Resident Evil: Deadly Silence

Overview

Resident Evil: Deadly Silence brings the classic survival horror series to the Nintendo DS. Deadly Silence is an enhanced port of the PlayStation original, with two different modes.

The first mode is Classic and is exactly the same as the PlayStation original, though certain musical themes have been remixed or removed entirely.

Rebirth mode contains more enemies and ammo, as well as specific content that utilizes the unique functions of the DS, such as touch screen knife fights as well as puzzles using the touch screen and microphone for control. This includes giving mouth to mouth by blowing into the microphone to help revive Richard Aiken, to having to turn a valve with the touch screen to stop the flow of poisonous water, to even playing a game of darts -- again with the use of the touch screen.

Beyond the additional puzzles, many new jump scare moments and remixed enemy placements have also been put into effect for Rebirth mode as well. Though the plot of the game is untouched from the very original Resident Evil, and still includes all of the same hallmarks such as the dubious voice performances and dodgy localization work. Richard Aiken's VO was actually redone in Rebirth mode for the sake of him providing a hint to one of the game's new puzzles; that, and there are a number of in-game quips regarding the player character's success concerning certain puzzles as well.

Gameplay and Visual Enhancements

Even for Classic Mode, Deadly Silence is privy to numerous gameplay updates over the very original release. The most notable is the inclusion of a 180 degree turn by simultaneously pressing down and the run button, first introduced in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Furthermore, there is a dedicated button for the character's knife--holding down L will have the player character equip it for use--and it thusly no longer needs to be carried in the player's inventory. Finally, players can also prematurely reload their weapons mid-game by pressing Y (default controls) when aiming, as opposed to doing it in the inventory or waiting until the firearm is out of ammo.

The character models for Albert Wesker and Enrico Marini have been upgraded to take into account their revised characters design from the 2002 Resident Evil remake. Certain animations for both characters and even enemies--including the T-002 Tyrant--have also been touched up (and in some cases sped up as well) with additional frames to make them look slightly more natural when animating. Many of the item icons in a player character's inventory have been redone, some to reflect the retcons from the remake, such as the handgun now being made to resemble the Samurai Edge.

Certain elements of the Director's Cut version of the game have been carried over, such as both character's ability to score a critical hit against a zombie with the handgun, destroying the head completely, and the zombie reanimation of STARS Bravo member Forest Speyer.

Due to the benefit of a dual-screen, the map of the area is now permanently available for view on the top screen, alongside a visual indicator for the player character's health. So should a character's health fall into a lesser state, such as Caution, the upper screen will begin to flash orange to indicate as such.

New Unlockables

Master of Knifing

Referencing the infamous 'Master of Unlocking' line of dialogue, the Master of Knifing mode is unlocked after completing the game. It consists of 5 rounds of increasingly difficult knife fights, culminating with the fight against the giant snake 'Yawn' from the main game.

Both Chris and Jill are once again selectable, with Chris being the harder of the two.

Multi-Card Multiplayer

In addition, there is a local-only multiplayer mode for up to 4 players that involves getting from one end of the level to another either as a team or competitively, with multiple members of STARS playable and 3 maps to play on. One notable downside, however, is that the other players are invisible whenst playing the mode and are instead represented by colored stars on the map.

All of the STARS members encountered in the game--including some simply as corpses--are available to play as, however besides Chris & Jill they must all be unlocked by certain means. Each character has their own unique specialisation as well.

A full list of the characters and their unique ability is as such:

Costumes

Like in the original release, completing the game with the 'Happy Ending'--the ending that features the survival of the player character's two supporting characters--will reward the player with a key to unlock a closet containing new costumes to wear. Alongside the original unlockable costume, both characters have available an additional outfit to wear exclusive to this version of the game. However the new costume is only available to change into in Rebirth mode.

Chris' new costume is a ninja outfit, while Jill's is a police uniform -- only one that is heavily sexualized with a noticeable amount of cleavage on show.

Trivia

• Across both Classic and Rebirth mode, the player can ''poke'' either Chris or Jill via the touchscreen to get a reaction out of them while they're currently in their idle animation. With Chris the interaction is situated around his hair, whereas with Jill it's her breasts.
• While the boxart depicts Jill dual-wielding pistols, no such ability is available throughout the game.