RE 0! A game I was not planning on playing this year until I saw some screenshots and gifs of the train and I was like eehhhhh it's on sale for 6 bucks lets do this!!
RE 0 takes place more or less concurrently with Resi 1, with Rebecca Chambers from Chris's campaign taking the starring role in this game. She is joined by a an ex-marine Billy Coen (I even remembered his name!!) who was convicted of the murder of two dozen civilians and his former squadmates. They both take shelter on a train in the woods around Raccoon City when they are attacked by monsters, and the two of them team up to survive. Now you might be thinking "Wait, are these horror protagonists actually doing the SMART thing of sticking together?!" Yes!! Now of course there are reasons in Resi 1 - 3 for why our main heroes are split up, but its still nice to see in this instance people making some sort of sense. Unlike in Resi 5 and 6 however there is no true co-op here - the player controls one main character at a time and can use a stick to move the other, or give them basic commands. They also can easily share their inventory items, and the games primary 'gimmick' over Resi 1 is how these are used in puzzle solving. Unfortunately, it does not work out as well as I imagined the developers had hoped...
While the split puzzle sections are vaguely interesting in theory, what they often work out to be is an exercise in tedium as you try to balance your very limited inventories with equipping two characters and holding onto all the quest items. This game has no shared 'box' space like RE1 - 2 - 3, but instead allows you to place items and ground and come back for them any time. I didn't find this too annoying as the map has built-in functions for keeping track of all items and where exactly you put them. There was only one particularly egregious example of a quest item being nearly forgotten and then forcing me to track it down near the end to continue (sup hookshot), otherwise I had a fine enough time doing the 'Inventory Shuffle' Resident Evil so enjoys.
Having two protagonists is a large detriment to 5 and 6 I feel, and this also carries over to 0, however to a smaller degree. Having another person with you certainly reduces the tension somewhat, and the player is pretty easily able to let the AI handle a lot of the wetwork if you want which automatically makes things a bit less scary. Thankfully the masterful fixed cameras and spooky atmosphere are very much done with finesse here so even though it shares a bad feature of 5 and 6 (partner character) it at least executes on the idea well enough so that it doesn't ruin the proceedings.
Speaking of partners - the characters themselves! I generally did like the two main characters, but ultimately felt like they were undercooked. They are initially distrustful but after saving each other a few times, they start to respect each other and Rebecca even lets Billy go free at the end as she promised (leading to her entrance in RE1, and sidestepping why Billy wasn't with her or even mentioned!), however, we get not a lot between the two as the game progresses. There's one particular moment with Billy going into his backstory (sort of) but it never actually returns to this conversation to show their growth after he rebuffs her. For several moments in the game I was waiting for a bit of banter between the two that would have fit right in, but ultimately never came. The main story itself is also kind of stupid - one of Umbrellas founders went crazy and injected himself with T-Virus leeches and turned into an anime villain..? RE0 is the first game chronologically to descend into dumb anime bullshit and I'm not happy about it alright?
Ultimately, Resident Evil 0 suffers from the same basic issue that RE5 did - It is aping an excellent classic of a game, with a handful of things to set it apart (albeit large things!), but just not being as clever and bold as what they're emulating. The game is cut right from the cloth of RE1, and it shows in the best and worst ways possible. The obtuse and silly puzzles, the oppressive atmosphere and environments, the anxiety-inducing camera angles, balancing health/ammo/progress... all well done and compared favorably to 1. However, it lacks a cohesive narrative, charismatic and endearing characters, a memorable setting (the Train is AWESOME, everything after that is pretty meh) and the sheer cleverness of its predecessor. That along with a faulty co-op system that I'm sure sounded great on paper but just didn't work out in practice... RE 0 is not one of my favorites, but I still thinks its good!
P.S. I picked this up after I beat the first campaign of RE6 and finished it well before I finished the third or even fourth campaign. Holy crap it is so much better lol
RE 0 takes place more or less concurrently with Resi 1, with Rebecca Chambers from Chris's campaign taking the starring role in this game. She is joined by a an ex-marine Billy Coen (I even remembered his name!!) who was convicted of the murder of two dozen civilians and his former squadmates. They both take shelter on a train in the woods around Raccoon City when they are attacked by monsters, and the two of them team up to survive. Now you might be thinking "Wait, are these horror protagonists actually doing the SMART thing of sticking together?!" Yes!! Now of course there are reasons in Resi 1 - 3 for why our main heroes are split up, but its still nice to see in this instance people making some sort of sense. Unlike in Resi 5 and 6 however there is no true co-op here - the player controls one main character at a time and can use a stick to move the other, or give them basic commands. They also can easily share their inventory items, and the games primary 'gimmick' over Resi 1 is how these are used in puzzle solving. Unfortunately, it does not work out as well as I imagined the developers had hoped...
While the split puzzle sections are vaguely interesting in theory, what they often work out to be is an exercise in tedium as you try to balance your very limited inventories with equipping two characters and holding onto all the quest items. This game has no shared 'box' space like RE1 - 2 - 3, but instead allows you to place items and ground and come back for them any time. I didn't find this too annoying as the map has built-in functions for keeping track of all items and where exactly you put them. There was only one particularly egregious example of a quest item being nearly forgotten and then forcing me to track it down near the end to continue (sup hookshot), otherwise I had a fine enough time doing the 'Inventory Shuffle' Resident Evil so enjoys.
Having two protagonists is a large detriment to 5 and 6 I feel, and this also carries over to 0, however to a smaller degree. Having another person with you certainly reduces the tension somewhat, and the player is pretty easily able to let the AI handle a lot of the wetwork if you want which automatically makes things a bit less scary. Thankfully the masterful fixed cameras and spooky atmosphere are very much done with finesse here so even though it shares a bad feature of 5 and 6 (partner character) it at least executes on the idea well enough so that it doesn't ruin the proceedings.
Speaking of partners - the characters themselves! I generally did like the two main characters, but ultimately felt like they were undercooked. They are initially distrustful but after saving each other a few times, they start to respect each other and Rebecca even lets Billy go free at the end as she promised (leading to her entrance in RE1, and sidestepping why Billy wasn't with her or even mentioned!), however, we get not a lot between the two as the game progresses. There's one particular moment with Billy going into his backstory (sort of) but it never actually returns to this conversation to show their growth after he rebuffs her. For several moments in the game I was waiting for a bit of banter between the two that would have fit right in, but ultimately never came. The main story itself is also kind of stupid - one of Umbrellas founders went crazy and injected himself with T-Virus leeches and turned into an anime villain..? RE0 is the first game chronologically to descend into dumb anime bullshit and I'm not happy about it alright?
Ultimately, Resident Evil 0 suffers from the same basic issue that RE5 did - It is aping an excellent classic of a game, with a handful of things to set it apart (albeit large things!), but just not being as clever and bold as what they're emulating. The game is cut right from the cloth of RE1, and it shows in the best and worst ways possible. The obtuse and silly puzzles, the oppressive atmosphere and environments, the anxiety-inducing camera angles, balancing health/ammo/progress... all well done and compared favorably to 1. However, it lacks a cohesive narrative, charismatic and endearing characters, a memorable setting (the Train is AWESOME, everything after that is pretty meh) and the sheer cleverness of its predecessor. That along with a faulty co-op system that I'm sure sounded great on paper but just didn't work out in practice... RE 0 is not one of my favorites, but I still thinks its good!
P.S. I picked this up after I beat the first campaign of RE6 and finished it well before I finished the third or even fourth campaign. Holy crap it is so much better lol