I hope this isn’t… Matt Williams’ article! No, it is. It is an article about Resident Evil. I’m sorry that I don’t have much to say about this game; I’ve given both it and its sequel a few fair shakes, but every time they utterly fail to engage my interest. The combination of a topic I find excruciatingly boring (zombies) and play controls I simply find excruciating are just too much for me to force myself to muddle through. Fortunately, GameSpite Quarterly isn’t just my opinions, so Matt saves the day by exploring the strengths, weaknesses and context of Resident Evil. I guess that is why they call him the master of… something something. Sorry, I don’t know enough about Resident Evil to come up with witty references here. Just read the article already, OK?
Great article. Resident Evil might be the best example of a “you had to be there” game. The author explains everything that made the game special at the time and (rightly) notes how terribly it has aged.
Ask any BioHazard/Resident Evil fan to pick this up today (or its DS port) and I think all but the most masochistic will put it down after an hour. I certainly did.
agree wholeheartedly. The first Resident Evil is something easy to get nostalgic about if you fell for it back then, and happened to be the demographic that Matt discusses. When it came out I was in high school, and remember playing this game every night of Summer vacation once my parents had gone to bed and I had the big TV in the living room to myself. The game was drenched with blood and USA Up All Night cheesiness that was just so perfect for the time and place.
Great article, Matt!
I remember resident evil as the game that made me want a playstation instead of a saturn.
I was all N64 back then. Getting RE2 was a nice little coup at the time, but I think the moment had passed for it to be a significant game-changer — the consoles were too deep in their lives for it to make a significant difference, and RE had already made its mark.
That said, three words: Resident Evil 4. Man I love(d) that game. I can think of very few franchises that took four games in the series to reach their high point. Final Fantasy, sure. Other series spanned several generations of consoles, so the improvements came with significant changes in technology. On the other hand, the RE boys decided to man up and adapt their formula.