Resident Evil Review

If you are a fan of reliving retro games from your youth, are already a fan of other Resident Evil titles, or just want an old-school Survival Horror game, this is likely for you. It is cheap enough at this point where it may be worth your time and money.

The Abridged Review

Look, I know you don’t want to read all this crap. I wouldn’t want to either. In fact, I don’t even know why I’m writing this at all. Why don’t you just watch this video:

If you have a morbid curiosity and a desire to get some more in-depth analysis of a game that came out 24 years ago, feel free to keep reading. Also, 24 year-old [spoiler alert].

The Written Review

I’m going to start things off by stating that I did not play Resident Evil growing up. I have no particular attachment to the Resident Evil series (save for VII), nor do I have nostalgia for any of the titles. We passed each other like ships in the night.

From afar I observed Resident Evil series with all its ups and downs, highs and lows, and shrugged.

The question then begs to be asked: why would I play Resident Evil now in 2020? I don’t have a great answer. Curiosity, I guess? The series overall has a certain pedigree, and its fans seem to really enjoy it. That and I played Resident Evil VII and it was excellent (I’ll save that for another time).

So, now having played the first entry in the series (the HD PC port release), I would say I am sufficiently whelmed. It’s not bad, but it is certainly not good.

The Story

Here’s the cliff notes:

There’s some weird murders happening outside of a small Midwestern town called Raccoon City. The local PD sends in the STARS (Special Tactics And Rescue Service) team to investigate. The first team in is Bravo team, which is apparently comprised of dimwits with little to no critical thinking skills, because shortly after they are sent in, communications are lost. STARS then sends in Alpha team to investigate Bravo teams fuck-up. This is where the game starts.

Alpha team gets spooked by scary dogs which kill one team member. The helicopter pilot, despite literally being in a helicopter, gets spooked as well and takes off without retrieving any squad mates. The spooky dogs then chase the remaining four STARS team members which prompts them to hole up in a creepy mansion they know nothing about.

Once inside, there’s now only three STARS team members. The other one apparently ran off somewhere even though in the previous cut scene he can be seen running along with everyone else.

Now, you have two options at the start of who to play as: Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine. Chris can take more damage, but has a smaller inventory and less firepower. Jill has more inventory slots, a lock-pick, and more firepower, but less health. Naturally, I chose Chris because I hate myself.

Depending on who you chose, the story changes a tiny bit. For Chris, some guy named Barry is missing once they arrive at the mansion. For Jill, Chris is missing.

After arriving at the mansion, the team settles on the smart strategy of splitting up to investigate. Nice.

Over the course of the game you run into some Bravo team members, including their captain Enrico Marini. He drops the bomb on you that someone on your team is A TRAITOR. You know it’s not you, so that rules out 2 of 4 possibilities (Chris or Jill). Wonder who it could be?? The milk-toast guy named ‘Barry’ or maybe the guy who never takes off his shades in a dark mansion and pops up at some very convenient times? Well, you won’t find out from Enrico, because he is then shot and killed by an “unknown assailant.”

As you keep playing you’ll learn about all the evil experiments being perpetrated by a clandestine research team under the supervision of a biomedical company called Umbrella Corporation. Big Pharma is at it again!

Turns out everything you’ve killed (and re-killed) in and around the mansion is a result of these experiments. They have all contracted the funk known as the T-Virus, a contagious mutagen.

Continuing on, you eventually come across Umbrella’s secret underground lab. In the lab, you encounter Mr. Sunglasses-at-Night himself, Albert Wesker. He proceeds to spill the beans: he was the traitor all along! A double agent for Umbrella! He killed Bravo team!

He then goes on a tirade about a bio-engineered super-soldier called the Tyrant which he plans to have kill the rest of the STARS team. Unfortunately for him, the Tyrant breaks loose and kills him. Shucks!

You then have to fight the Tyrant. Once you win, you activate the labs self destruct system and rush to the heliport. There, you contact Brad, the helicopter pilot that left you and your whole team for dead earlier. Just then, the Tyrant pops up again and you need to kill him.

Now, depending on some choices you made during the course of the game, you have 4 possible endings. I, of course, got the best one. So here’s the list from best to worst:

Best: You beat the Tyrant, and escape with Jill (or Chris) and one more STARS team member (Rebecca or Barry). Then the mansion blows up.

Second Best: You beat the tyrant and escape with either Rebecca or Barry, and the mansion explodes.

Second Worst: Jill and Chris escape as the only two survivors. The mansion does not explode and the Tyrant escapes into the woods.

Worst: You are the sole survivor. The mansion does not explode and the Tyrant escapes into the woods.

I am grazing over a lot of detail here, but that is the plot in a nutshell. It’s pretty dumb. That being said, it’s not all dumb. There are some elements I quite like, despite the larger story being silly.

The story of Resident Evil is passed along to you in two ways: cut scenes and gameplay. The cut scenes in Resident Evil, though I’m sure were impressive at the time, are largely cheesy, poorly acted (at least in English), and often boring. As far as delivery of the story goes, the cut scenes were what dragged the whole experience down for me. The cut scenes were funny, sure, but unintentionally so. Join that with the weak plot and there’s no way around the overall narrative suffering because of it.

The method of story being passed to you through gameplay, on the other hand, is not too shabby. I’d even venture closely to saying it’s good. This is a classic conundrum in a lot of narrative media, but exemplified in video games. How much will you hold the audience’s hand?

Resident Evil starts out fairly strong in this regard. Once you first enter the mansion, you have no idea what the hell is going on or where you are. All you know is Bravo team is FUBAR and one of your buddies is missing. The game then opens up for you and says “figure it out.” Moving through the mansion and solving the “puzzles” therein makes for an experience that is somewhat enjoyable. The story you pick up on through notes, set pieces, and various encounters is far more memorable than what is presented in cut scenes. Again, the larger plot is dumb, but these little story chunks you happen across are actually halfway decent.

The most memorable section of discovering an interesting story through gameplay occurs when you arrive at the Cabin area of the game. You’ve just made it out of the Mansion area for the first time and follow a winding path through the woods. At the end of the path is a dilapidated cabin. Inside the cabin, as you’re mucking around for inventory items, you come across a twisted and mutilated humanoid zombie-thing. This creature does not look like any of the other zombies you’ve encountered, but if you are like me, you tried to let it have it with both barrels anyhow. This does not work. The weird deformed creature continues to plod its way towards you. At this point you have to give up and leave the cabin.

As you move on, you gather more bits of information regarding this creature through notes and journals scattered here and there. The story crafted between these disparate items is sad and dark. The weird creature from the cabin at one point was a little girl. Her father was the architect hired to build the mansion. When construction was completed, the family was invited to celebrate. The father was unable to attend, so the little girl, Lisa, and her mother, Jessica, decided to go anyway and wait for the father, George, to arrive later.

Lisa and Jessica are then detained with the intention to be test subjects from some good ol’ fashioned Umbrella experimentation. Jessica then forms an escape plan for when the two are being transported to the Lab. But wouldn’t you know it, she is killed later that night.

To try to fool Lisa, the fine folks at Umbrella hire a look-a-like to pretend to be Lisa’s mother. Funny enough, Lisa was able to tell that this random person wasn’t her mother and became very upset and violent (also a side effect of all the testing). So much so that she carved the look-a-likes face off because she had “stolen her mothers face” and attempts to return it to her mother. She then stumbles across an open tomb bearing her mothers name, but is unable to open the casket to confirm. She is then promptly recaptured and experimented on further.

Some years later, Lisa regains some intelligence lost through all of the testing and becomes dangerous to the Umbrella staff. She kills three scientists and is then executed. The staff observed her body for three days following the execution to confirm that she is in fact dead.

Another scientist takes her body to a “secret location” where Lisa then wakes up. From there, she lives alone in the cabin for three years. Alone with her madness. Then you show up! Wee!

Eventually you open her mother’s casket during a boss fight and she shows up and decides to end it all by jumping into a conveniently constructed chasm. Que sera, sera.

Now, the best part about that little side story is that it is not spoon-fed to you. You really don’t even have to invest any time to gather all the details if you so choose. It is entirely up to you to discover, and if you do, it’s about 500 times more effective than anything else in the game.

Speaking of gameplay…

The Gameplay

Alright, first off, this is an old game. 24-ish years old. It was on the Sony PlayStation, pre-dualshock. As a result, a lot of the gameplay does not age particularly well. I will start with the bad, and then move on to some good.

The most egregiously bad portion of gameplay is, you guessed it, the doors. Every time you go through a door, a small cut scene of that door being opened is played, and I mean every time. I imagine this was a necessity to mask load screens. I’ve read from some folks that they believe this necessity also had the added bonus of creating more uncertainty and tension. To this, I will respond with: sort of. The first few doors you go through in the game do create an air of tension (at least, they did for me). However, as you progress and travel in, out, and all around the mansion, including places you have been 15 times before, the doors become by far the most annoying part of the game. Shoot, forgot something in the last room? Watch this door cut scene. Need to get to the other side of the map to solve a puzzle? Have 15 door cut scenes. If not for the sheer variety of doors, I probably would have ended my own life.

Another weak portion of gameplay are the puzzles. I hesitate to even call them puzzles, because more often then not, they are scavenger hunts. You see, a great majority of puzzles in this game are key puzzles. That is, you simply need to find a key to unlock something. This isn’t a puzzle. First off, you know a key exists or the game would end where you are. Second, almost every instance of these key puzzles shows an outline of said key. So not only do you know there’s a key, you also know what the key looks like. Now, this isn’t every puzzle, there are some thinkers present, but the great majority revolve around you doubling back (through door cut scenes) to find some random object to use as a key to get to the next area.

Now before anyone has a stroke and yells, “THOSE AREN’T THE PUZZLES, THE PUZZLES ARE WHAT YOU SOLVE TO GET THE KEYS!!”, just chill out. I did say there are some interesting challenges. However, most of even those puzzles are straightforward and contain far too many hints. I rarely had to try to solve a puzzle more than once. E Z P Z.

Another portion of gameplay that did not age well is inventory management. Again, many have pointed to this being part of the “Survival” in Survival Horror. Sure, I can see that. However, the fact that you can’t just drop something out of your inventory on the ground is mind boggling. It makes no sense in any context. Damn, I have too much ammo! I need to pick up this key item! Well, you can’t drop ammo. Guess I’ll discharge twelve rounds into the floor! Either that or watch 7 door cut scenes to get to an item box to store excess ammo, followed by 7 more door cut scenes to get back to the item. It’s stupid, and is only amplified by playing as Chris Redfield.

I realize that this complaint goes away on subsequent playthroughs, because you know what you will need and when. On your first play, however, this is infinitely retarded.

Inventory management, puzzles, and doors are really my biggest gripes with the gameplay. There are some other aging features that I do not have too much of a problem with, and some I actually enjoy.

Saving your game in Resident Evil revolves around finding ink ribbons and a typewriter. It may shock some to learn, given the last complaint, that I actually like this idea. It makes the act of saving your progress an actual element of gameplay. It breaks up the pacing and slows down the game in a good way. Plus, just as an idea, the fact that progress is saved by this STARS team member literally writing down what happened is a cool idea, narrative-wise. If only you could read what has been typed…

The combat in Resident Evil is not run-and-gun. It is stand-and-gun. You cannot swing your knife or fire a gun while moving. Contrary to other points outlined above, I believe this does actually add to the overall tension of the game. It forces fight or flight at a fundamental level. I will say, for the boss fights in the game, this makes less sense. I have to kill this giant spider that is rushing me, better stop and sight up!

Finally, one thing I mostly enjoyed, and one thing I miss seeing, is static cameras in games. The only trouble in this game is transitioning from one scene to the next and needing to reposition which direction I am pressing to continue the flow of movement. That became tiresome. However, this game would have been infinitely less spooky if I was granted control of the camera. It gives the game a cinematic feel, and allowed for some tense moments. In modern games, you would either be forced down a narrow corridor where it doesn’t matter where you look, or you sneak a cheeky peak around the corner and see the zombie ahead of time. Not as effective.

The Graphics

Right off the top, I will reiterate that I played the HD re-release of Resident Evil for PC. That being stated, all my impressions and comments for the graphical fidelity should be taken with that in mind.

Graphically, Resident Evil HD looks fairly decent. Again, Capcom basically slapped a new coat of paint on a very old game. Even with that being the case, I’d say stylistically the game has aged quite well.

Every pre-rendered background and set-piece fits in with the rest, and offer a sufficient amount of detail. There is little interacting with the environment, but as you interact with the scenery, you are met with some additional text describing further details. In a lot of ways, it looks and feels like a point and click adventure game.

The characters and enemies were also treated to remodeling, and the new models are adequate. They hold to the original feel, but are enhanced enough.

The whole look of this game does a fantastic job of selling the otherwise cheesy horror plot. If not for the artwork and locations, this game would be a lot worse off.

The pre-rendered cut scenes are decent enough, and they never feel like too much of a departure from the moment to moment graphics of general play.

By today’s standards, the animation is fairly lackluster. People and creatures are fairly stilted, with limited range of movement.

The Sound

The sound design, both music and effects, is one of the highlights in Resident Evil. The composer really nailed the ominous and intimidating feel for the soundtrack. It’s packed with some very creepy, memorable tracks. Two thumbs waaaaaaay up!

Despite the doors being abysmal, the sound of the doors is stellar. Believe me, when I say that these are some of the best door sounds on the market.

Enemies make creepy sounds, the environment makes creepy sounds. The sounds is about 55% of the overall creepiness of the game.

The only terrible sound is the sound of dialogue being spoken by all the main characters. It is poorly voice acted, poorly written, and stupid as hell.

Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, I applaud you. You either read everything which is admirable, or skipped to here which is respectable.

Resident Evil is an okay game. The larger story is wacky, but has some genuinely interesting elements to it. The gameplay is aging (and not particularly well), but there are some elements to it that I still enjoy and wish I could be seeing more in modern gaming. The graphics are alright and hold up for the most part. The soundtrack and effects are still excellent, though the voice acting and writing put an overall damper on this.

Again, I will reiterate that which was stated in the Bottom Line Up Front section of this review:

If you are a fan of reliving retro games from your youth, are already a fan of other Resident Evil titles, or just want an old-school Survival Horror game, this is likely for you. It is cheap enough at this point where it may be worth your time and money.

If you don’t want to plod through a slow burn survival horror game with little reward in regards to story, you may want to take a pass and let this game fade into obscurity.