Resident Evil Zero
It’s hard for me to believe I first played this game in 2002 on my Japanese GameCube I got from Yodabashi Camera in Tokyo with one of my grossly overpaid cheques from teaching English. It’s even harder to believe that in the years between then and when I livestreamed it in 2020 that I never managed to beat it—foolishly playing on Hard difficulty to impress a bored audience of internet weirdos and ending up locked on the final boss due to lack of ammo.
It’s hardest to believe that it took twenty-two years and three versions (GC, PC, and at last Xbox) to see the credits roll after achieving one of the six different endings. But the game still holds up, despite the occasional annoyance in the form of a design artifact from a bygone era. The camera switching on static scenes causing the controller to flip must have been a nightmare for the developers to program, never mind the player to navigate. I could appreciate all the choices the CAPCOM folks made with this title, though. The scarcity of not only the player’s ammunition but also their means to save progress, combined with the purposely awkward controls and dread-inducing background music truly define the genre of “survival horror.”
I jumped back and forth between this title and the latest entry in the franchise, Village, and while it’s astounding how far we’ve come in terms of graphical fidelity I found it even more incredible that the development team has managed to maintain so strong of a binding thread through their games. Even for its time, Zero looked phenomenal. I recall telling my wife that graphics were getting too real after spinning the minidisc for the first time in the ’Cube. But there is a very specific tone and a clear lexicon that defines the games in this franchise and makes them a joy to play no matter where or when they’re experienced.
On that note: this was the first video game that I can claim to have felt genuine joy at playing since I first quit livestreaming in May of ’23. I’ve been struggling for more than seventeen months to recapture my love for video games. And now it’s rekindled at the worst possible time. I should be reading, studying, and learning instead of losing these precious hours to diversion.
And yet, here we are.
2024.10.20 – 2024.10.23
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