Capcom’s Resident Evil games have come a long way since the first and original resident game was released; featuring some of the worst possible creatures a person just could not normally imagine. The original game brought us the ultimate in survival horror, and the games to follow brought even more freaky creatures, eerie scenes, plus weird, mysterious and wonderful gaming environments.
Possibly the worst console this could have been released on was arguably the Original Playstation with it horrible dull grey rectangle console, and blocky graphics on the consoles OS interface; much harder to play on the Sega Saturn due to the console being released before the Original Playstation, and the new Memory card technology that came out with the Original Playsation. As a result of this game play was un-savable once the console was powered off, and the entire game had to be played from start to finish. For those of you who loved a challenge and a console that would not crash half way through the game, then playing REvil Original on Saturn was one of the most rewarding experiences of game play ever; everything would lead up to the final battle and you would rush to the lift after hours of running through a game trying hard not to die, and then meet the Tyrant at the top on the heliport (still trying not to die) in a one on one battle with a creature twice your size.
From the original stemmed many different REvil games, listed in order of release; as follows:
Resident Evil – (1996)
Resident Evil 2 – (1998)
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis – (1999)
Resident Evil CODE: Veronica – (2000)
Resident Evil Zero – (2002)
Resident Evil 4 – (2005)
Resident Evil 5 – (2009)
Resident Evil 6 – (2012)
Resident Evil: Revelations – (2012)
Resident Evil: Revelations 2 – (2015)
REvil 1 set the ball rolling and there was much needed room for improvement with the REvil games to follow. The next REvil games to be released were REvil2 and REvil 3, though they carried on the storyline from the original, but with a different setting and location within Raccoon City; though they are essentially the same game that was too big for the original Playstation/PSOne to handle, therefore one was tweaked and released as REvil2 and the other tweaked, reworked in some places, and then released as REvil3. For some these games were ok, but also pretty Sucky and much room for improvement of the environment and storyline was needed.
The best and Last of the Original themed REvil Games to follow from them was REvil Code Veronica (on Dreamcast in full glory); this game was a head storm and the new take on the zombies and Cerberus dogs was just scary as hell if you did not know they were hiding under a building ready to jump out at you, or for Zombies to come through a shutter in flames to reach you. The Story Line was awesome and the Characters complimented the game well; The Antarctic base had to be the most awesome second half to the game, as you were literately transported to a whole new area of the game, with a whole new set of poisonous enemies to kill you, and desperately running around for the plants to heal you. The boss at the end was just messed up; if you died many times over and over again trying to kill her, you would have had nightmares that night for sure.
REvil 0 was also a great game, but it was not as impressive as Code Veronica; the great thing about this game was that it shed light on a lot of the unanswered questions and mysteries surrounding the other resident evil games. This game was trippy and those darn leeches were just as yucky as heck; burning them and that thing was the best part of the game.
REvil 4 was the first of the REvil games to go away from the original theme and featured some utterly insane creatures and challenges that were just not expected at all; these were not Zombies or Cerberus dogs, oh no, these horrible things were much worse. When you were trapped inside a building and had loads of Parasite infected Villagers storming the building to try and kill you, it was all one big rush and panic to cover all the entry and exit points to keep them out; utterly nuts. To make things worse the bag heads with the chainsaws were always somewhere around in the village and surrounding areas just waiting to have a piece. From parasite villagers, bag heads, infected trolls to crazy train rides, an infected solider, etc… This game has to be a perfect starting point for the new REvil theme for games.
We will ignore all the spin offs that came from the REvil line, as most were rubbish and just not worth playing to be honest.
REvil 5 and REvil 6 were the games that caused many of the REvil fans to navigate to other games, due to the awful controller styles of the PS3/PS4. Each of these games seemed to be confusing and the story lines were loose, to the point where you did not know what you had to do next at certain points in the game, and the creatures were too difficult at key stages of the game to defeat.
REvil 5 was playable to the end, with some utterly insane scenes of crazed villagers coming to murder you with all kinds of weapons, but the scenes dragged on, and on and it became tiresome and heavy and when it was finally over you just had to stop playing for a short spell to replenish and then carry on.
REvil 6 was the game that some players quit half way through playing and some did not even complete the game and went onto play games like Call of Duty Ghosts, Titian Fall and other games where you could progress without being thrown into a situation with almost impossible to beat enemies and get across a ravine on a small ledge without being knocked off to your death.
There is no way of knowing what REvil 7 has in store for players; will they return to the original format, or have an amalgamation of different creatures from the entire REvil line of games. Perhaps the biggest question is whether the die-hard REvil fans will return to the newer line of games and their style of gaming, or will they just not bother and continue to play the classics, and/or other games?