Resident Evil (PlayStation)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 4.0 stars Excellent
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 8.2 (4.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Staff
• Reviewed on: 12/01/1996
• Updated on: 05/02/2000
• Released on: 03/30/1996
• Originally published on GameSpot: Resident Evil (PlayStation) Review

At the time of this writing, Resident Evil - a super-slick, realistically mapped, and ultra-violent Alone in the Dark - is at the top of the heap in cinematic 3-D adventure games. It's one of the best buys for the Playstation, and one of those rare games that's almost as entertaining to watch as it is to play.

The story: A police special tactics and rescue squad (S.T.A.R.S.) vanishes in a remote location recently plagued by bizarre disappearances and deaths. Its sister team lands to investigate and is quickly set upon by creatures who force them to run for "shelter" in - you guessed it - a Creepy Old Mansion. Sure, we've all seen this movie before... but this time, we get to play it. And like a movie, Resident Evil deserves, almost demands, to be experienced in the dark.

In addition to its challenging cinematic gameplay (the polygonal characters' actions are witnessed and controlled from "camera angles" on par with any Hitchcock film), Resident Evil dishes out some truly frightening, skin-crawling moments. The wobbly, shambling, re-animated inhabitants of the mansion move with eerie fluidity; and the soundtrack veers from fairly typical, ominous, incidental stuff to discordant, disturbing, metallic shrieks that sound as though they're being played backward. The cinematic shift from room to room virtually guarantees that the incautious explorer will, at some point, turn a blind corner and run smack into something really dreadful. Even the extra-careful adventurer will have things jumping out at him at the most unwelcome moments. And thanks to the ingenious dramatic pacing of the game, just when you think things can't possibly get any worse, they suddenly do.

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