Judging by the many 10 star reviews here on the review page, a lot of gamers still have warm feelings for this classic survival game. I have a suspicious feeling that much of the love comes from copious amounts of nostalgia, since Resident Evil was easily the first and best horror game with a cinematic experience to reach a large audience at the time.
I was introduced to the phenomenon by a friend who tirelessly tried to get me at the same level of appreciation as he did. Unfortunately, I couldn't get past the crappy controls that have plagued the series ever since. Just walking down a corridor was easy enough, but any close encounter with a raving zombie got me in a state of panic, and the inability to make a decent turn led to an undeserved death by poor maneuverability.
The opposite of a guilty pleasure is a guilty pain, and as much as everyone seemed to love it, I had to decide that Resident Evil just wasn't my thing. However, I kept having this nagging feeling that I was missing out on something great. So when the first game got a fresh new overhaul on the GameCube, I gave it a well-deserved second chance. Several more years of gaming experience had surely paid off; what used to be an impossible combination of buttons was now mastered within a few hours, and I currently rank REmake as one of my all-time favorite games, having already lost count of all the replays.
But let it be said that the firm building blocks upon which the REmake (and the franchise) rests still belong to the original. I got re-introduced to the place where it all began through Resident Evil: Deadly Silence, a slightly expanded GameBoy DS port of the original. Of course, I had to look past the graphic limitations and lack of detail as compared to REmake, but it struck me how much of the setting, plot and monsters were already in the original game. The intriguing setup of plunging players into a personal hell and have them find out what happened and how to get out for themselves is still the best way to draw the player into the narrative, and there is nice balance between the zombie threat and ammunition, which means there is no room for a gung-ho gun battle and every shot must count.
What quality is present in the plot and atmosphere, however, is almost undone by the sheer horror that passes for a script and performances. The game is as famous for its scares as it is for its heroically bad dialogs. Hilarious quotes like "You were almost a Jill sandwich" and "I found this weapon. It's really powerful, especially against living things!" would be the stuff of bad legends on its own, but it has to compete with the way the actors deliver their lines. It is hard to describe here, but those who know how the line "WHOOOOAAAAAA! This hall is DANGEROUS!" was pronounced in-game know what I'm talking about.
You might think that both quality and lack thereof in a single work would make for a very bipolar game, but the opposite is true. Upon playing, I found this game to be like an amusingly bad horror movie where the tense parts are periodically interrupted by unintentional comic relief. Because the script is cheesy all the way through, it really adds to the overall B- movie quality of the game, but at the end, you'll still be satisfied by the decent plot, gameplay and puzzles that challenged you.
I'll admit that I still prefer the REmake: it had a more serious tone, better scares, expanded plot, better actors and an improved script to match, making it an A-level B-movie, where I would rate the original as an 'enjoyably made' B- movie, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the original game is still the definition of interactive horror that changed the way of gaming for the next couple of decades.
I was introduced to the phenomenon by a friend who tirelessly tried to get me at the same level of appreciation as he did. Unfortunately, I couldn't get past the crappy controls that have plagued the series ever since. Just walking down a corridor was easy enough, but any close encounter with a raving zombie got me in a state of panic, and the inability to make a decent turn led to an undeserved death by poor maneuverability.
The opposite of a guilty pleasure is a guilty pain, and as much as everyone seemed to love it, I had to decide that Resident Evil just wasn't my thing. However, I kept having this nagging feeling that I was missing out on something great. So when the first game got a fresh new overhaul on the GameCube, I gave it a well-deserved second chance. Several more years of gaming experience had surely paid off; what used to be an impossible combination of buttons was now mastered within a few hours, and I currently rank REmake as one of my all-time favorite games, having already lost count of all the replays.
But let it be said that the firm building blocks upon which the REmake (and the franchise) rests still belong to the original. I got re-introduced to the place where it all began through Resident Evil: Deadly Silence, a slightly expanded GameBoy DS port of the original. Of course, I had to look past the graphic limitations and lack of detail as compared to REmake, but it struck me how much of the setting, plot and monsters were already in the original game. The intriguing setup of plunging players into a personal hell and have them find out what happened and how to get out for themselves is still the best way to draw the player into the narrative, and there is nice balance between the zombie threat and ammunition, which means there is no room for a gung-ho gun battle and every shot must count.
What quality is present in the plot and atmosphere, however, is almost undone by the sheer horror that passes for a script and performances. The game is as famous for its scares as it is for its heroically bad dialogs. Hilarious quotes like "You were almost a Jill sandwich" and "I found this weapon. It's really powerful, especially against living things!" would be the stuff of bad legends on its own, but it has to compete with the way the actors deliver their lines. It is hard to describe here, but those who know how the line "WHOOOOAAAAAA! This hall is DANGEROUS!" was pronounced in-game know what I'm talking about.
You might think that both quality and lack thereof in a single work would make for a very bipolar game, but the opposite is true. Upon playing, I found this game to be like an amusingly bad horror movie where the tense parts are periodically interrupted by unintentional comic relief. Because the script is cheesy all the way through, it really adds to the overall B- movie quality of the game, but at the end, you'll still be satisfied by the decent plot, gameplay and puzzles that challenged you.
I'll admit that I still prefer the REmake: it had a more serious tone, better scares, expanded plot, better actors and an improved script to match, making it an A-level B-movie, where I would rate the original as an 'enjoyably made' B- movie, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the original game is still the definition of interactive horror that changed the way of gaming for the next couple of decades.