Original Publication Date: 13/06/2019

Re-published 13/06/22

Resident Evil REmake

I’m not someone who has delved far into the horror genre of games – the furthest I’ve gone is a few choice indie games, and much more recently, the latest entry in the esteemed Resident Evil series, VII: Biohazard. And whilst I have some serious problems with that game, it spiked an interest in a series I’d never really dabbled in before, only just being aware of the slow change in genre as the series progressed. And so, thankfully having had the game in my possession for a few years, and with Resident Evil 2 getting a remake, I thought it was finally time to try out the HD re-releases of the game that started it all – Resident Evil.

I am not a brave man. I’m throwing that out from the forefront. Horror movies always wormed their ways into the edge of my mind, but gaming is something that never really got to me on a terror level. Even Resident Evil 7 never utterly disturbed me the way I expected it would. But the moment you take the first steps into the mansion, there’s this tension of dread that never really leaves until the final moment of the game, and if there’s one thing that I’ll remember from this game it’ll be that. This game oozes so much from its presentation, from its eerie, crisp visuals, to its purposefully chilling and obscuring camera angles. There wasn’t a single time I was entering a room for the first time (or considering some of the events in this game, the second or third) I didn’t fully expect something to make me jump out of my skin. This game really got into my head, even when there wasn’t a lick of danger to be found anywhere.
If there’s one thing that’ll get me really invested in any game, it's a strong story with interesting, well-developed characters. And the thing about Resident Evil that surprised me most is it really didn’t have a lot of that – but I still found myself wanting to see the best for Jill, Chris, Barry (Honestly, Barry most of all!) and everyone trapped in the madhouse of the Spencer Mansion, and genuinely excited to unravel the mystery of what the hell was going on – even after so many years of this game being out leading to me obviously working out what was probably going on, every piece of development for the environment, characters, and situation enthralled me far, far more than I ever expected. It never really climbs out of b-movie territory, but it’s just a fantastic execution of a b-movie plot done straight.

Obviously, the star of the show are the lurking, monstrous inhabitants of the Spencer Mansion – the Zombies ((and the rest, which I won’t detail here!) that serve to make every corner turn and busted camera angle a thousand times more unnerving. I’m a big fan of the classic film Night of the Living Dead, which essentially made the zombie genre what it is today, and I feel Resident Evil is the most pure distillation of this film. In addition, fighting them is a constant, wonderful learning process, as you become naturally acquainted with the strategies needed to get through them – it’s also great, with some exceptions, that you don’t need to fight the hordes to get through the game, and in fact fighting them all is counterproductive, as you’ll slowly run out of supplies. I gotta say, though, that the enemies in the later sections of the game that essentially replace the shamblers and Crimson Heads aren’t really as interested and devolve the game into more action-oriented territory.

If you had to ask who my favorite character in Resident Evil was, odds are I’d tell you Barry – but my actual answer is, and should be, the environment itself. In the three or four major environments of the game, there isn’t a single room that feels like wasted space. I adored the pace at which the game environment opened up – in the early moments of the game, it feels like there’s nowhere to go, every room locked away. But then, slowly but surely, you find a key, a crest, or some other McGuffin, and then the world opens up to you, more avenues to explore – nothing in this game compared to the excitement about entering that one new room, and getting that much closer to unraveling the core mystery of the game. Having that moment where you pick up an item and the gears in your head finally click and you know just how to solve that puzzle is just one that never got old. The puzzles themselves are mostly fun, but every now and then I found myself running into the wall with a puzzle that just didn’t make any logical sense and eventually having to find the solution on the internet, but I generally found these situations few and far between.

If I had anything bad to say about that game, is that it’s maybe a little too rooted in classic game design – some puzzles are just that little too obscure, inventory management (especially for Chris) can be nothing short of infuriating, and certain mechanics can feel like they exist to do nothing but frustrate and waste the time of the player – most notably for me, one of the doors outright breaking and becoming unusable for half the game. But at the same time, changing these mechanics would take away a lot of what makes the original Resident Evil the masterclass it is. So I’ll complain every time I need to run back to the item box to drop off another ammo case I can’t use, and curse at that broken door again and again, but I’ll always know without this kind of design philosophy, applied to the game as a whole, this horrifying adventure wouldn’t nearly be as memorable.

Resident Evil enthralled me from the first minute, and held me in its decaying, oozing grip for almost the entire time. Its atmosphere and environment are almost unparalleled – I’d consider the Mansion and its surrounding locales one of the best environments in gaming. When you compare this to what apparently comes after, it almost feels like a different series entirely. It’s not without its problems, but those issues mostly stem from my point of view as a player in 2019 – if I’d played the original release of the REmake back in 2002 on the Gamecube, I probably would be even more enthralled with it (assuming I was still 23. 7 year old me would probably never sleep again). It’s an amazing game, and it makes me even more excited to tackle further games in the series, most particularly its immediate sequels and the spin-offs that adhere to the survival horror roots of the original game.

Retrospective comments:

Not a whole lot to say about this review; it's fine, I guess. I wrote it pretty much the day of finishing Resident Evil 1 for the first time, so I really could've spent a little more time letting the game sink in. In retrospect, I'd say RE1 is one of my favourite games of all time, and I really wish I took the time to really define how I felt about this game. Maybe I'll make a new review in the future. Maybe.