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The resident evil series
Resident evil is regarded as a trendsetter for survival horror genre games, although it’s widely accepted that it depicts the moods and mannerisms of the Infogrames’ title “Alone in the dark,” but some say that a Famicom (NES in the US) is the genre’s true originator.
Back in 1996, one of the biggest events took place when Capcom’s director, Shinji Mikami came up with this ambitious new series which won praise as the best 3D adventure game ever. Borrowing stock horror-movie elements, such as bloodthirsty zombies, mutated creatures and a story that changed depending upon how the game was played. The recent addition to the Resident Evil series is Code Veronica, on the Dreamcast and the Playstation 2 consoles.
The initial game in the series follows a unique storyline, which is about a Midwestern US town called Raccoon City. Bizarre happenings start taking place in the metropolis. A special task force of the Raccoon City police department named STARS (Special Tactics And Rescue Squad) unit Bravo team was sent in to investigate the mystery but the mission proved to be team’s worst nightmare.
The next episode, RE 2 is considered by many as the best game of the series simply because of the substantial improvements in the graphic department and enhanced animations. Detailed files and photos flesh out the story nicely making RE 2 more explicit and involving then the first chapter. It also introduces two new characters Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy, a determined police officer who was recruited along with some other officers to overcome the growing fear among the locals about some unidentified beings and mysterious death happenings at an alarming rate.
Resident Evil: Nemesis marked the third addition to the series with some more improvements in almost every department like in the character model and new control tweaks such as, the 180-degree turn with a dodge feature added in. It complicates the plot of the series tremendously and contains the occasional discrepancy. It also raises the difficulty considerably on the normal mode and lowers it extremely in the light settings, giving the veterans an extra challenge and the new comers a relief to be able to play the easy mode without thinking twice about the conservation of the ammo.
Nemesis is also accompanied by another game that one can play with the mercenaries, which is well thought-out because its shorter then its predecessors mainly due to its having one main character instead of two. Jill Valentine, member of the STARS rescue squad comes back to attempt her last escape from the horrors unleashed by the Umbrella Corporation. She plans to do this with the help of a mercenary named Mikhail Victor, member of a UBCS (Biohazard Counter Measure Service). They both plan to reach the clock tower via the L-train but the seemingly unstoppable monster Nemesis plagues her constant struggle for survival. The most advanced in terms of graphics is the last installment, Code Veronica. This addition harnesses the power of the Playstation 2 to produce some real animated graphics the series has seen to date, with the prerendered backgrounds being replaced by the impressively textured polygons that allows dynamic camera movement similar to Capcom’s Dino Crisis. Just a few months after the events of Resident Evil 2, Claire Redfield continues her search of her long lost brother Chris Redfield after tracking him down at the Paris Umbrella facility, but she was put into prison at the Rockfort Umbrella Island for trespassing. She is soon freed, and yet another struggle for survival begins against the horrors unleashed by Umbrella. Resident evil soon found its way to the PC (you know the personal computer), about a year after they made their Playstation debuts, which certainly helped to stimulate the production of horror games.
Resident Evil is now a part of the Playstation’s greatest hit series and every new bead in its strings is met with great anticipation. It may not be the true originator of the survival horror kind but it certainly introduced a new trend through which gamers would accept and even flock to cross genre efforts.
The writer
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