Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (DS)

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The game's occasional puzzles are appreciably more interesting in the rebirth mode, which challenges you to use the DS touch screen and microphone in a few clever ways. For example, you'll need to blow into the DS' microphone to try to resuscitate an injured team member, and you'll even need to do the equivalent of that popular parlor trick where some tough guy quickly stabs a knife in between his fingers without cutting his hand. Rebirth mode packs a number of neat little surprises such as that, but one of the most jarring is how first-person-perspective battles occasionally break out when you enter a new room. All of a sudden you'll see enemies shambling towards you. You can't move, but instead must slide across or poke at the touch screen to slash at your foes with your knife. These bits seem really tacked on at first but they're pretty entertaining, especially since you can perform flashy-looking critical hits by hacking at your enemies the instant before they hit you.

The rebirth mode is generally more action-packed than the classic mode, forcing you to take on more monsters but also giving you a lot more ammo--but that doesn't automatically make it better, since having to really watch your ammo while not knowing whether something's going to jump out at you around the next corner is what Resident Evil's always been about. Having more enemies to fight gradually just lessens the impact of each individual encounter. At any rate, it's worth playing through both modes if only to appreciate the differences.

Some unlockable extras give you further incentive to explore the single-player modes, but you've also got the multiplayer options to consider. You need from two to four players (each with a DS and a copy of the game) in order to play these, and you can choose either a versus or cooperative game type. These modes can be a good diversion but aren't quite what you'd probably hope for, especially since other players are depicted on your screen as large colored stars, rather than as other operatives running and gunning alongside you. Both multiplayer modes put you in one of several different maps based heavily on areas from the single-player storyline, and whether you're playing cooperatively or not, you're still trying to reach the goal area as quickly as possible within a time limit. The difference is, in the versus mode you can indirectly slow your opponent down by shooting certain types of foes, while in co-op, you share the same health meter and have other incentives to work closely with your allies. Since you can't directly interact with other players, let alone see them, the multiplayer modes in Resident Evil DS aren't inherently that engaging. But they're a nice extra.

When Resident Evil first appeared on the PlayStation, its incredible 3D graphics did a lot to draw players in. On the DS, the game still looks good if not particularly impressive, mostly because the prerendered backgrounds look plain and grainy on the system's small screen. Thankfully, the 3D characters moving around in the environments are more detailed, and the game's gore effects are as over the top as ever. Fans will even spot some new animations in the rebirth mode. It's remarkable that all the content of Resident Evil now fits onto a tiny DS game card, but it's still a bit of a shame that the visuals suffered some in translation. Meanwhile, the audio is completely intact, including all that bad dialogue that's just as amusing today as ever. There's plenty of eerie music throughout the game, along with some terrific sound effects, like the chilling "clack, clack, clack" of some of your foes' clawed footsteps. The audio isn't just for show, either--it's often the only indication you'll get that there's danger lurking nearby. The excellent stereo separation on the DS also helps you to use sound to your advantage, since you can actually hear where a noise is coming from relative to your character.

You know a game's a classic when you can play it years later and still have a great time. Resident Evil: Deadly Silence is surprisingly successful at translating the scary bits of the original to a much smaller format, and the end result has a lot to offer Resident Evil fans as well as those who've always wondered what the fuss is about. You wouldn't expect a portable game to be able to scare you, especially since this version's visuals simply aren't on par with the cutting-edge graphics Resident Evil is known for. But Resident Evil DS packs in a lot of gory, atmospheric moments. It's pretty wild that now you can play a game like this on the go.

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