Do you know what more video games need? That’s exactly right: friendly zombies. (How did you know?) Video games need more friendly zombies, disillusioned squid monsters, and other such zany nonsense. At a time when games are full of guns and gritty violence, the video game industry sure could use more silliness.

I may have found just the thing.

Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is the latest chapter in the tale of Shantae, a chipper young genie—well, half-genie—sworn to protect the fishing village of Scuttle Town. The previous two Shantae games offered Metroidvania-style adventure and tons of charm, but both suffered from significant flaws.

Has Shantae finally hit her stride? Does this game’s quality match its endearing goofiness?

Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse (Nintendo 3DS eShop, 2014)

Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse may not be a big game, but like its pint-sized heroine it never lacks for humor, charm, and fun.

A Pirate’s Life for She

Shantae may have lost her genie magic in a previous chapter, but she’s no less determined to protect her village. She’s astonished when her nemesis, the dread pirate Roberts Risky Boots, sneaks into Scuttle Town and suggests a temporary truce. Shantae and Risky must work together to prevent the return of the Pirate Master, Risky’s old mentor, saving the land and perhaps even recovering Shantae’s scattered genie magic.

Shantae becomes probably the most friendly and kindhearted pirate ever to set sail. She travels from island to island, gathering Risky’s old pirate weapons, meeting bizarre people, and being totally freaking adorable.

Mechanically, Pirate’s Curse is a fine video game; more on that in a bit. Its true value, however, is in its outlandish humor and vibrant charm. The never takes itself seriously for a second, yet manages to deliver quite a touching conclusion. Getting there takes the player through all kinds of ridiculous (read: hilarious) situations.

At one point, Shantae searches for an ancient spell. She begins by sealing the smell of roasted ham in a magical lamp and releasing it near a dragon. The monster salivates hungrily and creates a pool of drool. When a pair of oblivious tourists stumble upon this convenient “swimming hole,” they strip to their swimsuits. The sunlight reflecting off their pallid skin illuminates hidden runes on a nearby wall, revealing the spell Shantae needs.

Pirate’s Curse is full of such outrageous scenes as these, and some of its humor is delightfully self-aware. One character, the monstrous Squid Baron, is a boss (extra-tough enemy) from a previous Shantae game. He spends much of Pirate’s Curse wrestling with the disillusionment and existential angst of being a low-level video-game bad guy. Shantae doesn’t seem to understand his problem, but is just as quick to comfort him as she is to fight him.

On the whole, Pirate’s Curse is as goofy and good-natured a game as any I’ve played.

Boldly Going Where Many, Many Games Have Gone Before

Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse may stand out for its style and humor, but its design and mechanics are awfully familiar.

The game’s blend of exploration, platforming, combat, and puzzle-solving is nothing new. I recognized literally every mechanic in Pirate’s Curse from some other game; even Shantae’s iconic ability from previous games to transform into different animals is replaced with a more traditional setup of gathering items and equipment to reach new areas. The puzzle-packed dungeons felt like The Legend of Zelda; the sidescrolling overworld felt like Metroid; the tricky final challenges felt like Mega Man.

Although it hardly innovates, Pirate’s Curse never feels stale. It may do nothing wildly original, but what it does it does well.

I was pleased to note Pirate’s Curse corrects the flaws of its predecessors. The first Shantae game had a sprawling overworld that was frustrating to navigate; Pirate’s Curse divides the overworld into six islands, making it much easier to get around. The second Shantae game was tragically short; Pirate’s Curse, though neither so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, is a big enough game to satisfy.

I wish Pirate’s Curse contained more sidequests and optional challenges. I often revisited an island equipped with an ability for reaching new areas, eager to explore and find treasure, only to realize the unexplored areas I discovered were a necessary part of the game. On the other hand, I applaud the way the game keeps track of how many collectible bonuses are on each island. This keeps frustration to a minimum by showing players where to search, preventing them from looking for treasures that aren’t there.

The music in Pirate’s Curse is catchy; the graphics are crisp and colorful; the character designs are cute. I was, however, surprised at the… um… shapeliness of the female cast. Shantae games have always been a bit flirty. Pirate’s Curse is downright saucy. The cartoony designs are never inappropriate, but the game could definitely have shown a little less skin.

(I absolutely refuse to make a pun about pirates and booty. There are depths to which even I will not sink!)

A Pirate’s Curse Is a Player’s Blessing

It has minor flaws, and it never sails past familiar territory into uncharted waters, but Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is fun, hilarious, and absolutely a blast to play. If you’re wishing for an upbeat adventure, something sillier than the gloomy games filling store shelves, your wish is one this particular genie—well, half-genie—may be able to grant.

There was once a survival horror game called Resident Evil 4, and lo, it was greatly praised. It played like a dream, thrilled like a nightmare, and was tons of fun. Critics adored it. Gamers enjoyed it. Even those of us who don’t like violent or scary games gave it a try and thought it was pretty fantastic.

Then its sequel, Resident Evil 5, was released. It met with disappointment and even outrage. It was accused of being uninspired, unoriginal, and—of all things—racist.

What can we say? Is RE5 an unappreciated classic, or is it bland, repetitive, and even offensive?

Resident Evil 5 is campy, frustrating, insensitive, and… surprisingly excellent.

RE5 is the bloodstained, action-packed tale of Chris Redfield, an agent working for an organization devoted to stopping bio-terrorism. He is dispatched to an African country to investigate rumors of BOWs—Bio-Organic Weapons, monsters created through genetic tampering. Together with his ambiguously African partner, Sheva Alomar, Chris punches, shoots, and slices his way toward saving the world from megalomaniacal bio-terrorists.

There are a lot of good things to be said about this game. It’s violent—obviously—but also a lot of fun to play. The environments are brilliantly designed, aesthetically and mechanically: they look great, and they’re easy to navigate. Gameplay hasn’t changed much from RE4, which is a really good thing. The third-person, over-the-shoulder view makes exploring and shooting a breeze.

One of the things I liked best about the game was, oddly enough, reading about it. The game’s options include files containing background on the plot, characters, and enemies. These optional files delivered a lot of interesting information without burdening the game proper with long-winded exposition. Players wanting to immerse themselves in the story of RE5 can read these files; players wanting simply to shoot monsters in the face can play the game without tedious interruptions.

RE5 is fun to play, but not without its faults—many more, I’m sorry to say, than its remarkable predecessor. As long as we’re discussing a game set in Africa, we had better start with the elephant in the room.

Is RE5 racist?

During his mission in Africa, Chris, a white person, ends up shooting a bunch of black people. Granted, these Africans are BOWs infected with mind-controlling parasites, but it still seems awfully racist on the surface. It wouldn’t be so bad if Chris’s partner, Sheva, were unambiguously African. However, she’s light-skinned, speaks unaccented English, and seems more European.

Worst of all, at a few points in the game, the African BOWs dress in a primitive, tribal fashion. This is explained by a footnote—the parasites controlling these Africans cause them to revert to the customs of their distant ancestors—but this depiction of stereotypically savage African natives is the nastiest I’ve seen since Heart of Darkness.

This is not culturally sensitive.

In the end, I think RE5 is not racist. Its enemies happen to be indigenous Africans in the same way the enemies in RE4 happen to be Spanish peasants. There’s no intentional prejudice. There is, however, staggering insensitivity. I’m astonished that apparently nobody on the development team of RE5 realized a game in which a white guy slaughters African natives might be controversial.

Besides concerns of racism, the story of RE5 is a bit campy and the dialogue is horrendous. This wouldn’t be so bad if the game didn’t take itself so seriously. RE4 was just as silly, but it had a sense of humor. Like Doctor Who or Metal Gear Solid, it was extremely kitschy, but also very self-aware. It had one or two absurd villains, some outrageous set pieces, and the ubiquitous merchant.

RE5 lacks those gleams of humor. Where RE4 allows itself to be funny and succeeds, RE5 tries to be grim and fails.

Mechanically, RE5 is not without faults. Chris’s computer-controlled partner, Sheva, can be useful or frustrating depending on the situation. As neat as it was to have a partner, I missed going it alone. Nearly every boss battle revolves around some gameplay gimmick, some unique trick to damage the boss, which is irritating. As much as I appreciate creative gimmicks, I would have liked a few bosses of the traditional, “shoot-them-till-they’re-dead” variety.

There are also so many quick time events. Oh… dear reader… there are so many. In moderation, quick time events can add tension to a game. In RE5, they are a frequent and unpardonable nuisance.

Last of all… Resident Evil 5 isn’t scary.

It’s a fine action game, but it ain’t survival horror. As a third-person shooter, it’s fun. As an entry in Capcom’s respected horror series, it completely misses its mark. The quick time events were pretty much the only things I feared or dreaded in RE5.

Should you play Resident Evil 5? My answer would be: play Resident Evil 4. If you like RE4, and can tolerate quick time events and cultural insensitivity, you’ll probably enjoy RE5. Otherwise, you may want to keep your distance.

I don’t like zombies.

Zombies are hideous creatures. They smell terrible. Worst of all, they’ve become one of the most tired clichés in pop culture. Like vampires, zombies are freaking everywhere. In the past two years, we’ve had The Walking Dead, World War Z, Warm Bodies and an endless slew of novels and video games featuring these lifeless imbeciles.

To put it simply: Zombies have been done to death. (Pun intended. I’m so, so sorry.) I’m tired of zombies. Heck, I never liked them in the first place.

That said, why on earth did I play a Resident Evil game?

Fortunately, Resident Evil 4 doesn’t have zombies. Well, maybe fortunately isn’t the right word. RE4 replaces shambling zombies with murderous peasants, and they’re pretty scary.

Just your average Black Friday shoppers.

Nearly a decade ago, a friend in Ecuador recommended RE4. “It’s excellent!” he said, or words to that effect. When I told him I wasn’t a zombie enthusiast, he said something like, “The enemies aren’t actually zombies. And they shout at you in Spanish! How great is that?”

I’d heard of the Resident Evil games, which consist mostly of players shooting zombies with guns. Not only do I dislike zombies, but (contrary to the impression I’ve probably given in my past few reviews) I don’t care much for guns. Games with swords and magic, or no violence at all, are more my cup of tea.

For eight or nine years, however, praise for this game kept popping up. Nintendo Power (may it rest in peace!) named it one of the best games of all time. Everyone hailed RE4 as an enduring classic. It became a milestone in the game industry, influencing several major video game series being developed today.

At last, I submitted to the inevitable and got my hands on the game. It was time to see what the fuss was about, and also to be shouted at in Spanish.

Is this bloodstained game truly the masterpiece everyone claims it to be?

It isn’t perfect, and it certainly ain’t pretty, but Resident Evil 4 is a remarkably good game.

RE4 begins with Leon S. Kennedy, a US secret service agent, dispatched to a remote village in rural Europe. The president’s daughter, Ashley Graham, has been kidnapped. Leon’s job is to get her back. Unfortunately for him, quite a lot stands between Leon and Ashley: crazed cultists, mutant abominations, scheming criminals and (of course) guys with masks and chainsaws.

The not-zombies of RE4 are called ganados. (That’s Spanish for livestock, by the way: a clever touch.) These peasants have gone murderously insane, and they’re actually pretty scary. I dislike zombies, but at least zombies move slowly. Ganados often run, brandishing axes and pitchforks, shouting threats in Spanish. (This may be scarier for those who don’t know Spanish; I found it funny when ganados sneaking up on me yelled things like, “Behind you, idiot!”) The madness of the ganados is eventually explained, but it remains unnerving to be constantly surrounded by crazed murderers. They look pretty normal, which makes their obsessive violence that much scarier.

The environments of RE4 are fantastically creepy: abandoned buildings, dying forests, unquiet crypts. The player is left with a frightening sense of isolation. There is no backup. There are only more ganados, with an occasional monster for variety.

This isn’t exactly a criticism, but I must point out the odd tonal shifts of the game’s environments. It starts in a dreary village surrounded by gray woods; the outdoorsy setting gave me Snake Eater flashbacks. Then the action shifted to a castle packed with puzzles, lava pits and suits of armor. It was like a level from a Legend of Zelda game. Then the game went all Metal Gear again with a high-tech military installation. These levels were creepy and well-designed, but they felt disconnected. I felt like a single character straying into two or three separate video games.

The core gameplay is superb. Shooting is simple with a useful (and apparently groundbreaking) over-the-shoulder perspective that allows for great precision. (I played the Wii version of the game, which allowed for convenient point-and-shoot motion controls.) Weapons can be upgraded, and items can be combined to increase their value or effectiveness. Treasures can be found and sold. Managing the inventory—usually a tedious chore—is a pleasant challenge, with players fitting items into a briefcase like blocks in a game of Tetris. Even a long-running escort quest, which I expected to be an excruciating nuisance, turned out to be kind of fun.

Best of all, Leon can suplex ganados. It isn’t as impressive as, say, suplexing a train, but it’s still pretty darn cool.

Then there’s the merchant. Oh, the merchant.

“Whaddaya buyin’?”

This ubiquitous salesman shows up the most unlikely places, apparently unperturbed by the roaming hordes of homicidal ganados, and sells the player guns. I found his frequent appearances and exaggerated cockney accent hilarious. Every time I stumbled upon one of his strange little shops, I wanted to hug him.

In the end, I have only two major criticisms of the game.

First, there isn’t much story. What little plot makes it into the game is communicated by hammy action-movie dialogue and badly-written notes scattered for the player to find. The gameplay and setting are superb, but the story is utterly cheesy. It would have been nice to have some serious dialogue to complement the game’s grim environments and gallons of gore.

Second, the game consists almost entirely of fetch quests, and most of them make no sense. There are nearly a dozen doors that Leon must open by retrieving some meaningless relic: an insignia, a pair of goblets, fragments of art and other rubbish. Much of the game consists of finding stuff to open stuff in order to find more stuff to open more stuff. The brilliant gameplay, clever puzzles and superb level design keep the fetch quests from getting stale, but I still felt like an errand boy by the end of the game.

A final note: In case you hadn’t noticed, this is not a game for young players. There is some cursing (mostly in Spanish) and lots of blood. It’s worth playing—but I recommend it only for older, tougher gamers. This ain’t a game for the kiddies.

I’m glad to have played Resident Evil 4. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to find that merchant and give him a hug.