Resident Evil

The Good
Resident Evil is beautifully engineered. The graphics are wonderful! The graphics are so life-like. The game is so scary its fun! That's a good thing!! The game brings pleasure to me every time I play it. The games voice acting is great! The zombies are so scary! Resident Evil scared me lots of times!!

The Bad
The game has improved but the puzzles still remain. Much patience is needed for Resident Evil. The zombies are hard to kill and the overall difficulty of the game is medium. Limited ammo is given too you and the guns firepower sucks.

The Bottom Line
A great game!!! A game that fills your horror game satisfaction! A MUST BUY!!! IT'S GREAT!

The Good
I own every single Resident Evil game ever made, so to say I'm a bit of a fan of the series is an understatement. My first exposure to the series was back in 1998 when I played a demo for Resident Evil 2 at a friends house. I was pretty affected by it and not just because it was full of gore and body parts flying all over the place. I had never experienced a Survival Horror game before and these alien mechanics the game relied on baffled my developing 8 year old mind.

Years later when I began to collect video games one of the first things I resolved to do was amass an enormous collection of Resident Evil merchandise. So, suffice to say I know the entire series back to front.

The remake of Resident Evil caught my attention when I picked up a Nintendo Gamecube product catalogue back in 2001. It showcased the photo realistic graphics of the game and made a pretty big deal about the Resident Evil series making its way to the Gamecube. I didn't actually get to play it until last year, for a few reasons which aren't particularly pertinent right now, and I wish I hadn't waited so long.

A familiar setting

The remake of Resident Evil takes place in identical circumstances to the original released in 1996. The Arklay Mountains surrounding Raccoon City have become a dangerous place full of sightings of feral animals and packs of men attacking Hikers. A special police taskforce named S.T.A.R.S Alpha Team is dispatched to investigate and when they go missing Bravo team is dispatched to find them. The team is abandoned and seek refuge in a seemingly derelict mansion. From here, the horror ensues and the main protagonists Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine must battle the monsters that stalk the halls and find a way to escape the hellish mansion before they succumb to the resident evil (see what I did there?) inside.

Tried and true Resident Evil gameplay

The Resident Evil series has been both a staple source of praise and derision in the 14 years it has been circulating. In the time it had been bubbling away in Shinji Mikami's mind the series had gradually evolved up until 2001, when Resident Evil was released. Every single refinement that had been instituted in the series until then made its way into Resident Evil (and if you haven't already figured it out when I say Resident Evil I'm talking about the subject of this review and not the original.) The tank controls have been discarded for a more fluent 3D control scheme that incorporates the life saving 180 degree turn from previous games. Your character controls so smoothly, any criticism from the past concerning the controls are quickly forgotten.

In addition to the sharp control scheme you also have recourse when grabbed by an opponent from the front. Your character can utilize defense weapons like stun guns and phosphorous grenades that do very cool things when an enemy grabs them. It saves health and adds a degree of strategy into how you approach encounters.

In addition to this a new form of Zombie has been introduced named the Crimson Head which is a regular Zombie that hasn't been beheaded or burned. You can carry around a flask of oil which you need to pour on the corpses of Zombies and set them alight to kill them properly, or as I mentioned before you can seperate their head from their shoulders. The tension involved in whether or not a Zombie will rise up again as a Crimson Head adds a new degree of horror to the game.

All of the refinements, additions to the roster of enemies and options for defending yourself add this contemporary edge to Resident Evil that games like Code Veronica seemed to lack. While Code Veronica was a great game, it lacked any nuance or subtle refinements. The transition to 3D environments was wonderful but it added little to the game itself. Resident Evil feels like a meaningful evolution of the series, one that was due.

It looks like it plays

Resident Evil is a beautiful game, a stunning game. I can't really emphasize how amazing it looks. It's the dictionary definition of photo realistic. Environments look amazing and flickering lights, shifting shadows and tree branches add a layer of atmosphere to the game. Character models display a similar level of polish and animate superbly. They are textured immaculately with realistic facial animation and emotive expressions. The environments are smack of grunge and funk, they almost emit a musty smell as you wander through the decaying hallways. It's superb artistic direction.

The Bad
Resident Evil plays well but lacks any sort of contemporary checkpoint system. You still rely on ink ribbons and although this may not mean much to you, it's still a system the game relies on.

There are very little unlockables other than some modes that just make the game a little harder.

The Bottom Line
Resident Evil is a beautiful, photo realistic game with gameplay that is ultra refined and the most satisfying of the classic series to play. There is little about the gameplay I can fault.

It's a classic love letter to Resident Evil fans, something you should really experience if you even have a passing fancy for Survival Horror.

The Good
It's true that Resident Evil was not the first Survival Horror title ever made but it certainly revolutionized the genre and brought it into the mainstream. Now the remake is set to bring about the biggest evolution that the RE series has seen since, well... since the original that it's based on.

Of course the first thing that jumps out at you is that the visuals have been vastly improved. Capcom have finally done away with the circle shadows of previous titles and now figures arch up walls and tree branches outside are silouetted in motion against ceilings as they sway in the wind. Lights flicker and cast real-time shadows and colours over everything enriching the environment in a thick, dank, dread. Characters are so detailed that even the creases in their clothes are fully modelled, not texture maps and in-game models are the same models used in the stunning real-time cutscenes. The game looks so good in fact, that it puts even the pre-rendered CG cutscenes of any previous RE game to shame. The abundance of eye candy does more than just look good though, it creates an atmosphere so thick with tension that nothing else can compare with it, coupled with the amazing soundtrack of course. Each footstep echoes out with unnerving realism and suspense. Music is a beautifully haunting blend of old and new tracks that have been completely revamped and, like the visuals are better than ever.

Yes it looks and sounds fantastic but Capcom didn't stop with a facelift, many things about the actual game have been changed also. There are new areas to explore as well as a host of new puzzles (which are a lot better) new weapons plus some new enemies including an extremely creepy woman who I'll always remember as the scariest character ever to grace a RE title. It's always a joy to see areas from the original redone for old school players of the series but pretty soon you start treating them like new areas because most of the jumps and sequences are changed leaving you very susceptable to attack. One section, new to the game but shall remain nameless for spoiler purposes had me so tense I started to feel sick in the stomach, something I have not felt playing a horror game for many years.

One of the new features is that if you take a zombie down but don't do it appropriately, they can come back to life even more dangerous than they were before. There is also a very handy emergency weapon feature that allows you to use various small arms on zombies just before they are about to attack you, saving you some health and allowing for a quick getaway.

As before the layout of the game and overall story is much the same but a really nice addition is the Trevor Spencer side story that was originally to be included in the first game but was removed for various reasons. In fact, many of the new areas relate directly to this story too and this helps add a richness to the game that was painfully absent in the original version.

The Bad
It's always the same for every game in the series, the voice acting is terrible. Yes it was redone for the remake and while the lines and acting are an improvement over the abysmal example that the original gave us, they are still awful and fall in line with the average offerings of more recent RE titles.

None of the core controls have been changed either and while this is open for debate as to whether it's a good or bad thing, some players may be a little put out by this. There is also a lack of the quick dodge feature that RE3 had which is a real shame and I still don't see why you can't walk around with your gun pointed ahead. Many other games have done this such as Nocturne and there's no reason why this otherwise brilliant game should lack this simple but effective feature.

The Bottom Line
The finest example of Survival Horror to date. Similar enough to the original to be considered a remake but different enough in many ways to be more than worth getting for long time fans of the series.