Oh ho ho my god. We meet again. My arch Nemesis (see what I did there?)
From the moment I started playing this game as a kid after playing RE4, Code Veronica, etc. I knew that something was wrong here. I never finished this game when it was still new on GameCube, so then I returned to it many years later.. and I can definitely see why I never finished it that first time going through.
This is one of the most underwhelming, repetitive, and frustrating slogs Iβve ever experienced in this franchise. Resident Evil 5 and 6, Iβd play in an instant over this shit. What I can only imagine why this game is just so half assed, so rushed, and lacks what made the series popular to begin with, itβs survival horror roots, is due to rushed development and a lack of direction trying to connect it to the lore of the universe, but then again, you could also say that about many of the later RE games.
Up until now I have not spoiled any important pilot details in any other one of my RE reviews but for this game I have to make an exception, because the overall narrative is just a disappointing and confusing mess.
Trying to explain the sequences of events that happen in this game is actually difficult, which should give you a good indication of just how fuckin' jumbled this plot is.
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So this game is a prequel to RE1 and it takes place just before the Spenser Mansion infiltration. From the get go, the game is set up as an origin story that teases the question of what happened before the Spenser Mansion incident, where the T and G Viruses came from, and who created them.
After reports of those grizzly murders that took place on the outskirts of Raccoon City, the S.T.A.R.S Bravo Team are dispatched and I guess because of plot convenience, the helicopter decides to suddenly malfunction and crash, leaving the team stranded in the middle of the Arklay Forest.
Upon searching the area they find a crashed car with dead bodies lying there, and pick up a prison sentence file for an escaped criminal named Billy Cohen. He is an ex-military armed soldier who was sentenced to death for supposedly murdering over 20 innocent civilians in Africa.
So they not only find that, but they also find an abandoned train just sitting in the middle of the forest. And in typical Resident Evil fashion, it's infested with zombies. The protagonist of this game is Rebecca Chambers from Resident Evil 1.
After examining the body of one of the inhabitants, Rebecca just coincidentally encounters Billy, but Billy doesn't harm her. Once Rebecca reaches the back of the train, she gets attacked by a man made out of leeches, but is saved by Billy. That's when the main antagonist of the game is revealed, a.. very corny looking opera singer named Dr. Marcus.
It turns out he is the one who unleashed all the leeches on the train to infect all the passengers. He also for some reason manages to get the train moving again.
Despite Rebecca's distrust in Billy, the two still have to work together if they wanna make it out alive, considering the rest of Rebecca's team are pretty much fucking gone by this point. Once they manage to stop the train, it crashes into Dr. Marcus's training facility.
And here is where you learn about the creation of the T-Virus and the G-Virus. 20 years before the events of this game, Dr. Marcus creates the T-Virus, and throughout the next ten years he would continue to whip up creature after creature, one of these known as the Queen Leech. Shortly after this he gets assassinated by Umbrella under the orders of Oswell Spenser because he was using too many trainees as test subjects.
Albert Wesker and William Birkin were also party to the assassination plan. This was also due to the fact that these three people were in an arms race to discover the secrets of the Progenitor Virus, believing that whoever got to it first would be able to have full control over Umbrella.
After this, Dr. Marcus's body was disposed of along with the Queen Leech, and the credit for all of his work is given to William Birkin, and then William would go on to create the G-Virus. Over the next ten years the Queen Leech would then feed on Marcus's body and this actually gave him the ability to shape shift back into a newfound form and with his memories still intact. Now with a newfound hatred for Umbrella, he seeks vengeance. This is also how he has the ability to control the leeches.
So the main issues I have with this narrative are that, well, Dr. Marcus is one of the most forgettable villains in the entire mainline series next to Nicolai from Resident Evil 3. What you have to give credit for in Resident Evil is that almost every game has a main antagonist that you either love or love to hate.
Albert Wesker, William Birkin, the Alfred Twins, Salazar and Saddler, the Baker Family, all of these guys are legendary antagonists, whether because they have awesome line deliveries, they have iconic character designs, and have a lot of bombastic personality behind them.
But Dr. Marcus's motivations are very generic, and they don't have anything to do with the player, so I as a player don't see why I should care about Dr. Marcus succeeding. He also has a shitload of awkward line deliveries, even more so than the older games, so it's very difficult for him to develop as a character.
Instead he just comes off as a laughable joker of a villain like Cipher from Metal Gear Solid 5 because well, just look at him. I mean for God sake, he infects a train full of passengers for no reason whatsoever just to get back at Wesker and William by singing opera music. Oh and he puts a giant scorpion on there as well for some reason.
I mean, how can you say that out loud without chuckling? Marcus just isn't intimidating. I care a lot more about Wesker and William, and I think that's another problem. By having Wesker and William in the same game as Marcus, he immediately loses importance because Wesker and William are just the better villains.
I end up wanting to see more screen time with those two than him.
Rebecca and Billy on the other hand, while they do develop and grow to trust each other more, Billy is also just extremely forgettable. I mean he isn't balls to the wall annoying like Steve from Code Veronica, but he suffers from what I like to call Shadow the Hedgehog syndrome: a one note stereotypical edgy hardass who doesn't take shit from anyone.
I mean, I get that he was just convicted of a crime he didn't commit, but even during the flashback sequences he has that really deep, depressing, and edgy tone in his voice like he's about to snap a guy's cock in half if that person just looked at him the wrong way.
Also, it's very hard to care about Billy's inner struggle along with Marcus's because of a very important reason. It's because the game doesn't do a good enough job explaining it. Seriously, during your first playthrough, you might be confused on what's going on, and that's because the cutscenes are spread out very far between stretches of gameplay.
If you wanted to understand the story in full context you would have to either play through the game multiple times or go on the internet and do the research.
And even then, a lot of these scenes dump exposition that doesn't have much to do with the lore of the universe.
Also, this is the only game that we ever see Billy in. So again, why should you care about him? It's not like we ever see him again unlike Rebecca.
At least Carlos in RE3 was likeable because of his upbeat and caring personality who risks his life to protect Jill and the citizens of Raccoon City. You can see his inner struggle of watching all of his teammates around him die and being betrayed by his commanding officer who just sees the whole ordeal as another game or as an opportunity to obtain research to get rich.
Not to mention, you're gonna be so frustrated with the insanely repetitive gameplay loop that you're probably gonna forget about what's happening anyway but I'll get into that later.
There's also a pretty big problem with the narrative structure with Rebecca which has created a debate whether or not Rebecca's actions in this game are canon or not.
Right off the bat there is a problem with the continuity here. Because if youβve played RE1 and then this game, you would know that Rebecca stumbles in the Spencer Mansion and bumps into Chris Redfield. But not once in the game does Rebecca ever mention Billy, the infected train, the Umbrella facilities she ran into, her comrades that have either died or have gone missing, or even Dr. Marcus, which I will get into.
And it's not like Rebecca gets amnesia, she heads straight for the Spenser Mansion right after she says goodbye to Billy. And again, we never see Billy again after that point.
Which I can understand because the original RE1 came out in 1996, and RE0 is a game from 2002, but even in the 2002 RE1 GameCube Remake, Rebecca never talks about all the fucked up shit she just went through, nor does she show any signs of trauma or PTSD after being in near death situations countless times. Maybe one time during the Hunter scene but.. ehhhhhh⦠that's subjective.
At times she tries to act tough but you can see just how frail of a character she is, especially when itβs been confirmed that she doesnβt like to fight but will do it if she has to defend herself, which is all the more reason to give the player signs of her distress.
Hell, even Rebecca's combat experience is just completely gone for some reason. She turns into a near helpless character. There is one part in RE1 where she just stands in one spot and nearly lets a Hunter kill her. She fuckin' fought tons of Hunters and other monstrosities in the previous game! This just doesn't make any sense.
You fought against giant tarantulas, a giant scorpion, leech men, mutant frogs, and a giant leech queen. You even got captured by a giant centipede. Now all of a sudden you're afraid to take on a single Hunter??
And furthermore, why would she even go to the Spenser Mansion after the fact? If I was her I would have been like βthis mission is FUBARβ, and got the hell outta there. Who knows if the people that she was supposed to meet up with are already dead.
I'm assuming this is because of the fact that RE0 and RE1 were directed by two different people, two different development teams. But don't you think that the people who made RE0 should have done a bit more research on the game they were making a prequel to? This is just sloppy writing.
So with an interesting story that is poorly told, has a lot of plot holes, forgettable characters, retcons, and corny ridiculousness, it's hard to get invested in it.
It also really doesn't help that the gameplay loop in this game is very laborious, tedious, repetitive, and flat out aggravating, which actually brings down the story even further because most of your attention will be deviated towards that. THIS is where a large chunk of my gripes with this game comes from and why I don't even bother playing it anymore as opposed to the other games.
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Once again, as old as the ol' Shirley Temple VCR tapes, this is a third person survival horror game with a large emphasis on limited saves, limited resources, puzzle solving, exploration, etc.
Tank controls, quick turning, door loading screens, limited inventory space, and fixed third person camera angles, all the shit that you would expect in an old RE game. The formula had been perfected by Resident Evil 3, and yet as these games go on they start downgrading the gameplay mechanics so that they could start replacing them with frustrating gimmicks in an attempt to revitalize a dying formula, and I'll explain what I mean by that.
Let's start with the absolutely appalling inventory system.
This is the first game in the series to have two playable characters in the same playthrough, both with their own health bars and inventory. Each character only gets six slots for a maximum of 12 which may sound like a lot right? Especially since the two characters can swap items with each other.
Actually, it's horrible for two reasons.
First of all, there are some items in the game that take up two slots of inventory when in previous games they only took up one, a few examples being the shotgun, the grenade launcher, and the hookshot.
And secondly, there are quite a handful of sections in the game where Rebecca and Billy get separated so you then have to manage inventory with just six slots, some items taking up two slots. It's fuckin' awful regardless of the fact that you can now drop items on the floor in this game.
Seriously, try to carry a gun with some ammo, or a long gun with ammo along with some healing items and a key item or two.
It's almost borderline impossible to do this without having Billy next to you, because the two characters can only swap items with each other when they're right next to each other.
This is also the first game in the series to not have the traditional item boxes to store your loot in. This was supposed to be the trade off for being able to drop items and pick them up whenever you wanted and also having the ability to mix herbs immediately without having to put them in your inventory first (but only Rebecca can do this).
The map tells you what items you dropped are located so luckily if you drop something you won't lose track of where you left it if you just check the map.
However, with the item boxes completely gone and with less inventory slots than in the previous games, it creates a colossal problem and it's the fucking backtracking.
Backtracking is one of the biggest tropes in survival horror games, and Resident Evil games are mostly known for this, but the backtracking in RE0 is legendary. It is flat out egregious.
Because as a new player, you're not gonna know what items you are gonna need and at what moment, so most of your playtime will be spent with you backtracking to a specific room you leave all your items in and then trying to get Rebecca and Billy's stupid shit in order.
And if you don't know it, you're gonna end up giving important items to a character that gets separated or kidnapped. You're not gonna know!
For example, in the Centipede fight, only Rebecca gets caught by that thing. Imagine giving her the shotgun with all the ammo and healing items. Well fuck.
Guess that means you gotta reset the game and play up until that point again..
Or how about the Tyrant fight? Rebecca and Billy get separated again before that moment. If you gave Billy the Grenade Launcher or any other weapons and items before that fight, well then good fuckin' luck trying to beat him now. And I hope to God you haven't saved before that fight because oh my god, I've heard horror stories of people having to start the whole game over because of that. They didn't have the resources to beat the Tyrant.
Yeah Rebecca gets a Magnum after Billy is lost but you only get like.. 6 shots I think, and it's not enough to kill the Tyrant.
Also, you have to fight Hunters on the way there. Again, you need to have the resources to survive, so imagine the progress that could be potentially lost because you made the simple mistake of giving important items to Billy.
These types of roadblock moments are just infuriating, because even as a veteran player, the game mechanics make you feel underpowered, which I guess is the point right? But isn't it bad enough that Rebecca takes more damage from attacks than Billy, and Rebecca is the only one that can mix herbs?
Billy is able to take twice as much damage as Rebecca and is the only character that can push heavy things. Whoop-de-doo.
Seriously, why can't Billy mix herbs? Do you know how much time can be saved if he just had that ability? This is the only Resident Evil game I've ever played where only one specific character has the ability to mix herbs.
Even in Resident Evil 5 and 6, any character is able to mix herbs to free up inventory space. I seriously don't understand this.
While I'm on the subject of backtracking and inventory, I wanna talk about the hookshot.
What in the holy mother of shit was Capcom thinking with the hookshot gimmick?
The hookshot can just kill all of the remaining momentum that this game had along with all the other backtracking that you have to do.
Basically, the hookshot is an item that you need to progress to certain areas to get key items. It takes up two inventory slots so already there's a problem, but you have to use this thing not once, not twice, but THREE times across the whole game.
Meaning that through almost the entire game, you cannot get rid of or forget about the hookshot.
There will be numerous times where you are making progress but then you reach a point where the camera points at a hole, which is a sign that you need to use the hookshot on it. So you know what that means? You have to backtrack ALL the way back to where you last left it.
So it can take upwards of 5-10 minutes to go all the way back to where you left the hookshot, pick it up, then you have to travel all the way back to where that hole was, then use the hookshot.
You have to do this again, and again, and again. My god.
Couldn't we at least use the hookshot as a weapon? You know how cool it would be if you could just impale zombies in the stomach like a harpoon gun?
That would be awesome. Maybe then I would actually like having the damn thing in my inventory.
Speaking of that, once you leave the training facility and reach the observatory, you have to take multiple 5+ minute trips to and from the facility so that you can transfer all of your items to the next location.
There are quite a shitload of items to find in the training facility. Guns, ammo, healing items, key items, etc.
You have to manually grab all of your shit and take it all to the next area as if Rebecca and Billy were pack mules.
You also have to do this when going from the observatory to the Umbrella underground labs, unless you get lazy like I did and just don't take anything besides the important items. Why?
Well first off, it's a much longer trip between the observatory and the lab. You would have to travel so far if you wanted to bring all your items with you.
And second, Billy gets fuckin' kidnapped before you go there. So you get stuck with Rebecca and her lousy inventory of 6 slots. And did I mention you have to fight Hunters on the way there and then a Tyrant boss fight?
Remember, Rebecca can't take much damage at all in this game. It only takes 1 or 2 hits for her to go from Fine (Green) to Caution (Yellow).
Ughβ¦
Did I also mention this is all because there are no item boxes in this game? This is what happens when you remove the item boxes and barely give the characters any space to carry anything since they get separated a lot.
It's all a repetitive, boring, frustrating slog that can kill a player's motivation, or make the situation more intense if this doesn't bother you. All the power to you I guess.
Speaking of the Hunters, they are such bullshit in this game. They weren't hard to take down in the older games, but here they were buffed to the core.
In this game, Hunters don't stagger very often from gunfire, unless you use the grenade launcher. Also, when they hit you, the character gets staggered and you have to wait for the animation to finish before they can move and shoot again, and this shit draws out a lot.
Know what that means?
Stunlock City!!
Seriously, there are times that I die because I get infinitely stunlocked by Hunters and I just have to sit there not being able to do anything about it until my inevitable death.
Another enemy that can stunlock you to death, the monkeys, are an absolute bitch to fight. They're fast, they cling on walls, they jump around you, and getting swiped by one makes the character stagger like someone just kicked them in the crotch.
The movement controls and gun aiming just don't work for a rapid fire enemy like this. Again, they can stunlock you to death as well if you happen to get stuck in a corner.
Also, these things can tank shotgun rounds and keep going. I'm sorry, but if I took a shotgun to a goddamn monkey and it tanks the shot like if this were an episode of Dragonball, we've got a problem.
Why are enemies a pain in the ass to fight in this game? They either stunlock you, are bullet spongy, don't stagger when you shoot them, or you have to fight them in such constricted areas.
The tarantulas work the same as the other games but I just run past them to save bullets and to not risk myself from getting poisoned, because blue herbs are very rare in this game, and you have to manage resources between two characters instead of one.
But the best enemies in the game in my opinion are the leech men. These guys are actually scary. They look terrifying and the music that plays when they're around is horrific. You can either fight or flight, but if you kill them with gunfire, they explode which can damage you.
However you can craft molotov cocktails and kill them with those to save getting hurt.
Speaking of the enemies, this game has by far the most egregious hallway design I have ever seen in this franchise. It's bad enough that you have to manage inventory between two characters, but you also have no choice but to fight most enemies in the game because almost every goddamn hallway is narrow.
Narrow hallways are a trend in Resident Evil games. The gameplay shines where you have to make split decisions on whether you want to use up ammo to take out the enemy so you don't have to worry about it later, or if you want to run past it to save bullets but risk taking damage so then you'll have to use a healing item sooner.
That is the strategy and the risk/reward system that a survival horror game brings to the table.
But, because you have to control two characters at once, it is borderline impossible to run past enemies, so you have to take them out, meaning that you are forced to use up your resources to prevent Rebecca in particular from taking damage.
Because like I said earlier, Rebecca is as frail as a sheet of loose leaf paper. It is very easy for her to lose a lot of health in this game.
You could just make her wait around but regardless, the hallway design is very slim in this game, and sometimes they just load these areas with enemies, so you have no choice but to fight just to get past.
Also for some stupid ass reason, if you get grabbed by an enemy but you get freed by your partner even if the enemy hasn't actually attacked you, you still take damage.
For example if Rebecca got grabbed by a zombie but Billy stopped her from getting bit, she STILL takes damage anyway. Why?! If I stopped someone from taking damage, they shouldn't TAKE DAMAGE.
Jesus Christ.
Not to mention, if you left your partner behind in another room, they can take damage from the enemies and the AI is too stupid to just run away and or run through a door to another area to save themself. So your partner can end up dying and you get a Game Over because you forgot that they were in another area in danger and they end up yelling for your help over the radio over even a single goddamn enemy.
Because there will be times where you have to split up and you have to multi-task: Fighting off enemies, making progress through areas, and solving puzzles.
So because you have to fight a majority of the enemies because the areas are so crammed up that you are forced to use up all your ammo, the survival aspect of the RE formula is butchered.
The only good thing about the partner gameplay is that switching from one character to the other is as simple as pushing a single button, and the loading times between switches are pretty quick, even if your partner is in another room.
But just try to control the second character with the right thumbstick and with fixed camera angles and tank controls. Go on, I dare you.
So about the boss fights, they're again, underwhelming. The theme here is that they take regular enemies and just make them bigger, like, a big scorpion, a big centipede, a big bat, a big leech, you get the idea.
And the tyrant right is cool and all, but we have fought tyrants time after time again in the previous games.
Some of these bosses are a joke.
The scorpion for example can be beaten by just aiming downwards and shooting it in the head, which makes it stagger indefinitely. Every other part is bulletproof, so again, just shoot it in the head and it can never hurt you.
The centipede isn't really much of a boss fight. All it does is move around in circles and doesn't actually attack you unless you touch it. It's more of a sequence of "kill the boss before it kills Rebecca."
The bat fight is total bullshit because it infinitely spawns smaller bats that are impossible to dodge, and some of them can even block your shots. So the strategy is to just stand still and spray at the big bat and try to kill it as fast as possible, taking damage non-stop in the process.
10/10 boss design.
The tyrant is the only fight in the game that actually takes skill to beat. It's fast, it hits hard, but it does have a readable attack pattern. Beating one for the first time makes Rebecca look like a badass.
And the final boss just sucks as well. All you do is distract it as Billy while Rebecca opens up some windows to shine the sun on it, because its weakness is direct light. It's not actually possible to kill it with gunfire, nor is there any indication of how much damage you are dealing to it. All you do is grab your strongest weapon(s), spray at the boss like an idiot, and hope for the best that it doesn't attack Rebecca and kill her.
After you beat the game you unlock a couple modes. The first one is called Wesker mode in which you get to play as Wesker and he actually makes the game more bearable to play since he can run faster, has a stun attack which staggers enemies, and an attack where he can one shot kill enemies but it has to charge up, but that means that guns are almost unnecessary.
Also, the exclusive costume that Rebecca gets in the mode is fuckin' incredible. It's one of the best skins I've seen in a Resident Evil game.
Although it's extremely off-putting seeing Resident Evil 5 Wesker in Resident Evil 0 and with Billy's voice.
Just, no. This is wrong on many levels.
The other mode is the Leech Hunter mode, which is just a mode where you run around the training facility and you have to kill as many enemies as you can in each room and then get to the exit. And then you are graded and you can get rewards depending on what grade you get, such as an assault rifle and infinite ammo for your weapons.
So because the gameplay is just so monotonous, tedious, drawn out, boring, and flat out annoying, the game becomes incredibly difficult for me to be engaged with. And the boss fights are just not that fun to fight. They're either way too easy or it's something gimmicky and annoying like the bat fight and the final boss.
Maybe if the story was better written then it would soften some of the grievances I have with the game, but because the gameplay loop is so shitty, it made me not want to go back to it.
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Now the presentation on the other hand, wow, just wow. Man is this game goddamn beautiful. In fact, this game is so gorgeous that it should be in an art museum. This is still one of the most pretty looking games I've ever seen for a console game. Even all these years later it still holds up.
The character models are the best for 2002 standards, the lip syncing is done very well, the weather effects like the rain on the top of the train looks insane, and the backdrops and pre-rendered backgrounds look absolutely amazing, they're so rich in detail. I miss games that look like that.
Other effects like fire, acid from the tarantulas, glass breaking, explosions from the grenade launcher, it all just looks so stellar. The FMV cutscenes in the HD Remaster run at a nice 1080p resolution.
Having the resolution upscaled brings out more detail than what you normally could have seen in the original version.
And the soundtrack is very ace, definitely one of the best. The save room music, the boss fight music, the final boss music, the training facility music, they're among my favorite tracks in the series.
So pretty much the graphics and the soundtracks are the best part about this game but that is a given right? I mean every Resident Evil game has excellent graphics and music.
Which tells me that this game has all the style of a Resident Evil game but it's seriously lacking in substance.
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This game really needed to have either just one playable character or have a much better inventory system with the item boxes back. It's actually worse than RE5's inventory system. At least RE5 gives you 9 slots per character and there are no items that take up more than one slot.
RE0 also needed to have some better bosses, because they're just a letdown. And if the gameplay is to be as painful as it is, then the story needs to justify it, but it doesn't. So the game just falls over itself multiple times.
But, as much as I slagged this game, it did introduce mechanics that would become staples in the later games, so in a way, this game served as a blueprint for the future. If only it was just given more development or some things were scrapped entirely.
This game brought to the series two playable characters, item swapping, character switching, giving voice commands, telling your partner to shoot or not shoot, and to either wait or follow you, dynamic interesting puzzles that required both characters to solve, and having unique traits like pushing heavy items and herb mixing, something that would become a mechanic in the Outbreak games.
I own pretty much all of the mainline Resident Evil games, so I don't see why nowadays, during any day of the week, would I choose to play Resident Evil 0 over 1-4, or even 7 for that matter.
This game is just the epitome of average and or sloppy, it's below the standard of these older games. There are much worse RE games out there, but man, I was hyped playing this game for the first time, but looking at it now, it's disappointing, especially when we have the amazing RE1 Remake HD Remaster. Just go play that instead.
Or how about the RE2 Remake? That's pretty amazing as well. Like I said, there are many other better choices for Resident Evil games, so 0 just fades into obscurity for me. After I beat this game a few years ago I never touched it again, and that's not a good sign.
That is until a year later when some Discord friends wanted me to stream the game on Twitch but on Hard Mode. And that was.. oh my Lord, that was PAINFUL. But, I did do it. Of course I had to start all over cause I didn't have enough ammo for the final boss, but I did it in the end. And I'm never doing it again lol.
5/10
From the moment I started playing this game as a kid after playing RE4, Code Veronica, etc. I knew that something was wrong here. I never finished this game when it was still new on GameCube, so then I returned to it many years later.. and I can definitely see why I never finished it that first time going through.
This is one of the most underwhelming, repetitive, and frustrating slogs Iβve ever experienced in this franchise. Resident Evil 5 and 6, Iβd play in an instant over this shit. What I can only imagine why this game is just so half assed, so rushed, and lacks what made the series popular to begin with, itβs survival horror roots, is due to rushed development and a lack of direction trying to connect it to the lore of the universe, but then again, you could also say that about many of the later RE games.
Up until now I have not spoiled any important pilot details in any other one of my RE reviews but for this game I have to make an exception, because the overall narrative is just a disappointing and confusing mess.
Trying to explain the sequences of events that happen in this game is actually difficult, which should give you a good indication of just how fuckin' jumbled this plot is.
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So this game is a prequel to RE1 and it takes place just before the Spenser Mansion infiltration. From the get go, the game is set up as an origin story that teases the question of what happened before the Spenser Mansion incident, where the T and G Viruses came from, and who created them.
After reports of those grizzly murders that took place on the outskirts of Raccoon City, the S.T.A.R.S Bravo Team are dispatched and I guess because of plot convenience, the helicopter decides to suddenly malfunction and crash, leaving the team stranded in the middle of the Arklay Forest.
Upon searching the area they find a crashed car with dead bodies lying there, and pick up a prison sentence file for an escaped criminal named Billy Cohen. He is an ex-military armed soldier who was sentenced to death for supposedly murdering over 20 innocent civilians in Africa.
So they not only find that, but they also find an abandoned train just sitting in the middle of the forest. And in typical Resident Evil fashion, it's infested with zombies. The protagonist of this game is Rebecca Chambers from Resident Evil 1.
After examining the body of one of the inhabitants, Rebecca just coincidentally encounters Billy, but Billy doesn't harm her. Once Rebecca reaches the back of the train, she gets attacked by a man made out of leeches, but is saved by Billy. That's when the main antagonist of the game is revealed, a.. very corny looking opera singer named Dr. Marcus.
It turns out he is the one who unleashed all the leeches on the train to infect all the passengers. He also for some reason manages to get the train moving again.
Despite Rebecca's distrust in Billy, the two still have to work together if they wanna make it out alive, considering the rest of Rebecca's team are pretty much fucking gone by this point. Once they manage to stop the train, it crashes into Dr. Marcus's training facility.
And here is where you learn about the creation of the T-Virus and the G-Virus. 20 years before the events of this game, Dr. Marcus creates the T-Virus, and throughout the next ten years he would continue to whip up creature after creature, one of these known as the Queen Leech. Shortly after this he gets assassinated by Umbrella under the orders of Oswell Spenser because he was using too many trainees as test subjects.
Albert Wesker and William Birkin were also party to the assassination plan. This was also due to the fact that these three people were in an arms race to discover the secrets of the Progenitor Virus, believing that whoever got to it first would be able to have full control over Umbrella.
After this, Dr. Marcus's body was disposed of along with the Queen Leech, and the credit for all of his work is given to William Birkin, and then William would go on to create the G-Virus. Over the next ten years the Queen Leech would then feed on Marcus's body and this actually gave him the ability to shape shift back into a newfound form and with his memories still intact. Now with a newfound hatred for Umbrella, he seeks vengeance. This is also how he has the ability to control the leeches.
So the main issues I have with this narrative are that, well, Dr. Marcus is one of the most forgettable villains in the entire mainline series next to Nicolai from Resident Evil 3. What you have to give credit for in Resident Evil is that almost every game has a main antagonist that you either love or love to hate.
Albert Wesker, William Birkin, the Alfred Twins, Salazar and Saddler, the Baker Family, all of these guys are legendary antagonists, whether because they have awesome line deliveries, they have iconic character designs, and have a lot of bombastic personality behind them.
But Dr. Marcus's motivations are very generic, and they don't have anything to do with the player, so I as a player don't see why I should care about Dr. Marcus succeeding. He also has a shitload of awkward line deliveries, even more so than the older games, so it's very difficult for him to develop as a character.
Instead he just comes off as a laughable joker of a villain like Cipher from Metal Gear Solid 5 because well, just look at him. I mean for God sake, he infects a train full of passengers for no reason whatsoever just to get back at Wesker and William by singing opera music. Oh and he puts a giant scorpion on there as well for some reason.
I mean, how can you say that out loud without chuckling? Marcus just isn't intimidating. I care a lot more about Wesker and William, and I think that's another problem. By having Wesker and William in the same game as Marcus, he immediately loses importance because Wesker and William are just the better villains.
I end up wanting to see more screen time with those two than him.
Rebecca and Billy on the other hand, while they do develop and grow to trust each other more, Billy is also just extremely forgettable. I mean he isn't balls to the wall annoying like Steve from Code Veronica, but he suffers from what I like to call Shadow the Hedgehog syndrome: a one note stereotypical edgy hardass who doesn't take shit from anyone.
I mean, I get that he was just convicted of a crime he didn't commit, but even during the flashback sequences he has that really deep, depressing, and edgy tone in his voice like he's about to snap a guy's cock in half if that person just looked at him the wrong way.
Also, it's very hard to care about Billy's inner struggle along with Marcus's because of a very important reason. It's because the game doesn't do a good enough job explaining it. Seriously, during your first playthrough, you might be confused on what's going on, and that's because the cutscenes are spread out very far between stretches of gameplay.
If you wanted to understand the story in full context you would have to either play through the game multiple times or go on the internet and do the research.
And even then, a lot of these scenes dump exposition that doesn't have much to do with the lore of the universe.
Also, this is the only game that we ever see Billy in. So again, why should you care about him? It's not like we ever see him again unlike Rebecca.
At least Carlos in RE3 was likeable because of his upbeat and caring personality who risks his life to protect Jill and the citizens of Raccoon City. You can see his inner struggle of watching all of his teammates around him die and being betrayed by his commanding officer who just sees the whole ordeal as another game or as an opportunity to obtain research to get rich.
Not to mention, you're gonna be so frustrated with the insanely repetitive gameplay loop that you're probably gonna forget about what's happening anyway but I'll get into that later.
There's also a pretty big problem with the narrative structure with Rebecca which has created a debate whether or not Rebecca's actions in this game are canon or not.
Right off the bat there is a problem with the continuity here. Because if youβve played RE1 and then this game, you would know that Rebecca stumbles in the Spencer Mansion and bumps into Chris Redfield. But not once in the game does Rebecca ever mention Billy, the infected train, the Umbrella facilities she ran into, her comrades that have either died or have gone missing, or even Dr. Marcus, which I will get into.
And it's not like Rebecca gets amnesia, she heads straight for the Spenser Mansion right after she says goodbye to Billy. And again, we never see Billy again after that point.
Which I can understand because the original RE1 came out in 1996, and RE0 is a game from 2002, but even in the 2002 RE1 GameCube Remake, Rebecca never talks about all the fucked up shit she just went through, nor does she show any signs of trauma or PTSD after being in near death situations countless times. Maybe one time during the Hunter scene but.. ehhhhhh⦠that's subjective.
At times she tries to act tough but you can see just how frail of a character she is, especially when itβs been confirmed that she doesnβt like to fight but will do it if she has to defend herself, which is all the more reason to give the player signs of her distress.
Hell, even Rebecca's combat experience is just completely gone for some reason. She turns into a near helpless character. There is one part in RE1 where she just stands in one spot and nearly lets a Hunter kill her. She fuckin' fought tons of Hunters and other monstrosities in the previous game! This just doesn't make any sense.
You fought against giant tarantulas, a giant scorpion, leech men, mutant frogs, and a giant leech queen. You even got captured by a giant centipede. Now all of a sudden you're afraid to take on a single Hunter??
And furthermore, why would she even go to the Spenser Mansion after the fact? If I was her I would have been like βthis mission is FUBARβ, and got the hell outta there. Who knows if the people that she was supposed to meet up with are already dead.
I'm assuming this is because of the fact that RE0 and RE1 were directed by two different people, two different development teams. But don't you think that the people who made RE0 should have done a bit more research on the game they were making a prequel to? This is just sloppy writing.
So with an interesting story that is poorly told, has a lot of plot holes, forgettable characters, retcons, and corny ridiculousness, it's hard to get invested in it.
It also really doesn't help that the gameplay loop in this game is very laborious, tedious, repetitive, and flat out aggravating, which actually brings down the story even further because most of your attention will be deviated towards that. THIS is where a large chunk of my gripes with this game comes from and why I don't even bother playing it anymore as opposed to the other games.
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Once again, as old as the ol' Shirley Temple VCR tapes, this is a third person survival horror game with a large emphasis on limited saves, limited resources, puzzle solving, exploration, etc.
Tank controls, quick turning, door loading screens, limited inventory space, and fixed third person camera angles, all the shit that you would expect in an old RE game. The formula had been perfected by Resident Evil 3, and yet as these games go on they start downgrading the gameplay mechanics so that they could start replacing them with frustrating gimmicks in an attempt to revitalize a dying formula, and I'll explain what I mean by that.
Let's start with the absolutely appalling inventory system.
This is the first game in the series to have two playable characters in the same playthrough, both with their own health bars and inventory. Each character only gets six slots for a maximum of 12 which may sound like a lot right? Especially since the two characters can swap items with each other.
Actually, it's horrible for two reasons.
First of all, there are some items in the game that take up two slots of inventory when in previous games they only took up one, a few examples being the shotgun, the grenade launcher, and the hookshot.
And secondly, there are quite a handful of sections in the game where Rebecca and Billy get separated so you then have to manage inventory with just six slots, some items taking up two slots. It's fuckin' awful regardless of the fact that you can now drop items on the floor in this game.
Seriously, try to carry a gun with some ammo, or a long gun with ammo along with some healing items and a key item or two.
It's almost borderline impossible to do this without having Billy next to you, because the two characters can only swap items with each other when they're right next to each other.
This is also the first game in the series to not have the traditional item boxes to store your loot in. This was supposed to be the trade off for being able to drop items and pick them up whenever you wanted and also having the ability to mix herbs immediately without having to put them in your inventory first (but only Rebecca can do this).
The map tells you what items you dropped are located so luckily if you drop something you won't lose track of where you left it if you just check the map.
However, with the item boxes completely gone and with less inventory slots than in the previous games, it creates a colossal problem and it's the fucking backtracking.
Backtracking is one of the biggest tropes in survival horror games, and Resident Evil games are mostly known for this, but the backtracking in RE0 is legendary. It is flat out egregious.
Because as a new player, you're not gonna know what items you are gonna need and at what moment, so most of your playtime will be spent with you backtracking to a specific room you leave all your items in and then trying to get Rebecca and Billy's stupid shit in order.
And if you don't know it, you're gonna end up giving important items to a character that gets separated or kidnapped. You're not gonna know!
For example, in the Centipede fight, only Rebecca gets caught by that thing. Imagine giving her the shotgun with all the ammo and healing items. Well fuck.
Guess that means you gotta reset the game and play up until that point again..
Or how about the Tyrant fight? Rebecca and Billy get separated again before that moment. If you gave Billy the Grenade Launcher or any other weapons and items before that fight, well then good fuckin' luck trying to beat him now. And I hope to God you haven't saved before that fight because oh my god, I've heard horror stories of people having to start the whole game over because of that. They didn't have the resources to beat the Tyrant.
Yeah Rebecca gets a Magnum after Billy is lost but you only get like.. 6 shots I think, and it's not enough to kill the Tyrant.
Also, you have to fight Hunters on the way there. Again, you need to have the resources to survive, so imagine the progress that could be potentially lost because you made the simple mistake of giving important items to Billy.
These types of roadblock moments are just infuriating, because even as a veteran player, the game mechanics make you feel underpowered, which I guess is the point right? But isn't it bad enough that Rebecca takes more damage from attacks than Billy, and Rebecca is the only one that can mix herbs?
Billy is able to take twice as much damage as Rebecca and is the only character that can push heavy things. Whoop-de-doo.
Seriously, why can't Billy mix herbs? Do you know how much time can be saved if he just had that ability? This is the only Resident Evil game I've ever played where only one specific character has the ability to mix herbs.
Even in Resident Evil 5 and 6, any character is able to mix herbs to free up inventory space. I seriously don't understand this.
While I'm on the subject of backtracking and inventory, I wanna talk about the hookshot.
What in the holy mother of shit was Capcom thinking with the hookshot gimmick?
The hookshot can just kill all of the remaining momentum that this game had along with all the other backtracking that you have to do.
Basically, the hookshot is an item that you need to progress to certain areas to get key items. It takes up two inventory slots so already there's a problem, but you have to use this thing not once, not twice, but THREE times across the whole game.
Meaning that through almost the entire game, you cannot get rid of or forget about the hookshot.
There will be numerous times where you are making progress but then you reach a point where the camera points at a hole, which is a sign that you need to use the hookshot on it. So you know what that means? You have to backtrack ALL the way back to where you last left it.
So it can take upwards of 5-10 minutes to go all the way back to where you left the hookshot, pick it up, then you have to travel all the way back to where that hole was, then use the hookshot.
You have to do this again, and again, and again. My god.
Couldn't we at least use the hookshot as a weapon? You know how cool it would be if you could just impale zombies in the stomach like a harpoon gun?
That would be awesome. Maybe then I would actually like having the damn thing in my inventory.
Speaking of that, once you leave the training facility and reach the observatory, you have to take multiple 5+ minute trips to and from the facility so that you can transfer all of your items to the next location.
There are quite a shitload of items to find in the training facility. Guns, ammo, healing items, key items, etc.
You have to manually grab all of your shit and take it all to the next area as if Rebecca and Billy were pack mules.
You also have to do this when going from the observatory to the Umbrella underground labs, unless you get lazy like I did and just don't take anything besides the important items. Why?
Well first off, it's a much longer trip between the observatory and the lab. You would have to travel so far if you wanted to bring all your items with you.
And second, Billy gets fuckin' kidnapped before you go there. So you get stuck with Rebecca and her lousy inventory of 6 slots. And did I mention you have to fight Hunters on the way there and then a Tyrant boss fight?
Remember, Rebecca can't take much damage at all in this game. It only takes 1 or 2 hits for her to go from Fine (Green) to Caution (Yellow).
Ughβ¦
Did I also mention this is all because there are no item boxes in this game? This is what happens when you remove the item boxes and barely give the characters any space to carry anything since they get separated a lot.
It's all a repetitive, boring, frustrating slog that can kill a player's motivation, or make the situation more intense if this doesn't bother you. All the power to you I guess.
Speaking of the Hunters, they are such bullshit in this game. They weren't hard to take down in the older games, but here they were buffed to the core.
In this game, Hunters don't stagger very often from gunfire, unless you use the grenade launcher. Also, when they hit you, the character gets staggered and you have to wait for the animation to finish before they can move and shoot again, and this shit draws out a lot.
Know what that means?
Stunlock City!!
Seriously, there are times that I die because I get infinitely stunlocked by Hunters and I just have to sit there not being able to do anything about it until my inevitable death.
Another enemy that can stunlock you to death, the monkeys, are an absolute bitch to fight. They're fast, they cling on walls, they jump around you, and getting swiped by one makes the character stagger like someone just kicked them in the crotch.
The movement controls and gun aiming just don't work for a rapid fire enemy like this. Again, they can stunlock you to death as well if you happen to get stuck in a corner.
Also, these things can tank shotgun rounds and keep going. I'm sorry, but if I took a shotgun to a goddamn monkey and it tanks the shot like if this were an episode of Dragonball, we've got a problem.
Why are enemies a pain in the ass to fight in this game? They either stunlock you, are bullet spongy, don't stagger when you shoot them, or you have to fight them in such constricted areas.
The tarantulas work the same as the other games but I just run past them to save bullets and to not risk myself from getting poisoned, because blue herbs are very rare in this game, and you have to manage resources between two characters instead of one.
But the best enemies in the game in my opinion are the leech men. These guys are actually scary. They look terrifying and the music that plays when they're around is horrific. You can either fight or flight, but if you kill them with gunfire, they explode which can damage you.
However you can craft molotov cocktails and kill them with those to save getting hurt.
Speaking of the enemies, this game has by far the most egregious hallway design I have ever seen in this franchise. It's bad enough that you have to manage inventory between two characters, but you also have no choice but to fight most enemies in the game because almost every goddamn hallway is narrow.
Narrow hallways are a trend in Resident Evil games. The gameplay shines where you have to make split decisions on whether you want to use up ammo to take out the enemy so you don't have to worry about it later, or if you want to run past it to save bullets but risk taking damage so then you'll have to use a healing item sooner.
That is the strategy and the risk/reward system that a survival horror game brings to the table.
But, because you have to control two characters at once, it is borderline impossible to run past enemies, so you have to take them out, meaning that you are forced to use up your resources to prevent Rebecca in particular from taking damage.
Because like I said earlier, Rebecca is as frail as a sheet of loose leaf paper. It is very easy for her to lose a lot of health in this game.
You could just make her wait around but regardless, the hallway design is very slim in this game, and sometimes they just load these areas with enemies, so you have no choice but to fight just to get past.
Also for some stupid ass reason, if you get grabbed by an enemy but you get freed by your partner even if the enemy hasn't actually attacked you, you still take damage.
For example if Rebecca got grabbed by a zombie but Billy stopped her from getting bit, she STILL takes damage anyway. Why?! If I stopped someone from taking damage, they shouldn't TAKE DAMAGE.
Jesus Christ.
Not to mention, if you left your partner behind in another room, they can take damage from the enemies and the AI is too stupid to just run away and or run through a door to another area to save themself. So your partner can end up dying and you get a Game Over because you forgot that they were in another area in danger and they end up yelling for your help over the radio over even a single goddamn enemy.
Because there will be times where you have to split up and you have to multi-task: Fighting off enemies, making progress through areas, and solving puzzles.
So because you have to fight a majority of the enemies because the areas are so crammed up that you are forced to use up all your ammo, the survival aspect of the RE formula is butchered.
The only good thing about the partner gameplay is that switching from one character to the other is as simple as pushing a single button, and the loading times between switches are pretty quick, even if your partner is in another room.
But just try to control the second character with the right thumbstick and with fixed camera angles and tank controls. Go on, I dare you.
So about the boss fights, they're again, underwhelming. The theme here is that they take regular enemies and just make them bigger, like, a big scorpion, a big centipede, a big bat, a big leech, you get the idea.
And the tyrant right is cool and all, but we have fought tyrants time after time again in the previous games.
Some of these bosses are a joke.
The scorpion for example can be beaten by just aiming downwards and shooting it in the head, which makes it stagger indefinitely. Every other part is bulletproof, so again, just shoot it in the head and it can never hurt you.
The centipede isn't really much of a boss fight. All it does is move around in circles and doesn't actually attack you unless you touch it. It's more of a sequence of "kill the boss before it kills Rebecca."
The bat fight is total bullshit because it infinitely spawns smaller bats that are impossible to dodge, and some of them can even block your shots. So the strategy is to just stand still and spray at the big bat and try to kill it as fast as possible, taking damage non-stop in the process.
10/10 boss design.
The tyrant is the only fight in the game that actually takes skill to beat. It's fast, it hits hard, but it does have a readable attack pattern. Beating one for the first time makes Rebecca look like a badass.
And the final boss just sucks as well. All you do is distract it as Billy while Rebecca opens up some windows to shine the sun on it, because its weakness is direct light. It's not actually possible to kill it with gunfire, nor is there any indication of how much damage you are dealing to it. All you do is grab your strongest weapon(s), spray at the boss like an idiot, and hope for the best that it doesn't attack Rebecca and kill her.
After you beat the game you unlock a couple modes. The first one is called Wesker mode in which you get to play as Wesker and he actually makes the game more bearable to play since he can run faster, has a stun attack which staggers enemies, and an attack where he can one shot kill enemies but it has to charge up, but that means that guns are almost unnecessary.
Also, the exclusive costume that Rebecca gets in the mode is fuckin' incredible. It's one of the best skins I've seen in a Resident Evil game.
Although it's extremely off-putting seeing Resident Evil 5 Wesker in Resident Evil 0 and with Billy's voice.
Just, no. This is wrong on many levels.
The other mode is the Leech Hunter mode, which is just a mode where you run around the training facility and you have to kill as many enemies as you can in each room and then get to the exit. And then you are graded and you can get rewards depending on what grade you get, such as an assault rifle and infinite ammo for your weapons.
So because the gameplay is just so monotonous, tedious, drawn out, boring, and flat out annoying, the game becomes incredibly difficult for me to be engaged with. And the boss fights are just not that fun to fight. They're either way too easy or it's something gimmicky and annoying like the bat fight and the final boss.
Maybe if the story was better written then it would soften some of the grievances I have with the game, but because the gameplay loop is so shitty, it made me not want to go back to it.
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Now the presentation on the other hand, wow, just wow. Man is this game goddamn beautiful. In fact, this game is so gorgeous that it should be in an art museum. This is still one of the most pretty looking games I've ever seen for a console game. Even all these years later it still holds up.
The character models are the best for 2002 standards, the lip syncing is done very well, the weather effects like the rain on the top of the train looks insane, and the backdrops and pre-rendered backgrounds look absolutely amazing, they're so rich in detail. I miss games that look like that.
Other effects like fire, acid from the tarantulas, glass breaking, explosions from the grenade launcher, it all just looks so stellar. The FMV cutscenes in the HD Remaster run at a nice 1080p resolution.
Having the resolution upscaled brings out more detail than what you normally could have seen in the original version.
And the soundtrack is very ace, definitely one of the best. The save room music, the boss fight music, the final boss music, the training facility music, they're among my favorite tracks in the series.
So pretty much the graphics and the soundtracks are the best part about this game but that is a given right? I mean every Resident Evil game has excellent graphics and music.
Which tells me that this game has all the style of a Resident Evil game but it's seriously lacking in substance.
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This game really needed to have either just one playable character or have a much better inventory system with the item boxes back. It's actually worse than RE5's inventory system. At least RE5 gives you 9 slots per character and there are no items that take up more than one slot.
RE0 also needed to have some better bosses, because they're just a letdown. And if the gameplay is to be as painful as it is, then the story needs to justify it, but it doesn't. So the game just falls over itself multiple times.
But, as much as I slagged this game, it did introduce mechanics that would become staples in the later games, so in a way, this game served as a blueprint for the future. If only it was just given more development or some things were scrapped entirely.
This game brought to the series two playable characters, item swapping, character switching, giving voice commands, telling your partner to shoot or not shoot, and to either wait or follow you, dynamic interesting puzzles that required both characters to solve, and having unique traits like pushing heavy items and herb mixing, something that would become a mechanic in the Outbreak games.
I own pretty much all of the mainline Resident Evil games, so I don't see why nowadays, during any day of the week, would I choose to play Resident Evil 0 over 1-4, or even 7 for that matter.
This game is just the epitome of average and or sloppy, it's below the standard of these older games. There are much worse RE games out there, but man, I was hyped playing this game for the first time, but looking at it now, it's disappointing, especially when we have the amazing RE1 Remake HD Remaster. Just go play that instead.
Or how about the RE2 Remake? That's pretty amazing as well. Like I said, there are many other better choices for Resident Evil games, so 0 just fades into obscurity for me. After I beat this game a few years ago I never touched it again, and that's not a good sign.
That is until a year later when some Discord friends wanted me to stream the game on Twitch but on Hard Mode. And that was.. oh my Lord, that was PAINFUL. But, I did do it. Of course I had to start all over cause I didn't have enough ammo for the final boss, but I did it in the end. And I'm never doing it again lol.
5/10
SlasherMcGirk
2 years ago