THE IMPACT RESIDENT EVIL 4

WHILE THERE HAD BEEN A HANDFUL OF INNOVATIONS DURING ITS FIRST THREE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED GAMES, THE CORE GAMEPLAY OF THE MAIN RESIDENT EVIL SERIES HAD REMAINED BROADLY THE SAME BY THE TURN OF THE CENTURY. AS THE NEW MILLENNIUM DAWNED, IT WAS TIME FOR A SIGNIFICANT CHANGE THAT WOULD COME TO REDEFINE THE SERIES FOREVER

- GRAEME MASON

Whether you’re a fan of the series or not, there’s undoubtedly no argument that Resident Evil helped redefine videogames in the mid-Nineties and propelled the Sony PlayStation into a more mature demographic. Open and tense locations, limited ammunition, a mysterious corporation, oblique puzzles and, of course, those shambling undead corpses all contributed massively to a successful regeneration of the survival horror genre. And back in 1996, we didn’t seem to mind the tank controls and those painful door animations. This was a frightening experience like no other. “I remember walking into a lot of walls!” smiles Alex Moore, designer on Firesprite’s brutal VR survival horror game, The Persistence. “The controls and camera suited the game at the time, but they were a high skill floor for players to learn.”

While it retained the tank controls and prerendered backdrops, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis included a few nods to a new direction. Much of the original game’s anxious skulking of tight corridors was gone, as was the laborious trudging across the map to find a specific item. Instead, we got the mutated Nemesis, stalking Jill Valentine with a rough gargled exhortation of “STARS” as the series took a notable move towards action-based gameplay. Then, with further advances arriving with the Sega Dreamcast game Resident Evil – Code: Veronica in 2000, Capcom’s decision to publish a remake of the original game on the Nintendo GameCube pointed the way to a new beginning.