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Resident Evil review

Game: Resident Evil
Platform: PlayStation
Genre: Action Adventure (Survival Horror)
Developer: Capcom

Reader review by Duo

May 15, 2010

There was a time when Resident Evil was scary. I remember it; I remember when I could walk past a large window without readying a firearm for the obligatory zombie mutts who were obviously going to jump through it. I remember when the campy voice acting and the tank controls were minor annoyances easily overwritten by the core game itself. That of a group of highly-armed enforcers being stuck in a desolate mansion cut off from the rest of the world having to survive increasingly hostile waves of undead.

For all of Capcom’s mistakes, Resident Evil was a massive hit. While there had been horror games in the past (such as Alone in the Dark whose experience on the Playstation is best left forgotten) nothing had yet come along on a similar scale. It was instantly accessible, and, within minutes, gave you the gory deaths of the vast majority of your team. Its artwork and direction was flawless; the camera angles taken for the exploration of the macabre mansion perfect almost every single time. These fixed camera angles could come from anywhere; the corner of a corridor, the far end of a hallway or a top-down view from above. They all had one thing in common -- to make the trek to the next camera angle as tense as possible. It was the first time such liberal direction had been lifted from the big screen and pasted directly into gaming.

They led you into a dining room mere seconds after you took control, and teased you through a narrow hallway where you find your first zombie snacking on the brains of a fallen comrade. The first meeting was exceptional; it told you from the word go that anyone was fallible and, while that was sinking in, it had a rotting corpse clock you over his shoulder, gore still dripping from its mouth, then lumber after you. You ran away, or you died.

That encounter ended with cheesy B-flick voice acting and cringe-worthy lines that would forever be the most remembered aspect of Resident Evil, not unfairly, despite the fantastic work taken by the game’s director. But it came at a time when competent voice acting was an exclusive trait to PC adventure games, so the player chuckled under their breath and moved on. They armed themselves as best they could, and moved on. They failed to guess that a corpse beneath their feet must spring to life and tear off their ankles so they panicked and flailed. Then they stomped on its head, and moved on.

Then, it was an unforgettable experience, but, now, a nostalgic glance back proves fatal to even the most hardy of rose tinted glasses.

Now, when obtuse tank controls are unacceptable, and voice acting is rightfully taken seriously by the industry, overlookable flaws are cast in a whole new light. It’s obvious, that, for all the good work it did back in the day, Resident Evil only lives up to one half of its survival horror moniker. It’s simply not traditionally scary in any sense other than cheap. It wants to make you jump as another carnivorous dog leaps through another window or when crows dive-bomb you out of nowhere, and, several Resident Evil games later, these things are more expected than shocking.

Which leaves it with survival -- which the game does very well indeed.

Indeed, it’s become obvious that, the more they ply their brand of survival horror to the world, the further away Capcom steer away from the genre. Resident Evil did survival so well, that it dragged its dismembered torso, bleeding and oozing, into the world of horror through the back door. Even if they don’t inspire a huge amount of fear, enemies still need to be, ideally, eliminated so they don’t come back to chew on your skull later. However, even though the range of firearms, starting at pistols and weaving up to bazookas, is respectable, ammunition is not. The terror, then, is in nagging doubt; it's in wandering if you’ll have enough firepower to make it through the next assault. It’s that awful feeling in the back of your mind that you might well be doomed after using that last shotgun shell on a group of zombies when a murky green hunter could be waiting around the next corner, ready to decapitate you in one swing of its claws.

Resident Evil deserves recognition for what it achieved and what it brought to the table, but that doesn’t mean what it does wrong should earn a get out of jail free card. It has its own sense of horror, but it’s marred in mistakes no longer excusable. A remake offered out almost a decade later does its best to fix the majority of issues, but was sadly released for a console owned by no more than twelve people, leaving the majority with fond memories that can only be preserved by shunning the game that made them. The undead isn’t Resident Evil‘s biggest enemy; it’s time. Like the rotting sagging flesh on the bloodthirsty corpses made prevalent within, Capcom’s opening attempt at horror has not aged well.

Rating: 6/10

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