Looking back: Resident Evil

Do you remember picking up the game box of Resident Evil at a shop for the first time? Remember seeing the screaming guy on the cover with a giant spider in the background, asking yourself "what the hell is this about?"

I do. I remember being torn between scared and intrigued by the cover art, the screenshots on the back and the description.


Before you say it, I know Resident Evil wasn’t the first survival horror and I’m not trying to make out it was. But for me, it was the first time I’d sat down and played a game that scared me. Well, OK, Doom also scared me a few years before, but Resident Evil was made like a horror movie.

It featured a real movie intro sequence, with actual actors, being attacked by vicious dogs and ended with the main characters arriving at a seemingly abandoned mansion. It didn’t take long before you realised it was something seriously wrong going on within the building. I bet you're recalling the same as me now, that first CGI sequence with the zombie eating at a dead guy and then slowly, turning its head towards the camera. I remember just shouting out "what the hell is that?!".

Back when RE1 was released, the movie sequence at the beginning seemed cool and helped build the atmosphere of the horror story. Looking back, the movie intro is cheesy and the voice overs are bad in-game, they even partially were back in 1996. However, the overall story, all the written notes scattered about the mansion and the atmosphere of every room, with your imagination filling in the gaps, help make the experience excellent and creepy.



What I find unique about the original Resident Evil, and not so much in the remake, is that it doesn't go to far lengths to make the mansion overly creepy. It's just an old, abandoned mansion, complete with old furniture, horrid wallpaper, a large, separate guardhouse and a hidden, dismal research facility beneath. There aren’t candlelight rooms, dungeons and over-the-top scary characters.

It simply told the story of a medical company experimenting with bio-weapons at an old, Victorian-like, mansion and something went horribly wrong.

While the controls were sluggish and the combat often frustrating, it helped build tension and was a typical trait of early 3D gaming. It kept you at your toes, fighting down the zombies, dogs and other hideous creatures. Add the fact that it never let you have stacks of ammunition either, it’s probably the most balanced survival horror titles you’ll ever encounter in this regard.

The gunplay felt satisfying and while slugs were sparse, the shotgun gave for some of the most satisfying headshots in gaming. It balanced out the weapons perfectly and always gave you them at a slow pace, making you really enjoy the moment you got your hands on a new, more powerful, one.

The zombie killing and scary moments, like when dogs jump through the windows etc, wouldn't have made such an impact had it not been for the atmospheric environment. This is the truly genius part of the first Resident Evil in my opinion. 



Firstly, let us look at the build-up of the game structure. It doesn't make you travel through the game from A to B, it just leaves you in a mansion with some rooms open and many others locked.

You needed to get familiar with the layout of the mansion and soon you'd find shorter routes as you constantly had to go back and forth finding new keys or items needed to progress. You'd even go out of your way and go a longer route to avoid enemies because of sparse ammo. As you progressed you found new keys to unlock doors further and further into the building.

All this combined, with some truly amazing designed rooms and interiors, made every room feel and look unique in both colour scheme and layout. The unique colouring was lost in the remake, in favour of grey and brown shade. I'd just walk around and look at all the details, combined with notes and diaries written by the people that lived there, and I'd imagine how it was working there before everything went wrong.

I can still close my eyes and see all these creepy, yet fascinating, rooms in front of me. The blue marble room with the green statue in it, the bright lit art gallery with the crows, the hidden lift to the library, the dining hall with the bloody fireplace, the room with a collection of medieval armours, the guardhouse with it’s cracked up wooden floor, the secret lab entrance beneath a fountain, the white tiled morgue, the steam filled power generator rooms and so on. Truly one of the best designed environments in the history of gaming.



The RE series went on to become one of the biggest gaming franchises ever from this and it was indeed well deserved. While not actually outdoing it’s first outing, RE2 and RE3 followed the same style and are well worth mentioning with their beautifully realised Raccoon City settings. Taking the story of how the T-virus spread to a larger and more shocking, yet not too exaggerated scale.

RE: Codename Veronica took a new direction and placed the RE formula on an island. It too was initially cleverly designed but gave up halfway and became far fetched. From there on the series lost my original love. We got a great remake and a prequel, which both held the style of RE1-3, but perhaps then formula was getting worn down by then? 

The series then moved over to action genre, and while good games on their own, RE4 and RE5 have nothing to do with the original trilogy for me personally. The atmosphere, the setting and style was lost completely.

I’ll raise a shiny, blood-red glass of wine at the end of my dining table in the flickering candlelight and give a toast to Resident Evil 1, 2 and 3, but of course mostly to RE1, and say: You changed my deception of videogames, introduced me to survival horror in its true form and amazed me with your atmosphere, tasteful design and clever plot.

Now I’ll grip hold of my Beretta, load it with 9mm lead and blow some zombie brains out!