Friday, February 7, 2014

Editorial: The Things Resident Evil Got Wrong

Resident Evil has a storied history of making people scratch their heads at decisions made. Most of their legacy is seen in the positive, but of course there is the insane fall from grace with Resident Evil 6. Here are some of Resident Evil's questionable decisions.


  1. Resident Evil 2 - The Moth
    You've fought your way through the police station, slugged knee deep through poopy-water, and battled William Birkin away multiple times. There's a giant metal blast door staring you down. You ready your customized shotgun, not knowing what creature awaits you. And.... moth. Giant, fluttering moth. In a way it was somewhat creepy and I have to applaud that someone had to design and program the moth for this one room. But once you do research, you find out that unless you are a giant flower, this moth is mostly harmless.

  2. Resident Evil 0 - Opera Singing Leech Doctor

    Leeches creep me out. So it should have been one hell of a scary edition. Unfortunately, from the moment I saw Dr. Marcus singing opera on a mountain top to call the leeches, I realized this is when the series was going to lose some of it's luster. And it did.
  3. Resident Evil Survivor

    Underneath all the terrible design decisions, Resident Evil Survivor has a pretty OK story. There's no way to save, you couldn't use a light gun in the North American version, and when you died, there were no checkpoints. The rage I felt when I died during the last tyrant battle and saw the title scream cannot be described. New curse words would need to be invented.
  4. Call of Duty: Resident Evil 6

    There were several issues with Resident Evil 6. The couch co-op is great. My wife and I really loved playing through Resident Evil 5 together. Issue with 6, on the PS3... well that second player couldn't sign into their PSN profile or upgrade any weapons or upgrade anything. That made an already death filled game harder. The inventory system was terrible, there was no way to pause the game, and I still don't really understand how herbs work. On top of that, Chris' campaign might as well have been the new Call of Duty. Run and gun through eastern European towns with the arm-swollen Chris.
  5. The Resident Evil Magazines

    The Resident Evil Magazines were comic books that came out in 1998. The first two comics were actually pretty great, covering the events of the first two games. But beyond that, they suffered from lazy writing. Essentially, "Ummm... an Umbrella facility has an accident... in South America... and here's Barry."
  6. Resident Evil 5 Boss Battles

    Part of the tension of the Resident Evil series was the battle between your character and the bosses. They were chess matches of firing a few shots and running like hell. In Resident Evil 5, most the boss battles involved you jumping on a mounted machine gun and firing away.

    The height of the RE5 boss battles was the first one, the executioner. And you know why? Because it felt like an old Resident Evil boss battle. I didn't get a quick time event every 45 seconds so that a giant didn't punch the jeep I was holed up in.