Circuit Jerk

In honor of Halloween and bandwagons I’m jumping onto, the next two weeks will mostly be dedicated to classic survival horror reviews.

People argue over when “survival horror” started. Some say it was “Sweet Home” on the NES, others say it was “Alone in the Dark” for the computer. Technically “Resident Evil” spawned the phrase.

Honestly though, who cares. Which games have held up their horror factor through the years? And which have turned into more of a survival of horrible game play.

With literally hundreds of Resident Evil clones like Silent Hill, Overblood, Run Like Hell, Dino Crisis, Obscure, and eventually Alone in the Dark, I’m going to stay more on the mainstream path.

First on the chopping block, the tried and true innovator of the phrase Resident Evil.

I’ve played the first Resident Evil scenario on five different platforms, destroying both scenarios multiple times on each platform. Instead of picking one platform and sticking with it, I’m going to give a brief review of the scenario, and then a small paragraph of each of the platforms weaknesses and strengths.

Nostolgia factors into this game greatly. I remember being 12 years old and feeling so damn proud of myself for figuring out that the chemicals had to be dumped into the fountain to kill the plant. I didn’t touch a controller for the first two years this game was out, but watched my cousin play. He was the guns and I was the brains.

Resident Evil was one of the first games to take the mad scientist scenario and create a somewhat believable plot. A classified division of THE major pharmaceutical company in the world creates bio-weapons that break loose, killing all personnel, expanding their numbers greatly, in a somewhat remote mansion.

Sure the tank controls were hard to learn at first, but this was the first time any of us were stepping into a pseudo-3D environment. Any early non-2d Playstation game broke the gamer’s left and right button shackles and made them think on a new plane of existence. (Assuming no one played a Saturn… so yes, the first time we all played in 3D) The geniuses at Capcom found that prerendered scenery looked amazing, and used up little of the Playstation’s power.

Resident Evil also was the first game to innovate gun play. Every game out had a character with a magical 100+ bullet carrying pistol that never had to be reloaded. Resident Evil took this away by giving the character a 15 shot clip that had to be manually reloaded or the player often suffered the consequences.If the player ran out of ammo, it was knife city, which turned out to be shit city.

PlaystationOne (1996): Looking back on this version now, the dialogue is hooky, the load screens are unbearable, and the graphics are undecipherable. Isn’t that the charm though? If not for this game no one would know that Jill Valentine was the “master of an unlocking.” And yes, hearing the disk spin during the load screen adds to the dramatic atmosphere.

The Directors Cut (1997): This wasn’t an overhaul and didn’t add a ton of content like the fans would’ve liked, but it ditched the corny box art of the original and added an “arrange” mode where all the items were placed elsewhere and the game was more difficult.

PC: The PC version didn’t add much, except some American censored material from the original Japanese game. It looked better, but played worse. Mostly because at the time PC controllers were crap.

Gamecube Remake (2002): This is considered the definitive version and for good reason. This version is by far the creepiest (possibly in the series), has amazing graphics, sound, dialogue, and has added large sections of map not in the original game. Unfortunately not many people had Gamecubes to play this. I specifically bought a Gamecube to play this.

Deadly Silence (2005): Supposedly there was a Gameboy Advance port in the works years before the DS version, but citing a horrible port Capcom cancelled the Gameboy version and released a somewhat shit port on the DS. Granted they did add a “Deadly Silence” mode where the monsters are disgustingly harder and some rooms prompt you to swipe the stylist like a knife across the screen at monsters. Too bad you rarely hit the monsters and often end up using all of your herbs after one of these scenes. I will say the original version of the game is fun to play on the portable and supposedly this has four player multiplayer that I have yet to test out. (Because no one heard of this game’s release)

Umbrella Chronicles (2007): Wii was asking for an on rails arcade shooter, and Capcom released the first major one. If your sensor bar was set up right, this game was actually pretty fun. However, if you had any lag at all, you begged for the Tyrant to end your misery before you threw the Wii-mote through the TV. This version gave the bridged version of the mansion incident as far as Chris, Jill’s, and Rebecca’s story went, but filled in gaps of (spoiler alert!) why Wesker is a super human and how did he survive the four claw impaling he received.

If you were to play one version… well I can’t recommend one. While the Gamecube version offers the best mansion experience, you can’t skip out on the original if you wish to survive in the Resident Evil fanboy world. There are just too many inside jokes and too many differences between the two. Most people say that Resident Evil 2 is the best in the Raccoon City story arc, but the first game is by far the creepiest.

Game: Resident Evil
Publisher: Capcom
Platform: Take your pick
Year: 1996-still running
Reviewer: Dan