Resident Evil REtrospective

WARNING: This post contains scenes of extreme violence and gore.

On Friday, Resident Evil 5 arrives in stores in North America. It's been four years since a new RE game hit shelves and I couldn't be more excited. Note: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles was released in 2007, but it recaps events that occured in previous games.

There are only a handful of franchises I trust so blindly as to purchase their games without any information about them, including whether critics favor them. I would buy anything that begins with The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, Final Fantasy, Metroid and Castlevania. I would similarly buy anything that begins Resident Evil.

I discovered Resident Evil later than most, in large part due to the fact that I never owned a Playstation. The first Resident Evil game was released in 1996. At that time I was busy playing Super Mario 64 and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on my N64.

Luckily for me, Capcom decided to port its sequel, Resident Evil 2, to the N64 in 1999, a year after it premiered on the Playstation. Reading a positive review in Nintendo Power, I rushed to Toys"R"Us and picked up a copy, knowing very little about the RE mythology.

I remember a few things from that first RE experience. One: The cartridge was heavy. REALLY heavy. Developers were forced to squeeze two discs worth of data onto a single 64MB cartridge. Two: I HATED the control scheme. I was used to manuevering the camera around the hero; in RE2, the point of view was static. Three: I was regularly terrified by the content of the game. The atmosphere was full of dread and there were plenty of drop-the-controller moments.

Since then I've been hooked. I've played the five main titles, although not in chronological order.

Below are brief reviews of the five main titles in the Resident Evil canon (excluding Code: Veronica and Umbrella Chronicles). There are listed in order of release date.

**Spoilers may follow**

Resident Evil
Release dates: March 30, 1996 (PS1); April 30, 2002 (GCN)
Genre: Survival horror
Developer: Capcom

In 2002, Resident Evil was remade for the Gamecube. If you're new to the franchise, I suggest this is the version you buy. Resident Evil uses virtually the same plotline of the Playstation original, but adds several gameplay elements, environments and visuals that look frightingly realistic.

For those who don't know, Resident Evil takes place in fictional Raccoon City, a unassuming Midwestern town. After a series of brutal slaying are reported, local law enforcement sends two S.T.A.R.S. (Special Tactics and Rescue Services) teams to investigate. The trail leads S.T.A.R.S. members to an abandoned mansion deep in the woods on the outskirts of town. Players can choose to control either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, two members of S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team, as the explore the mansion and come face-to-face with secret experiments gone horribly wrong.

Resident Evil 2
Release dates: January 21, 1998 (PS1); October 31, 1999 (N64)
Genre: Survival horror
Developer: Capcom

RE2 takes place shortly after the events of the first Resident Evil. A virus which turns humans into flesh-eating zombies has found its way into the heart of Raccoon City. As the streets become filled with walking corpses, two strangers enter the city. One is Leon Kennedy, a police officer on his first day at the Raccoon City Police Department. The other is Claire Redfield, Chris' sister, who's looking for her missing brother.

Once again, players can choose to survive the game as either a male or female hero: Leon or Claire.

RE2 boasts several upgrades over the original, including enhanced graphics and the ability to gauge the protagonist's health simply by looking at their body language.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
Release date: November 11, 1999 (PS1)
Genre: Survival horror
Developer: Capcom

Every family has a black sheep, an individual that doesn't quite match up to his or her siblings. RE3 is that black sheep.

The first half of RE3 takes place one day before Leon Kennedy arrives in Raccoon City and the second half takes place two days after. Players control Jill Valentine, now a former S.T.A.R.S. member, as she tries to escape from the zombie-infested city. Along the way she encounters several mercenaries employed by Umbrella, the corporation responsible for the outbreak.

RE3 is a departure from the previous two RE installments. Players can only control Jill (except for a brief episode when players control Carlos Oliveira, one of the mercenaries). There is also a recurring villain who appears in several boss fights and other set-pieces: Nemesis. Designed by Umbrella to kill S.T.A.R.S. members, Nemesis can run, use weapons and follow Jill from one area to the next.

RE3 is far from a bad game; it simply doesn't have the same effect on the player as RE and RE2. One of the biggest drawbacks is the setting: Raccoon City. By removing the action from a mansion or police station, RE3 eliminated a lot of the claustrophobic feeling associated with the first two RE installments.

Resident Evil Zero
Release date: November 10, 2002 (GCN)
Genre: Survival horror
Developer: Capcom

Made exclusively for the Gamecube in 2002, RE0 takes place one day before the mansion incident chronicled in Resident Evil. It follows the adventures of Rebecca Chambers, the medic for S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team (and a supporting character from Resident Evil) and ex-marine and escaped prisoner Billy Coen, who find themselves stranded in the Arklay Mountains outside of Raccoon City.

As opposed to earlier RE titles, where players choose a character at the beginning of the game, RE0 demands players switch between Rebecca and Billy throughout the game. This dual-character system is necessary to solving many of the game's puzzles and makes the gameplay that much more enjoyable.

RE0 has tremendous graphics, terrifying enemies and goes a long way toward clearing up obscured plot details about the Umbrella Corporation.

It is the last of the main RE titles to use the classic RE control scheme prior to Resident Evil 4.

Resident Evil 4
Release date: January 11, 2005 (GCN); October 25, 2005 (PS2)
Genre: Survival horror/Third-person shooter
Developer: Capcom

Goodbye Raccoon City. Goodbye Umbrella. It's now 2004 and Leon Kennedy, one of the heroes of RE2, is a member of the Secret Service. Umbrella is bankrupt and publicly disgraced. Raccoon City is cinder and ash.

In RE4, the best of the series, players control Leon as he journeys to a remote village in Europe on the trail of a secret cult responsible for kidnapping the daughter of the United States President. RE4 is remarkable for almost everything: graphics, sound, story, atmosphere, etc. Where it made huge leaps, however, is in its control scheme. The camera is no longer motionless above a ceiling fan or behind a window; instead it follows Leon wherever he goes, just above his right shoulder. What does this mean: the ONE fault from which RE games suffered was removed.

I can't say enough good things about RE4. When I played it, I knew I was experiencing something special. It's survival horror, action-adventure and shooter combined into one masterpiece of a game.

Note: Resident Evil 4 is currently ranked #3 on my Top 100 Games of All Time.