Game Title: Resident Evil
Your name: Jens Wouters
Pretty or ugly: Ugly
Description: Although it is now one of the most well known franchises and it spawned the survival horror genre, the first, original Resident Evil had something very, very wrong. In fact, so horrible, I think it would have killed the game if it would have been a then known genre. I’m talking of course, about the voice-acting.

They are even worse than a low budget B-movie. In fact, they are so worse, you just have to laugh about it. Something I think doesn’t really fit into a game where you want to create suspense and horror.

Until this point, I have never owned a Playstation console. But I was glad to hear the DS version of Resident Evil was almost a port of the Playstation version and even included the bad voice-acting. Because I was hooked that time on Resident Evil 4, I wanted to play the first game in all its original glory. The voice-acting just cracked me up. Even the intro movie is horribly, horribly bad, sad even.

I have chosen this movie because the intro dialog after the intro movie just gives you a proper idea of how the quality of rest of the game is. Also, this version is pure and game only, no interruptions.

I certainly recommend to also watch this movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41TAy7RfVI&feature=related

I think the worst acting of all is the one you can see at 2:42 of the above link. It’s so hilarious if you think of the condition of the guy lying on the floor and how he talks.

Game Title: Unreal Tournament 2004
Your name: Jens Wouters
Pretty or ugly: Pretty
Description: UT2004 is the first FPS where I really paid attention to the sound. The quality just blew my mind.

The music is very epic and sounds very full. The more relaxing music, named Level8, also has the same quality feel, although it differs from the otherwise adrenaline pumping epic music.

The two sounds I’m the most impressed with are these from the shock rifle combo and the explosion of the core in the Onslaught mode. These explosions sound as explosions are meant to sound. Of course, to fully enjoy these sounds, you need a decent soundcard and speakers/headphones.

In the past, I actually played some matches pure to enjoy the sound. I did a deathmatch with robot only bots and the instagib mutator. If you were playing a small map, the map was constantly filled with the sound of metal pieces flying around.

The movie above doesn’t do the sound justice. In fact, this movie is the only one where the sound is decent enough to hear it, but it’s a bit too strong, causing it to distort a bit.

For the real experience, go play the game yourself with a good sound set-up. If you want to listen to the music, you just can go to the music folder of the game and open them with any media player that is capable of playing the ogg vorbis codec.