Resident Evil ranked

Introduction

About 6 months ago I played through the Resident Evil series for the first time. I did play Resident Evil 7 around the time of its release, and had made multiple attempts to play through the first one only to be met by either hardware failure or an age-induced impatience for older-styles of gameplay, but 6 months ago I finally got around to playing the main games in the series (most of them anyway). Shortly after, I wrote my own personal ranking for all the main entries of the series which has just been sitting in the laptops documents folder since then.

When playing a new game or series of games for the first time one can often fall into the trap of hyping it up in your own mind and declaring it to be one of your favourite games or series of all time, but some months down the line once you've moved onto something else, you'll start to think that you overrated the series in your head and you actually don't like as much as your other favourites. Not that you'd think it was bad necessarily, just not one of your favourites as you thought. Well, recently I finally got around to the latest entry in the series, the Resident Evil 3 remake and I can say with some confidence that Resident Evil is still one of my favourite franchises, so I'm going to rewrite my personal rankings, and actually do something with it this time.

Tat

Firstly though, a quick discussion on the tat of the series; you know what I mean by this: all the spin-offs like the light-gun and rail shooters that did absolutely nothing for the franchise as a whole and were only there to sell hardware gimmicks and add so much unwelcome complexity to what was already a complicated and messy franchise. These games will not be in the ranking, partially because they would all rank lower than the main games, but mostly because I haven't played any of them, and have no intention of doing so. Is it presumptuous of me to disregard them without giving them the time of day? Yes.

For clarifications sake, the games that are discounted as tat include: Survivor, Gaiden, Survivor 2, Dead Aim, Outbreak, The Umbrella Chronicles, The Darkside Chronicles, The Mercenaries 3D, Operation Raccoon City, Umbrella Corps, and any garbage mobile game that may have been released which I can't be bothered to check. I'm also going to discount Resident Evil Zero as a prequel, it just felt cheap to downgrade the events of Resident Evil 1 as the inciting incident of the franchise as a whole... also I haven't played it. I will, however, give an honourable mention to Revelations and Revelations 2; depending on who you ask, these are sometimes regarded as main entries in the series... the only problem is I've played neither of them. This may the first ranking of a video game franchise where the writer hasn't actually played half of the series. Oh well.

7. Resident Evil – Code: Veronica

I've heard mixed opinions regarding Code: Veronica. I've seen some praising it as "the true Resident Evil 3", and others deploring it as complete garbage. I personally don't think it's that bad, but I do think that it's kind of boring in most places, and the parts where it isn't boring were just the signs of what was to come later in the series: super-powered Albert Wesker, the Ashfords being weird, all the action pieces, etc. but the main reason why I don't like Code: Veronica is because it did too much to expand the world of Resident Evil, but not enough at the same time. There were a lot of plot threads left open at the end of Resident Evil 2 leaving room for a sequel to tie them up to create a stable franchise. Umbrella is still at large, Raccoon City is still infested, Chris is still missing, Umbrella has a mysterious rival company introduced to us in the form of Ada Wong, that last one in particular hint at a wider world for the sequel to tie up, but CV tied up none of it with the exception of Chris Redfields disappearance: he just turns up with no explanation (apparently Leon got into contact with him. How? If that was possible, why didn't Claire just do that in the first place?). Otherwise, Umbrella is still out there doing evil stuff; its mysterious rivals have hired a super-powered Albert Wesker (who's alive, apparently). In fact, the Wesker reveal is really the only difference the game makes to the franchise, other than that it really feels like more of a spin-off, the likes of which came in abundance after Resident Evil 3.

I also find that there was a serious problem with the tone on this game. For survival horror to work the main characters seriously need to feel like they're in danger; like their life is on the line and they may not get out of this situation alive. I do not get this feeling for Claire, and especially not from Steve. Steve's brash overconfidence while dual-wielding sub-machine guns really feels out of place in a survival horror franchise. Claire on the other hand always seemed to be taking the events of this game rather casually with little sense of urgency. One moment between these two characters that sticks out in my mind, is when Claire offers a new pair of sub-machine guns to Steve who promptly realizes that they have no ammo in them, at which point Claire bursts out laughing. Characters made jokes in the earlier games but they always had a nervous edge to them that said quite clearly: "We might die here", a feeling I never got from CV.

I can sum up my feelings for CV by my reaction to the ending: the antarctic base had been blown up, Chris and Claire have escaped on a plane, Chris turns dramatically to the camera and declares "it's time to take out Umbrella once and for all". That's exactly how Resident Evil 2 ended, with Leon turning dramatically to the camera and declaring war on Umbrella; can we, you know, get the fuck on with it please? I was really expecting that to happen in this game. In the end Resident Evil - Code: Veronica left me feeling cold.

6. Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5 is not a survival horror game, it's an action game. Now, there's is nothing wrong with action games, but they do not belong in a survival horror franchise. Resident Evil 4 also had action, but the characters always felt like they were in danger. Resident Evil 5 feels more like a Call of Duty game. Trained experienced soldiers fighting off enemies with little concern as to whether or not they'll survive the encounter out of confidence. Leon always felt like he was scared, cautious, but professional. Chris just feels cautious and professional. But all that being said though, Chris has experienced a lot at this point, even having read "the Kennedy report". Leon was scared because he was unprepared to be facing parasitic bio-weapons; Chris is a member of an elite international military organisation whose whole purpose is fighting bio-weapons, parasitic or otherwise.

I would have put this game lower on the list than Code: Veronica, but Resident Evil 5 did one thing that CV didn't; it tied up all loose ends. At the start of this game the loose ends are Umbrella's rival company, Super-Wesker, and the Las Plagas sample that Ada acquired at the end of RE4. All this came together in Resident Evil 5, Super-Wesker is now in charge of Umbrella's rival company, which is apparently called Tricell, and they are using Ada's stolen Las Plagas sample to do evil stuff. By the end of the game Super-Wesker is dead, Tricell is (presumable) but through the legal proceedings, and their evil plans with the Las Plagas are foiled. Everything is tied up for a new story to take place.

Resident Evil 5 is highly maligned and I can see why, but I actually felt pleasantly surprised by the game. I wouldn't argue that everyone is wrong and the game is actually really good, it isn't; it just wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. It was a 3/10 when I was expecting a 1/10 (not that I'm using actually scores for these games; that was just an example). Even Sheva Alomar wasn't as irritating as I was led to believe. Although no Resident Evil 5 review would be complete without mentioning the ridiculous notion that Chris Redfield can somehow punch a 10 ton boulder of rock without shattering the entire skeletal structure of his wrist into a fine powder.

5. Resident Evil 3

A common complaint I've heard regarding Resident Evil 3 is that it doesn't raise the stakes in anyway, nor does it give you a new and interesting setting. I think both of these points are unfounded. Starting with the setting, RE3 takes in place in a city as neither RE1 nor RE2 did. No, RE2 did not take place in the city; it took place in the police station. Let me explain that a bit better. Resident Evil 1 took place in a mansion; that mansion was located a forest, but you don't go to the forest in the game. Resident Evil 2 on the other hand takes place in a police station and the police station is located in a city, but you don't visit it, except at the very beginning. Running through the city at the start of RE2 is basically the live-action cinematics of RE1, where the characters are exploring the forest, except it’s playable; but the game doesn't really start until you're at the police station. Anyway, I'm getting side-tracked; the point is that RE1 and RE2 take place in very enclosed locations, but Resident Evil 3 actually uses the city as a setting for the action to take place, rather than acting as the surrounding forest full of monsters.

As for the stakes of Resident Evil 3, I would argue that the stakes are not Jill being trapped in a city full of zombies. No, Resident Evil 3 is about Jill being trapped in a city full of zombies with Nemesis. I think stakes in a video game can be described in terms of the threat to the protagonist combined with the prior experience and capability of that protagonist. Using this as our definition, the stakes of RE1 can be summarised as a group fully trained elite police officers facing off against monsters. RE2 has a rookie police officer and some random civilian facing off against monsters plus William Birkin plus Mr X; the threat has been raised, but the capability of the protagonists has been lowered. In RE3 the capability of the protagonist has been raised above both that of RE1 and RE2; she knows how to handle zombies and similar monsters like the hunters or Cerberuses, she's done that before, but the horror that Jill is surviving in this survival horror game is not the zombies and monsters; it's Nemesis. Nemesis is unlike anything Jill has ever encountered; the zombies are just an obstacle for RE3. If you think of the first three Resident Evil games as one long game with multiple chapters, then Nemesis suits perfectly well as a final boss in my eyes.

4. Resident Evil 2

I've pretty much explained my feelings of Resident Evil 2 above, it's Resident Evil 1 but with the stakes made higher by bigger monsters and less capable protagonists. If anyone can handle a mansion full of zombies, it an elite team of specialist police officers, but a rookie cop and a random biker girl? They need to be careful. I keep talking about the capability of the protagonists of these games, but admittedly, mindless zombies are not much of a tactical threat, as long as the protagonists are able to point the right end of the gun and figure out some way of pulling the trigger, most likely they'll settle on using their index finger, there isn't really much that advanced training can have over regular people. That being said though, it still feels like the stakes have been raised in Resident Evil 2 by who out protagonists are now.

Like I said earlier, RE2 also does a lot for expanding the world of Resident Evil by introducing plot threads to be resolved in "the next game". It introduced the notion of rival companies to Umbrella hinting at a much wider world of bio-weapon development; it introduces the idea of the G-virus, which was fortunately not explored further in later titles. Not that the G-virus was a bad thing, but knowing how this series over-sensationalises itself to point of not being survival horror anymore, it probably would have just ruined the G virus by the end.

That's really all I've got to say about Resident Evil 2; it's the first game but more so. Although I will also say that this is the game that turned the series into a franchise with a lot of future potential. Resident Evil 1 was a very self-contained story with no real opening for a sequel set into its ending; but RE2 ends with Umbrella still at large being evil, rival companies vying to take control, and only a small group of survivors willing to take these companies on for the sake of innocents.

3. Resident Evil

Resident Evil: the worlds first survival horror game, except for Alone in the Dark, and Sweet home, and Clock Tower, and the dozens of survival horror games that came before it. Yeah, it's not the first despite what some people believe, but it did popularise the genre and coin the term "survival horror". Resident Evil was kind of bad, but it still managed to hook you into it. The voice-acting was bad, the writing was bad, the live action cinematics were laughable, but the gameplay was... well, tank-controlling, so also bad. I must admit, I really don't mind tank controls in games. I know to some people, that's like saying "I really don't mind that my child was eaten by stray dogs" but I've just never hated them. As for why I like the game despite thinking that every aspect of it is bad, it's more down to the exploration and atmosphere. I've always liked that slow methodical unravelling of the map as you discover more key items or solve a puzzle to unlock another set of doors. It's the type of game that I play with an excel spreadsheet next to me listing off all the things I haven't done yet and any item that I haven't yet picked up for the sake inventory management, and slowly ticking those things off my list as I progress further and further towards the end. As for the atmosphere, for the pre-RE4 titles, I don't think the atmosphere of the first game was ever topped, mainly due to the sound design. One specific moment that sticks out is when you enter one of the second floor corridors, the camera is facing Jill and the door, and all you hear is a moan and slow squelching of an approaching zombie, possibly with that slow creepy ambient music over the top of it as well; thinking about that one moment still gives me shivers.

2. Resident Evil 7

When I was about 11 years old I started a game of the original Resident Evil, a played for about half an hour before I decided that the game was too hard and gave up. I then played Resident Evil 2 for about 2 minutes before also giving up because I had no idea what was going on. I then played Resident Evil 3 for about 30 seconds before also giving up. Flash-forward a decade, it was 2017 I decided to get Resident Evil 7 for PS4 and for the first time I played more than the first half an hour of a Resident Evil game. In fact, I played for about 3 days straight stopping only to eat, sleep, and probably shower. Then a few days after I had finished it I played it again, because it was such a blast from start to finish and to this day remains my favourite game on PS4. Actually, it wasn't so much as a blast as a creeping, terrifying dread, that was the perfect blend of Resident Evil 1's explorative gameplay, the tense pursuit of near-indestructible monsters from Resident Evil's 2 and 3, and the slow, methodical, claustrophobic tension of similar first-person survival horror games of recent years like Alien Isolation and Outlast. All of this combined together to form an atmospheric experience that had me terrified every time I proceeded through a door, because I had no idea what was on the other side.

1. Resident Evil 4

I would say Resident Evil 7 is my personal favourite Resident Evil game, which is kind of counter-intuitive when I've put it as second best on my personal ranking, but I consider Resident Evil 7 to be my personal favourite, while Resident Evil 4 is the best one in my opinion, even though it's not my favourite. RE7 is my personal favourite mainly because it's the one I played all the way through first and because it's the one that got me into the series as a whole, but overall, Resident Evil 4 is the better game, not by a huge amount, but by enough to make a difference. You can tell that it's the best game because it managed what Code: Veronica didn't: it killed off Umbrella. After Resident Evil 1, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, Code: Veronica, Survivor, Dead Aim, Outbreak, the prequel, the remake, the T-virus, the G-virus, the T-Veronica virus, the Tyrant, the Birkins, the Nemesis, the Ashfords, the mecenaries, and, last but not least, Steve, Resident Evil 4 opens by saying "right, it's done!!! Umbrella is gone, everything is tied up, let's move on and do something new for a change". And that's just the opening monologue.

RE4 changes the gameplay of the Resident Evil series by unfixing the camera and mounting it on Leon's shoulder; the control is still quite tanky, but with a much higher dexterity than the clunkyness of previous games, and the action is turned up to 11 without losing the survival or the horror that was later lost in RE5. Remember what I said earlier about stakes? Well, Leon may know how to fight zombies but what he doesn't know how to fight parasite infected villagers aggressively hording him with chainsaws. It's all new, both to the protagonist of the game and the players controlling him. Tearing down everything in your franchise and rebuilding it from the ground up while focusing on the basics of what made your franchise great in the first place is something that every game developer should do every two or three games and Resident Evil 4 (and 7, for that matter) is the embodiment of why.

Looking back over the rankings, I keep getting the feeling that I've missed something. Well, anyway...

The Remakes

One thing I should clarify is that the entries above for Resident Evils 1, 2, and 3 all refer to the original PS1 editions of all three games. I did consider adding in the three remakes to the ranking as well, but I thought that was probably going to be unfair in some ways. Firstly, they have the same storylines as their original versions so I’d would already be comparing less of a game to the rest (ranking a storyline twice seems silly to me), and secondly because the list was long enough as it was. But I would like to talk about them collectively, or rather remakes in general, here.

There is one thing I really don’t like about the remakes: I really don’t like remakes that seek to replace the original. I much prefer remakes that seek to stand alongside the original as a separate entry in the series. A prime example is found in the Half-Life series. Half-Life 1 was remade in the source engine and it was called “Half-Life: Source”, not just “Half-Life”. It did not claim to be “the new Half-Life 1, forget the old, it doesn’t count anymore”. If you go on Steam both versions are available to buy, depending on which one you prefer (spoiler alert: you prefer the original). Go on Steam and search for Resident Evil 2 on the other hand, and the PS1 version is nowhere to be found. No, the remake is Resident Evil 2, it’s the only Resident Evil 2 that you need, no one wants to play the original RE2 anymore and if you think you want to play it, you’re wrong. I hate this because the RE2 and RE3 remakes are so different to the original games, that the two versions ought to be counted as different entries.

Imagine if someone remade, say Star Wars from the ground up with a revised script and an all new cast. That in its self would be fine, but image that LucasFilm then made the original 1977 version of the film completely unavailable to purchase or view anywhere. Fans would be fucking furious, so why are the original classic versions of these games completely unavailable to buy, except as second hand physical copies on the handful of consoles that very few people own anymore?