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.

I have no interest in the RE games but man Dokapon Kingdom is the best virtual board game ever made.

Mario Party and Fortune Street wish they had the guts to be so brutal and unfair.

@corevi: Dokapon is sort of an awful party game because it takes a trillion hours to finish if you are playing a mode other than Battle Royale. It's that same trait, along with it being ultra-random and a complete bastard that makes it the pinnacle of "party" games.

Oh hey, a Resident Evil blog with barely any comments, with the one comment not even being related to the game in question!.. Man, Giant Bomb just really isn't the place if you want any discussion related to Resident Evil, I guess. Well, certainly not Resident Evil Zero of all the games.

Anywhoo, one of my main personal issues with RE0 that you didn't bring up is that the animations are reeeeally slow. In fact near enough everything about this game is; sitting there waiting for those bloody dumbwaiter machines to transfer items is just the most excruciating thing. Which is weird because the remake is super fluid and smooth! Or at least as fluid and smooth as you can get with tank controls of course.

I also of course agree it's a wasted opportunity not to essentially have RE0 function as the original Resident Evil, but with the Bravo squad. They should have at least had the pairing be Rebecca and Richard in any case. Would have given his ultimate death in the remake a little bit of added weight, and because that way they're not left with this other new character that they then proceed to do eff all with after his one and only appearance. It's a real shame that the part where Rebecca and Richard reunite during that one new scenario in Umbrella Chronicles couldn't have somehow functioned as DLC for Zero at the very least.

I can't recall many of the particulars of Zero unfortunately, besides what you've already written, however I will still proceed to note some bullet point highlights from what I do recall!

• Leech Zombies OP
• Billy is like literally the only person in the entire Resident Evil universe who doesn't know how to mix herbs... Talk about contrivance.
• No item boxes?!
• ENEMIES IN SAVE ROOMS OMF
• I've always really liked the introduction of Billy Coen. The music that accompanies him slowly raising his gun up to Rebecca is really ominous and well done! Even if you know nothing's actually going to happen given they're the protagonists and all.
• Hey, some backstory behind the T-Virus and Wesker's involvement, neat.
• That part where you play as Rebecca on her lonesome while somehow coming upon these RE2 environments sure was awesome! Specifically because you become so accustomed to playing as the In-des-tructible Billy Coen, so for them to take away that shield was a great way to suddenly make you feel really damn vulnerable.
• Fuck that giant bat boss. Constantly picking you up and then dropping you; like everything in this game the animations all feel so weirdly prolonged.
• Seriously, having to backtrack all that way to collect that damned hookshot... That's egregious even by Resident Evil standards!
• Leech Hunter is laughably terrible, but still not as much as Code: Veronica's Battle Game.
• They really didn't put the two-character setup to the best use unfortunately. A shame as it's a really intriguing premise.

I may have already told you this, but completing RE0 on Hard mode gifted me one of my favourite memories in all of Resident Evil! During that final boss fight, I had actually ran out of ammo... I didn't have the knife with me and Rebecca still had one more valve. So, I did all I could do... I just kept running towards the Leech Queen to ever so slightly slow its advance enough. I took some beatings but Billy can take 'em like a champ! And it fucking worked! I was able to slow it down enough with Billy's own weight for Rebecca to turn that last valve and save the day weeeeee! I also remember getting a C rank for it all... Man, I just wish I could have somehow recorded that boss fight =/

...Never did go back to Umbrella Chronicles now that you mention it.

I'll always be one of the first people to leap up and say that Resident Evil games should be harder and slower these days, but I always just felt like RE0 was simply too tedious and too punishing. There's just a lot of disincentives to do what the old Resident Evil games encouraged you to do to get through the game: explore every part of every room and eventually untie the knot of the area you're in to move on to the next one. But with random leech zombies, having to baby both Billy and Rebecca around all the time and make sure neither of them are left in a place where they can be hurt, and no item boxes, once you add in the fact that it's probably as hard, if not harder, than REmake, you end up with an incredibly demanding finished product.

In some ways I feel like Zero gets a bad wrap, because it's not that bad, but just the part where it's sometimes pretty frustrating to play and really does you no favors when you get lost and have to wander around for awhile makes it difficult to defend. Despite really enjoying Resident Evil in general, I never did finish it.

Which is a shame, but I feel like the game sort of gets slowly worse as time goes on. The opening train sequence is really fantastic; just the concept of being stuck on a train in that situation is one of the better settings from the series, and the close quarters nature of the train means you don't really get too separated from items, but enemy designs really get steadily worse, and the training facility stuff is really the sort of place you look at and think "So, you guys are kinda running out of ideas, aren't you?"

I really enjoy Rebecca and Billy, but yeah, I dunno. If I ever tried playing through it I suspect I would just do so with a guide for minimal tedium. I just don't feel like some of the design decisions in that game complement each other particularly well.

@marokai: I still think Zero gets an unfair rap as the bastard child of the old Resident Evil games, but yeah, after this playthrough I think it's the most frustrating game (that isn't RE6) by a decent margin. Probably explains why I haven't replayed it in years! Except, I remember really liking it the first time I went through it. Dunno, weird disconnect between nostalgia and reality there.

@yummylee: Hey, I figured you'd at least have something to say, which almost justifies my time. Your bullet points reflect a lot of what I was thinking as I went through this game again. I'm like a step or two away from saying that Code Veronica (which I played through again a few months ago) is a better game than Zero, which might break my heart a little given our mutual distaste for some of the pacing and story issues that cripple CVX. I'd really rather not play this game on hard mode though. I've beaten REmake on hard no problem, but the amount of juggling and babying going on in RE0 makes me grateful for all the healing and ammunition I can get my hands on. I have the A scenarios of RE2 (the B scenarios less so) and Jill mode in both OG Resident Evil and REmake down to a science, but Zero, 3 and Code Veronica are still games that intimidate me from a speedrunner's perspective.

All this really does is make me want another old-school Resident Evil game, which means one of two things: A. I wait for that Team IGAS or whatever they're called to finish that RE 1.5 restoration project which they occasionally release screenshots of when they get a certain amount of facebook likes or B. Just play Dino Crisis and be disappointed. Given your recent playthrough of the latter... maybe I won't do that second one when I have a lot of other stuff to get to after finals.

Not having a storage safe was such shit. What you end up doing is dumping your shit in that main hall in the mansion or at other typewriters. It's so pointless not to include them.

Good Resident Evil game though. Not great. And of course it's certainly no REmake or RE4.

@arbitrarywater: I'd still say Zero is a better game. Steve Burnside is near irredeemable and I really don't care for Veronica's art style. Plus it has no discerning mechanics that make it stand out, beyond the fact that it lacks all of the unique features from RE3 and has zero replay value or fun unlockables. That second Tyrant battle on the cargo plane is pretty miserable, too.

Alfred Ashford's still pretty great, though.

The only "main line" resident evil I have not played. Mostly because it was exclusive back when I cared.

I just can't go back to these old RE games. The closest I've gotten is the early Silent Hill games, which I can appreciate for the stories and subtext...can't really say that for the RE games.

@arbitrarywater: I know talking about story and or tone in the resident evil franchise is kind of an inherently dumb idea but this and CV is where they sort of lost a lot of what I liked about the early B-Movie tone, stuff like leeches forming into a dead man in a goofy cultist robe (what?) and Alexia being a huge bug kind of took it from 50's horror with zombies and mutants into this weird almost fantasy realm that I hated. Once they went full bore "You are a secret agent and here's a robotic statue chasing you" I was back on board with four though.

@wampa1: The Leech Zombie didn't wear a robe, just a suit. Honestly I think the level of stupid in Resident Evil has largely stayed consistent throughout most of it. I mean comon, the very original has a giant undead shark and a tall, pale-white naked guy with his heart exposed and a huge claw. People also continually mutating into increasingly weird and grotesque monsters ala Alexia has been in the series since Resident Evil 2 after all. I don't see how any of that is any more ridiculous or fantastical than what's found in Zero or Veronica really.

@yummylee: I think it's just a case of design preference, the mutations in 1 through 3 still seemed like homages to zombie films and splatter horror to me maybe a little Body horror too? I could have sworn the leeches had a white robe as young Marcus with the long hair? I never finished it so my bad if I'm totally wrong there.

Resident Evil Zero has its moments, but it is still far and away my least favorite main RE game, with Code Veronica right behind it. The inventory management is the absolutely worse, and the story doesn't make up for it at all. Bland villain, not much importance to the overall arc, and Rebecca has never been that great. Billy's okay, just kind of bland. He's like Carlos, essentially. At least Code Veronica was rife with unintentionally funny moments thanks to Steve and Alfred, and the Wesker/Chris stuff is actually pretty great.

A little??

Anywhoo, the real Marcus himself is all young and wears a robe, though the actual Leech Zombie Marcuses are meant to resemble him in his old age while wearing a suit.

Man, RE0 is old, now? I feel like I'm aging way too quickly.

Maybe this is a result of the ol' nostalgia factor, since I played it as a kid, but I really liked RE0. The monkeys were scary as sin, the boss designs were cool and the spiders were... as much of a non-threat as they've always been. I've always touted Rebecca Chambers as a badass type gal because she goes through TWO somewhat coincidentally timed nightmare scenarios and saves a man dying from poison in one 24-hour period. Damn. I mean, she's no Claire Redfield, but still. And for the gameplay, my two favorite REs are 2 and 4. I'm totally cool with tank controls and once I got used to them (about fifteen years ago. Again, thanks for making me feel old!) I find them way better than the normal 3D controls some modern Silent Hills use. You have any idea how hard it is to dodge monsters in fixed camera angles without tank controls? Bah. Anyway, modern SH being bad doesn't MAKE RE0 good, but it puts it into perspective I think, that it's really not that bad a game.

Also, I've always loved the summation of RE0 I first heard from the Two Best Friends: Rebecca and Billy fight monkeys and leeches while Wesker and Birkin enjoy the most boring Friday night in history.