The origin of Evil... on PC

Let me start by saying, I HATE SOFTWARE WITHOUT A SPEED GOVERNING ROUTINE. With that said, let me tell you about Resident Evil on PC.

If you haven’t played Resident Evil, I’ll take a moment to explain the story. If you have, go ahead and skip this paragraph. Resident Evil is the tail of a S.T.A.R.S. mission. In Raccoon City, there have been reports of people venturing into the woods and not coming back. If they find remains, the victims are discovered eaten to death. Bravo team was sent in to investigate. When they failed to report in, Alpha team is sent on recon to a mysterious mansion that is reported to be the last known whereabouts of Bravo team. Once on the grounds, they discover things are not what they seem. The mansion seems overrun with zombies. Delving deeper, they discover that whatever research went on at the mansion produced more than just zombies. The team’s objective becomes escaping with their lives.

Believe it or not, this was actually inspired by John Romero films. John Romero was the man behind the Living Dead series which includes: Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. This game shows the inspiration as you run into zombies all over. The story seems very predictable, as you discover (through solving puzzles and reading memos) what actually happened in the mansion before and during the zombie infestation. Honestly, it’s the memos that really give you the entire story. If you fail to read them all, you’ll still understand what’s going on, but you won’t be privy to the back-story behind the game.

To add to the story, there are two playable characters, Jill and Chris. Jill is like easy mode while Chris is your normal (actually, more like hard) mode. The character you choose to play as also alters the story slightly. If you play as Chris, you pick up Rebecca (bravo team). If you play as Jill, you’ll be accompanied by Barry (alpha team). Only in Chris’s scenario do you change characters and that’s for a brief point in the story where Chris needs her help. In Jill’s story, you will always play as Jill. In both stories, you will meet dead or dying members of Bravo team.

The actual game consists of moving from room to room. During each transition, there is a loading screen where it shows you opening the door. This really didn’t do anything for me. But, as a warning, they do play a heart beat sound when entering a boss chamber. I can’t say I was ever really impressed with the choice of loading screen. But, having played the Saturn and Playstation 1 versions, I understand why it’s there. As you progress, you will be forced to read notes. Many notes are just pointless ramblings or give some clue as to the next type of enemy that you’ll be facing, but some actually provide clues to puzzles. The puzzles are made to blend with the environment, but seem very over-the-top. For instance, why would I have to collect jewels to put in a tiger statue’s eye sockets? One of the jewels I retrieve from a buck. Then, on top of that, they add stone crests that must be used to open certain areas. It just seems like this modern mansion is more complex than an ancient Egyptian temple.

Well, moving on, the control scheme is a little awkward. On the PS1 and Saturn, the control pads made it feasible to move around while keeping all of the triggers in easily reachable locations. It was odd getting used to the up is always forward model, but with a control pad it worked. I have yet to find a control pad that’s supported by this game on PC. Since you can’t remap, the WASD configuration doesn’t apply. Instead, you must use the arrow keys along with the far left of the keyboard to perform any actions. This is rather uncomfortable and just odd to play. Very non-intuitive, so I say, “Bad Capcom… no biscuit.” Again, you move by using up (walk forward), back (back step), right and left (turn). Because this isn’t very visceral to players, at first, you will get caught and killed. Once you get a feel for movement, things get a little better.

Urgh, the voice acting is atrocious. It sounds like they collected a cast of adults with the minds of first graders and then had them read scripts. Perhaps it’s just the script, but the actor’s reading is just bad. The characters sound void of emotion or awareness of what’s going on. I was just very disappointed with the quality of presentation in this area. To make matters worse, the script was even worse (in certain places). Barry walks up to a pool of blood then asks, “What is it?” Well jeez, it looks like blood there sport. He then says, ”I’ll investigate this while you go look around.” What’s to investigate? It’s a pool of blood, Columbo. They have quite a few moments like this in the story which really makes be believe that they should’ve touched up the script. (Point of Interest: There are several internet sites that point out the stupidity in this game for audio and other presentation flaws)

At least the sound effects are good. The undead hounds are some of the scariest creatures in the game. At first, all you hear are their nails tapping on the ground, and then they let out a loud growl as they leap on you. The suspense up to the attack really does build the moment. Zombies moan better than the voice actors recited their lines, but I guess that comes pretty easy. Hunters (an enemy that appears later in the game) have these spine tingling screeches that can instantly put the fear in you. There are other enemies in the game, but most of them are silent or just cliché.

Well, the graphics show their age. Released in the mid 1990`s, Resident Evil featured very blocky characters. All of the interactive models just look horrible. But, back when it came out, this was cutting edge. What really looks off, is the fact that they backgrounds are all prerendered. Once again, they (game developers in general) used static images of a higher resolution to make the surroundings visually fantastic. This makes the characters stand out a bit more. What they do right, is use your comfort with the static background to throw unexpected changes of environment at you. This scare tactic along with the games unsettlingly calm sound track adds a fear factor.

The cut scenes get mixed reviews. They use a lot of CGI that was excellent in the day, but overall, dated now. The reason I give mixed reviews is because the intro and endings (all 6 of them) use live action. The live action cut scenes seem very out of place against the CGI used in the rest of the game. I will give special attention to the introduction to the “Hunters.” Hunters are a creature with razor sharp claws that appear in the third phase of the game. Despite the updated Resident Evil on Game Cube, the effect given by the original PC version makes the hunters seem much more menacing than their graphically superior Game Cube cousins. Along the same line, there are creatures called Chimera in the final phase of the game. These look just like Hunters (from what I can see), but can climb on the ceiling. Although Capcom claims they’re separate species, due to lighting and general presentation issues in the areas they appear, they look like little more than Hunters that attack from above.

The problem with Resident Evil on PC is purely compatibility. I’d like to see a show of hands for anyone that still has a PC under 300Mhz. I know I don’t. Currently, my slowest PC is 1.6 Ghz, and as such, when I run this game, it’s twice as fast (if not faster) than it should be. Shame on Capcom for not adding a governing routine to slow down the game if it’s run over X number of frames per second. Even the classic Doom (1993) will not run above a certain frame rate which makes it playable on today’s most powerful PC’s. As such, I find the necessity is to use an CPU killer to slow down your processor to between 300 and 400 Mhz. Doing this will make the game playable.

Well, in the grand scheme of things, Resident Evil was a blast from the past. I guess this one goes in my archive of games I own because I can. As a collector of old software, I find this an invaluable addition. As a gamer, I CAN’T RECOMMEND this title to anyone with a modern PC. You have to slow down your processor to play Resident Evil before you can run it. Plus, the controls are horrible, the game is dated, and if you’ve already completed the Director’s Cut on PS1, you already know the story and have little reason to play it again. The classic gamer in me weeps for this title, but the current gamer finds little reason to look back.

PLEASE NOTE: This title was tested on the following PC configurations. Deviation from these may alter your experience.

Setup #1:
Build: Toshiba Satellite 1905-S277
Operating System: WinXP Home
Processor: 1.6 Ghz
System Ram: 256MB
Video: ATI Mobile (16MB)

Setup #2:
Build: Custom Built PC
Operating System: WinXP Home
Processor: 2.2 Ghz
System Ram: 1GB
Video: Radeon 9600 (128MB)

Setup #3:
Build: Custom Built PC
Operating System: Win XP Home
Processor: 1.1 Ghz
System Ram: 512MB
Video: GeForce 2 (32MB)