Night of the Living Dead, eat your heart out (Resident Evil (PC))

Member Name: Zarrah

Product:	Resident Evil (PC)
Date:	05/03/03 (141 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good value for money, Quite scary, Funny?

Disadvantages: That voice acting!!, Choppy graphics

Title: Resident Evil/Resident Evil, Director's Cut
Developer: Capcom
Year: 1996
Consoles: RE1 - PSX, PC, Saturn -- Remade for Gamecube.
RE-DC - PSX
This review is based on the Director's Cut, as opposed to the original.

:~*~PLOT~*~:

There have been around a dozen gruesome murders in the areas around Raccoon City - people having their guts ripped out, and then apparently being eaten. The RPD (Raccoon Police Dapartment) Special STARS (Special Tactics And Rescue Squad) Unit's Bravo team is sent to investigate, but contact is lost early on. Alpha team is then sent in, and things go drastically wrong....
A team member is mauled to death by dogs within minutes, the pilot chickens out and leaves, with the helicopter and supplies, and the remaining four members are forced to escape to an old, abandoned mansion.
The problem is, the old mansion isn't so abandoned after all...

You either play as Jill Valentine, the lockpicker, or Chris Redfield, the marksman.
Jill will fight alongside Barry Burton, the weapons expert.
Chris will fight alongside Rebecca Chambers, medic and sole survivor of Bravo Team.

:~*~GAMEPLAY~*~:

I found the controls quite easy to handle, but I've been told they're actually quite hard to use. As I played the game after playing Resident Evil 3 and Dino Crisis 1 and 2, I found the lack of dodging and 180Deg. turns quite annoying, and because of being used to Dino Crisis, I found myself aiming at the ceiling instead of walking with a gun, but they were my only complaints.
The zombies move very slowly, and if you were in a larger area, they would be easily dodged, but, as the large part of the zombie-oriented gameplay occurs in narrow corridors, that is out of the question; you have to shoot them down, and run like the devil in case they get up again. The BOWs (Bio-Organic Weapons) move faster, and won't drop until they're dead, which takes more
f
irepower than a zombie - you will have to conserve ammo in things like the Shotgun and Bazooka.
Scattered throughout the game are 'Save Rooms' - these are safe areas that contain within:
A typewriter, so you can save your game (just like in real life.).
An item box, where you can store... Well, items, for when your inventory is full.
Ink ribbons, for the type writer.
The item boxes are especially useful for Chris, as he can't carry as much as Jill can.
The most annoying thing about the gameplay is the loading sequance between rooms. The 'opening door' sequance, while just a slight hinderance at first, gets very annoying as the game goes on, and is especially bad when you're thrown straight from the quiet, nothing-to-do opening sequance to being jumped on as soon as controls go back to you by ravenous zombies and killer dogs. What I'm trying to say is, it can put you off guard.

:~*~GRAPHICS/SOUND~*~:

I would say the opening sequances and FMVs (Full Motion Videos) use real people, and the opening sequance has a very Blair Witch Project feel to it, what with it switching between fist person camera to third person narrative about halfway through. The normal cut scenes were probably considered well done in 1996, but compared to the rest of the Resident Evil series and other Capcom games, they are quite far behind the times; the characters are not very well put together, and the surroundings have an almost bad-cartoony feel about them in places.

The sounds of the enemies are well done - you can get an early warning of unseen zombies from groaning and shuffling, and the quiet, creepy music gives a horror movie undertone.
This undertone is, however, entirely spoilt by the voice acting, which simply put, was crap. I spent most of the opening sequance laughing, and I stopped choosing the Jill scenario when I played for the simple reason that I laughed so much at her 'actor''s
bad wo
rk that I could hardly concentrate on the important parts of the scenes.
To be fair, though, I think it was simply a case of the actors trying too hard to make their character sound more human - if they weren't scared, that wouldn't seem real.

:~*~OVERALL~*~:

Resident Evil was one of the first survival horror games out there (I say 'one of the first' so as not to offend Alone in the Dark fans) and, while the first efforts were choppy, it fully made up for it with its sequals. Besides, you have to appreciate that it was a precursor to Devil May Cry and Dino Crisis. ^^;
The game, being in the Value Series now, is available for under £10, and, for a few scares and cheap laughs (voice acting, or lack of same) it's a good buy, but I would really only recommend it for those who want to know the background behind the game; otherwise, the Remake might be a better option.

Summary: