Resident Evil

Genre: Graphic Adventure / Horror

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Resident Evil Origins Collection along with Resident Evil 0.)

Resident Evil is a game that hardly needs an introduction. When the game was first released on the PlayStation in 1996, it wasn’t the first “Survival Horror” game ever made (credit for that usually goes to Alone in the Dark, although other earlier games were also influential in the genre’s creation), but it was the game that codified and popularized the genre as it existed for the next decade, even coining the term “Survival Horror”. This was a game that combined elements of Graphic Adventure games with Action that had you fighting off enemies while keeping a close eye on your supply of bullets and healing items (thus, “survival”), all with the horror-inspired atmosphere of the zombie genre.

In 2002, the game received a remake on the Nintendo GameCube that updated the graphics and dialogue, rewriting a lot of the poorly-localized lines that had by that point become infamous (such as “master of unlocking” and “Jill sandwich”) and offering optional reworked controls as well. This version of the game was subsequently ported to multiple platforms, even getting another HD update, and it is this upgraded version that reached the Nintendo Switch in 2019.

While not on par with the extensive update we saw more recently in the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 on other platforms, the visuals in this version of Resident Evil are still quite impressive, even today. Like the original version of the game all the way back on the PlayStation, this release uses 3D characters on pre-rendered backgrounds, but this time around both of those have received a huge overhaul, with the backgrounds getting an incredible amount of detail, the quality of the character models pretty good even by today’s standards, and the game goes above and beyond by incorporating the two through some phenomenal lighting and reflection effects layered on top of the pre-rendered backgrounds.

On the GameCube, these visuals had a 480i resolution, and here they have been upscaled to 1080p in docked mode and 720p in handheld mode, with a rock-solid 30FPS framerate. Additionally, players can choose between 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios. Just about the only element of the presentation that hasn’t made the transition too well here are the game’s pre-rendered cutscenes, some of which look fine, but others look horrendously blurry.

The story, for those who somehow missed out on the game in its many previous releases and subsequent sequels, follows a paramilitary team sent in to a rural American forest area after another team sent to investigate a string of gruesome local murders had gone missing. It doesn’t take long for things to go awry though, after the discovery of a downed helicopter and an attack by mutated dogs leads to the team’s few survivors barricading themselves in at a nearby mansion, which they soon discover to be housing its own horrors.

Even with the script worked over to remove the most groan-worthy lines, it’s still fairly cheesy stuff, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as Resident Evil has a long history of walking the razor’s edge of being serious horror on one side and being B-movie schlock on the other side. It’s not Shakespeare, but it works well for what it is.

Still, while the graphics and story of this game have each, in their own way, aged very well… the gameplay hasn’t been so lucky. Even when Resident Evil was fresh and new, people complained about its terrible controls, its odd and at times nonsensical puzzles, its frustratingly limited inventory system, and its artificially-limited save system, and while this version does offer a more modern control scheme, it’s nowhere near enough of an improvement to fix this game’s major problems.

One other thing that should be mentioned here – this game was originally released on the Nintendo Switch at $30, which is absurdly steep for an upscaled port of a 14-15 year-old game. In the time since then, it has dropped down to the price of $20, which is a bit more reasonable and on par with other versions of the game.

For those looking to explore a classic, formative Horror game, Resident Evil on the Nintendo Switch is still without a doubt a fantastic way to experience this game, and it’s a game that’s well worth playing if only to see where the genre started (albeit with a fresh coat of paint). And despite its age, this game’s visuals still look amazing even today. But it is damn difficult to recommend this game with such awkward and frustrating gameplay. As a result, most players may be better off simply watching a Let’s Play of the game on YouTube instead. That way, you can still enjoy what this game does right without suffering its flaws.

tl;dr – Resident Evil is an HD remaster of the GameCube remake of the formative “Survival Horror” game, and in terms of its visuals and presentation, it’s still impressive even to this day. What is not impressive, however, is the horribly awkward controls and frustrating game design elements that were derided even in the original PlayStation release, and are even less welcome over 20 years later. This is still an impressive, landmark game, but it’s not especially fun to play by today’s standards.

Grade: C+

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