Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil

Ignore the shitty title from the department of redundancy department, this is really just a port of the original Resident Evil. RE1 came out for the first Playstation over a decade ago, and the game was given a big update (better graphics, new areas and puzzles) when it was ported to the Gamecube. A second port was made for the Wii, which I ended up purchasing, but unfortunately it's the exact same game as the Gamecube version- no motion controls or fancy updates. I probably could have saved some money by going for the Gamecube port. I'll be honest, this game was one of the hardest I've ever played. I played it on the easiest setting, with the easiest character, using a walkthrough, and it was still pretty tough- I can only imagine how hard it must be to get through on the impossible modes. First off, my character: I went with Jill Valentine over Chris Redfield because she has two extra inventory slots and a bit more health, while Chris does more damage to enemies. Inventory management is crucial in the game- Jill had 8 slots, which you can use to carry health items, a limited supply of ink rolls (used to save at the few typewriters located throughout the game), guns and ammo, and any other key-like items to progress through the game. Needless to say, inventory spaces fill up fast so you need to plan ahead. Most of the game involves searching around through a zombie-infested mansion and the surrounding area. It's loaded with puzzles, most of which were pretty difficult and required walkthrough assistance. Zombies were tough to kill and would rarely stay dead- if not properly disposed of, within an hour or so they would be revived but stronger and faster than before. Properly disposing of zombies means either beheading them (only by a lucky shot) or lighting them on fire (with an extremely limited supply of fuel (seriously I think I was able to light 6 or 7 total zombies up) and a lighter, which means taking up two separate inventory slots). Thus I found the best strategy wasn't to actually kill zombies, but mostly just try to avoid them as much as possible- hard to do in a game full of them. Alright, I've been whining for a while about the hardcore difficulty of the game, but I really shouldn't be. After all, I kind of liked that Resident Evil Archives didn't wuss out on me. Capcom made the game tough, sure, but that's fair. What wasn't fair was the horrible camera choice used throughout. Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil is a third person shooter, but the camera doesn't follow behind you- it's completely static and placed at random spots on walls! Seriously, you walk into a room and all of the sudden you're looking at yourself from a window on the other side. Turning a corner was a nightmare, and I often found myself walking right into a zombie's grasp. That's just terrible. This criticism brings me to the main thing I was thinking while playing Archives: it's been remade twice now, but why has no one remade the original Resident Evil correctly? If the camera worked differently, I think I'd be raving about the game. Instead I found it frustrating and wouldn't recommend playing. Oh well. At least it's finally out of my backlog, so I can move on... to its sequel. Damn. At least Resident Evil 2 was critically acclaimed- Game Informer recently placed it 41st in its list of the top 200 games of all time. Well, we'll find out if that ranking was justified soon enough. Oh yeah, a closing thought- I had kind of been trying to work through most of the game with just a crappy handgun, positive that I'd need to save my magnum and grenade launcher ammo for the last few bosses. I managed to make it to the final boss barely touching either of those reserves, and went after him with about 20 bullets for each gun. I then proceeded to kill him with a single magnum bullet. Kind of funny for such a ball-bustingly difficult game to end so abruptly, and it goes to show that I could have had an easier time by using the guns when they were first available to me. What a shame.