RESIDENT EVIL

This weekend I traded in THE CONDUIT and got the new edition of RESIDENT EVIL for Wii. It's pretty much just another release of the 2002 Gamecube remake of the first game, but I never played it so it was a good buy for me.

And I had not played the original since 1996 when I got this (ahem) backup from a Malaysian source of a Japanese game called BIOHAZARD. I had no idea what it was, but when Is started playing it and got to that first zombie scene I was like "holy shit, this is like a George Romero thing!" Zombies have totally jumped the shark at this point and have become completely boring, stupid, and "cute" but that wasn't the case 13 years ago, when goofy crap like PLANTS VERSUS ZOMBIES just didn't exist.

So the original RE became one of my favorite games...it had an interesting mix of sci-fi, J-horror, and ALONE IN THE DARK-style adventure gaming. I thought it was great then, and I've played every "main" game in the series but 5. I've loved them all.

But going back to the first one, I'm totally blown away by it in a way that I really wasn't even in 1996. Zombies may be over as far as I'm concerned, but I think RE actually stands- believe it or not- with DAWN OF THE DEAD as the ultimate iteration of the zombie idea in an entertainment medium. I think RE is _great horror_, not just a great video game. I think it's probably the best directed video game I've ever played. And I think it's a better example of the horror genre than most horror films of the past couple of decades.

There's so many levels of brillance, and a lot of them are things that both in 1996 and in 2009 are regarded somehow as "design flaws". Like the fixed camera- games today try so hard to be cinematic but RE totally nailed it long before 3D/HD games screwed it all up. The pacing is incredible- slowly walking through dimly lit halls creates an amazing sense of dread that something could jump out of any window, door, or come running around the corner. And when that does happen, it's like this burst of speed and energy. RE scares me like movies just can't because it gets that combination of atmosphere, dread, and punctuation exactly right. I'll be damned if those dogs didn't scare the shit out of me again. And I knew they were coming.

There's really not much in video games that matches the tension of walking through that house with three bullets and no healing herbs in sight. Or seeing a zombie stumble into the foreground that you've got to try to get past because you're running on empty. A lot of folks hate the inventory system, which I think is perfect and more realistic than having a character carry around 50 items including three or four big guns. I like that everything is extremely limited and you can literally run out of ammo, healing items, or saves. It's survival horror, after all.

The lighting, environment, and music all come together to create the perfect sense of doom. It's almost unheard of for games today to be more about shadow and light than hardcore action- just like with current horror films. The 2002 update to everything was incredible, I can't even remember what the PSX game looks like at this point. I do wish they had left some of the awful dialogue in it (the whole "master of unlocking" thing is gone!), but the cut scenes are well-directed and still fairly modern even though they're seven years old.

So for $30, it turns out I picked up one of the best games for Wii and one of the best games ever made, for any system. I'd rank it in the top five of my favorite video games of all time, easily.

I'm hoping that this "RESIDENT EVIL ARCHIVES" thing goes on further...I hear that ZERO is next, coming to the US in January. I'm really looking forward to remakes of the second and third games. And maybe one day I'll get to play 5.

It sounds great, but I'm just not a console gamer. If I can play a game on my PC, great.

Btw, have you ever played Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines? That was another game that offered some outstanding horror in certain parts of the game. The game was based on the Half-Life 2 engine, which suffered a serious setback when somebody stole that during development, so the Bloodlines developers ran out of time near the end. But download the patches and you have a very good game, with several hours of outstanding gameplay at the beginning, including a very enjoyable tutorial. There are some great scenes of creeping horror, some great gotcha moments, and some very disturbing ideas.

I'm pretty sure the original version was on PC. The 2002 remake, I'm not so sure.

I've heard Bloodlines is good, but I'd be shocked if anything in the White Wolf world could actually scare me. "OMG it's some guy in a trenchcoat with a Brujah shirt and really bad acne!"

I really enjoyed the first few, especially the first one. I remember vividly that scene where you are walking down that corridor close to the entry that you've walked down a bunch of times before and you just get dudes blasting in through the windows out of nowhere. I FREAKED out. It was awesome.

I played a bit of 5 and was totally disappointed. It just felt so clunky to me and the story seemed way too overwrought and lame.

For me the ultimate zombie game is now Left 4 Dead. It trades some of the plodding slow terror (which I do like) for what feels to me much more like running the fuck away from a horde of zombies would be like. Periods of relative calm punctuated by total madness. The forced team work makes playing it with 3 other friends one of the best video games experiences I've ever had. Just constantly on edge and yelling at each other (in a good way), even when there isn't a zombie in sight.

Michael Barnes wrote:

I'm pretty sure the original version was on PC. The 2002 remake, I'm not so sure.

I've heard Bloodlines is good, but I'd be shocked if anything in the White Wolf world could actually scare me. "OMG it's some guy in a trenchcoat with a Brujah shirt and really bad acne!"

The game actually works with different kinds of horror in different situations. In one part, there is the gradually unfolding horror as you uncover evidence that you are dealing with a real pyscho. In another part, there is that spooky sense of being watched and just catching glimpses of something scary at the edge of your vision. Other times, it's the more mundane horror of running low on ammo in a firefight. But the game works with as many moods as the stranger HK action movies, so there is some humor, some cool posturing, some weirdness, and even some tragedy.

For the early part of the game, you can accomplish many of the missions with a variety of approaches: stealth, combat or social skills. Unfortunately, the last third of the game puts a heavier emphasis on combat, and there is simply no way to finish the game without serious combat ability.

I haven't played any of the Resident Evil games, but I really enjoyed the first movie. Which PC games in this series would I enjoy?

Oh man, that's a whole different issue all together.

I thought the first movie was fun trash. It has practically nothing to do with the games whatsoever other than Umbrella. And frankly, Milla is the only reason I've bothered to watch the other two, which were truly bad movies on every level.

Definitely try the first one, I think it's probably all-around the best. Next best would be 4, but it's kind of a departure from "classic" RE gameplay and is more action-oriented. But it's a great action game, one of the best. And it has some scary stuff in it. 2 is great, more apocalyptic than the other games but it's also the most absurd in terms of the puzzles. And 3 has Nemesis. He pursues you through the whole game and he's pretty much indestructable until the end. You'll here him grumble "STARS" and then shit your pants.

Haven't played the Wii version, but I agree that the Gamecube version is an incredible gaming experience.

Are the graphics beefed up any from the GC version? I can't even remember if Wii's hardware is better than GC's.

I don't have my GC anymore. Between this and Punch-Out, I'm craving a Wii.

RE 2002 can still hold its own against the fancy graphics we're getting on the 360 and PS3 right now, and for a 7 year-old game, that's saying a lot.

Barnes, did they integrate motion controls in any way with the new version? Don't get your hopes up of Zero, it's got basically the same gameplay (with a revised inventory system and two playable characters), but it's absolutely stupid story-wise, waaaay more J-Horror than Romero.

The first RE movie was probably the worst film I have ever seen in my life. Not because it's got nothing to do with the game, but because it's a fucking awful movie by every convievable measure.

I still remember having some friends over to my old apartment and one of them playing the second RE late at night. The controller went flying when the first zombie arms burst through the boarded up windows in a hallway. Good times.

Shellhead wrote:

Michael Barnes wrote:

I'm pretty sure the original version was on PC. The 2002 remake, I'm not so sure.

I've heard Bloodlines is good, but I'd be shocked if anything in the White Wolf world could actually scare me. "OMG it's some guy in a trenchcoat with a Brujah shirt and really bad acne!"

The game actually works with different kinds of horror in different situations. In one part, there is the gradually unfolding horror as you uncover evidence that you are dealing with a real pyscho. In another part, there is that spooky sense of being watched and just catching glimpses of something scary at the edge of your vision. Other times, it's the more mundane horror of running low on ammo in a firefight. But the game works with as many moods as the stranger HK action movies, so there is some humor, some cool posturing, some weirdness, and even some tragedy.

For the early part of the game, you can accomplish many of the missions with a variety of approaches: stealth, combat or social skills. Unfortunately, the last third of the game puts a heavier emphasis on combat, and there is simply no way to finish the game without serious combat ability.

The Ghost Hotel is one of the creepiest levels I've ever played.

I never played the actual GC release, but from what I understand the only new addition at all is a variety of controller schemes.

Graphically, it's the same. It doesn't have 16x9, but it is 480p. If they were to do a 16X9 edition, they'd have to go in and literally redo the graphics from the ground up. It plays in that 4:3 letterboxing. Them's the breaks.

Control-wise, you can pretty much use anything you want and there's a couple of schemes for each. The only motion control is a setup where you can tilt the control to aim up or down. You can use the GC controller, just the wiimote, wiimote with nunchuck, or classic controller. I use the classic, definitely the way to go.

I never played the actual GC release, but from what I understand the only new addition at all is a variety of controller schemes.

Graphically, it's the same. It doesn't have 16x9, but it is 480p. If they were to do a 16X9 edition, they'd have to go in and literally redo the graphics from the ground up. It plays in that 4:3 letterboxing. Them's the breaks.

Yeah, but despite all this, it's still pretty impressive graphically, isn't it?

Control-wise, you can pretty much use anything you want and there's a couple of schemes for each. The only motion control is a setup where you can tilt the control to aim up or down. You can use the GC controller, just the wiimote, wiimote with nunchuck, or classic controller. I use the classic, definitely the way to go.

That sucks. I was still sort of hoping they'd do like they did with RE4; take a fantastic game and make it just that much better, but I guess the original isn't really a Wiimote-friendly game. Still, they could've given us instant knife swipes or something.

Oh yeah, graphically it's awesome. Because it has a real sense of aesthetic style and direction that is timeless. And I'll take that over bloom lighting, more polygons, particle physics, or whatever any day. I think the graphics totally hold up today, and I was really kind of shocked at how good they actually are. I went back and looked at some pictures of the PSX version and I was like, "really?" But even then, the game had all the atmosphere and style that the 2002/2009 edition has.

I don't know that they could do the RE4 controls with any RE before it. With the fixed camera and very specific "edits", they'd again have to redo the whole thing from the ground up. Knife swipes would have been great though, something like in UMBRELLA CHRONICLES where you hold the button and swing the controller.

This got me thinking about other scary games...the only two that I think even come close to RE are SILENT HILL (the phone ringing in the hospital is one of the greatest horror moments ever) and the first THIEF. That level where you have to get into the haunted chapel and find that ringing bell is so freaking creepy.

One thing I think is common with all of these horror games is that unlike LEFT 4 DEAD or anything like that, you're really, really vulnerable. Press the wrong switch in RE, you die. Get caught once or twice by a zombie, you die. And with resources very, very limited, it makes the stakes feel really high and the danger level extreme.

The problem with horror games now is that everything has gone more down the action-heavy path. That really worked with RE4, that game is basically a white-knuckle action movie that you control. Left 4 Dead is OK as a purely executive-theme sort of zombie game, but there's nothing very original about it.

Dead Space is great, sort of. It really does a lot with sound, lighting, atmosphere, and pacing. For the first few hours of the game, you're pretty much shitting your pants because the game will constantly make you think there are monsters coming after you. But as your asshole clinches up tighter and tighter, you realize that scary sound you heard was just a piece of the ship creaking around, then you sort of relax, and then BOOM, you get hit with the monster. The problem is, the game's a one-trick pony, and once you get wise to the red herrings, you can see all the "boo" cues coming a mile away. It's kinda' like the Call of Cthulu game that way.

Clock Tower was always one of my favorite horror games. It's a point & click adventure, and you're constantly being chased by this crazy fucker with a giant pair of shears. Every time he comes after you, you have to think of a different way to escape, because you're never really armed.