Whenever I see hot American girls playing or promoting video games on the 'net, I invariably assume it’s some sort of scam. Hot American girls just don’t play video games. Sure, they might know what a video game is (in the same way they know that lesser female creatures actually have to pay for their own drinks), but it’s not from any actual experience. If through some miracle they manage to actually appear holding a controller correctly or answer a "favorite game" question with something other than Pac-Man or a Mario game, you can rest assured it’s because their handlers were on the ball.
Japan, though, that’s a whole different ballgame. When a girl like Battle Royale/Kill Bill’s Chiaki Kuriyama turns up promoting a game, I totally believe she plays games. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but I don't think so. I like to think it’s just one more example in the ever-expanding list of reasons why Japanese women are so much cooler than their American counterparts. I mean, aside from Megan Fox, can you think of one other hot American woman who’d spend a night gaming? I could think of dozens of famous Japanese women who would.
Anyway, this whole thing is getting a little creepy. The real point of the post (aside from bashing American women for not being gamers…) was to pass along a recent news story stating that Kuriyama will be promoting Resident Evil 5 for the Xbox 360 in a television commercial airing in Japan. Asked about her experience with the RE franchise, Kuriyama stated:
"I've played Resident Evil before and I can't wait for the upcoming entry in the series. I played it a little before we started filming the commercial, and because the graphics are so good, I'd forget it was a game!"
If she'd mentioned that she loved the gore explosions whenever she landed a headshot or made the argument that changing the control scheme to a more run-and-gun style would make RE inseparable from about a bazillion other shooters, she’d have probably had to get a restraining order. Do they have those in Japan? If not, I may need to move…
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A film critic by trade, specializing in Euro-horror, cult exploitation, and Asian action cinema, Mike has written reviews for a diverse group of print and online publications. He covers horror news, movies, books, and games at TheHorrorGeek.com and Horrorsquad.com and spent two seasons as The Horror Geek on Comedy Central's pop-culture game show, Beat the Geeks.
Mike's childhood was spent playing videogames any time he got a chance. His parents had a Pong console and his grandmother had an Atari 2600, where Mike cultivated his skills by playing hour upon hour of games like Space Invaders, Berserk, and Asteroids. From those early experiences Mike learned one thing: he loved games.
In 1999, Mike became a staff reviewer at Cinescape Magazine's website where he spent a year learning the craft of game criticism. After internal changes led to Mike leaving Cinescape in late 2000, he joined up with RPGFan in 2001 and spent several years writing reviews for them. Happy, but looking for an opportunity to expound on a wider variety of titles, Mike joined GameCritics.com and hopes to help Chi, Dale, and the rest of the GC staff bring a higher level of respect to the field of game criticism.
- Final Fantasy Type-0 HD Review - July 14, 2015
- Sunset Overdrive Second Opinion - December 8, 2014
- Diablo III: Ulitmate Evil Edition Review - October 8, 2014
She sounds like every other actress getting paid to hype a videogame or videogame movie. I mean, she actually said “the graphics are so good, I’d forget it was a game!”. Geeze.
Dude, if you’re gonna post something like this, you need to add more than one pic. Photo gallery? hello?
; )