Resident Evil Zero

So once upon a time I was a die hard RE fanboy. I had played most of the games and for the games I hadn't played, I read the script and learned the story. I was active on about three or four RE boards and I belonged to many more. All this exposure to the Resident Evil fanbase showed me that much of it is very divided from the rest of the gaming community. Namely, many RE fans detest Resident Evil 4, which is often heralded as one of the best action games of the decade. You'll run into people who say everything from it was just a bad RE game to people who insist it as a terrible game in all respects.

And so the two cultures of gamers were at odds in a rather huge way. And yet they seemed to come together on one issue. Hardcore fans and casual gamers alike seemed to have a low opinion of Resident Evil 0. It is apparently ranked as the worst game, or close to it, quite often by damn near everybody.

And I do not get it.

I am no longer a super RE freak. When Damnation and RE6 came out and I did not give even the vague semblance of a damn, I knew I had outgrown the series.

That is...I had outgrown most of the series. There is one game I still love. Guess which.

I honestly think Resident Evil Zero is one of the best installments in the franchise. While it had the old controls, it added new gameplay elements which keeps it fresh and different. I liked the Partner Zapping system a lot and I also loved dropping Items. I know people bitch about the Hook Shot butit really was convenient to, if your inventory was full, just to drop somethinginstead of having to go to a Box.

I also say that there is absolutely no better male/female pair in the series than Billy and Rebecca. They were both interesting characters and worked well in a Fire and Ice sort of way. I miss Billy and I hold him to be better than Leon or Chris or anyone else.


And let's get to audio. REZero is teh first RE with even somewhat decent voice-acting. I think that helped a lot. The soundtrack is also great. RE games don't get enough credit for their awesome music.
Resident Evil Zero OST - Leech Man - YouTube
Resident Evil Zero Soundtrack: Laboratory (1080p) - YouTube
Resident Evil Zero Soundtrack "Adrenaline Rush" - YouTube

The only real complaint I have against the game is that the boss lineup was boring and lazy. Giant Scorpion, Giant Centipede, Giant Bat.... The Proto Tyrant was pretty cool though.

Well that's all I have to say for now. I want to hear the opinions of you fine people. Did you love this game? Hate it? Why?

I was a big fan of the series up until after RE 4 where they just lost their damned minds and pretty much gave up entirely. RE4 was a good fun game that seemed to love the ridiculousness of everything but everything since takes what is clearly ludicrously stupid and plays it straight.

That said, RE Zero is ludicrously stupid and plays it straight. On top of that the plot drives home another point of the series, they no longer know what to do since Umbrella is kind of dead. They killed off that thing in Code Veronica and have just had a giant "UUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHH" on the scripts ever since. The gameplay seems to follow the same path but it instead clings to RE4 and tries to amp that up.

Zero also started the crazy of lazy enemy ideas. "What should he fight? We can't keep just doing zombies!" *thinks* "....UUUUUHHHHHH. Zombie....Monkeys. Good enough"

The gameplay in Zero was top notch though. One of the best refinements of the old control schemes and style. But without the humor and a shoe horned meta plot that retconned to the stoneage, I just can't get behind what should be a good fun time. Part of the fun was always the cheesy B movie feel. We need more of the "You were almost a Jill Sandwich".

That's what's so ironic about how Zero turned out. Like RE3 and even the Dino Crisis games, it took itself too seriously, when the first RE was basically a tribute to B-grade horror films. Capcom made RE1 that way on purpose, but most people didn't "get" it so they tried too hard later to make the series take itself too seriously.

I liked Zero but it was lazy through and through. I understand that Capcom had to kind of re-develop it for GC since it was supposed to be for N64, but come on. Like edletters said, fighting the same enemies over and over just got really tiresome. I also didn't necessarily like switching characters. It took you completely out of the moment. Like it was just slapped on as an afterthought. Oh, and screw the centipede battle.

Of course Mikami would go on to do the REmake and say THAT was what he intended RE1 to be. There's some proof of this, as the Trevor Letters are from RE1.
And of course REmake is often celebrated as the definitive Resident Evil expeience. That game was pretty straight and serious too.

It was serious but it was also well done serious. It didn't have goofy enemies, villains or crazy action set pieces with exploding trains and stuff. They set the mood up right for that one. RE2 and Code Veronica where probably the closest in terms of setting and tone that comes close to REmake but those still had their B-Movie roots in full swing with cheesy dialog.

I has been about 5 years since I played Zero but it is the setting, the enemies and everything about it that smells of lazy. Oh boy...another mansion. I didn't get enough of that in RE1 or Code Veronica(twice here yo!). Random Animals = Zombie Animals...and that is it by and large. Nothing creative going on here.

REmake also succeeded not only because of the ton set by the game overall (new areas super well done) but because of new gameplay elements. Zombies don't disappear and will resurrect later to become even deadlier nightmares. Quick out items like the hand knife. Well made puzzles and traps. If anything, the game as a whole lives outside the rest of the series as nothing else is like it.

Every RE game after RE3 made the game into some sort of weird epic journey. While I love Code Veronica and 4, the stories are now about saving the world from utter annihilation. Both of those are ultimatly about that but they felt smaller. Leon goes to save the Presidents daughter and even with the stakes getting higher, this focus is never lost and things never really escalate outside the compound....even though the compound is like the size of a small country.

They want to continually raise the stakes because everything needs to be bigger and better. How about we leave umbrella as dead, don't expand on that back story (looking at you Zero) and just have a new bio-genetics company spring up and cause some serious damage through small simple experiments instead of some insane turn into a mutant and be the queen whatever and rule a civilization of whatevers.

UGH! Now I am just bitching about how the series has gone to poop :P It would be one thing if the gameplay still held up but it really doesn't.

I guess the moral of the story is that the devil is always in the small details. Is too much stuff popping up that you find to be lame? Are they trying to hard about everything? Are you questioning why the characters(Rebecca) seem to instantly forget and never mention any of this in the sequel (the original game). The game overall isn't terrible but you can't separate it from the known universe that it is attempting to expand upon and not question all of the odd choices being made.

RE2 is on my personal list of GOATs. RE1 is one of the most hilarious games of all time (but for some reason I still find it the scariest). RE3 > RE1 but RE3 < RE2. I just count Resident Evil 4 as a separate entity. It was still fun, though.

I never played the others due to reasons including but not limited to not owning a Gamecube, thinking RE5 looked terrible, losing interest in vidya with age, and glorious PC master race. I'd love to play CV or the remake.

The best part of this game is the title drop when you start the game.


"Resident Evil...ZEROOOO"

I didn't hate the game or anything, I just remember thinking it wasn't as good as -insert list of RE games here- I enjoyed playing as Rebecca and seeing what happened to the Bravo team when they went on their mission, but we can add Billy to the growing list of RE characters we'll never hear from again.