LifeisXbox’s Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness review | A computer-animated miniserie with Leon and Claire?! Yeah, Resident Evil fans have been looking forward to Infinite Darkness. In four episodes Netflix’s latest fanservice is full of secret plots, fan favourites and new characters, biological weapons, gore moments and some questionable animations. With a short runtime of 104 minutes, it is a bit of an inconvenience that they split it up into four episodes. It is over fast and at the end of the day I started to wonder was this a required viewing?
What we liked!
- Interesting new characters | They succeeded in creating interesting new characters despite the presence of Leon and Claire. Big parts of the story and runtime go into Jason and Shen Mei, who have a prominent history with Penamstan. Here things start with Infinite Darkness story and it is magnifically told by flashbacks from both characters. Shen Mei was by far my favorite person, her backstory, mysterious attitude and design was a highlight.
- Horror | Regularly the horror theme is forced to the background as a lot of runtime went to military action scenes, political talks and character building. The few horror scenes we do get to see fit perfectly with what you would expect from a Resident Evil series. There’s this great submarine episode with scary-looking rats, a stressful White House invasion and the last minutes of the finalepisode. Visually it looks a lot better than previous offerings, so the gore has a lot more impact. I did miss more shock or scare moments but I understand that they wanted to set another atmosphere for this series.
Somewhere between
- Story | I think it is the first time in the series history that the story revolves around the person who made it and his reasons as to why he would create something so awfully dangerous. It was a fresh take on the ancient old focus on zombies, something the franchise is steering away from in the videogames. (I will leave it up to you if you think that’s positive or negative) The political and military starts strong but finishes a bit disappointing as if they didn’t have enough time to show all the reasons and consequences. Still, it was fascinating to follow how the Penamstan mess and political war between the US and China would conclude. The ending was very predictable but that’s okay, I enjoyed the story considering the previous disappointing live-action series that was a welcome unexpected fact!
What we disliked
- You need game knowledge before you start! | If you don’t know who saved the president’s daughter or how Claire relates with Leon you’ll often scratch your head while watching Infinite Darkness. If you didn’t play Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4 parts of the story are impossible to understand. Luckily there’s a standalone main story but it is a shame to miss some of the jokes and flashbacks from the past. General franchise knowledge is recommended!
- (English) Voice acting | Tjeez, how uninteresting can voice-acting be… Considering the ambitions here it is surprising to hear the low-quality voice actors. Wrong emotions (or emotionless even) dialogues really hurt the overall production.
CONCLUSION
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