Resident Evil

This was a fail!!!!! I decided that I wanted to make an article documenting every time I play one of the Resident Evils until I get to the most recent. Even though I’m a huge fan, I have never played the original. I know, sacrilege. So I decided to give it a try. It did not go the way I had planned. Older Resident Evils have this habit of being extremely difficult to play. Whether it’s the old school acting, the gameplay, the angles, or just the game’s slow pace, sometimes it’s just difficult to get through. Resident Evil is well known for being challenging and a lot of people love that challenge. I’m not one of those people.

I was born in 2002, which puts me in the Gen Z generation. Therefore, I didn’t exactly grow up with the same video games because well… I was a baby. Sure I was brought up on Spyro and Crash Bandicoot but Resident Evil? No way. Even if I wanted to play it when I was a kid, my parents most likely wouldn’t have let me. They didn’t even let me watch Pokemon so Resident Evil was out of the question. No, no, I didn’t get into Resident Evil until my freshman year of high school. I really enjoyed watching playthroughs and the big game that was out at the time was Resident Evil 7 Biohazard! I loved this game! I loved the horror element and the survival! It was so fun to watch others play and it scared me far more than any horror movie did! But I didn’t know much about the world, and when everyone recognized Chris Redfield at the end, I was at a total loss. Like who was this handsome, big guy who looks like he can rock the shit outta boulders. Unfortunately, it didn’t take until the Resident Evil 2 remake coming out for me to officially get into the game. I mean… Have you SEEN Leon? That boy is… WOW.

The first Resident Evil game I had played was the RE2 remake. It was an absolute masterpiece. That was when I dug into the lore, watched the movies, bought and played the following games. I went full out beast mode. I’m still missing a few games like Resident Evil 0 and Resident Evil Code Veronica. But besides those, I have every single game that I’ve been playing completely out of order! So after Village came out this month, I wanted to try out the first-ever RE. This was the worst idea I ever had.

If you know me in real life, you know I love gaming. I don’t really do it because I like a challenge or the gameplay, I do it because I am obsessed with stories and lore. So I was pretty excited to play the original RE since I’ve only seen videos explaining it. Long story short, I could barely get through the first part. NOW, before you all get mad at me, know I’m more disappointed in myself than you could ever be. Moving on from that, I loved the classic feel of this game. It was very old-school gaming and they did amazing with the ambiance and atmosphere. That being said, I hated the angles, so freaking much. And I went into this knowing what the angles were going to be like and how the fighting would be like, but I didn’t know how crazy difficult it was going to be for me. My head could not keep up with how much the angles changed, how quickly they swapped around. It was like getting whiplash. It actually gave me a minor headache while playing. I wish I was being dramatic.

But I did love seeing my boy Chris! He looks so young and full of life. It’s outstanding how trauma can make you hotter, because my God, it made Chris so much hotter. The same goes for Jill. I love that woman but you cannot tell me the shit she went through didn’t make her ten times sexier, because it did. It totally did. Better graphics also helped their looks a lot, I guess, but it was mostly the trauma. Still, it was awesome to see them so young! Chris looked so adorable and honestly made me want to continue the game further. I was very happy to see that you can choose to play Jill or Chris, I think I remember seeing that in a video, I just couldn’t remember. Despite that, I’m glad to see the two storylines like RE 2! It’s something I wish they sort of continued with their most recent games, but alas, we don’t always get what we want.

The horror ambiance was absolutely to die for, mind the pun. I loved how the atmosphere was in this game and I can tell it’s something they’ve always been consistent in. The tense, terror you feel when fighting your foes is very much present. But in this one, it was a little tenser because I could not wrap my head around how hard it was to fight. And I had it on the easiest mode and still was doing horrible. Granted I’m not the best gamer in the world, but I learn controls pretty quickly but for some reason, I could not understand this setup. It’s super disappointing because it’s not the game! It’s definitely not the game but for me as a player. I know what I like and how I like things and this game just didn’t meet any of the checkmarks.

The saving system was also a little off for me. Did I need an Ink Ribbon every time I needed to save? Or did I just need one? It was very confusing. And then some zombie had the audacity to take a dagger from me? Freaking jerk…

Personally, I didn’t like playing the OG Resident Evil. As I said, it was not the game’s fault. I knew how it was going to be and I hadn’t realized how hard it would be for me to play. But this doesn’t discourage me at all from the RE universe. I still adore the story and the wonderful characters and I will be back for days full of all the other games! I am so excited to take you all with me through this!