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| #38 | Resident Evil |
|---|---|
| guessed by | SanAndreasX |
| platform | Wii/Switch |
| release year | 1996 |
| developer/publisher | Capcom |
| genre | shooter, survival horror |
| links | Wikipedia |
| past years | 2018: #35 |
| 2017: #28 |
I never played the original Resident Evil back then it first release, as in the 90s I didn't play on console. So my first exposure was the rerelease on Wii. And I liked it. I wasn't repelled by the old control scheme as many others were. And I played Resident Evil 4 beforehand (which was the reason I tried my hands on the original in the first place), so it wasn't that I didn't knew how the controls could be made better. But Resident Evil excels in another area: atmosphere. The atmosphere of the creepy villa and then the lab. The game always keeps you on your toes, although it has way less enemies than later entries. Every time you start to feel secure, because you start to amass ammunition, know how to kill the Zombies or find your way around the villa, the game adds a spin to keep you unsettled. And that makes it so great and keeps the game in my TOP 50, although yes the controls and visuals are dated.
The game is a mix of a shooter, but with fixed camera angles which certainly makes shooting a bit cumbersome, survival horror and light puzzles. You find your way through the villa and lab, searching for keys or items that help you progress and slowly uncover the truth about what happened here. The game keeps your resources as healing and ammunition sparse, so it often is a prudent tactic just to run through a room with an enemy instead of wasting bullets.
From this game spawned a whole big franchise, with many games, movies and recently a rumoured netflix-series. This success started here, despite controls, despite all it's shortcoming, because it does so well on the creepiness, on the unsettling feelings, on the jump-scares (who doesn't remember the zombie dogs). So it deserves it's place on my list. The game itself became countless rereleases, most recently on Switch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw3i5jQ4NR8
