Resident Evil - Then & Now
Back in 1996, we were introduced to the survival horror genre, which was made popular by Resident Evil. The original numbered entries in the series brought us true horror, with limited stock of ammo to find, zombies soaking up bullets like sponges and enemies jumping at you when you least expect it. Resident Evil truly defined the Survival Horror genre of its day, and this peaked (in my personal opinion) at Resident Evil 2, featuring Claire Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy as its main protagonists. That's not to say after this the game stagnated, there were some further great entries in the series including Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Code Veronica X and Outbreak File 1/2. As Resident Evil 4 came along, this brought in a massive change in the series as a whole.
Resident Evil 4 introduced us to a new style of over the shoulder gameplay and more action heavy sequences. This is where I feel the series changed forever. With the loss of the survival horror element, the series continued down this road, with RE5 and 6 following suit, but RE6 gave us an utter action-explosion fest that we hadn't seen in the series before. This entry gave us four storylines to follow, that all intertwined with each other, giving us different types of infected before grouping the story together at the end with a different boss fight for each. Whilst I enjoyed Resident Evil 6, I believe this is where it truly lost what it was before.
However it seemed Capcom has heard the message from the players in that they missed the survival horror, because along came the Revelations side entries. Revelations 1 was a brilliantly claustrophobic iteration, taking place mostly on board the Queen Zenobia cruise ship, riddled with a new breed of infected. Now sure, there have been far too many viruses and this one gave a really loose ending as to what we can expect to come but the game itself was brilliant. The Atmosphere was perfect, the battle system was good (and improved upon in the PS3 version) and really brought back some of the scares from the originals. Then along came Revelations 2, which blew me out of the water. Again it brought about a new virus, but this time it was based on fear.
This infection was different from the others completely and again the atmosphere was brilliant. Sure there were parts which were completely over the top, but isn't that Resident Evil's whole base for their game? It wasn't shy to poke fun at some of it's previous entries either, with Claire making comments about Barry with his now infamous 'Jill Sandwich' line from RE1. The ammo wasn't as scarce as the originals, but with some of the enemies needing a lot of handgun bullets to take down, you were sure wishing you had of held on to those shotgun rounds to take them down. The puzzles are back in this entry as well, with you having to escape areas quickly and solve different button combinations also. This really was a brilliant entry in what was becoming a slowly stagnant series.
Now we talk Umbrella Corps, the Call Of Duty of this series. This iteration looks to bring a multiplayer shoot out to the RE universe. Set in 2015, years after the downfall of Umbrella, there are corporations around the world looking to take the research on Bio weapons and use them for themselves. Set among areas from previous Resident Evil games, teams will fight against each other, in with the hordes of the undead to get hold of the research. It'll feature many of the usual guns you find in FPS games along with some interesting melee weapons. However they may want to take a look at their movement animations, which don't seem ready for release just yet:
So with this coming up soon and no further information on a numbered entry in the series, where do you think Resident Evil will go from here? Do you think the remade Resident Evil 2 will completely refresh the series, or do you think Umbrella Corps is going to kill it? Let us know in the comments below!
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