Marc Cellucci
I can’t stand horror movies. I’ve never understood where jump scares and slashing sprees get fun. It’s the same with bungee jumping, roller coasters, and anything else designed to give you moments where you question life decisions.
Horror games are a different story. Give me agency in a horror setting, and I’m all in. I can’t stand watching teenagers hear a sha-sha-sha sound in the forest and decide to go investigate, but give me a gun or an axe, and I’m Encyclopedia Brown.
This all started because of Resident Evil. I was in college, in the Pentium-driven throes of one of my PC master race phases, and I knew next to nothing about the console with the silly name of PlayStation. A friend had one, and was raving about this new zombie game, so I checked it out.
The moment the dogs jumped through the window, causing me to actually drop the controller, I was hooked. Resident Evil combined so many elements I love — exploration, puzzle solving, silly FMV — all into one package.
Its popularity led to a lot of sequels, but more importantly, to a lot of life lessons as well, some of which I will share with you now.
How to Heighten Home Security (Resident Evil 1)
The original RE was groundbreaking, and introduced many elements that have made the series what it is, including one of my favorites — the convoluted security systems in place in each building. If you or someone you know owns a historic mansion or basement research center, here’s how to keep it secure:
- The preferred method of locking away valuables is with gemstones, statuettes, and/or medallions, preferably several that need to be collected and used in tandem. This eliminates a single point of vulnerability.
- If you use a combination lock, write the combination down on a piece of paper and put it in a separate room — ideally in the same room as your letters where you outline your diabolical plans, so you won’t forget.
- More is more. When purchasing switches and levers for the home, choose the biggest ones possible.
- Store your firearms and ammo all over the house, not in just one room. Keep them in breakable crates or vases for easy access.
- Passcodes are always preferable to passwords, as they are easier to remember.
If push comes to shove, and your mansion is infiltrated by do-gooding BSAA agents, just unleash all those bioweapons you have in your underground lab. Now that’s what you call peace of mind.
Fight the Power (Resident Evil 2)
In most walks of adult life, you have a boss or other authority figure that you rely on and look up to. Well, look closer — that authority figure is probably planning world domination via viral bio-terrorism.
The series has at least one leader-gone-bad in every game, and you quickly learn that you can never trust authority figures. This all started with Albert Wesker, who combined the green herb of slicked-back blond hair with the red herb of sunglasses at night, forming a potent blend of classic ’80s-inspired turncoat.
The scariest one was in the excellent remake of Resident Evil 2, in a stage where you play a young Sherry Birkin trying to escape corrupt police chief Brian Irons. It’s an incredibly tense scene, where you are completely defenseless while trying to escape the clutches of this huge adult who is supposed to serve and protect. All set in an orphanage, for that extra creepiness.
RE2 is considered to be among the very best in the series, and it’s hard to deny that. It took everything the first did, and did it bigger and badder. The remake is the gold standard of how to revive a classic.
Dress for Success (Resident Evil 3)
When you are trapped in a city overrun with zombies and being chased by a giant bio-monster, you need to look the part. Now, some people might go in wearing combat gear and body armor. But not you. You have the look. You have the swagger. So put on that skirt and tube top, and do this in style!
This is what happens when game developers don’t get enough vitamin D. I get that outlandish outfits are kind of a thing with Japanese games, but the late ’90s were a champagne-popping bubble era for it, to the point where it distracted from the largely serious nature of the games.
Sartorial concerns aside, this is another great game. A bit scaled back from its predecessor, but it offered a tight and unique RE experience. The remake was great as well, but unfortunately truncated some portions of the original, and had Nemesis running around like a puppy dog in a couple of battles, which tended to understate the hugeness of the enemy.
Don’t Trust Blond People (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)
As someone with a lifelong affliction of severe pigment deficiency, this bit of truth hurts… but you can’t trust blond people.
Sure, they seem charming enough, with their multicolored eyes, cornsilk hair, and fancy ways. But as soon as you turn your back, you’ll be sporting a combat knife in it, and then they’ll conquer your people, steal your treasures, and put them in their museums.
Blond baddies abound in Code: Veronica. Our old boy Wesker is there, but then you have the Ashford twins, who not only are completely nuts, but have their own mansion, which is about as evil as it gets, and proves the formula of blond hair + resources = insanity.
Code: Veronica was a revelation when it came out. It was during my early days at SEGA, and it was so exciting to have the Dreamcast get an exclusive RE title, especially one that looked and played as well as this one.
Invest in Cargo Pants (Resident Evil 0)
Being able to suspend disbelief is an important thing for a gamer. Video games have a long history of allowing the impossible, like carrying ten different weapons at once, having 200-inch verticals, and getting shot multiple times but not dying.
RE has a lot of this, but one of its more interesting conceits is the storage box, where you can keep extra items you can’t carry on your person. The magic is that the items are available in any storage box you find during the adventure. The creators of the box solved the mysteries of spacetime, creating a real-life wormhole just for your bullets and ink ribbons.
Our heroes should probably just jump in the box and warp to the last boss, but anyway…
RE0 does away with the box, and you can drop items right on the floor without having them vanish into the ether as they do in the rest of the series. Sounds like a good change, right?
Sadly, your two playable characters can hardly carry anything, and you end up spending a good portion of the game jockeying inventory instead of actually playing. I’m especially looking at Billy Coen, who goes through this adventure in a tank top and skinny jeans. We’re talking zero personal storage here. He needs to jump in the storage box, warp to a Uniqlo, and get him some cargo pants.
Otherwise, RE0 is a solid entry in the classic vein, but the formula was starting to wear thin a bit, leading Capcom to reinvent — and almost destroy — my beloved franchise.
You Can Win the Battle, but Lose the War (Resident Evil 4)
I’m an OG when it comes to tank controls. Hell, I’ve played through all the Tomb Raider games, so I’m pro-gear spec when it comes to running in zig-zag patterns until I finally go in a straight line. But by 2005, it was time to mix up the formula, and Capcom did so to near universal acclaim with RE4. It’s considered to be the best in the franchise by a lot of people.
But…
The RE series excels when it focuses on atmosphere, adventure, and ludicrous puzzles. Where RE decidedly fails is action. It was always cumbersome with the tank controls, but even with them gone in RE4, you still feel somewhat like a tank. Movement is too stiff, and the gameplay is pretty much a glorified shooting gallery, like Duck Hunt with Spaniards. The action is by far the weakest part of an otherwise truly excellent game.
Sadly, the success of RE4 begat the noticeably inferior games to follow it, and introduced a bunch of things that hurt the series, like breakable item crates all over the place, “partners” you have to babysit, and Roger Moore-level one liners. It was the right game at the right time, but led to the dreck that follows…
Give the People What they Want (Resident Evil 5)
When I put on an AC/DC record, I don’t want to hear symphony orchestras or spoken word bits — leave that to the Moody Blues. I wanna rock.
RE5 doesn’t rock, but it sure tries to.
You’ve got to give the people what they want, and in this, RE5 fails in quite a few ways:
- I don’t want a dumb AI partner. I’ve got enough to deal with here, and you want to add an item-wasting Tamagotchi to the mix?
- I don’t want the co-op, no matter how bad Capcom wants me to want it. I game alone, and to appropriate some George Thoroughgood here, when I game alone, I prefer to be by myself.
- I don’t want to open doors with roundhouse kicks. Roundhouses are cool and all, but if you use one to open a door, you just look like a tool.
- I don’t want everything onscreen to explode.
- I really, really don’t want QTEs.
Of course, this one sold well, leading to the monstrosity known as RE6. I respect the amount of work that went into this game, but this is not what the people want.
It’s Such a Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever (Revelations 1 and 2)
We are in the post-survival horror phase of the series, where Capcom leans into action, ratchets up the cheese, and lowers the IQ of the gaming public. While the Revelations duology does have its merits, Capcom waltzes right across the line between stupid and clever, and gives a toothy grin from the stupid side.
Nothing makes that stand out more than the dialogue. The writers tried way too hard to be witty and memorable, and only nailed the latter, but probably not in the way they intended. Some choice quotes:
“Me and my sweet ass are on the way!”
“The man eats danger for breakfast and craps it out at dinner.”
“Irony sure is a dick.”
“Go jump on a dildo, boss!”
In addition, there are scenes where the script commits the cardinal sin of saying out loud what the player shouldn’t be thinking, but is thinking anyway. For example, during a particularly frustrating rail shooting scene where you fight a sea creature, one character says, “These tentacles are so annoying.” Yes. Yes they are.
This happens quite a bit across the series, usually after extended, difficult scenes:
“There’s more?”
“When will this end?”
“Well, that was a pain in the ass.”
“I just want this to be over.”
So do I. Script writers, find other ways to have characters emote besides having them unintentionally rag on the game they are in.
Only Get In Rescue Vehicles At Dawn (Resident Evil 6)
If a rescue chopper comes for you and the sun’s still not up, don’t get in it. It will invariably get shot down, have a zombie pilot, or meet some other fate that will lead to a crash. Don’t worry, the crash will only kill those without plot armor, but it means more B.O.W. shooting and item scrounging for you.
No other game encapsulates this more than RE6, where the series goes full Bruckheimer. This is big dumb superhero stuff, with spinning kicks to zombie faces, leaps from exploding buildings, bosses with a million forms, and lots and lots of explosions. The first time you give a zombie a German suplex, you know you’re a long way from the Spencer mansion.
To its credit, the story is ambitious, the presentation and voice acting (!) are excellent, and the co-op gunplay is fun… mostly. Each chapter is overly long, consisting largely of corridors connecting monster closets, with the occasional boss fight and dramatic cutscene to really drive home that stakes is high.
But if some faceless hero comes in a vehicle to extract you, tell them to keep the engine warm until the sun comes up. It’s the only way you’ll get to the end credits.
Little Kids are Scary (Resident Evil VII: Biohazard)
Having two boys myself, I’ve known this for a while now, but little kids are scary as hell, and very capable of evil acts with a giant grins on their faces. I’ve had enough nut punches from giggling kids to know this firsthand.
RE7 is credited with reviving the series, and it is certainly the scariest of the bunch. This is a total pendulum swing from RE6. Washed of color and Michael Bay aesthetics, we have a disturbingly violent first-person trudge, with horrifying enemies and a distinct lack of heroics.
The Baker family steals the show, but the true baddie here is Eveline, who can invade minds, drive people insane, and bring them back from the dead in mutated forms. Just like my sons.
This game is bleak, bleak, bleak, and has way too much of the indie horror vibe for my taste. I don’t want nightmare fuel, I want my Resident Evil to be a Jill sandwich with extra cheese.
Europeans Speak American (Resident Evil VIII: Village)
Three years later, our heroes from RE7 have relocated to “Europe” to try to lead a new, peaceful life. Of course this doesn’t happen, as the game starts with the protagonist’s wife becoming home to a variety pack of bullets. But as the hero explores the titular village, we soon learn that while the townsfolk lack some of the creature comforts of America, they do not lack the accents.
I’m guessing they got a lot of CHiPs reruns in this village, as the denizens have that distinct Animal Style sound of Californians. While thick eastern European accents might have added to the mood, they wouldn’t have given the oomph needed for such lines as, “Put a sock in it, Roxana!” and “Dumb bitch is crazy as a bag of rats.”
One of them is even named Ernest, which makes me think they got some Jim Varney films in addition to all the Ponch and Jon.
For those of you worried about language barriers when traveling abroad, rest assured that you will not only be able to understand the natives, but you can probably talk with them about March Madness brackets or prescription drugs, with nothing lost in translation.
It’s hard to overemphasize how much more I liked Village than its predecessor. It honed the first-person style of RE7 while bringing back over-the-top characters, mansions filled with mysteries, enemy variety, and the full RGB palette. It’s consistently entertaining, and one of the best in the series.
The Definitive Resident Evil Rankings
As per my other series reviews, I now bring you my rankings of all the mainline games in the Resident Evil series. Remakes are included with the originals, as I consider them part of the full experience. The Revelations games are apparently canon, so they are here as well, but I’m leaving out offshoots like the light gun games and such.
12. Revelations: A charmless and frustrating experience.
11. RE6: Check your brain at the door.
10. RE5: All it was missing was Fonzie on water skis.
9. Revelations 2: Way better than the first, but still The Ropers to the mainline series’ Three’s Company.
8. RE0: A solid old-school RE game with some bad design choices.
7. RE7: Great indie-style horror, but none of that RE soul that I crave.
6. RE3: Felt a little thin after RE2, but still great.
5. RE Code: Veronica: A big leap for the series and one of my favorite Dreamcast games.
4. RE4: A truly great game, but too much of a shooting gallery for my tastes.
3. RE8: Kept everything that worked in RE7 and brought back the soul.
2. RE2: A James Cameron sequel, keeping the core stuff that worked while amping everything up.
1. RE OG: Ain’t nothin’ like the real thing, baby. The original is still the best.
