DIY

I spent yesterday pulling up the flimsy boards nailed firmly to the original floorboards in our front room prior to sanding and varnishing to get rid of that ‘please ignore the state of the carpet, we have two young kids’ look which has horrified the more houseproud of our guests. My cup truly runneth over with excitement. By the time everything was made safe for little pink feet I was too tired to play anything, so I turned to the TV for a bit of mindless wallpaper. The funny thing was I hopped all the freebie digital channels and repeatedly flew past Resident Evil : Apocalypse. I seem to remember having heard some OK things about the movie, the adverts I had seen looked competent enough (even if the film takes itself deeply, deeply seriously), and the survival horror games have a natural enough fit with cinema. But I think it would have taken wild horses to make me sit and watch it.

It can’t just be a case of many times bitten, now shy. So now I wonder why I have no desire to see any game-to-film adaptation? I enjoy the harmless pasttime of watching gamers turn up in other movies (In Over the Hedge it is game literacy that saves the day, again -- hurrah) and I have no problem watching mass culture popcorn movies, but there seems to be a substantial difference between what I want to watch rather than do, and my preferances (in terms of genre) in games and film. I was turned off Resident Evil even though I had heard it was an OK film. So the thought of Doom, the movie, excites me not every time I walk past it reduced in a supermarket although I am happy enough to blast my way through many an FPS. But while survival horror games have an attraction for me – with all their dependence on a language we are familliar with from film – I have almost no interest in the cinematic version. And, off the top of my head, I can’t work out why, as I am usually as much of a sucker for cross-media franchise works as anyone. Worse, I know I am (initially at least) tempted into trying games purely because of their external IP (anything Star Wars for example - which has proved something of a mixed blessing) while I wouldn't make the move in the opposite direction.