If you are a fan of zombies or survival-horror or an amazing combination of the two, Resident Evil is for you. Although the dialogue and story may feel like your watching a bad horror movie, the game makes up for it with the sheer suspense and cinematic gameplay. The story for Resident Evil goes as such: A special police team called S.T.A.R.S (Special Tactics and Rescue Squad) is sent to investigate strange disappearances outside of Racoon City. Contact is lost with S.T.A.R.S. alpha team and the bravo team is sent in to investigate. You are soon attacked by strange creatures and forced to take shelter in a nearby mansion. Its turn out this mansion is also infected with these strange creatures and your job is to figure out what happened and escape.
The game is played through a cinematic camera, which means as you explore the mansion you will see your character from different angles depending on where you are. This camera system builds for some really frightening, goosebump dispensing moments. The animations for your enemies look realistic making this game even creepier. The soundtrack accompanies the action in the game, and still sounds really great today. The cinematic camera adds an element of suspense, in which if you’re not cautious going from room to room you will run into many unpleasant surprises. Even if you are cautious, you will still have moments when something jumps out at you. The game paces itself well, so when you think you’re done, you find out that there is still a lot to be done.
This game is not without it flaws though, as you’ll find there are a couple of big things that stop this game from being perfect. Throughout the game you will encounter “storage” areas. Depending on the character you are, you can only carry 6 or 8 items. This doesn’t sound bad until you realize you will be needing to swap items. Often you will be forced to go back to these storage areas and just as often you will have to fight through hordes of enemies to get there and back. The other flaw in this game is voice acting. As I said earlier in this review Resident Evil is like a b-horror movie. This isn’t a bad thing while your playing it, but when you see the cutscenes you are painfully reminded of this. The dialogue is filled with over dramatic, horribly translated, and just plain bad voice acting. The opening video of this game is live action and really brings the phase “bad acting” to mind.
The flaws in this game can be forgiven, because of the great, scary gameplay. The game looks great and you get a strange satisfaction from blowing away a zombie with a shotgun. Its fun, yet it can scare the living crap out of you. If you’ve heard of this game but never played it, shame on you.
My Rating – 4/5
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