So, Game 3 is upon us. And it's one of those games that lives on in infamy, and one that I've played some of the sequels to - but never played the original beyond about 5 minutes.
Resident Evil
Originally released on: Sony Playstation (followed by Sega Saturn and PC, before being remade for Nintendo Gamecube, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii)
Played on: Sega Saturn
Release Date: 1996
Resident Evil (or Pestilent Weevils as it's often known in our house), is a game oft discussed for many reasons. It's a game that spawned a franchise of live-action films, animated DVDs, novels, comics and most importantly, it's the game that created the most random numbering system ever.
What on earth are you on about Brawny? I hear you ask, well just look at the following list of Resident Evil games:
Resident Evil
Resident Evil: The Directors Cut
Resident Evil 2
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - Numbering up to this point? So far, so good.
Resident Evil: Survivor
Resident Evil: Code Veronica
Resident Evil Gaiden - OK, so maybe they've given up numbering the games, instead just doing subtitles. That's OK, right?
Resident Evil: Survivor 2 Code Veronica - What? This is a sequel to one game (Survivor), remaking another (Code Veronica) into a different genre (Light Gun Shooter). This is getting strange...
Resident Evil Zero - Again, a bit strange as a piece of numbering, but it's a prequel so I suppose it's OK...
Resident Evil: Dead Aim
Resident Evil: Outbreak
Resident Evil: Outbreak File #2
Resident Evil 4 - Oh - so we're going back to numbered games are we? This is quite definitely not the 4th game in this list, so quite why we're going back to numbers now I don't understand...
Resident Evil: Deadly Silence - Oh hang on, this is a remake of Resident Evil 1 but with a different name??
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles
Resident Evil 5 - This is getting silly....
Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles
Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D
Resident Evil: Revelations
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City
Resident Evil 6
So that's 20 games, and the newest one (that comes out later this year) is numbered as 6? Yeah that's not confusing at all. In fact, I'd argue it's more confusing than Final Fantasy numbering (and don't get me started on that!) But anyway, I'm not here to talk about the whole franchise, I'm here to talk about the game that started it all. The original.
This game came out at a point where I wasn't a big gamer. As with many people, after gaming a lot as a child/early teen, I "put away childish things"and became obsessed with teenage things (mostly girls and beer). Consequentially, the 32-bit era (Playstation, Saturn, N64 (This is struck through as my wonderful friend Mr Andy Isaacs just pointed out that while it was of the same generation, it is incorrect to list the N64 as a 32bit console)) mostly passed me by at the time, and I didn't get into it until several years later. Famous games that I therefore completely missed at the time they came out include this, Tomb Raider and many others, mostly with horrendous polygonal graphics. So in a way this feels like I'm filling in a portion of my missed youth.
So after choosing a character to play (and then discovering in the manual that if you play as Jill, the female character, it's the easy difficulty, whereas Chris is hard - sexist or what!) and settling down onto the sofa, I began my game. And my first overriding impression? This game is frustrating. After declaring "9 minutes in, and I've found one zombie... and it ate me!" I had to stop and actually look up the controls in the manual and, while they are intuitive once you know what they are, they're not obvious at all.
People have often complained about areas of this game. "The voice acting is rubbish" they say (which it is), "The controls are very awkward" (which they are, it's obvious this was a very early 3D game as up is always forwards, even when you turn the character around, which takes a while to get used to), and "It's hard!". (Which, again, it is).
But you know what? It may be frustrating, it may be awkward to play, you may have to endure loading times cunningly "disguised" as rubbish animations of doors opening and steps moving past, everyone may sound as if they are permanently surprised, bored or both, and it may get exceedingly boring when you don't know where you're going, but after my hour was up? I wanted to keep going.
All of the things in the game that annoyed me, all of the niggles, bad controls, blocky polygonal graphics, strange pacing, were balanced out by the good parts. It's a game with a plot, however ridiculous, it has character, the strange fixed camera angles actually really work to give it an atmosphere of it's own and most important of all, the gameplay is strong.
So, in conclusion, I was pleasantly surprised by Resident Evil. It's reputation of being awkward and awful is understandable, but completely unjustified. It's very playable, and I may well come back to it, to see how far I can get.
Rating (out of 10): 7/10
Would I continue playing?: I think I will. Granted, you have to be in the right mood to play it, but it'll definitely get dug out again.
The next game on this big list of video-game-awesomeness? Micro Machines 2 on the Megadrive!
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