One Avocadoan’s journey delving into the realm of survival horror.

As I mentioned last time, horror media is quite a recent interest for me. One of the byproducts of this is that although I was aware of the existence of the Resident Evil series, I knew very little about it for the longest time. The first time I can recall ever paying attention to it was just prior to the release of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard when I saw many articles detailing how scary it was supposed to be; I watched a clip from the game and was immediately like, “Nope, not for me.” After that were all the discourse and memes about Lady Dimitrescu in the lead-up to Resident Evil Village, and then clips of Resident Evil 2 Remake mods that replaced Mr. X with other fictional characters (like Thomas the Tank Engine or the goose from Untitled Goose Game).

Suffice to say, I didn’t have any real idea about what the series – and especially its early entries – was like.

It wasn’t until I was getting ready to play Crow Country that this changed. While reading up about the game, I noticed several reviewers making mention of fixed camera angles. Now, Crow Country doesn’t make use of fixed camera angles itself, but it was noted by some how the game’s presentation seemed designed to evoke the horror games of yore that did utilize this technique. (For those who might not be familiar, many older 3D horror games – and games of other genres, for that matter – used pre-rendered backgrounds to save on processing power and thus allow for more detailed visuals overall. Essentially, the backgrounds were 2D images made to look like 3D models – the problem being that any movement of the camera would break the illusion. So instead the camera was fixed in place independent of the player, and any time the player moved from one part of the room or area to another it would switch to a new background and camera angle.) I was unfamiliar with the concept at the time, so I decided to look more into it.

This led me to gameplay footage from the original Resident Evil, and I found myself both intrigued and baffled. How could one possibly manage all the other survival horror gameplay mechanics while the camera angle kept changing suddenly like that? It was an intimidating thought, but one that became less so after playing through Crow Country (and eventually Signalis) and becoming more accustomed to how survival horror games otherwise operate. And as the intimidation factor faded, the things I found intriguing pushed their way forward and prompted me to finally give the Resident Evil HD Remaster a shot a couple of weeks ago. I’m very glad I did because the game is, for lack of a better word, fantastic.

First, some additional context. Resident Evil, created by director Shinji Mikami and producer Tokuro Fujiwara for Capcom, was originally released in 1996. It wasn’t the first survival horror game – Sweet Home (created by Fujiwara), Alone in the Dark, and Clock Tower all preceded it – but it popularized and helped define the genre and even served as the inspiration for the term ‘survival horror’ itself. Over the next five years it spawned three successful sequels (Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, and Resident Evil – Code: Veronica), leading to a deal with Nintendo to port all four games to the Nintendo GameCube. Rather than make a straight port of the increasingly outdated first game, it was decided that Mikami and his team would remake the game with updated graphics, new voice acting, altered puzzles, and additional mechanics.  The remake was released to extensive acclaim in 2002, with many people to this day considering it among the best games in the franchise and the genre as a whole, but it remained confined to the relatively poor-selling GameCube until an HD remaster was finally launched across most major platforms in 2015.

The premise of Resident Evil is pretty simple. Strange and disturbing attacks in Raccoon City and Arklay County have been traced to the nearby mountains, and two teams from an elite rescue organization – S.T.A.R.S. – are sent to investigate. When one of the teams goes missing and their helicopter is found abandoned, the other team comes under attack from violent and seemingly rotting dogs and takes cover in a nearby mansion. Realizing that this place is likely connected to the incidents around Raccoon City, they split up to look around. (The player is given the choice to play as S.T.A.R.S. members Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield, a choice that affects both gameplay and plot as I will get into more later.) As they investigate the grand and decaying home and fend off the zombies infesting it, the S.T.A.R.S. team begins to unravel a conspiracy as they are picked off one by one. Again, it’s a very simple plot – especially when compared to something like Signalis – but the game has so much else going for it that it doesn’t really need any added story complexity.

As mentioned previously, the game gives you two player character options that do actually affect the gameplay. Jill has more inventory space, a lockpick to open certain doors, and access to a grenade launcher. Chris has fewer inventory spots, permanently has access to a lighter (which Jill eventually has access to, but for her it takes up an inventory spot), and has more health. Many people consider Chris’s playthrough harder, which is partly why I went with Jill for my run; but also, after playing Signalis, I really wanted to have as much inventory space as possible. The player character you choose affects which side character you will encounter throughout the mansion as well. Chris is assisted by Rebecca Chambers, who I understand can heal him a certain number of times and carries out tasks for him (like playing a piano) that he lacks the skills for. Jill is assisted by Barry Burton, who can provide her with ammo on certain occasions and help her get out of certain traps or defeat certain bosses. Barry’s also quite fun, with some very dad-joke-y lines, although unfortunately I triggered a cutscene that prevented me from hearing his most famous/infamous line (the ‘Jill sandwich’ one, in case you’re wondering). I love how these diverging mechanics and character beats really give the player a choice ahead of time as to how they want to play the game and add a strong replayability factor.

Progression follows a very similar process to other survival horror games, with the player given some freedom to explore the environment, finding key items or necessary pieces of information along the way and taking those to other areas to solve puzzles and unlock doors. The game does suffer a little bit from being an early remake of one of the first big games in the genre; many of its coolest puzzle ideas have gone on to be utilized in other projects. Even so, there are still some really good puzzles here, and some quite challenging ones too. I particularly liked the death mask puzzle, which required you to find four death masks scattered throughout the mansion and bring them to a central location in the graveyard to open up the next area. It reminded me a lot of a similar puzzle in Signalis that required you to find six scattered key cards to activate a large and imposing door.

The ability to choose between two mechanically different characters and the competent, well-designed puzzles are certainly major positives of the Resident Evil HD Remaster, but the thing that really kept me coming back to the game over and over is the fantastic tension that suffuses everything. I thought Crow Country and Signalis were both excellent at giving a creepy, tense feel to their proceedings, but Resident Evil manages to surpass them on that front in my view. The game creates this tension in three main ways – the visuals and sound, resource management, and sudden changes.

First up, there is the sensory experience – environmental design, sound design, etc. This is where the pre-rendered backgrounds really come in clutch. For a game that is, again, a ten-year-old remaster of a twenty-three-year-old remake, the backgrounds look so gorgeously detailed and moody. Together with the excellent use of lighting (including the occasional flashes of lightning) they do a great job of capturing the unsettling feel of a lived-in space that has gone into rapid decline. Worn furniture, scattered refuse, debris – it makes some of the rooms feel cluttered, less in a ‘confuses the eye’ manner and more in a ‘what could be hiding over there’ way. The outdoor areas manage to be even creepier with their heavy fog and the way the wind rustles through the foliage and undergrowth.

The fixed camera angles also contribute a lot to the looming sense of dread, particularly in combination with the sound design. When you enter a room, the first camera angle will almost always be focused on the player and the area immediately around the door. This leaves most of the room obscured. You’ll hear noises – moaning, creaking, shuffling – but you can’t adjust the camera to see what’s there. The only way to change the angle is to move forward, despite not knowing what you’re walking into. It is frequently a nerve-wracking experience, even when the room proves to be empty of any threats.

Second, there are the extensive resource management aspects. I have noticed that this seems to be one of the most off-putting parts of the game for a lot of people, which I can understand, but overall I love it. You are rather severely limited in the amount of items you can hold in your inventory; Jill has eight inventory spots, Chris has six. Weapons, key items, extra ammo, and health items all take up spots, and it should be noted that once you pick up an item and put it in your inventory you generally cannot just set it back down. In order to open up spots again in your inventory, you have to make use of the item boxes that are located in some save rooms. The item boxes are all connected, but not all save rooms have them. In order to make any progress, you are generally going to have to use the save rooms that contain item boxes as hubs, and you are frequently required to make very tough decisions about what to bring with you at any given time. Bringing more ammo or weapons might mean fewer health items, or going to solve a puzzle that makes use of a large number of key items may require you to leave most other things behind. There is a lot of strategy involved, something that I became accustomed to when playing Signalis (which likely was inspired in part by Resident Evil for its inventory system), which adds a lot of tension to the whole situation.

Even beyond the limited inventory, there are other sources of resource management that play a big role in the game. Ammo is relatively scarce, particularly in the early game; I think in the first two hours I only came across one additional box of handgun ammo. Meanwhile, the enemies tend to be bullet sponges. Even simple zombies frequently would take four or five bullets from the default handgun to go down. This forces you to constantly decide when you should take a stand and when you should try to avoid or dodge enemies entirely to conserve ammo for larger threats. Burning the bodies of enemies (something important that I’ll get into more later) can only be done with kerosene. Kerosene jugs are located around the mansion and its environs, but each one only contains enough for a finite number of uses. Saving the game itself even requires significant forethought and decision-making. Saving is done at typewriters located in the save rooms, but in order to save you have to use up an ink ribbon. There is only a certain number of ink ribbons that can be found on a single playthrough (thirty on normal difficulty, although I think there are different amounts with the other difficulty levels). Trust me, you do not want to use up all your ink ribbons and then realize you have to try to go an hour or more through a difficult stretch without being able to save at all. It’s a unique system that I’ve never seen before, and I quite liked what it added to the game.

Finally, there is the game’s willingness to keep you on your toes through constant change. The Crimson Heads are one such example (and, from what I understand, one of the biggest additions the remake made). If you kill a zombie and come back later, you’ll likely be in for a nasty surprise – when left for long enough, dead zombies will revive as faster, more aggressive, and more resilient versions of themselves. Those things are utterly terrifying. Just when you thought you’d cleared a hallway, you’ll find yourself facing an even more difficult to handle enemy. (You do have three choices to avoid the creation of Crimson Heads: avoid rather than kill zombies, try to get headshots [easier said than done sometimes], or burn the bodies with your lighter and limited supply of kerosene. Sometimes none of these options are good.) The other two survival horror games I’ve played can have enemies revive (Signalis) or respawn after story events (Crow Country), but the Crimson Heads feel more unique and even more scary.

There are other ways the game plays with your feeling of relative safety. After freely traversing a hallway multiple times, you might suddenly be ambushed by dogs or zombies breaking through the windows or (something that really surprised me) even opening doors. You might find that a door that you had been using as a crucial shortcut is suddenly broken, requiring you to take a longer and more dangerous route. Or, you might find that areas you had completely cleared before are now infested with a new type of powerful enemy – complete with a one-hit instakill attack – after the game’s midpoint.

The level of tension created by this combination of aesthetics, resource management mechanics, and sudden change are second to none. I don’t know that I’ve ever played a game that induced this much anxiety. The game’s certainly not for everyone because of this, but I found it strangely exhilarating. There are definitely flaws. The dialogue can be a bit hokey, which does give the game some charm, but the voice acting is occasionally too leaden to really sell it. And while the bosses looked cool, I defeated most of them in less than twenty seconds by just standing in place and pouring ammo into them. Otherwise, though, I was deeply impressed by the Resident Evil HD Remaster and would put it at the top of my nascent ranking of survival horror games.

Survival horror and adjacent games I hope to cover (currently own, in no particular order) – Resident Evil HD Remaster, Resident Evil 2 Remake, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (original), Resident Evil 4 (original), Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Resident Evil: Village, Silent Hill 2 Remake, Silent Hill 4: The Room, Silent Hill f, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Amnesia: Rebirth, Tormented Souls, Alien Isolation, Yomawari: Midnight Shadows, The Evil Within, The Evil Within 2, Alisa, Dead Space (2008), Alone in the Dark 1, Alone in the Dark 2, Alone in the Dark 3, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, Curse: Eye of Isis, Dino Crisis, Darkwood, ObsCure, Cold Fear, Lempo, Stasis, Stasis Bone Totem, System Shock 1 and 2, Metro 2033, Look Outside

Other survival horror and adjacent games I hope to cover (but don’t currently own) – SOMA, Amnesia: The Bunker, ObsCure II, Fear the Spotlight, Heartworm, Little Goody Two-Shoes, Hollowbody, Cronos: The New Dawn, Sorry We’re Closed, Tormented Souls II

My Current Survival Horror Ranking:

1. Resident Evil (HD Remaster) (9.5/10)
2. Signalis (9/10)
3. Crow Country (8.5/10)

Up Next: Resident Evil 2 Remake

Header image courtesy Game Rant.