Alternate Title: Resident Rambling, the return of me talking about old games.

I’m definitely studying for finals. No, really. Ask my Spanish professor. For some reason or another, writing about stuff isn’t a bad way of decompressing from catching up on missed assignments (which also includes writing about stuff) or trying to remember exactly what Toni Morrison said in that one article she wrote about writing. Obviously, I haven’t played a ton of video games this week, nor am I really going to play a ton of video games next week (at least until Thursday…) Still, between the reading guides and the google docs I’ve managed to edge my way through Resident Evil Zero, and I have some thoughts about it! Who knew bringing the Wii (not the Wii U, sadly) down to school would pay dividends in non-Dokapon related ways!

The other Resident Evil game.

I’m not the biggest Resident Evil nut on these forums, but I’d say that my appreciation for that series ranges from “zealous” to “apologetic” depending on the time of day and in what context we’re talking about it in. It’s not dissimilar to my relationship with the Might and Magic series, except without the part where M&M at its worst is still totally okay (one-off mistakes like Crusaders of Might and Magic as exceptions). When Resident Evil is bad, it’s grandiose in its baditude. I might claim to have mostly enjoyed RE6, but I’m not going to claim it’s a “good” game in any sense of the word. It’s a beautiful disaster that takes all the wrong lessons from modern game development and implements them in a frenzied haze of QTEs, bad set-pieces and cutscenes that clearly cost a lot of money to produce. I’m not going to pretend that it’s a series that hasn’t lost its way and Capcom clearly has no idea what to do with it, nor am I going to pretend that I won’t feel a twinge of self-loathing when I willingly pay $20 for an HD remaster of a 12-year-old remake of a game that came out in 1996 next month, but hey: names have power. Just ask @yummylee why he bought those Umbrella/Darkside Chronicles games despite not having a motion controller to play them with.

Still, the Resident Evil games of the past are some of my favorites and occupy the special space of being titles that I can replay and enjoy on a whim. Some of the talk about REmake HD on these forums unsurprisingly led to talk about Zero. It’s been more than a few years since I’ve sat down and finished RE0, so what better time to play it than when my academic standing is on the line? Resident Evil Zero is an… interesting game. Announced as a N64 exclusive and then moved to the Gamecube, it’s sort of the forgotten child of the series, standing in the shadow of the far more popular, far better remake of Resident Evil 1. As a prequel, it basically tells the story of the founding of Umbrella and the creation of the T-Virus by James Marcus through the adventures of plucky STARS rookie (and subject of weird easter egg in RE2) Rebecca Chambers and “Wouldn’t be out of place in an ad for AXE body spray circa 2001” tattooed guy and escaped prisoner Billy Coen. While I’m not going to bag on RE0 too much for what it isn’t, how can you make a Resident Evil prequel that takes place the night before the first game and not focus on what happened to STARS Bravo Team? Keep in mind this game doesn’t really have any direct bearing on the rest of the series other than: A. Some back story, notably revealing that Marcus was responsible for the outbreak at the Arklay Laboratory and B. Telling what Rebecca was up to before she was in the first game. Turns out she had a pretty rough two nights. There’s also some stuff about how Billy was a soldier who was wrongfully blamed for some sort of vague massacre thing and perhaps most interestingly a look at Albert Wesker and William Birkin overseeing the whole thing (ending with Wesker deciding that Umbrella is finished and Birkin giving him that virus that turned him into a Matrix rip-off). Of course, given the convoluted and pointless nature of the rest of the Resident Evil story, going after Zero for being straightforward and pointless doesn’t seem like the best use of my time.

So then, how does it play? Like a Resident Evil game, silly. There are tank controls, fixed camera angles and an emphasis on conserving ammunition until the end of the game when you realize you have like 40 shotgun shells. What differentiates Zero from the rest of the series is twofold: You’re usually controlling Billy and Rebecca at the same time (though you can split them up whenevz), meaning you have twice as much firepower but dodging zombies without someone getting hurt is twice as difficult, and there are no item boxes, instead you can just drop an item on the ground if you don’t need it. The former is sadly underused as an interesting game mechanic. There are a handful of times where the two protagonists will be split up, maybe they’ll have to turn on two different switches at the same time, but I’d go as far as to say it never quite goes for the crazy potential such a premise offers. The latter differentiator is actually a pretty big deal. It’s sort of like playing that “Real Survivor” bonus mode in REmake… as Chris. Sure, you have 12 slots between both characters, but when the shotgun and grenade launcher take up two slots each, juggling ammo, healing items and key items really reveals how efficient you are with your Resident Evil inventory management skills. I am not very efficient with my Resident Evil inventory management skills, especially in this game where I haven’t played it in years and don’t quite remember when and where to use certain key items. Zero is also remarkably stingy with ammunition for weapons other than the handgun. I’d go as far as to call it the hardest game in the series. REmake might have Crimson Heads, but those guys are not much of an issue if you play it smart. Know what are an issue? Leech Zombies. If you aren’t using molotovs or flame rounds in the grenade launcher, these suckers take a bajillion hits to kill and will explode upon death all while a suitably fear-inducing musical theme plays whenever they are in the same room as you. THEY ARE THE WORST. There are also like Hunters n’ stuff, but pffft. Whatever. Hunters? Shoot those guys with the acid rounds. Virus infected monkeys? Shoot those guys with whatever. Leech Zombies are the true survival horror.

If I (and many others) have a place to bag on RE0 about though, it’s not the inventory management or the story. The inventory management stuff is only a real hassle after you leave the second area and have to cart that damn hookshot with you along with everything else and the story is just sort of a missed opportunity. If I have a place to talk about where Zero falters, it’s that I don’t think the main area of the game is very interesting. While the train you start on and the lab/water treatment plant areas of the game are actually pretty interesting, the Umbrella Training Facility is no Spencer Mansion or RPD Station. It’s just another ornate building filled with zombies, laid out in a manner that is depressingly straightforward and linear. There’s no sense of “place” the same way there is for the best areas in Resident Evil and it seems sort of small by comparison. The puzzles aren’t all that inspired either. The basement of the facility has some grim stuff going on in it, but even that straight up repeats a puzzle that was in a previous Resident Evil game (the power puzzle in RE2). Once you get to the second disk things get a little more atmospheric, though the puzzles still never go beyond “braindead obvious” or “there was nowhere else to go in this place so obviously the solution is here”. It’s telling that I think the single best sequence in Resident Evil Zero is when you’re alone as Rebecca and you essentially stumble upon the lab entrance from Resident Evil 2 (followed by a somewhat easy boss fight against a prototype Tyrant). It’s tense in a way the rest of the game really isn’t, but of course it’s also like 30 minutes before you get Billy again and once again double your firepower (though the water treatment plant isn’t bad as a final area with its worn down machinery and stark lighting. It just feels sort of half-baked in a way the sinister laboratories that usually define Resident Evil endgames don’t).

So then, what can be learned from whatever drivel I just spent the last handful of hours writing up? I still like Resident Evil Zero. I think it has a grim, even gloomy atmosphere that it does really well, even if the game part of it isn’t quite as well paced or inspired as I remembered it being. It’s one of the weaker installments in the series for sure, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth taking another look at.