With the wholly disappointing 2014 firmly behind us, we can finally lift our heads and begin to anticipate all the new and exciting releases 2015 might have in store for us. So let’s look at a remastered version of a game that came out in 1996.

Survival horror was a genre that was born and flourished in the nineties, and Resident Evil was it’s poster child. I was just a wee boy at the time, and have fond memories of watching my brother play through it before summing up the courage to face it myself. Eighteen years later and the survival horror genre is floundering. Resident Evil HD reminds us of the glory days. Oh, the nostalgia.

For the two or three of you who haven’t had the pleasure of playing the original, Resident Evil tells the ludicrous story of two highly-trained ‘S.T.A.R.S.’ operatives who find themselves stranded in the infamous, zombie-infested Spencer Mansion.

It’s a game that comes from a time when the smooth, third-person combat of it’s later successors wasn’t even a pipe-dream, so Resident Evil HD features third-person tank controls, with the protagonists awkwardly stepping around the rooms like confused, elderly line-dancers.

The writing is still as atrocious as it was all those years ago, complimented by voice acting which sounds like it’s been directed by David Lynch, and the convoluted puzzles still involve keys with pictures of shields on them, and fail to inspire.

I’m purposely highlighting the negative aspects of Resident Evil HD because despite the HD face-lift which has given the game new life, Capcom have clearly gone for a ‘warts and all’ remake, preserving all the flaws that were present in 1996.

Despite this, it was a good idea for Capcom not to meddle too much. Recent entries into the venerable horror series have shown clearly that Capcom do not remember how to make a good horror game, so by tampering with Resident Evil, they might have spoiled it.

Instead, the flaws are still present, but so is everything that made the game so effective and gripping the first time round. The Spencer Mansion looks resplendent on the PS4, and is complimented by the added juxtaposition of feeling familiar yet eerily different.

One thing any modern gamer will notice with Resident Evil HD is just how terrifying the zombies are. Zombies have been so ubiquitous in recent years that any effect they might have had has been completely worn down. Yet, the shuffling, moaning zombies which haunt the mansion’s corridors manage to get under the player’s skin.

They don’t appear immediately frightening. A zombie is a zombie, after all. It’s a combination of the sound design, with baritone groans and agonising roars, and the intense threat they pose. They may be slow, but they offer a very real threat with the amount of bullets it takes to dispose of them. Even the most rudimentary zombie encounter feels lengthy, with the player having to balance constant retreating with pop-shots.

The ‘crimson head’ zombies, which first appeared in the original remake (never thought I’d write that) also add an extra basting of terror. In Resident Evil HD, filling a zombie with bullets is not enough to ensure their demise. The player also has to set them alight using a limited supply of kerosene, otherwise they return as ‘crimson heads’, i.e. faster zombies who deal far more damage. They still lumber along, especially when compared with the infected of Left 4 Dead, but they seem like Olympic sprinters compared to the vanilla zombies. It’s hard to describe the powerless horror the player feels when being pursued down a winding corridor by a crimson head.

A massive contributor to the effectiveness of the zombies is the fixed camera. Nowadays, basing your game around fixed camera angles is considered a cardinal sin of game design, yet it gives the developers of horror games a powerful weapon. Basically, the player can only see what you want them to see. It means that zombies can lurk around every corner, and the only way to find out what lies in waiting is by bumbling head-first into danger.

The camera also adds to the game’s fantastic atmosphere. It’s one of the most claustrophobic games ever made, with the exception of the early Silent Hill games. The corridors are narrow, and with the camera angles exploiting the tight, enclosed spaces, at times it feels like the walls are closing in.

If Capcom had remade Resident Evil with a player-controlled camera, it would have completely destroyed the experience. By forcing them to view the mansion in the way the developer intended, it makes the player feel that little bit more helpless.

Despite being eighteen years old, Resident Evil HD should be an example for modern survival horror games to follow. It might have a stupid story, wooden characters and charmless puzzles, but if you boil down what was amazing about Resident Evil, it was its simple yet electrifying approach to horror: a creepy mansion full of monsters and a fairly ineffectual main character.

If you compare that to The Evil Within, which was a sprawling game crammed with feverish set-pieces, but with mostly uninspired enemies and a focus on its fairly standard combat, its easy to see why the former is better. It was a tight, focused horror experience that concentrated on doing one thing, and did it amazingly well.

 

9/10

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