Resident Evil (2002 Remake)

Resident Evil. That's a name that strikes fear and admiration in horror gamers worldwide. The franchise has been going for close to 30 years and, despite a few missteps, has shown little sign of slowing down. That said, my first introduction to the Resident Evil franchise was through Paul Anderson's film series and not through the games themselves.

I heard the games praised pretty much everywhere and wanted to check them out myself. Luckily for me, there was a massive Steam sale on the series towards the end of 2020 and I was able to purchase most of the games in a bundle!

It took a while to get to them- I have tons of other games in my library - but I finally did and I LOVED it, so, let's talk about it!

Just a quick note before we start: I'm going to be looking at the 2002 remaster of the original game as that's what's available on Steam.

A Brief History

The gaming industry saw quite the change over the course of the 1990s with games like Doom and Silent Hill bringing about a change in view on the world of gaming. It wasn't entirely kid-stuff anymore, now there were games that could thrill an older audience. Tucked into a decade that saw games like House of the Dead, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Nocturne, was a little gem that would go on to shape the horror gaming landscape forever.

Development for Resident Evil (which was called Biohazard in Japan) began in 1993. Capcom, the company that published the game, wanted a new type of horror game and so they brought in Shinji Mikami to work with one of their developers - Tokuro Fujiwara - to do the job.

The original idea was to take one of Fujiwara's older projects, a 1989 game called Sweet Home, and remake it. Over the course of development, the game went through several changes before being released in 1996. The game was a mega hit and was praised for its atmosphere and pacing but criticised for the voice acting and storyline - we'll get to that in a bit though.

Resident Evil went on to coin the term 'survival horror' when it was dubbed the first survival horror game. There have been many sequels and spinoffs since then and, in 2002, the first game was remastered.

Let's Talk about the Story...

Members of an elite rescue team are forced to crash land on their way to an assignment and have to take shelter in an abandoned mansion. Inside the mansion, they encounter and have to fight through zombies of various kinds.

While fighting through zombies, the team also has to investigate where they came from - an underground lab...what a shock.

The Good Stuff

Let's start off slowly, the graphics are absolutely gorgeous! For a game released 20 or so years ago, the visuals hold up remarkably well. I wasn't sure how this game would play on my PC because oftentimes older games don't do well on Windows 10. It seems like my concerns were unfounded, however, as the game ran just fine - for the most part.

The atmosphere of the game is fantastic. The halls of the Spencer mansion are largely silent; the echo of your footsteps across the floors is just unnerving as a result. Additionally, the jump scares, while present, are thankfully few and far between. The music is also great.

I LOVED the world building! Throughout the mansion, you can find documents that talk about the various experiments and such which provides a neat little backstory. What makes it especially good is that it's up to the player to piece everything together - you don't get a direct answer until right at the end of the game.

Nit-picking Resident Evil...

I don't really have anything negative - anything that I outright hated - but there are a few things that are more nitpicks than anything else.

First off, the camera. I have a love-hate relationship with fixed cameras in games; but in this case it wasn't really a problem. It worked really well to heighten the feelings of claustrophobia and tension and there were several times where I turned a corner and walked straight into a horde of zombies - which, of course, scared the hell out of me and got me screaming like a little girl on more than one occasion.

The save and inventory systems also frustrated me at first. The inventory is limited to just a few slots so you have to balance out your ammunition and other pickups. Having such limited space was...frustration incarnate. I can't tell you how many times I ran out of space and had to rework things.

Puzzle solving is a huge part of this game and while I like the idea, I found many of them to be frustratingly obscure most of the time. With that said, I did enjoy working through quite a few of them.

This was a Great Intro to the Series!

This game was considered the benchmark of what a remake should be for many years - that has, of course, changed over the years. With that in mind, the Resident Evil remake is a great intro to a series that I'd been itching to try for years.

Well, there's a whole series of survival horror games to go through, and I'm going to enjoy doing exactly that!

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time!