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Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness is fun fan service

On Thursday, the latest Netflix Original – Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness – hit the streaming platform and we sat down to binge all four episodes of the series.

Unlike the live-action films starring Milla Jovovich, Infinite Darkness actually follows the story of a Resident Evil game, or rather it fills in the gap between Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5.

So what are we dealing with here?

The show starts with a team of soldiers who defy orders to leave the fictional Middle Eastern country of Penamstan before it is wiped up by a bomb. The reason for the bombing? The T-virus is running rampant.

The events in these moments are used throughout the series to showcase why these events were important and it actually makes for compelling viewing, despite you being able to guess where the story is going.

What we love about Infinite Darkness is that it doesn’t wait an episode before diving into the action and the action is great.

Shortly after learning that Zombies were littering the streets we are re-introduced to Leon Kennedy who is en route to the White House to deal with a cyberattack. Upon his arrival, Zombies have infiltrated the White House and nobody seems to know why.

Believing the attack to be Chinese, the US sends Kennedy, Jason and Shen May to China to investigate whether it was behind the attack and that is where we are going to stop because we’d rather avoid spoilers.

The plot is compelling and there is something of a twist that we weren’t really expecting.

The animation is decent but we noticed that some lip-syncing didn’t match up, particularly when it comes to auxiliary characters such as the President’s advisor. When it comes to main characters though, the animation is superb.

What we loved about Infinite Darkness are the action scenes and the cheesy one-liners, which Kennedy seems to have an infinite supply of.

Throughout our viewing we had the distinct impression that we were watching a very long cutscene from a Resident Evil game. At times this helps, particularly in action scenes, but there are also moments where we were tempted to skip ahead.

As for fan service, there is a lot of it here. Mentions of Raccoon City, T-virus, Umbrella and more are littered throughout the show. Hell, Tricell – a name you will likely only recognise from Resident Evil 5 – gets a gratuitous mention in the final episode of the show.

For fans of Resident Evil, this show will be a fun romp through the lore of the games but we suspect that folks who have no clue about Resident Evil, or who have never played the games will be lost.

The voice acting is good, the animation is superb with some scenes looking so good we had to remind ourselves this was all CGI.

We hope that Capcom is planning to release more Netflix Originals such as this because even during Kennedy’s cheesiest moments, Infinite Darkness is better than the live action Resident Evil films.

Pop some corn, pour yourself a beverage and give Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness a watch.

As an aside, if Capcom wants to do a series that takes place during the first Resident Evil game, we’d be incredibly happy.

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