original quest. She’s there at the same time as Leon, who is already mowing through zombies. Ada is tasked by Wesker to ring the church’s bell, which will calm down the Ganados. Logically, Leon should be hearing a second shooter in the area, but he doesn’t.

Sorry, I'm not dressed for church; that's okay, I'm not here
to hear the hymns anyway.

She finds the Insignia key on a rooftop and the emblem for the church’s door. Yep – she’s the one who rung that bell that made the zombies go away while Leon was fighting them. In-between chapters, we get a recap showing that everything Leon learned on his own, Ada (and the organization she works for) already knew. She knows that Las Plagas are controlled through sonic frequencies, akin to dog whistles. It’s implied that all the key items that Leon took forever to find were so because Ada was using them first. She'd hide them off the beaten path, so Leon would take longer to finish his mission – otherwise, his heroic resolve would mow everything down before she could fulfill her goal.

She may not be the one to deal the finishing blow to the big
players of the Las Plagas conspiracy, but she still deals
with major threats in each of her chapters.

She must get into contact with Luis Sera, who has been captured by Los Illuminados. He's the one to will hand over to her the master Plaga sample. Ada starts in Mendéz’s home, follows Leon's path, and ends up saving him from the village chief. Bullets through the window, right in the guy’s back. This leads to her getting knocked out by Ganados and almost offered as sacrifice, but she kill her captors and finds her way back. She gets the key in the barn, reactivates the lift and heads over to the shack, killing an El Gigante on the way for sport. She arrives right after the cabin brawl, and confirms with Luis that he's her contact. However, he doesn’t have the sample yet…

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Chapters 4 and 5 today? Let’s try. There’s a LOT here.

The Terminally-Kidnapped Girl

IT'S HOT IN HERE! Why does a castle in the modern age
need a foundry?

The last piece of the chimera insignia is at the end of a foundry over lava, accessible through a cart. I’ve stopped wondering what isn’t in Salazar's castle. The insignia is placed and the blocking columns goes away; Leon and Ashley access a second cart, taking them to yet another building. More exploration ensues, including areas where Leon can partake in “shooting range”-style minigames to earn bottle caps. Mostly bragging rights rewards. There's 5 of those and they’re alright, but I was focused on finishing the plot for these articles.

You can't even do anything with the bottle caps afterwards.
Can't even sell them!

Good thing those armors are old and break with just a few
bullets, huh?

Further down, the two encounter more suits of armor possessed with parasites, some of which animate and attack. This is the only section where this enemy appears properly, by the way.. One thing I noticed while watching the longplay I use for screenshots is that when you know what’s coming, you can easily tell Ashley to stay somewhere safe while Leon deals with approaching threats. However, when you don’t know, she’s by your side as you destroy various horrors, and she becomes another variable in the fight. Her smaller health bar makes her a prime target.

Ah yes, the classic difficulty spike of "Just throw more
tough enemies at the hero".

More traps around the castle, like a falling ceiling that can be stopped by shooting at four red lights. And what about that giant drill taking up a hallway? One tower contains a giant Novistador nest. As she ventures through that room alongside Leon, Ashley gets taken (again!!) by one of those flying insects. We chase her captors through a tower with a giant mechanism, over a long bridge, and into another castle area where we fight TWO Garradors. This game has a pattern with major mooks; introduce them in a fight with just one, have a second battle with another on harder terrain (like a small cage, or a tight ravine), and later, pit Leon against two of them.

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

We’ve already gone through the basics, so I guess we can focus on the plot starting here – unless we have new gameplay elements coming soon…

Rescuing Ashley

If you need a better look at those... uh... growths,
go back to my title card in Part 1.

While making his way back to the village church, Leon finds Los Illuminados' insignia behind a waterfall. He had to kill a ton of Ganados to get to it, too; but it will let him open the church and save Ashley Graham. This chapter sees our first encounters with enemies who, after their head has been blown off, will have it replaced by a squirming creature popping out of their body with eyes, scythe arms, and limbs moving erratically. Those fucked-up things are the actual Las Plagas. In every crowd of enemies, there’ll always be a few that will pop out. These “heads” have long range due to their tendrils, so it’s best to stay away and shoot them; using the knife means being within stabbing distance, and they freaking hurt.

Las Plagas control their hosts, which is why Ganados have enough intelligence to devise simple plans like taking ladders to sneak into houses from the top floor or sneak behind the hero for an attack. These aren’t “zombies” by the modern definition of a risen undead. They’re zombies in the traditional voodoo meaning of people who've had all their free will ripped out of them. Yikes. I’d argue it’s even darker than zombies who are just undead or diseased.

These things can't even go "Gigante Smash!". 0/10.

Leon uses a boat to get back to the holding area seen before, and follows a different path that leads him to camps surrounded by cliffs. He witnesses a bunch of Ganados pulling out something large using ropes. The thing reveals itself to be an enormous, human-shaped monster, nicknamed El Gigante, which kills every Ganado that brought it out. Wait, how can Las Plagas cause the existence of monsters this fucking big??

Waggle to kill! Waggle! To! Kill!

Dealing enough damage to El Gigante causes its parasite to erupt from its back. Since the monster falls to its knees, Leon can climb on its back and slash at that weak point with his knife! This isn’t an easy battle, but El Gigante is killed. (For bonus points, if you saved a dog in Chapter 1, it comes back to help you in this fight.) Leon follows the trail back to the church, enters using the insignia, solves a color puzzle, and finds the girl’s cell. First mistaking him for her captors, Ashley throws a plank at him, but he explains that he’s there to save her.

Movie Review: Zootopia 2

Since I loved the first Zootopia so much, I knew I had to see the sequel in theaters as soon as possible. My verdict? It's a great movie overall, though I do have a few gripes with it. Beware: Slight spoilers ahead.

The story

We open merely one week after Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) saved the city from the Nighthowlers epidemic affecting the all-mammalian population of Zootopia, and successfully arrested its perpetrators. As a result, Nick was accepted into the Zootopia Police Department and became Judy's (work) partner.

However, this new partnership hasn't changed them much. The bunny is still impulsive in her dreams of making the world a better place and using her position as an officer to do so, and Nick is... well, as sarcastic as ever. The movie begins as Judy's attitude gets her team in trouble again for running into a mission before even hearing the briefing from Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) at the station. So, sure enough, their idea goes awry and they almost ruin the ZPD's plan. Even the ensuing car chase ends with them accidentally destroying a statue of Ebenezer Lynxley, the founder of the city, that was being placed to celebrate its hundredth anniversary. Lynxley is the inventor of the weather walls allowing the biomes to exist next to each other and letting mammals from all walks of life to be a part of this great city.

Investigating the van they were chasing, Judy finds dried skin that looks like it came from a scaled body. There was a reptile in there. However, due to her recklessness, her team is knocked off the case and told to stay away. And because there are clearly a few hiccups in the partnership, Bogo forces them to attend therapy sessions for mismatched PD work partners.