When you are talking about classic horror games, or even just classic games in general, Resident Evil will always be brought up. While it’s not technically the game that invented survival horror, that honor would probably go to 1992’s Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil is absolutely the game that invented the term, popularized the genre, and defined the genre as well!

The Resident Evil series has been going on since the release of the very first game in 1996 on the original PlayStation. Since then, the series has gone through some pretty radical changes. The first three stuck to the series’ survival horror roots only to begin to shed some of that horror when Resident Evil 4 came out until the series went full action with Resident Evil 6! Thankfully, after the poor fan and critical reception of RE6, Capcom managed to bring back the horror with Resident Evil 7, a game that honestly saved the franchise and kept it going strong to this day even after almost 30 years.

While Resident Evil as a whole is a classic series, that’s not what we’re going to be talking about today. Today, I want to specifically talk about the original, or rather the best way to experience the original. That being the remake of the first Resident Evil!

The remake of Resident Evil, which I will be shortening to REmake, is not only considered to still be the best of the Resident Evil remakes but one of the best remakes ever! I’ve talked a bit in the past about remakes in general, specifically when a remake feels justified. While remakes have always been a thing in gaming, they are especially popular in this current era of gaming! Something we very much owe to the success of the remake to Resident Evil 2. After that, we saw so many remakes and not just from Resident Evil! This is a trend that’s going even to this day with games like the recently announced remake for the first Silent Hill. Despite having so much remake fatigue now, I can still wholeheartedly recommend REmake!

Nowadays, it can feel pretty hard to justify some remakes. When the remake for Resident Evil 4 was announced, the reception was pretty mixed. Most felt that the original stood the test of time and didn’t need any kind of remake beyond maybe a visual upgrade. Even I felt this way! And while I will still argue that the original RE4 can be enjoyed in the modern day, I can’t deny just how great the remake was and how great a lot of the changes ended up being. I wanted to bring this up because, even back in 2002 when REmake was originally released, no one argued that the original Resident Evil needed a remake.

I’m not trying to say that the original PS1 game isn’t a classic even now, but just from a visual stand point, it’s hard to argue that a game this classic and legendary didn’t deserve some kind of glow up!

The looks weren’t the only things upgraded and changed from the original either! There are plenty of differences that truly make REmake not only the best way to experience the original Resident Evil but also the best survival horror game of all time!

REmake was originally released exclusively for the GameCube back in 2002 and was made to bring the classic game to more players with a fresh coat of paint. Not only that, it gave the game’s developers a chance to make the game they wanted to back in 1996 but couldn’t.

The remake includes a lot of changes from the original, changes I feel are pretty much always for the better. First and foremost, the game looks absolutely gorgeous, even back on the GameCube when it was first released!

Thanks to the game using prerendered backgrounds, meaning that each of the areas are actually a flat image that was hand crafted instead of being rendered in 3D, it managed to achieve these stunning visuals even on a GameCube! It’s hard to even tell the difference when looking at the HD remasters of the game compared to the original, that’s how good they are! While it might sound a little shallow, these visuals are absolutely one of my favorite parts of the game. I could look at some of these camera angles for ages. And that brings us to another aspect of the game I personally adore. The fixed camera angles!

I’ve talked plenty in the past about how much I adore fixed camera angles in survival horror games. There are so many benefits to using them when it comes to horror over just the standard first person or third person angles. Those angles obviously have their own benefits when it comes to horror, but I still feel like fixed camera angles are the most unique, and REmake provides so many great examples for my point! However, like I said, I’ve talked plenty about my love for fixed camera angles in the past so I won’t go super in depth here, but I still have to sing REmake‘s praises on this one.

First, fixed camera angles allow for these beautifully crafted backgrounds I mentioned before. Because the player is only going to be looking at each room from very specific angles, you don’t need to worry about making it fully 3D. You can simply hide the important bits under the image without needing to fully render out anything besides the characters. And because the backgrounds are simply images, you don’t need to worry about using so much memory or processing power to make it look good since it’s literally just an image. Secondly, because the designers know exactly where the player will be looking at all times, they can put plenty of clever scares! Like when the game has a window just in frame, they know the player can see the zombie right up against the window. Or having an enemy slowly come in front the side of an angle! REmake doesn’t do this as much as other games with fixed camera angles, like Fatal Frame, but it still uses them very effectively! And of course, since the game uses fixed camera angles it also of course has another love it or hate it aspect, that being tank controls.

Tank controls are yet another thing I’ve talked about in the past and have praised! I believe they aren’t all that confusing and they go perfectly with fixed camera angles. But I do understand that they can be annoying to some. Nowadays, when someone sees their character on the screen they expect them to move down towards the bottom of the screen when they hit down on the D-pad or analog stick, it’s just natural. For tank controls, that would make your character turn around. Tank controls are based on your character with up making the character move in the direction they are facing like you are moving forward rather than moving towards the top of the screen. Given that only games with fixed camera angles really use tank controls, and fixed camera angles aren’t much of a thing now sadly, most people need quite a bit of time to adapt to tank controls. Thankfully for those people, REmake has a setting that lets you play without the tank controls! As a purest I think people should just adapt but I digress! At least this way people don’t have that excuse to miss out on the best survival horror game. And I really do mean the best by the way!

If you asked me what my favorite survival horror game is I’d have to say Silent Hill 2. It is a game that left a profound impact on me that I still feel to this day. But if you asked me what the best survival horror game is, I would absolutely say the remake of Resident Evil.

The original Resident Evil on the PS1 defined and popularized survival horror. It was without a doubt a trend setter. Just look at all the horror games that tried to copy it! From Fatal Frame to Silent Hill, and many, many more. No one can deny how influential and inspiring RE1 was and still is. And despite that, REmake is everything the original was perfected and added to.

REmake is pure, classic survival horror. There’s lots of kinds of survival horror at this point. Honestly, if you are a horror game where you need to manage your resources as you fight back and run around, you are a survival horror game. But REmake is what is considered a classic survival horror. Meaning it has fixed camera angles, tank controls, lots of maps, and lots of puzzle solving with the combat being more of a secondary thing! Not to say combat is particularly bad, just that it’s not a focus. The focus of REmake is absolutely the scares and being able to bring a lot of what made the original PS1 game to a modern audience as a modern game!

Like I have been saying, REmake is the definition of classic survival horror. If you ever wanted to know what makes survival horror good and why people enjoy it, this is the game to pick up! If you have already played other survival horror games though, you should still pick this game up! You might feel like the game is a bit cliche or doing things that so many other games have done, but that’s not technically correct. It’s more accurate to say that so many other games have done what REmake had started. Even the game’s general concept of being stuck in a spooky mansion filled with a bunch of monsters sounds cliche but that’s only because it’s what inspired so many others to follow its lead. Hell, you can even say Resident Evil has copied itself with Resident Evil 7 having so many similarities to the original game in the series. And even then, REmake probably does it better than all the others!

But let’s actually talk a bit more about the game itself rather than just its legacy.

You’ll start by picking between two different characters, Chris and Jill. This choice will actually change a lot about the game! From the story to the way you progress through the mansion. Not only that, the two play slightly differently. Chris has more health and always has a lighter on hand for burning zombies but lacks inventory space. Jill has more inventory space and a lock pick for simple locks you’ll find throughout the game, but she has less health than Chris does. Most people believe that Jill is the easiest character to play as solely for the extra inventory spaces alone and I’m inclined to agree! Two extra inventory slots can mean so much in a game like this. And her lock pick means she doesn’t need to be collecting small keys to open doors and wasting space on that too. She will need to carry a lighter though and use a slot for that in order to burn zombies but still!

Thankfully, like I was saying, there’s more to picking a character besides those things meaning that just because Jill makes the game easier doesn’t mean you don’t have a reason to play Chris. While the stories aren’t drastically different, you will be meeting some different characters between the two of them. Namely Jill’s story features Barry while Chris’ features Rebecca! So even if you want to pick Jill because she’s technically the easier character, you still have plenty of reasons to do a play through as Chris, which basically gives you double the game. Even if you will be treading over pretty similar stuff.

After picking your character and what kind of hike you enjoy, which is the game’s bizarre way of asking what kind of difficulty you’d like, you get right into the scares with an intro scene! And after your first run in with a zombie, featuring a truly terrifying scene that’s still spooky to this day, you are truly in the game free to explore the mansion and figure out what is going on in these mountains. I guess at this point I should probably touch on the story a little!

While I don’t think the story is particularly amazing or anything, it does provide a good set up and does a great job getting you to enjoy these characters! The set up is that a series of bizarre murders have occurred in the mountains just outside the small town of Raccoon City. The police department sends the Special Tactics And Rescue Service team, also known as STARS, to investigate. After Bravo team heads out and doesn’t come back, Alpha team is sent in after them to figure out what happened. Alpha team is comprised of Jill, Chris, Wesker, Barry, Richard, and Brad. After finding Bravo team’s downed helicopter, Richard is attacked by a group of seemingly rabid dogs! After he is killed and Brad flies away without the rest of the team, what remains of Alpha team run to a nearby mansion for shelter. It doesn’t take long to figure out that this mansion is far from normal and might just have the answers to the questions they are looking for! From here, the story will be different depending on who you decided to play as. For example, if you picked Jill, only Barry and Wesker will have made it into the mansion with you. But if you picked Chris, Barry will be missing. From here though, regardless of who you picked, you will begin investigating around the place, trying to figure out what’s really going on in these mountains and how it ties into the bizarre murders!

I could honestly go further into the story from here but there really isn’t much of a point given that the story itself isn’t ground breaking or anything like that. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a ton of fun! But that mostly comes from the enjoyable characters and the game play itself. But unlike something like Silent Hill, you probably won’t be playing this just to experience the story. You’ll likely be playing it for the genre defining survival horror game play!

REmake is pure classic survival horror. Meaning you’ll be dealing with limited resources, locked doors, and lots of puzzles. The game of course has combat too, but it’s nothing to write home about. It can certainly be tense but that partly comes from the clunky controls and aiming. Which I’d argue is perfect for this brand of classic survival horror! Most modern survival horror tend to give you plenty of supplies to fight whats coming at you but not here. The clunkiness of the combat combined with the resource management means you really need to pick your fights. Zombies can be quite tanky at times, meaning even if you use a full clip of your pistol, they might not go down! Due to the fixed camera angle, aiming for the head isn’t so simple. While you can aim higher or lower, it’s hard to aim directly for the head of a zombie unless they are directly in front of you in grabbing range! While that might sound annoying, I actually really enjoy the risk versus reward nature of it. After all, it’s not like you need to go for a head shot, but if you want to, you’ll need to put yourself in danger!

That being said, zombies aren’t the only thing you’ll be fighting on your trip through the mansion and beyond. As seen in the intro, you’ll be hounded by infected dogs but those we’ll be the least of your worries when you’re being attacked by the insanely quick Hunters, infected sharks, giant spiders, and more! And that’s not mentioning the new enemy introduced to the remake in particular, the Crimson Heads! Whenever you kill a zombie without getting a head shot or destroying the body, there is a chance that whenever you go back to whatever room they were last in, they will get back up as an insanely quick and powerful Crimson Head! To make sure this doesn’t happen, you need to burn the bodies of zombies after you kill them. This of course requires fuel and a lighter, adding another resource to manage on top of your other items. Meaning not only do you need to pick and choose which zombies to spend your bullets on, you have to also consider how much you might be coming back to that particular area. If it’s not much, then you really don’t need to burn the body, but if you’ll be running through that room over and over again? Then you should absolutely burn it! These are the kinds of decisions that really define survival horror for me. The genre provides fear not just from freaky visuals but from having to manage so much!

Crimson Heads aren’t the only new thing added to the game though. Like I said above, the developers took this chance to basically add things in that they wanted to in the original but couldn’t. I won’t be going over every little thing here but probably the biggest change was adding in not only a whole new monster that is running around the grounds, but the story that goes with said monster! Now while I didn’t care too much about spoiling the story of the main game, I do care about spoilers when it comes to this monster and her story! I will say though that you will know which monster I’m talking about when you meet them and why they are easily the best new addition to this remake.

Circling back around a little, I want to wrap things up by talking about why I think REmake is the best classic survival horror game. And the main reason is simply because it has everything that defines survival horror! The setting, the camera angles, the controls, the puzzles, the clunky but still fun combat, the map checking… These are some of the things that define this amazing and scary genre and REmake has them all. If anyone ever asks me what game to try when they are wanting to get into survival horror I recommend this game without a single doubt in my mind! That is something I can very rarely do when recommending any horror game.

The original Resident Evil is the game that put survival horror on the map, the gold standard for so many games to copy and take inspiration from. Even more modern horror games like Dead Space took their inspiration from this game! And REmake is without a doubt the best way to experience this ground breaking, genre defining game that is still a classic to this day. And even better, the game is available on just about every console around and PC! So you really have no excuse to pick it up this Spooky Season or replay it! It’s just that good…

But those are just my thoughts! What are some of yours? Have you ever played a Resident Evil game? Thinking about giving REmake a go for Spooky Season? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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