I never imagined I would say this but I think I'm really into the survival horror genre. I started off with aspirations of braving Silent Hill 2, 3, and Resident Evil Remake to understand the genre a bit. In the last two years, I played through SH2&3 and now making my way through REmake to close the book on that goal but something has changed, something has really clicked. I think I get the appeal of these games. Maybe it's because I've gotten a little experience under my belt with SH2&3 but I'm, to my surprise, kinda mesmerized by REmake.

First of all, the game is, to this day, stunning. I love the look of this game and no exaggeration, it might be my favorite game to look at ever. The way some of the rooms are lit and the shadows play, some of the shots are simply breathtaking and it's just a pleasure to explore these environments. Slowly walking down a hallway, taking in the atmosphere is way more satisfying than it sounds. Speaking of walking, I really like all the animations in this game. Watching Jill point a shotgun up at a zombie's head, blows its brains out, and reload is a thing of beauty, so cool and badass. Because all the movement in the game is so deliberate, they feel especially tactile.

The item management in the game, while it is a pain in the butt and force too many backtracking, does provide the game a layer of depth. Deciding which items to take, whether or not to pack additional ammunition in exchange for a slot, not only adds tension to the situation but asks players to think a bit and have some forethought, a thing games don't do enough.

Many years ago, I try to play RE2 and while I didn't hate it, so much of the atmosphere and visual impact were no longer there. I got very far into Leon's side but ended up dropping it. REmake is making me think about giving it another shot.

Anyway, based on how much I'm enjoying REmake, I don't think it's the end of my affair with survival horror. I'll definitely play more, if not right away, down the line. RE2make just shot up to one of my most anticipated games, maybe even the most!

p.s.: I just got both of the octagonal shaped things with the emblem engravings (one of them is used to get to the courtyard/residence area.) How far am I?

I'm happy for you! You picked a hell of a place to start with the genre.

REmake and Silent Hill 2 are literally the best survival horror games ever made. SH3 is also great.

REmake is my favorite resident evil game and then after that I guess is 2, 3, and 0 in that order. That's just for the pre-RE4 era of course.

@frostyryan: Where would you place the original RE1, Code Veronica, and the Outbreak games? I remember ppl being pretty high on CV at the time but it seems like ppl are pretty cool on it these days.

Any other in the genre you've enjoyed?

I'm a massive RE fan. My big brother's friend came round with the original Resident Evil back in like 97 or something when I was 9 years old, and I watched them play it. After that once the REmake came out, I got that with a gamecube for Christmas and sat up all night Christmas Day playing it and finished it in one sitting, went to bed and started all over again as Jill. I feel like Resident Evil 2 leaned abit more into the action side of things by giving you alot more enemies to shoot at. I enjoyed Nemesis but I didn't think it was "great", and I think I really only enjoyed it for the Nemesis stalking you around stuff. I never really played Outbreak much even though I owned it, as I didn't have my PS2 online and it felt kinda hollow as a single player game. Code Veronica is definitely one of my top favourites of the series, and Resident Evil Zero was enjoyable but not the best, I didn't like the whole controlling 2 characters at the same time thing. For me I would say:

1. REmake

2. Code Veronica

3. RE2

4. Zero

5. Nemesis.

Edit: The Forbidden Siren games are pretty good, and Silent Hill 2 and 3 are also awesome. It's not everyones cup of tea but Obscure also has its moments, aswell as being local coop.

I forgot about code veronica. I'd put that below all the ones I mentioned. Good but not great, just like 0 and 3. The Outbreak games are spinoffs and not main series so I never bothered. Most people don't talk about those in RE discussions tbh. The main series is 1(and remake,) 2, 3, 0, CV, 4, 5, 6, REvelations 1 and 2, and 7.

Oh and the ORIGINAL ORIGINAL resident evil remains the only one of the main series I never played...but I can't imagine it's aged well. Everyone agrees REmake is the definitive version. Personally I consider it the definitive Resident Evil in general.

If you want to get more into survival horror, I recommend the Outlast games, Amnesia the dark descent, Alien Isolation, and The Evil Within 2. Don't know what system you have but every single one of these is for PS4.

1. RE2

2. Code Veronica

3. REmake

4.RE1

5. Nemesis

6. Zero

1. RE2

2. REmake

3. Code Veronica

@liquiddragon: In regards to how far into the game you are - and bare with me, I'm far more familiar with the original game than I am with REmake - I would say you're probably about 2/3rds of the way through? You should 100% let me know where you got the second emblem you're talking about so I can confirm whether or not I'm giving you incorrect information, and I don't want to potentially spoil something you haven't seen yet even via spoiler tags. <3

That being said, I'm a huuuuuuuuuuge Resident Evil fan and have been playing the games since I was very young, and it all originated during a car ride to Reno from the Bay Area in which my cousin and I played through a good chunk of RE2 in the car on the way there (hooray cigarette lighter converters and the old PSOne with the screen you could bolt on!) and to this day, I still get the most ominous, unsafe feeling listening to the RPD main hall music. Long story short, we were at a truck stop with some Silent Hill levels of fog in the middle of the mountains, and I refused to move forward with the game until my cousin returned from the bathroom, so guess who got to listen to that wonderfully creepy track on loop in the car alone while the rest of the family was out stretching their legs?

RE4 is my favorite game ever and is why I didn't give up on the medium when I felt like "video games were for dumb kids". But this is about the fixed camera angle games! Spoiler tags were added to obscure specific names of things or details and can be entirely avoided. On with the list!

1.) Resident Evil 1 (Directors Cut/DS port/REmake) - I've beaten every version I listed, but by far spent most of my time with the DS port. If you want to fuck with the original game in any capacity, I would recommend that version. The "Rebirth" mode adds some cool touch screen minigames, but if you pick classic it's the original game with one caveat - they added in a quick knife option a la Resident Evil 4. You just hold down L and you auto-equip the knife, plus it doesn't take up an inventory slot! In my eyes this game is immaculate and a necessary cornerstone when talking about good level design, atmosphere and world building.

2.) Code: Veronica - Admittedly this is the one of the fixed camera games I played the least (save for 0, but we'll get there), but between the sweeping camera angles, enemy designs and their willingness to do weird-ass stuff with the structure of the game (the whole playing as Chris for chunks of the game, and the Nosferatu fight was very different in terms of RE bosses), it holds a very special place in my heart. Game isn't without its faults, though, as there are definitely some brick walls you can run up against that would make progression a wall-punching affair. But people can beat all of these games with just a knife and no healing items, so it can't be that bad, right?

3.) Resident Evil 2 - I had a tough time picking between 2 and 3 in this spot, but a few things edged 2 over for me, most important being more structural weirdness. RE2 is probably the only game I can think of off the top of my head to do multiple campaigns right. Each character you can play as has two campaigns, an A-campaign and a B-campaign. Now when you beat, say, Claire-A, you would unlock Leon-B, and vice versa (That's also the canonical way to play them if you're into that sort of thing, but hey, you do you). Effectively what this does is show you how the B-campaign character contributed to the story, and it has its own share of new enemies, puzzles and at least a couple of boss fights. Don't worry about playing both A-campaigns and B-campaigns as they're effectively the same with a character swap, although at least one small chunk of the game will be fundamentally different. RE2 also has what I would say is the most terrifying video game enemy/boss ever with Mr. X, who is a B-campaign exclusive, and by far my favorite boss music in any game ever (see: below). With all of that being said, I feel that this game is criminally overrated despite loving it to death myself. It's a fantastic game that does a lot of things right, but it doesn't have the same lasting effect on me as, say, the first game, whose mansion I can probably navigate entirely with my eyes closed at this point.

4.) Resident Evil 3 - More structural weirdness, an interesting set-up, and what I would probably say is the most fun to play due to the pseudo-dynamic nature of elements of the game.

5.) Resident Evil 0 - The only mainline game I haven't beaten. I find this game to be an absolute chore to play, and it completely loses me after the initial sequence of events on the train. I've tried multiple times to get into this one on both the Gamecube and modern releases, but it's never gotten its hooks in me in a way literally every other game I've played in the in the series has, spin-off or otherwise.

I have had a limited exposure to the Outbreak games, but they seemed solid enough from what I had played. Though I do recall the AI making Sheva from 5 look like a rocket scientist, I could very well be completely misremembering that so take it with a grain of salt.

I made a list covering this exact topic like 5 years ago. I'm not quite sure how closely it hews to my current opinions (I replayed the PS1 original a couple of years ago and found it to be incredibly rough in spots, while I actually had a pretty good time trying to speedrun through Zero when that came to PS4.) All you really need to know is that REmake is the peak of that style and I don't think Code Veronica is very good at all.

I was a huge Resident Evil fan. To the point I wrote in-depth fan fiction on IGN's Resident Evil boards for many years. It was weird, in retrospect, because I'm not a fan of horror films or most other horror games (Silent Hill 2 is about the only other one I gave serious time to and I didn't finish it). But I love the RE series, to varying degrees, up through RE4. My rankings:

Resident Evil 2: Probably a stupid pick, sure, but the story was legitimately touching in a lot of ways, the Umbrella Corporation was still mysteriously rather than purely evil, and the villain was legitimately endearing. I loved the environments, I loved how weird it was willing to get, as well as how grim, and Leon and Claire were great characters.

Resident Evil 4: Clearly the most fun of all the Resident Evils, this was a game that made replay value more than a gimmick (slight scenario and inventory differences) with its awesome weapons and upgrade system, to mention all the fun, tense combat sections. I played this game over and over on its PS2 release, and while the depth of its influence on video games has begun to make me wonder whether it would still feel good in 2018, my memory is so fond for this game.

Resident Evil Remake: I'll grant anyone the argument that RE2 has become dated in a lot of monotonous, grotesque ways over the years. I'll even grant it might not have ever been that much fun to play. The great accomplishment of REmake is that it's likely the only game with tank controls that the world generally agrees is a blast to play and a tour de force of technical accomplishments. That they were also able to fine tune the story (some might say to its detriment by removing the B-movie acting) and add in a whole new side story that ranks among the most valuable in the whole RE canon makes REmake every bit as valuable to the series as the very best it has to offer.

Resident Evil: This is the last Resident Evil game I'd consider great, but that comes with a lot of caveats, the most primary of which is that if you weren't there when the Playstation cases were ten inches long and the mystery of what video games on CDs were capable of was still pure fantasy and that zombie turned its head for the first time...well, Resident Evil probably looks and plays like utter crap these days. Unlike Shadow of the Colossus, which arguably still has more value as art in its original form, this game was rendered nearly discardable once its Gamecube update hit the scene in any context other than historical preservation.

Resident Evil 0: This game was not great, but in some ways it paved the way for the sheer body horror weirdness of Resident Evil 4's most grotesque moments. The prequel-ness of it isn't handled particularly well and the item management is a unique but cumbersome take on the series' classic Tetris cases, but at the time it was valuable enough just to have another game in the REmake engine that took some risks.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica: This might be a better game than Resident Evil 0, but truthfully I only ever played it once because it left the Sega console after a pretty prolonged period, and all I can recall from it any more is the intro cinematic and the form of the final boss, which was stupid. I think I was also a little burned out on the series due to how much I played RE2 by this point, not to mention Onimusha: Warlords had released and was more novel with better graphics and improved tank controls.

I can't rate Resident Evil 5, 6, 7 or 3 as I tapped out after learning the latter was designed as a co-op game that doubled down on all the action-y bits of RE4 (I played a single player demo and didn't enjoy it at all either) and just never felt interested in 6 or 7, while the mere idea of 3 (an unstoppable version of the scariest enemy in the original games, the Tyrant, popping in at any time to wreck your shit) scared me away from ever playing it. I just read the S.D. Perry novel.

I'm actually grinding my way through the series as we speak. Despite thinking I'd played most of it growing up, I'd actually not made it through or even touched many of the games outside of Resident Evils 2, 4, 5, and VII. That means I'm playing a lot of this series for the very first time in 2018.

I've been surprised to see how much changes from game to game, especially the really granular stuff between the original three. My impression was that the Playstation trilogy kept a terminal adherence to a tried and true formula, but honestly, they each have a distinct feel and pace. This is especially true when comparing Resident Evil 2 with Resident Evil 3--games I'd initially assumed were extremely similar. Beyond some limited terrain used in both games, they actually play wildly differently. The Nemesis changes everything.

The middle-section of Resident Evil's history--the section that includes Resident Evil - Code: Veronica and Resident Evil Zero--feels like at once like some gesture toward tribute and an immense slog. I get the sense that both games try to pay homage to the legacy of the original trilogy. But they do so while also setting out to create something removed from the franchise's roots. Code: Veronica is this long, tedious, plot-heavy coda to the Redfield narrative that trades pre-rendered environments for 3D level design, a decision that doesn't actually pay off in a meaningful way. Resident Evil Zero is kind of the twin sibling. Mechanically tedious where Code: Veronica was emotionally tedious. As everyone knows and complains: The item boxes are gone, which means you're spending an inordinate amount of time managing inventories with every single item you encounter and hope to take.

Both games have design traps--bosses or sudden puzzles--that punish players for not being clairvoyant. Literally, both Code: Veronica and Zero have ways of suddenly bringing a run to a screeching halt, ways that one would only avoid by knowing of their existence ahead of time. In Code: Veronica more frequently than Zero, failing to adequately prepare for these traps will essentially force a restart of the entire game. This includes multiple sequences that occur within the final hours of the (very lengthy) game. Your opinion will probably vary on whether this is smart design.

Coming out of this, you can see pretty easily why Resident Evil 4 is so important. Not only for the impact it had on the industry at large but also because of its place as a saving throw for the Resident Evil franchise. A lot has been written about Resident Evil 4. People love this game. That love is for good reason. Though there is some revisionist backlash I've seen sprout up against 4. People have taken to blaming 4 as being the reason Resident Evils 5 and 6 exist in the states they do. While I can acknowledge the superficial logic of that statement, I also consider that a silly and petty position to take.

Resident Evil VII is special in its own right. Though not the seachange that Resident Evil 4 was in 2005, it's still extremely cool to see a franchise get so comfortable with reinvention. Reanimation, you might joke. I don't have a lot to say about VII, other than I'm excited to see where a minimalistic, first-person survival horror experience might go under the current team's direction. As many have said before, Resident Evil VII is essentially the original Resident Evil philosophy transposed into a first-person perspective. It works very well and feels very fresh.

--

Sorry, I don't have a ranking. Play them all.

EDIT: Also, at some point, I decided to veer off-topic. More apologies.

My favorite RE games are RE1 Remake and RE7.
The list pre-RE4 would be something like this:

1. RE1 Remaster
2. RE1 Director's Cut
3. RE1
4. RE Code Veronica
5. RE 0
6. RE 2

The Silent Hill series contain some of my favorite games ever
and I rank those worth mentioning like this:

1. SH 1
2. SH 2
3. SH 4
4. SH Shattered Memories
5. SH 3

@frostyryan: I'm not trying start a debate about what is survival horror but you'd consider games like TEW2 to qualify? I don't have the same anxieties about playing post-RE4 over-the-shoulder 3rd person horror shooters as I do about ones like RE1 popularized. Anyway, I have TEW2 on the shelf and I'm one of those that really enjoyed TEW1 and played all the dlcs so I'm sure I'll like the sequel. I do definitely want to play Alien Isolation, that looks pretty good.

@krayzeegloo: haha, thanks for sharing your story. I got the 2nd octogonal emblem from the study, which I got in to by using a key only for that room, the family emblem key. I finished the game and you were pretty spot on, I was about 2/3rds the way. I had to find a frame for the 2nd emblem so it would fit in the door I was trying to get down in the lobby of the mansion. Along the way, I almost got crushed by couple giant boulders, and met a giant spider during that sequence. I did not like Barry right from the start. I shouldn't have saved that man, he is not a good man. Fuck that guy. Anyway, super fun game, I loved it.

Oh, and speaking of RE music, that save room theme, safe heaven, so gorgeous, so serene yet haunting.

@inevpatoria: you weren't off topic at all, very thoughtful thanks! You say you're currently making your way through RE, have you gotten to REmake? If not, oh man, I think you are gonna love. It's just a great game, no qualifiers necessary. RE7 does look very good. I've actually tried not to look too much into it cause I know I want to play it. It does seem like it might be a one off at this point. Capcom didn't seem especially happy with the game's performance and the main team's busy working on RE2 remake, which I assume will do quite well for them.

I used to spend a lot of time trying to chose a favourite between the old RE games and I can never decide. It's a three way tie every time. It's a very special series to me.

I grew up with them and I think it must be such a weird experience to play them for the first time in the last few years and more specifically since that style of survival horror went away.

I think its great that REmake remaster got more people interested that might have missed them before. I hope they deliver the same level of care and craft to the RE2 remake, not only will it be amazing to experience that kind of Nostalgia trip again but if it goes well I could see them giving RE3 the same treatment as well.

RE3 with modern tech would be nothing short of glorious if done right and for me they have never topped the Nemesis in terms of an intimidating enemy.

1. RE1 Remake
2. RE1
3. RE2
4. RE1 Directors Cut
5. Code Veronica
6. RE3

As for games that are inspired by RE, i love Eternal Darkness about as much Remake. It is incredible and criminally unapreciated. Silent Hill 1 & 2 are also up there.

Yeah there's no doubt about it. It's a horror game and the gameplay has an emphasis on overcoming overwhelming odds. Resources are limited, lots of crafting, hiding mechanics, etc. A lot of the time just bypassing enemies without encountering them is the best option.

Playing TEW2 on nightmare difficulty was a real treat. It's perfect for genre veterans. Probably not for someone just getting into the genre though

Haven't gotten to REmake yet! Everyone is over the moon about the REmake, so I'm really looking forward to it. That'll be the cherry on top at the end of this long journey.

I'm eager to see its changes and eager to see its callbacks.

1. Remake
2. Nemesis
3. RE 2
4. RE
5. Code Veronica
6. RE 0

Resident Evil 0 is by far the worst of the core RE games. The removal of item boxes and having to deal with two characters at once sounds good on paper, but in practice is really bad. The new enemies are also really bad and seem counter to the games design. Who thought a giant flying bat was a good idea for a boss? Annihilators are super annoying and should have never been in the game. Small, super agile enemies are a nightmare to fight with tank controls and a fixed camera.

Code Veronica is the 2nd worst RE game because of Steve.

Dino Crisis! Thats alright game too. Pretty much Capcom taking their Resident Evil formula but replacing zombies with dinosaurs.