Ahh, I'll buy it at a high price
Recently I've been catching up on the Resident Evil series, one of many things I got into quite late but have developed a mini obsession with. While it's still fresh in my mind, here are a load of my thoughts on the games I've played so far. This is ridiculously long and I doubt anyone will read it all, but I wanted to get it written down anyway.

I played the GameCube remake of the original game last year sometime. I had mixed feelings about it, but I'd really like to play it through again (and actually finish Chris's story this time) and also play the original version for comparison. It didn't help that it took me a while to get used to the controls, which was obviously no longer an issue when I played the subsequent games. So more on this later when I feel I'm in a better position to judge it.


But from what I have seen of the original, Resident Evil 2 sticks pretty closely to the basic formula of its gameplay: Pick one of two characters, get stuck in a building with limited ammo and plenty of zombies, progress by solving bizarre puzzles that really have no place in the world of the game, gradually reveal the backstory through diaries and occasional cutscenes, and later find a lab for a final showdown with some giant mutated thing. It does all of this pretty flawlessly, and I had a blast playing it.

Replay value is added by the way that unlike RE1, the two characters' stories aren't mutually exclusive but instead tie into each other -- and even cleverer, the story changes for both quite a bit depending on which character you play first. A lot of thought went into making the most of the same basic elements in different ways that are actually interesting, which I appreciate. The story itself, while relatively simple, has some interesting turns and is full of strong characters. (It's a bit odd that Claire's entire reason for being there -- finding Chris -- goes completely unresolved, but hey, that's what CODE: Veronica is for.)

I don't tend to scare easily (and usually just roll my eyes when the "atmospheric" fixed camera angles make me run into an enemy I can't see, etc.), but I love the survival horror concept for its potential to put you in the mindset of someone alone, scared and defenseless in a dangerous situation. For that reason, the scenes with Mr X, the invincible, slowly-approaching menace, are some of my favourites in the entire series.

The older graphics made this game less atmospheric than the GC RE1, but then the setting was less explicitly horror-themed anyway, despite their best attempts at making a police station into a bizarre pseudo-mansion with libraries and statue puzzles. While I'd love an updated remake (with RE4 camera and without Crimson Heads please!) I feel the graphics hold up pretty well for such an old 3D game.

Missteps are the typical ones for the series: poor voice acting and the ease with which you can get stuck by missing one item in one room you went to hours ago. I also got irritated at how long it took Sherry to climb up large steps (such a needlessly long animation), but that's a rather specific nitpick. Apart from that this game was pure fun and my favourite of the series that I've played so far.


Resident Evil 3 felt like an inferior rehash of 2. Minor changes to the gameplay formula seemed to be for the worse, most notably the rather broken ammo-building system that resulted in me having far too much amazing ammo later in the game. (This was before I looked up a guide to it after I finished the game, and realised that if I'd done it slightly differently I could have made even more ammo with the same ingredients.) And unlike 2, there were several occasions where I felt the game was requiring too much dexterity of me considering how limited the characters' movement is. In particular, the Nemesis fight outside the Clock Tower when Jill is infected -- how am I meant to aim when it takes so long to turn and face him that he's attacked me before I get there? I don't like to play with auto-aim on since it's off by default and feels like cheating, but for this boss I didn't see much other choice.

It also seemed like tons of the game's art assets were reused from 2, and some of the police station area was reused wholesale. Gone is the idea of two intertwining stories that change depending on which is played first, and instead there's just one story and (for the most part) one character. It does change slightly as it goes along depending on certain choices you make, but it all feels a bit half-hearted and arbitrary, including an ending that changes primarily based on an unrelated decision from earlier in the game. On the whole, the entire game felt very lazy.

Still, it was nice to play as Jill again, and it was interesting to see how the story fitted around 2. As more of the same you can't go too far wrong.


I then skipped ahead a bit and played Resident Evil 4. Though there were all sorts of little touches to link it back to the previous games, and several classic characters were present as well, it's no secret that the basic gameplay and tone of RE4 are nothing like the rest of the series. Some changes like the mobile camera and proper aiming are unequivocal improvements, but they didn't necessitate removing the exploration and puzzle elements almost entirely and making the game into a series of rooms where you have to kill all the enemies.

But it's fine, since the result a brilliantly fun game anyway. It's an addictive romp about shooting tons of monsters, with clever systems for health, storing items and upgrading weapons. It's also one of the best implementations of Wiimote controls I've seen yet; I'm sure I'd have got used to the GC version's controls as well, but I'm glad the Wii version was available by the time I got round to playing it, because the game suits the system down to the ground. The quick time events were great fun also, and prevented the cutscenes from stopping the game dead in its tracks.

The survival horror aspect crops up only occasionally. Interestingly, the environments - things like a creepy village, woods, a castle, sewers - are actually more inherently creepy than most of the things in most previous games, and the game builds a great atmosphere around them. (I rarely found the other games scary anyway, so I can't fault this game too much for not providing that.) I did quite like the part where you played as Ashley and could defend yourself only by throwing nearby objects, and the blind enemies who attack you savagely if they hear you (or your gun) were pretty cool as well.

The story might have little to do with the overarching plot of the series, but that also makes it fairly unique amongst the plethora of secret Umbrella labs. It's simple (moreso than 2 I'd say) and still full of hilariously clunky dialogue, but seeing the backstory revealed gradually through diary entries was another of those things that helped keep the Resident Evil feeling despite the different context. I also loved the return of Ada, even if the mind boggles at why she thought that dress was a practical outfit.

The merchant is awesome. It's amazing how hilarious and memorable just a few lines of dialogue can be.

Currently, RE4 takes the #2 spot in my favourite RE games. Leon's a lucky guy to be in the best games of the series. Nonetheless, I can't help but wish they'd made more of a Resident Evil game and not changed so many other fundamentals along with the necessary mechanical upgrades.


Finally, I spent the past few days playing Resident Evil CODE: Veronica (to keep me distracted until MGS4 comes out). This is the game that should really have been called Resident Evil 3; it's an actual sequel to 2 rather than a sidestory and feels like an actual new game that stands on its own merits to a much greater degree. Still, I can't help but feel like it's one step forward and two steps back compared to 2. The improved graphics, and in particular the realtime 3D environments that allow the camera to actually move (though you still can't control it), are just about the only explicit plus point. Even then, the camera feels like halfway house that should have been updated entirely to something more like RE4.

Apart from that, you have a game that follows the general formula of 1-3, which is no bad thing. It falters in the implementation in a couple of places. The save points seemed far too spread out, particularly at the beginning of the game, and there also seemed to be far too much area to cover at the beginning (with much of the Palace and Military Training Facility available to you, and LOTS of backtracking between them if you don't know what needs to go where). Also, the tendency to expect more out of the player than the controls will let you achieve returns with a couple of this game's boss fights, most notably the second Tyrant fight at the end of disc one. This is one of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had in a video game, and a black mark on the game as a whole. Once he closes in to attack you, the amount of time before he attacks you again is not long enough to turn and face the right direction to move out the way, let alone to actually move. It's cheap and unfair, and a game with these controls should be designed to accommodate them.

The game tries to be a bit clever with the two-character model, rolling it all into one story that's played half as Claire and half as Chris. All in all it feels much like RE2's method, only with less of the game repeated and no option to switch the story around even by beginning the game as Chris. One twist that's quite clever idea in theory, but needlessly frustrating in practice, is that an easily-made mistake at the very beginning of the game (as Claire) will prevent you from getting the Magnum at the end of the game (as Chris). It was partly because of this (although I won't claim to be entirely blameless, since I was running far too low on ammo for everything else as well) that I got to the final boss and found it was literally impossible for me to beat it. I ended up redoing the entire game from scratch -- and I actually enjoyed it quite a lot more the second time, since I knew what I was doing and could skip all the cutscenes.

Speaking of cutscenes, this game is in love with them. Someone clearly forgot to tell them they were making a game and not a (bad) movie, because the entire game is packed with fully-voiced animated cutscenes that are long, boring and often quite pointless. I'm glad that RE4 both toned this down considerably and added the interactive element with quick time events; a feature like that would have made all the difference to (for example) the final showdown with Wesker that I, the player, had absolutely nothing to do with.

The story and the locations it involves are utterly ridiculous, complete with Umbrella's very own prison island, a mansion that connects by a secret tunnel to a base in Antarctica, a hyper-intelligent British noblewoman/mutant, and her twin brother who crossdresses and pretends to be her because of his borderline-incestuous obsession. Steve Burnside is also probably my most hated character in all of Resident Evil; he's far more annoying than Sherry or Ashley. His scenes are written to actively impede your progress by having him act like a dick and/or make idiotic mistakes. He's a lazy plot device we're actually supposed to care about later in the game, when if I was Claire I'd be glad to be rid of him.

Overall, CODE: Veronica is inferior to 2 but with superior graphics. The complaints I have about it aren't massive, but they do add up to a game full of little annoyances, when the same doesn't apply to 2 or even quite so much to 3.


So of the main series, all that's left are RE0 and revisiting the original RE at some point. It looks like I'll actually be caught up before the next one comes out, which is a plus! I should probably also play more of Umbrella Chronicles for its additional story details, even if the story does generally just consist of "There's another outbreak and another lab and Wesker's back and OH MY GOD IT'S GOING TO EXPLODE FIVE MINUTES TO ESCAPE!"

Over and over again. But hey, it works.