Resident Evil: Director's Cut (PlayStation)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 6.9 (3.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Joe Fielder
• Reviewed on: 10/23/1997
• Updated on: 05/02/2000
• Originally published on GameSpot: Resident Evil: Director's Cut (PlayStation) Review

Not only was Resident Evil one of the first Sony PlayStation games that took longer than an hour to complete, it was revolutionary. By sacrificing the fully 3D worlds that were the trend of the time, for static, rendered rooms, the game's developers created backgrounds and characters that were better looking than anything anyone had seen up to that point. Perhaps even better yet, Resident Evil proved that "mature" themes could be justified within a good game at a time when the industry was still recovering from the attention Congress had given it sometime back (though Capcom did cut a slight bit of the game's violent cinemas). More than a year later, now that the company has a little less to fear from Senate subcommittees, it's released what it calls the Director's Cut, a version with all of the original footage supposedly left uncensored, along with additional new material to boot.

The game's storyline is equal parts X-Files and Night of the Living Dead. You select from Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, two members of a special police force sent into the woods outside Raccoon City to investigate a series of strange murders. After being separated from their team, Chris and Jill (you choose your character) begin searching through a mysterious house, hidden in a remote location deep within the forest. The characters encounter zombies, mutant plants, monstrous spiders, and other by-products of an experiment gone astray, as they attempt to gather evidence pertaining to the case, save their partners, destroy the evil residing within the house, and escape with their lives.

As first reported in GameSpot News, Resident Evil: Director's Cut fails to come through with its promise of providing the footage Capcom trimmed for the US release of the original title, supposedly because of a mistake during Sony's approval process. Though that seems to be the impetus of the game's marketing campaign, it really ends up being a relatively small part of the overall package, since the two new modes of play (training and advanced) and a Resident Evil 2 demo CD are clearly the main attractions.

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