Having a great pace, fun yet tactical gunplay, as well as tons of thought-provoking puzzles, this is more like a survival horror "Myst" game than another generic zombie shooter. It's just a shame about the barebones story telling...
It took me a long time to settle into the "fixed camera" gameplay, and I mean a "long time" as in multiple attempts across nearly two years, but I am so thankful that I gave it another attempt this past week! Once you adjust to moving your character in the three dimensional / pre-rendered spaces, whilst having the camera flicking from new angle to new angle, you forget that it ever felt like a hindrance. It's definitely a niche bit of game design, but having it in the odd Resident Evil title keeps the games from feeling the same and allows this to feels fresh and enjoyable.
Amongst the intense survival horror and constant sense of impending doom, one of the appeals to any good Resident Evil game is the implemented puzzles and labyrinth-like level design. The fact that puzzles, small and large, play such a big part in this game from beginning to end felt right. Despite loving the Resident Evil 2 Remake and enjoying the first few hours of the 3rd Remake, I'd be lying if I said that how those games seemed to drop the puzzle aspects in their second halves wasn't at least a bit disappointing. It's one of the things that helps seperate this franchise from any other more generic zombie shooter. It's fun to feel clever whilst blowing a zombies head clean off, once in a while...
Speaking of zombies, they actually feel like they have a decent level of threat here, unlike in most modern games, TV shows and films. It probably has a lot to do with the constant narrow hallways and camera work that doesn't always reveal what's round every corner until it's too late, but these zombies weren't just the type you run past with no effort and barely think about as you do. Hearing their zombie groans before I could make out where they were coming from was effective horror!
This 2002 Remake actually took the original game's zombies one step further, and in an inventively scary way... It was actually a good few hours until I noticed this, but the reason I kept stumbling across zombies I'd already downed but now found standing once more (only this time much faster and more aggressive) was because I'd failed to shoot off their heads or burn their corpses... without doing just that, they get a second chance to chomp on your flesh. Most of the key corridors were flooded with numerous "Crimson Head" zombies (as they're referred to in this new stage), and they were genuinely terrifying. It made me glad this game had loading screens between each room, since they gave me just enough breathing room before continuing to try outrunning these things.
The game has such a great pace because of that sort of creativity. The variety of monsters you face and different types of the living dead keep the gunplay from ever getting boring.
Unfortunately, the game does have its downfalls. The constant back and forth (that admittedly can be a part of the charm of this franchise) does border into levels of tedium, especially when taking into consideration the amount of extra time added with the loading screens between every single corridor and room towards those few Item Boxes. This could have been remedied at least a little by the simple inclusion of allowing you to swap out items for new ones here and there...
The friendly A.I. characters are also very pointless from a gameplay point of view, and are also rather redundant to much of the narrative. They don't really move the plot forward and barely have any meaningful interactions with Chris, besides for a few VERY convenient scenarios. You forget they're supposed to be running around the mansion doing their own thing until the odd cutscene pops up here and there. It doesn't help that every character is voiced with the biggest level of cheese, whether intentional or not.
Speaking of the narrative, one of the few story beats revolves around a "plot twist", but it's a story beat that fails to have any impact on the player, since it really is the most obvious of twists. They play it like it is this big reveal, but I was playing the game all that time with the mindset that this eventual "truth" was just a known thing all along; it's that obvious.
All in all, the VERY loose story, constant back & forth, as well as the - sometimes comically - cheesy voice acting do age the game more than anything else, but the overall creepy atmosphere, fun puzzles and that admirable level of creativity (like with the intense Crimson Head mechanic) really do make this game go beyond any "old" game's biggest hurdle in making it stand the test of time.
Overall Rating: 7.8/10
[Chris playthrough only. I am yet to do my Jill playthrough.]
It took me a long time to settle into the "fixed camera" gameplay, and I mean a "long time" as in multiple attempts across nearly two years, but I am so thankful that I gave it another attempt this past week! Once you adjust to moving your character in the three dimensional / pre-rendered spaces, whilst having the camera flicking from new angle to new angle, you forget that it ever felt like a hindrance. It's definitely a niche bit of game design, but having it in the odd Resident Evil title keeps the games from feeling the same and allows this to feels fresh and enjoyable.
Amongst the intense survival horror and constant sense of impending doom, one of the appeals to any good Resident Evil game is the implemented puzzles and labyrinth-like level design. The fact that puzzles, small and large, play such a big part in this game from beginning to end felt right. Despite loving the Resident Evil 2 Remake and enjoying the first few hours of the 3rd Remake, I'd be lying if I said that how those games seemed to drop the puzzle aspects in their second halves wasn't at least a bit disappointing. It's one of the things that helps seperate this franchise from any other more generic zombie shooter. It's fun to feel clever whilst blowing a zombies head clean off, once in a while...
Speaking of zombies, they actually feel like they have a decent level of threat here, unlike in most modern games, TV shows and films. It probably has a lot to do with the constant narrow hallways and camera work that doesn't always reveal what's round every corner until it's too late, but these zombies weren't just the type you run past with no effort and barely think about as you do. Hearing their zombie groans before I could make out where they were coming from was effective horror!
This 2002 Remake actually took the original game's zombies one step further, and in an inventively scary way... It was actually a good few hours until I noticed this, but the reason I kept stumbling across zombies I'd already downed but now found standing once more (only this time much faster and more aggressive) was because I'd failed to shoot off their heads or burn their corpses... without doing just that, they get a second chance to chomp on your flesh. Most of the key corridors were flooded with numerous "Crimson Head" zombies (as they're referred to in this new stage), and they were genuinely terrifying. It made me glad this game had loading screens between each room, since they gave me just enough breathing room before continuing to try outrunning these things.
The game has such a great pace because of that sort of creativity. The variety of monsters you face and different types of the living dead keep the gunplay from ever getting boring.
Unfortunately, the game does have its downfalls. The constant back and forth (that admittedly can be a part of the charm of this franchise) does border into levels of tedium, especially when taking into consideration the amount of extra time added with the loading screens between every single corridor and room towards those few Item Boxes. This could have been remedied at least a little by the simple inclusion of allowing you to swap out items for new ones here and there...
The friendly A.I. characters are also very pointless from a gameplay point of view, and are also rather redundant to much of the narrative. They don't really move the plot forward and barely have any meaningful interactions with Chris, besides for a few VERY convenient scenarios. You forget they're supposed to be running around the mansion doing their own thing until the odd cutscene pops up here and there. It doesn't help that every character is voiced with the biggest level of cheese, whether intentional or not.
Speaking of the narrative, one of the few story beats revolves around a "plot twist", but it's a story beat that fails to have any impact on the player, since it really is the most obvious of twists. They play it like it is this big reveal, but I was playing the game all that time with the mindset that this eventual "truth" was just a known thing all along; it's that obvious.
All in all, the VERY loose story, constant back & forth, as well as the - sometimes comically - cheesy voice acting do age the game more than anything else, but the overall creepy atmosphere, fun puzzles and that admirable level of creativity (like with the intense Crimson Head mechanic) really do make this game go beyond any "old" game's biggest hurdle in making it stand the test of time.
Overall Rating: 7.8/10
[Chris playthrough only. I am yet to do my Jill playthrough.]
MeerkatChris
3 years ago
Overall game rating (taking it as a whole): 8.0/10