 idely considered the best PlayStation game in existence, Resident Evil has finally made its way to the PC in a perfect port, with all of the gore of the PlayStation "Director's Cut" (Hollywood marketing comes to gaming – should we be excited by this?) and requiring the use of a 3D accelerator card.
This is a standard-issue haunted house story full of zombies and dripping with not-quite-red blood (it's sorta brown). You control one of two characters and the game changes some of the puzzles accordingly, providing some replay value (and it's a fairly long adventure to begin with). The gameplay consists of not-very-arcade-like action and simple puzzles that would seem innovative if you've never played the original Alone in the Dark.
The big mystery in the game is why it requires a 3D accelerator. While the 3D characters have a high-polygon count (and look quite good), the backgrounds are low-resolution (and look quite bad) and there's no real-time 3D à la Quake. It seems like more of a marketing necessity than a gameplay one, but whatever.
With a non-issue story and derivative gameplay, there has to be a reason the game's so compelling. It's not scary – the most terrifying thing in the game may be Virgin's eyeball logo animation. It's not the interface, which forces you to use gamepad at all times. It's not the save games, which are limited in number and are only allowed in certain locations.
No, what makes the game worth playing is being able to experience what is the worst dialog and voice-acting ever committed to CD-ROM. Eclipsing even the legendary Inca series, you can only hope it was intentionally made this way (some of the location descriptions would imply it's just one of those bizarre Japanese translation issues). Whatever the case, Resident Evil is the funniest game of 1997, and fans of all things Velveeta should worship it like the god it is.
Requirements:
- Windows 95
- 90MHz Pentium
- 16MB of RAM
- 4X CD-ROM
- 3D accelerator
Multiplayer: None
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