Resident Evil and Shitting the Bed at the Finish Line
Resident Evil and Shitting the Bed at the Finish Line
1998. Christmas day. My brother and I rush downstairs, knowing what awaits us under the tree. We pull out the largest of the boxes and frantically unwrap what turns out to be the single greatest gift we will ever receive - A Sony PlayStation.
We played the day away, kicking the hell out of each other on Tekken 3, and kicking the hell out of each other on Street Fighter EX plus Alpha.
But as the sun went down, we put on a game that changed the trajectory of my tastes forever and sent me down the grimy rabbit hole of horror, a game that essentially formed my entire adult personality.
That game… was Crypt Killer.
Only joking, Crypt Killer was utter trash but I loved it anyway. No, that night, we played Resident Evil for the first time.
My introduction to survival horror
It’s fair to say I have a love-hate relationship with Resident Evil; I can’t deny that turning that corner and seeing the first zombie in the Spencer Mansion is one of my all time favourite video game moments.
The team has a huge talent for creating such an oppressively creepy atmosphere, and most of the mainline entries manage to capture that same feeling in their first few hours, when once again you feel lost and hopeless.
They also seem to have a huge talent for completely destroying that atmosphere in the last third, picking away all the mystery and dread they’ve created with bizarre enemy choices and ridiculous set pieces that leave a sour taste in my mouth when all is said and done.
So why does every Resident Evil turn into a slapstick satire of itself in the second half?
The burden of escalation
There’s a video game rule of thumb that difficulty needs to increase as the game goes along, so that we never outgrow the competition, and feel a sense of accomplishment at all times.
This seems to be an issue with a lot of horror video games, as scary is typically quiet, eerie, and unsettling - not loud, brash and explosive.
In the opening hours of the first Resident Evil, the horror comes more from the impenetrable tension in the dark, tight corridors, the sombre music slowly tearing away at your psyche. When a dog finally smashes through the window, your heart skips a beat as you take to putting it down. There’s a small window of relief as you gather yourself, before that tension starts seeping back in again.
The final third, however, always seems to be focusing on escalation over keeping consistency with theme and feeling, often dropping the survival-horror for something a bit more out of this world.
Undercover Sci-Fi
Players inevitably overcome the initial sense of vulnerability as they get used to the mechanics and enemy patterns, so games have to bring in new enemy types, new problems to overcome, and new gear to overcome them with. Some games do this particularly well - I thought Shinji Mikami’s other project The Evil Within did a fantastic job of bringing in new threats to keep you on the backfoot.
But Resident Evil always seemed to bring in enemies from what feels like an entirely different game.
In a puzzle-box creepy mansion filled with shambling zombies and undead dogs, why bring in giant humanoid lizards and sharks?
In a dilapidated, moulding shack when you’re hunted by its deranged residents, why should daddy bear turn into a giant goggle-eyed tree man?
At its worst, the series feels like it wanted to be a sci-fi game, but horror was the fad at the time, so it wrapped its galactic wonders in blood and guts just to fit in. The underground lab in the first one was a neat little twist, but the series seems to have a penchant for ditching the grungy aesthetics for clinical, wipe-down surfaces (apart from the movie, which was all lab and no atmosphere).
Bigger is better
There’s a moviemaking rule of thumb that the last act should cost as much as the first two acts combined. This makes for a satisfyingly epic conclusion, where the stakes are sky high, and the hero is put through the wringer to come out on top.
Resident Evil seems to take this advice to heart with its design, often throwing away the location where they’ve been brewing a fantastic atmosphere for the last 10 hours, and instead, giving you a location that wouldn’t go amiss in an 80s action romp.
Resident Evil 4 is considered a cornerstone of horror gaming, and set the precedent for survival horror as we know it for a number of reasons. The rural European village setting was refreshing for the genre, and it used this Wickerman-esque backdrop expertly to craft a remarkable sense of dread as you’re chased by pitchfork wielding villagers and chainsaw wielding maniacs.
We go deeper into this aesthetic with Salazar castle, a dungeon-like setting full of hooded Zealots of the Los Illuminados cult, lead by the suitably (if slightly cartoony) Ramón Salazar. It feels like a seamless evolution from culty village to culty castle.
Naturally, the next place is an island with gatling gun wielding baddies and an enemy base like that one in Mission Impossible 2. Obviously, we end up fighting Giant Insect-Scorpion Boy on an oil rig before speed-boating outta there…
Have a guess where I think they jumped the shark on that one?
A cure for the itchy tasty
Resident Evil has proven time and again that it can try something new. The Baker family residence in 7 showed promise that they could take the concept in new directions, and the dollhouse in RE: Village confirmed it.
If they could use that phenomenal creativity and put it into inventive ways to escalate a concept without making things physically bigger and more on-fire, I think they could maintain the creeping dread from start to finish.
In the laws of video games, you’ll always need bigger targets if you find bigger guns. Maybe the next Resident Evil should think carefully before handing out rocket launchers.
I’m sure this article might have touched a nerve with some of the more dedicated RE fans, but I mean it when I say it’s one of my favourite series’.
I’ve sung its praises as one of the Godfathers of low poly horror here.
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