Resident Evil 4 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I’m not really a fan of the original three games. I can see why people like them and why they were so popular though. The original Resident Evil was arguably the first real survival horror game, and it helped codify and popularize the genre. But while Resident Evil may have helped establish the genre, in my opinion the Silent Hill games were the first ones to do it really well. And that opinion has only solidified after playing Resident Evil Remake.
Released six years after the original, Resident Evil Remake was a game for the GameCube that was a from the ground up remake of the first game, featuring much better graphics and presentation while still keeping the core experience intact. In some ways it does show how at its core the original Resident Evil was a really solid horror game, but at the same time the visual improvements don’t disguise how janky and awkward the gameplay is.
Before I go over the problems with this game, I’d like to be nice and start off with some positives. This game does have a really good sense of atmosphere, and there were some moments where I was getting genuinely immersed and creeped out. I also like how most of the game takes place in the same mansion, as it feels like you’re gradually solving one big puzzle piece by piece, and you do kind of grow fond of the location, creepy and macabre as it may be. The sound design is also great.
But for all the things this game does right, there’s also plenty it gets wrong. One thing I don’t think has aged very well are the fixed camera angles. Now, I get why they’re like that. Part of it was hardware limitations, but it was also to create a sense of detachment and dread, to make the player feel like they’re being watched by some unseen but malevolent entity, and not being able to directly control the camera does add to the sense of unease and vulnerability you’re supposed to have in a horror game. But the way the camera never moves and just abruptly cuts from angle to angle as the player moves through the mansion feels clunky. In other games like Haunting Ground or the recent title Tormented Souls the player doesn’t have any direct control over the camera, but the camera moves with the player, gliding naturally along as the player walks, and it’s a lot smoother and less jarring than the rigid positioning of the old school Resident Evil games.
Another flaw in Resident Evil is that you play as a trained police officer, which kind of undermines the fear you’re supposed to be feeling in a horror game. Silent Hill and many other horror games that came afterwards featured more ordinary people who can just barely defend themselves, which makes the player feel more vulnerable and thus more afraid. I played as Chris Redfield when I played the original PS1 version of Resident Evil, so this time around I opted for Jill Valentine. And in her story she and another police officer are together for a lot of it, and the only reason they keep splitting up is basically just because it’s a video game. If this were a bad horror movie one would expect the other police officer to die a gruesome death almost immediately after they split up, but surprisingly he doesn’t, and both he and Jill seem quite capable of handling the various threats that lurk in the mansion, which once again undermines the fear.
The second biggest flaw with the game is the limited inventory system. Like with the fixed camera angles, I get what they were going for. The inventory system has limited slots so that you have to choose carefully which items you’re going to carry at any given time, and you have to run back to a safe room for more supplies from time to time. In theory it adds to the unnerving dread of a good horror game, but in practice it’s just annoying. Several slots will be taken up by weapons and healing items, since you want to stay alive, and the rest will be limited to blank spaces for any items you pick up while exploring, and puzzle items. The only problem is that it’s not always clear what each item is supposed to be used for, and if you enter the room where you need a certain item but you don’t have it with you, then you might not realize what you need to do to solve the puzzle, or you might realize it but have trouble making it all the way back to one of the safe rooms, and then struggle to remember where exactly that one spot was. There are also so few slots that it really doesn’t take long for your inventory to fill up, forcing you to constantly run back to a safe room to drop some of them off even if you’re in the middle of something.
The puzzles in this game are rather mixed, which unfortunately seems to be a common problem when it comes to survival horror games. Some of them are really clever, but others have solutions that are so obscure or odd that figuring out the answer is next to impossible, especially with the limited inventory being a constant hindrance. It also really bugs me that Jill never bothers to write helpful notes on the map, like differentiating between a door that’s locked from the other side, a door that’s locked and requires a certain type of key, and a door that’s locked and requires a specific puzzle item. Because when you’re exploring the mansion it’s easy to forget exactly why a particular door is locked just from looking at the map, and nothing is more frustrating than when you obtain a new key, walk all the way across the mansion to a locked door to see if this key will work, only to find out that it doesn’t, and that if Jill had just made a simple marker on the map you could have saved yourself a lot of time and effort. There’s also inexplicably some doors that will open one way, but not the other. I’m not sure why, it’s never used to trap you or disorient you, all it does is make getting around the mansion more tedious than it needs to be.
By far the biggest flaw is the fact that you can only save using a limited item, and if you don’t have any of that item, you flat out can’t save. This is just a shitty thing to do, plain and simple. Limiting the number of bullets and healing items the player can find is fair enough, as that’s par for the course for a horror game, forcing the player to be careful and giving them the tough choice of whether they should fight the enemies or run away. But making it so that the player is unable to save whenever they want isn’t scary, it’s just annoying. There were several instances where I would save before I explored a new room because it looked like it might feature a boss fight, only for nothing to happen, while the actual boss fights seem to come out of nowhere, and there’s no way to know when.
Now, this wouldn’t be a deal-breaker flaw if the game was generous with this item, but it isn’t. There was one moment where I’d used up my last save item, and knew I wouldn’t be able to save again until I found another one. I solved some puzzles, fought several enemies, unlocked a number of doors and walked through several rather large areas, only to be blindsided and killed by a new monster. To add insult to injury, before I encountered the monster I’d made it to a room that looked like it clearly should have a save item, but for some reason didn’t. And because the game didn’t provide me with enough of that item, it was going to force me to do all of that hard work all over again. So I said, fuck it, I’m done. The good stuff wasn’t enough to outweigh the annoyances that had piled up one after another, and I wasn’t going to put up with it any longer.
Resident Evil does have its merits, and I can see why people like it. The Remake did a good job of improving the presentation while still keeping the core experience the same, and on a certain level I do admire how faithful it is to the original. For anyone who is curious about this franchise, this remake of the first game isn’t a bad place to start, though I’ve heard there’s an HD version of the remake, and that might be a better choice than the Gamecube version. But ultimately it's too janky, too archaic, and too annoying for me to enjoy, and I can’t really recommend it to anyone new to the genre. The remake is better than the original, but frankly that's not saying much.
If you are looking for recommendations regarding the survival horror genre, I have a few. The original four Silent Hills are really good, though Silent Hill 2 is the best, and if you’re looking for something more similar to Resident Evil I would recommend Tormented Souls, as it does a lot of the things that Resident Evil did but better. It’s not perfect, and it does have some flaws, but I liked it, and think it deserves more attention.
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