After somehow not playing this series aside from dabbling with RE2 as a kid, I finally decided to dive right in. I soon realized just how influential these games have been, and I was caught off-guard more than a handful of times.
So I boot up the OG Resident Evil and am immediately surprised by a live action intro sequence that I never knew about. Look at the fucking hair on Wesker's actor. These people are marching through an open field at night, and this man wears his sunglasses. They stumble upon a mansion in the middle of nowhere that apparently nobody performs lawn care for. I'm not sure where the inhabitants parked. But onto the action. Playing as Jill, I quickly learn about characters I never heard of before and have now already forgotten besides Barry. As I begin my exploration, I start to see just how fucking weird this mansion is.
The owners of this place casually placed random traps because why not. I encounter this firsthand by grabbing a conspicuously placed shotgun, triggering a mechanism in the wall. The ceiling in the next room comes slowly down, almost making me a Jill sandwich. Why would any architect design this in a living space? It's just weird. There's the mansion's true purpose underground, but then topside the place seems mostly uninhabited (even unlivable) and has random shit like this. But I'll just write it off as some eccentric millionaire finding ways to spend money. This point being one example, Barry just randomly pops in and out of JIll's route like it's nobody's business. But he's a helpful ally who would certainly never betray his teammates in the interest of protecting his family.
By this point in the game I'm acquainted with how resource-limited the player is. Ammo comes infrequently and hostiles for the most part do not respawn, allowing me to plan out and ration which enemies are worth taking down. It's a fine balance, although I never reached the point where I was completely ammo-less and had to rely on the combat knife or running if I didn't have it on hand. Even more curious is that there is a limit to saving the game; you can only do so with consumable items. I didn't come too close to running out, but what if I had depleted every Ink Ribbon available to me? It does take away a safety net for the player, but I can imagine how annoying it would be to be if I completely ran through the supply.
The game just gets weirder the more I progress. Itchy tasty. You've got a giant snake chilling in the attic and giant spiders crawling around in the game room, not zombified at all. There's a shark casually swimming around in the basement. An Umbrella employee set the password for his company login to a three-character name on an all-caps keyboard consisting only of letters. There are some head-scratching moments sprinkled here and there for using a specific item at a specific place, compounded by the limited inventory and having to find a box to get who knows what item. At some points the game felt like a glorified ad for strategy guides. It was almost like a point-and-click adventure game but with zombies and shooting.
Then we learn that one of Jill's cop buddies is a traitor. Who could it possibly be? Surely not Wesker wearing sunglasses with a labcoat in the Umbrella slideshow. Nah, couldn't be. After taking him down and reuniting with Barry I soon met what I assume to be the core specimen of the virus research or whatever. It is known as Tyrant, the ultimate life form:
What could possibly have prepared ordinary humans to fight the most powerful of specimens when even their firearms struggled against the lesser enemies? Oh oops I killed it in 3 gunshots. Okay then. Time to run. Oh it's back and actually invincible this time. The final boss of this game isn't the Tyrant itself, but fighting the changing camera angles and tank controls to flee Capcom's naked, assymmetrically misshapen Juggernaut. Then I get tossed an OP weapon at a convenient time and blast the zombie thing to smithereens. Bye-bye mansion.
Overall Resident Evil was a fun game with its drawbacks being mostly due to lack of refinement. It was the first of its kind so that was bound to be the case. I'm aware that there is a moderately different playthrough when playing as Chris, but I think I will put that off until later. There is the remake as well, which gives me decision overload on how to proceed. Eventually I do want to experience all routes in both games, but that's for another day. What I did for the time being was proceed right onto Resident Evil 2, the series's first real shiny gem.
What's more interesting than some shitty old mansion when it comes to zombies? An infested city, particularly one of its last safeholds leaking with zombies. It doesn't take long to see what an improvement this game is over its predecessor. The exploration is much more concise; backtracking is not as frequent and is more like "Aha, I just need to get to that place from earlier" instead of RE1's "Where the hell am I supposed to go now?" Every single environment is more detailed and feels real compared to the sparsely decorated mansion. This is best seen with the one area in the PD that is suspiciously identical in layout to a room in the mansion:
Only thing I found to be a downgrade is that zombies seem to eat more lead this time around, at least with the standard handgun. Ammo is more common, but I preferred having less and not needing to use as much. Fortunately by this point I've had some practice blowing heads off with the shotgun, so it's not a huge deal. This sequel does not shy away from the weird puzzles of the first game, and in that sense it's even funnier. It can't be explained away by some weird rich people throwing money down a hole; the game itself more or less states that people at the police department just make strange decisions more often than not. Also the police station houses giant spiders that are just giant spiders, like in the mansion.
Other than those bits, RE2's story is more grounded than the S.T.A.R.S. story from the previous game. You get to see more immediate effects of the virus with one of the first characters Leon meets. While I was prepared for any character I came across to unexpectedly become a zombie, Marvin here really drove the point home. I met him just after he suffered an attack that pretty much sealed his fate. When looking for the other cops as per his command, I had a sliver of hope that I would make it back to him in time, but in the back of my head I knew it would be too late by the time I reunited with Marvin. Recognizing his color-deprived enemy model against others left me unable to help but feel powerless to save him. Either by design or as an intended side effect of how enemies work, the game lets you choose to kill your relatively harmless former ally or leave him be to suffer his new existence. Pretty chilling against anything else in Resident Evil thus far.
The ending bits were more or less the same song and dance as before. Umbrella had a research station reachable from the RPD for reasons I must have missed. The Ada twist was actually unexpected, not at all like the one with Wesker. This was no doubt aided by the fact that the game had me play as her at points, underhandedly getting me to trust her as a character. I chose Leon for this playthrough, and I liked him even more than Jill, though Jill is still cool. From what I understand, RE2 ups the ante with the multiple route playthroughs. Leon/Claire A/B whatever. I do plan to tackle every combination down the line, but I wanted to see what Resident Evil 3 had in store for me first.
Even though I overlooked Resident Evil as a whole, I still knew some beats and characters. RE1 is a mansion full of zombies, RE2 is a police station full of zombies, RE4 has to do with the president's daughter or something, RE5 has someone punch a boulder, etc. Yet I have heard absolutely nothing about 3 prior to playing it. Not a peep. Zilch. I didn't even know who the protagonist was beforehand. Is there a reason RE3 doesn't have much buzz compared to its brethren? While ultimately I rank it below the previous two games, it holds its weight perfectly well.
First a mansion, then a police department, and now a trail mix of locations in Raccoon City. If nothing else, Resident Evil 3 gets points for environmental variety. You've got your standard city and lab areas like before, but you additionally get new locales like a park, cabin, or restaurant. No choice of protagonist this time around, however; it's Jill Valentine through and through. After departing from the random guy from the beginning, Jill sets off into the ruined streets of Raccoon City to do stuff. Unfortunately I did find RE3 to be more maze-like than even RE1, and this is most apparent in the beginning when figuring out where the hell to go. Hey, that building looks familiar. Can I go inside?
Oh look at that, it's the RPD from the previous game. I like when games do that. This is also where I first encountered RE3's central... thing: Nemesis. I'm just trekking through what's accessible in the place, backtracking through the room from RE2 that was identical to a room in RE1, when this asshole busts through a window and chases me with a speed that would make RE1's Tyrant look like a QWOP novice. At least this behemoth is clothed. Okay, heart rate's back to normal. What the hell was that thing?
I'm somewhat mixed on Nemesis. On one hand, it offers something that sets RE3 apart from the previous two games. This game could have been more of the same, but instead it challenges the player with a persistent obstacle that steals whatever scene it appears in. Nemesis is no cakewalk by any means. It is one scary puppy... at first. Then it just becomes an annoyance. Jump scares with this big dude they lose their potency fast. Although, with how much Nemesis throws itself in my face, it at least feels more like a proper antagonist than the unsurprising traitor guy whose name I forgot. But damn if it didn't just make me groan to return to where I knew it would be waiting for me later on.
Carlos is cool. He breathes an air of positivity in a setting where there's anything but. How come nobody talks about this man? Carlos is the only one I could trust when talking about the oddities of RE3. Raccoon City officially has weird-ass puzzles in random places from some lunatic mayor. The big bad evil organization is illegally operating in the place where the fecal matter of the city populace collects. The game makes these things clear in no uncertain terms. Carlos would have just laughed and told us to keep moving. Thank you, Carlos. Capcom, remake RE3 and expand this character's role.
For once the final boss is actually kind of something. Appropriately so, it's immune to anything Jill could personally dish out at it. Instead, there's the challenge of luring it in front of a laser that periodically annihilates anything in its path. If that's not enough, you can also shoot the thing again because screw you Nemesis. Fucking it up with such finality makes dealing with this asshole for most of the game worth it. Then for the ending I'm treated to seeing the city get wiped off the face of the earth. I found it to be a bold decision, cleaning the slate of the world built up from the series so far. Open-ended, but not a cliffhanger.
Resident Evil 3 earned its seat at the big kids table, but I found it to be the most flawed of the original three. It felt like it had more backtracking and confusion of direction. Nemesis, while good if it were in small doses, was largely a nuisance. The conflict in this game was somewhat vague. The singular route naturally results in less replay value. The water level puzzle exists. Resident Evil 1 was mostly guilty of being rough around the edges, as comes with the territory of being first. Resident Evil 2 is a game with no flaws whatsoever youre not allowed to disagree ok
I'm glad to have finally given the Resident Evil series a chance after so long. Its influence is apparent. There's beaucoups of replay value waiting for me when I decide to return to these games. Once I take a break and cleanse my palate, I'll hop back on with Code Veronica X. Then perhaps 0 and then 4. I admit I'm hesitant with the latter because, despite the universal praise, it looks like a departure from what I enjoyed about 1-3. But we'll see.
So I boot up the OG Resident Evil and am immediately surprised by a live action intro sequence that I never knew about. Look at the fucking hair on Wesker's actor. These people are marching through an open field at night, and this man wears his sunglasses. They stumble upon a mansion in the middle of nowhere that apparently nobody performs lawn care for. I'm not sure where the inhabitants parked. But onto the action. Playing as Jill, I quickly learn about characters I never heard of before and have now already forgotten besides Barry. As I begin my exploration, I start to see just how fucking weird this mansion is.
The owners of this place casually placed random traps because why not. I encounter this firsthand by grabbing a conspicuously placed shotgun, triggering a mechanism in the wall. The ceiling in the next room comes slowly down, almost making me a Jill sandwich. Why would any architect design this in a living space? It's just weird. There's the mansion's true purpose underground, but then topside the place seems mostly uninhabited (even unlivable) and has random shit like this. But I'll just write it off as some eccentric millionaire finding ways to spend money. This point being one example, Barry just randomly pops in and out of JIll's route like it's nobody's business. But he's a helpful ally who would certainly never betray his teammates in the interest of protecting his family.
By this point in the game I'm acquainted with how resource-limited the player is. Ammo comes infrequently and hostiles for the most part do not respawn, allowing me to plan out and ration which enemies are worth taking down. It's a fine balance, although I never reached the point where I was completely ammo-less and had to rely on the combat knife or running if I didn't have it on hand. Even more curious is that there is a limit to saving the game; you can only do so with consumable items. I didn't come too close to running out, but what if I had depleted every Ink Ribbon available to me? It does take away a safety net for the player, but I can imagine how annoying it would be to be if I completely ran through the supply.
The game just gets weirder the more I progress. Itchy tasty. You've got a giant snake chilling in the attic and giant spiders crawling around in the game room, not zombified at all. There's a shark casually swimming around in the basement. An Umbrella employee set the password for his company login to a three-character name on an all-caps keyboard consisting only of letters. There are some head-scratching moments sprinkled here and there for using a specific item at a specific place, compounded by the limited inventory and having to find a box to get who knows what item. At some points the game felt like a glorified ad for strategy guides. It was almost like a point-and-click adventure game but with zombies and shooting.
Then we learn that one of Jill's cop buddies is a traitor. Who could it possibly be? Surely not Wesker wearing sunglasses with a labcoat in the Umbrella slideshow. Nah, couldn't be. After taking him down and reuniting with Barry I soon met what I assume to be the core specimen of the virus research or whatever. It is known as Tyrant, the ultimate life form:
What could possibly have prepared ordinary humans to fight the most powerful of specimens when even their firearms struggled against the lesser enemies? Oh oops I killed it in 3 gunshots. Okay then. Time to run. Oh it's back and actually invincible this time. The final boss of this game isn't the Tyrant itself, but fighting the changing camera angles and tank controls to flee Capcom's naked, assymmetrically misshapen Juggernaut. Then I get tossed an OP weapon at a convenient time and blast the zombie thing to smithereens. Bye-bye mansion.
Overall Resident Evil was a fun game with its drawbacks being mostly due to lack of refinement. It was the first of its kind so that was bound to be the case. I'm aware that there is a moderately different playthrough when playing as Chris, but I think I will put that off until later. There is the remake as well, which gives me decision overload on how to proceed. Eventually I do want to experience all routes in both games, but that's for another day. What I did for the time being was proceed right onto Resident Evil 2, the series's first real shiny gem.
What's more interesting than some shitty old mansion when it comes to zombies? An infested city, particularly one of its last safeholds leaking with zombies. It doesn't take long to see what an improvement this game is over its predecessor. The exploration is much more concise; backtracking is not as frequent and is more like "Aha, I just need to get to that place from earlier" instead of RE1's "Where the hell am I supposed to go now?" Every single environment is more detailed and feels real compared to the sparsely decorated mansion. This is best seen with the one area in the PD that is suspiciously identical in layout to a room in the mansion:
Only thing I found to be a downgrade is that zombies seem to eat more lead this time around, at least with the standard handgun. Ammo is more common, but I preferred having less and not needing to use as much. Fortunately by this point I've had some practice blowing heads off with the shotgun, so it's not a huge deal. This sequel does not shy away from the weird puzzles of the first game, and in that sense it's even funnier. It can't be explained away by some weird rich people throwing money down a hole; the game itself more or less states that people at the police department just make strange decisions more often than not. Also the police station houses giant spiders that are just giant spiders, like in the mansion.
Other than those bits, RE2's story is more grounded than the S.T.A.R.S. story from the previous game. You get to see more immediate effects of the virus with one of the first characters Leon meets. While I was prepared for any character I came across to unexpectedly become a zombie, Marvin here really drove the point home. I met him just after he suffered an attack that pretty much sealed his fate. When looking for the other cops as per his command, I had a sliver of hope that I would make it back to him in time, but in the back of my head I knew it would be too late by the time I reunited with Marvin. Recognizing his color-deprived enemy model against others left me unable to help but feel powerless to save him. Either by design or as an intended side effect of how enemies work, the game lets you choose to kill your relatively harmless former ally or leave him be to suffer his new existence. Pretty chilling against anything else in Resident Evil thus far.
The ending bits were more or less the same song and dance as before. Umbrella had a research station reachable from the RPD for reasons I must have missed. The Ada twist was actually unexpected, not at all like the one with Wesker. This was no doubt aided by the fact that the game had me play as her at points, underhandedly getting me to trust her as a character. I chose Leon for this playthrough, and I liked him even more than Jill, though Jill is still cool. From what I understand, RE2 ups the ante with the multiple route playthroughs. Leon/Claire A/B whatever. I do plan to tackle every combination down the line, but I wanted to see what Resident Evil 3 had in store for me first.
Even though I overlooked Resident Evil as a whole, I still knew some beats and characters. RE1 is a mansion full of zombies, RE2 is a police station full of zombies, RE4 has to do with the president's daughter or something, RE5 has someone punch a boulder, etc. Yet I have heard absolutely nothing about 3 prior to playing it. Not a peep. Zilch. I didn't even know who the protagonist was beforehand. Is there a reason RE3 doesn't have much buzz compared to its brethren? While ultimately I rank it below the previous two games, it holds its weight perfectly well.
First a mansion, then a police department, and now a trail mix of locations in Raccoon City. If nothing else, Resident Evil 3 gets points for environmental variety. You've got your standard city and lab areas like before, but you additionally get new locales like a park, cabin, or restaurant. No choice of protagonist this time around, however; it's Jill Valentine through and through. After departing from the random guy from the beginning, Jill sets off into the ruined streets of Raccoon City to do stuff. Unfortunately I did find RE3 to be more maze-like than even RE1, and this is most apparent in the beginning when figuring out where the hell to go. Hey, that building looks familiar. Can I go inside?
Oh look at that, it's the RPD from the previous game. I like when games do that. This is also where I first encountered RE3's central... thing: Nemesis. I'm just trekking through what's accessible in the place, backtracking through the room from RE2 that was identical to a room in RE1, when this asshole busts through a window and chases me with a speed that would make RE1's Tyrant look like a QWOP novice. At least this behemoth is clothed. Okay, heart rate's back to normal. What the hell was that thing?
I'm somewhat mixed on Nemesis. On one hand, it offers something that sets RE3 apart from the previous two games. This game could have been more of the same, but instead it challenges the player with a persistent obstacle that steals whatever scene it appears in. Nemesis is no cakewalk by any means. It is one scary puppy... at first. Then it just becomes an annoyance. Jump scares with this big dude they lose their potency fast. Although, with how much Nemesis throws itself in my face, it at least feels more like a proper antagonist than the unsurprising traitor guy whose name I forgot. But damn if it didn't just make me groan to return to where I knew it would be waiting for me later on.
Carlos is cool. He breathes an air of positivity in a setting where there's anything but. How come nobody talks about this man? Carlos is the only one I could trust when talking about the oddities of RE3. Raccoon City officially has weird-ass puzzles in random places from some lunatic mayor. The big bad evil organization is illegally operating in the place where the fecal matter of the city populace collects. The game makes these things clear in no uncertain terms. Carlos would have just laughed and told us to keep moving. Thank you, Carlos. Capcom, remake RE3 and expand this character's role.
For once the final boss is actually kind of something. Appropriately so, it's immune to anything Jill could personally dish out at it. Instead, there's the challenge of luring it in front of a laser that periodically annihilates anything in its path. If that's not enough, you can also shoot the thing again because screw you Nemesis. Fucking it up with such finality makes dealing with this asshole for most of the game worth it. Then for the ending I'm treated to seeing the city get wiped off the face of the earth. I found it to be a bold decision, cleaning the slate of the world built up from the series so far. Open-ended, but not a cliffhanger.
Resident Evil 3 earned its seat at the big kids table, but I found it to be the most flawed of the original three. It felt like it had more backtracking and confusion of direction. Nemesis, while good if it were in small doses, was largely a nuisance. The conflict in this game was somewhat vague. The singular route naturally results in less replay value. The water level puzzle exists. Resident Evil 1 was mostly guilty of being rough around the edges, as comes with the territory of being first. Resident Evil 2 is a game with no flaws whatsoever youre not allowed to disagree ok
I'm glad to have finally given the Resident Evil series a chance after so long. Its influence is apparent. There's beaucoups of replay value waiting for me when I decide to return to these games. Once I take a break and cleanse my palate, I'll hop back on with Code Veronica X. Then perhaps 0 and then 4. I admit I'm hesitant with the latter because, despite the universal praise, it looks like a departure from what I enjoyed about 1-3. But we'll see.
