Game Discussion of The Week: Resident Evil

Added and stickied.

I gave it a 1, assuming that 1 is the highest rating.

Nah, that's the lowest rating.

I love the original Resident Evil on PlayStation.

My favorite parts of it is the story and how it tries to scientifically handle the explanation of the zombies and monsters, the script, the voice acting, the characters, the enemies, the bosses, the great use of cinematic camera angles and pre-rendered background graphics, the menu and item management system which allows examination of and combining items, the level design of the mansion, the overall visual, artist and aesthetic design, the sparing use of music letting a combination of silence and the sound effects of moaning zombies shuffling about and cawing crows waiting to peck your eyes out and other eerie stuff create a much more suited atmosphere than any constantly playing musical soundtrack ever could, the replay value of having two different playable characters with genuinely different sides to the story and the simple yet intuitive controls adapted nicely for use with constantly different static camera angles.

And easy 5/5 from me for this legendary classic.

I got obsessed with it after seeing the first movie (the first one was a very entertaining film). Bought all the games out at the time at a used game store. All downhill after 4.

I loved the first game. It may seem nothing or even a bad thing nowadays, but the multiple camera angles gave it a movie feel in an era in which "this game looks like a movie" was a compliment. Also, it was properly scary for the most part: this is Resident Evil before it became an action third-person shooter. The survival-horror approach was very tense, especially the save system: you couldn't just save scum your way out of it, you had to think at which point it was worth saving.

The tank controls were both the best and worst of it: first of all, they were necessary for the multiple camera angles (I just tried playing a bit of REmake with standard controls and it sucks, tank controls are surprisingly better). Second, it made sense in the horror context: when a zombie is walking towards you, you either shoot it (losing precious ammunition), slowly walk away from it or lose time turning to the other direction - and if you have to turn again to shoot, it may be already too close.

On the other hand, exploration and bosses on tank controls suck. They just do.

Most puzzles are ok, though they could get very obtuse (I remember when I had to examine a book to find a key inside of it after basically ignoring that examine option through the entire game, since it was useless). The story was also ok, though the cutscenes and dubbing were too cheesy even for its time - I almost died laughing at the excessive amount of blood from the opening title and the less than enthusiastic "Don't go!" that Chris screams at the helicopter in the first cutscene.

My final grade for it is a 4: I loved it, but also had some mild annoyances; also, RE 2 and Silent Hill improved so much on it in such a short time that its flaws became even more obvious.

By the way, I'm playing through SOMA right now, but I intend to also play REmake as soon as I'm finished with it. Everyone seems to love it and consider a huge improvement over the original, so I have high expectations.

Have you played the REmake on Gamecube? Just curious.