This Week’s Game: Resident Evil (Xbox One)

I have never managed to beat Resident Evil. I don’t know if it is the restrictive inventory management (8 slots: not enough slots! 6 slots: who the fuck are you kidding?) or the tank controls (an M1 Abrams could maneuver better) or the fact that I am completely incapable of playing those games without someone else in the room to make the somewhat dull-as-shit gameplay loop (find key, find door, kill monster using sub-par combat controls, repeat) fun.

Wow, I never knew how much of that game bothered me until I wrote it out up there. I think, honestly, the real reason I never beat Resident Evil was the fact that I did not have a PSOne growing up. By the time I got around to playing RE, the gameplay mechanics were outdated and annoying. Perhaps if I had played the game when it first hit, I would have adapted to the controls and enjoyed the experience for what it was.

As it is, I am amazed at how many of the idiosyncrasies of Resident Evil I am willing to deal with when only the tank controls are removed. The removal of the tank controls were, in fact, the only reason that I bought this new release of an older game at all. For a few days after buying the game, I wasn’t sure that I had made the right decision anyway, but after putting a couple of hours into it, I can say that I made a good call in picking this latest release of Resident Evil up, because I really enjoy it!

It’s not a very scary game, as it turns out, nor is it very tense. I think that after the first-person experiences of PT and Alien: Isolation, a 3^rd person camera just doesn’t pack the same sort of punch as it may have before. Sure, there’s a few jump scares here and there – a surprise zombie hiding behind an obtuse camera angle, dogs jumping through the windows – but the game lacks the tension that I remember it having back in the GameCube days.

What it is, however, is a pretty fun game to play with friends, especially when neither of you quite remembers where to go next and you end up just running around waiting to trigger the next encounter with Barry “The Sandwich Artist” Burton. Sometimes, you get frustrated. Sometimes, you realize how absurd the whole game is. And sometimes, magic happens.

The whole game’s got a base price of $20, which to my mind means that it is ripe for becoming a free Xbox Gold/PlayStation Plus deal in the next six months or so. For me, it was entirely worth dropping a twomp, even though I have a copy of the GameCube remake floating around the house… somewhere. I can rationalize the hell out of a $20 purchase.

One final thought: I am a big fan of the shotgun in this game, as it is one of the most satisfying shotguns in a game since… Doom, I’d say. BLAP BLAP BLAP.