Resident Evil HD Remaster is a Zombie of its Former Self

Occasionally I look back on the industry as a whole and think to myself, what if I could finally, for the first time, play one of those games that people loved back in the day (mid 2000s or earlier when I could have played it but didn't) and review it now? Well, that's when I pull out my calendar, a random watch that isn't mine and I don't know how I got and turn the watch back as I flip through the calendar backwards quite aggressively, until I realize that's not how time travel works, and sit down to play a game that has a reputation in the industry as something influential or as a cult hit. Today, we are doing a Throwback Review!

The Introduction

I have played 3 Resident Evil games before this one. The remake of Resident 2 and 4, and Resident Evil 8. I enjoyed all of them. My first experience with the original Resident Evil was through the old Gametrailers retrospectives (here’s a playlist of the 6 part series that is almost 2 hours long). It was an enjoyable way of absorbing that story, especially since I didn't want to play them for fear of getting scared. Now, years and years and years later, I read the Boss Fight Books Resident Evil book (link to the book, anna also has a copy) and it made me want to finally play the original game myself.

This is going to be a bit different of a review since I'm aware of the story and the general structure. I will be reviewing this as someone  who is both reliving the story, and experiencing playing the game for the first time ever. That will not mean that I'm going to be lenient on the game as a whole, if I have issues, I will still be commenting on my problems when I encounter them. This review will also be shorter than a lot of my reviews since the game is pretty short. With that said, let's play some Survival Horror.

The Premise

Resident Evil HD Remaster is the HD Remaster of the 2000s GameCube Remaster of the original Resident Evil game from the 90s. The GC version completely redid the graphics, the character models, and most importantly, the dialogue. Essentially, you are a member of the Alpha team of STARS, either Chris or Jill, who gets dropped off to investigate the disappearance of Bravo team who were deployed to investigate the murder of some locals who were apparently eaten by their murderers. When you get dropped off in the field, one of your teammates dies from mutated dogs attacking them and you manage to escape the same dogs by running into the Spencer Mansion, the last known site of Bravo team. If you're Chris you escape with Jill and Wesker, your commanding Officer. If you're Jill, you escape with Wesker and Barry, a guy who cares about his family and wants to avoid his teammates dying. You then have to explore the Mansion solving puzzles and killing monsters to figure out not just what happened to Bravo team, but what happened to the people who inhabited the Mansion. The simplistic premise is part of the charm because you don't expect it to take some of the turns it takes, at least if you've never experienced a Resident Evil game that is. Resident Evil created Survival Horror, despite it building off of the basics of prior games in the industry at the time, it's what made Survival Horror a thing.

The Good

Resident Evil as a series has perfected the sense of atmosphere the characters you play as have to deal with. The quiet, the angles of the cameras, the set dressing, everything contributes to that sense of unease. The HD Remaster is obviously no different. I frequently found myself enjoying the framing of specific camera angles since you could see small details. For instance, in the first real room you are in as Jill, the dining room, your first shot is from the table where in the foreground there is a place set but the glass is knocked over giving the sense that someone left that place setting quickly. It's incredibly well done. Or in another scene you are in a hallway and there's a mirror in the background that is at the perfect angle to show you what is around the corner. You, obviously, see a zombie in the mirror who is just chilling and waiting for you to round the corner in a very ominous fashion. It's a fantastic way of not just establishing atmosphere, but showing the player that the environments are more than just a level to exist in, that they can communicate things to you just like normal gameplay does. It's a fantastic example of what makes Resident Evil such a wonderful series.

The puzzles were great. Simplistic but not to the point of annoyance, I was, thankfully, usually able to tell what I needed to do without looking things up. I also played the Resident Evil 2 remake in 2023 and I found that a lot of these puzzles seemed to be inspiration for the puzzles in that game. Overall, it was a great experience.
Of course, I couldn't review this game without heaping praise on the story as a whole. Going through the game, discovering the notes left around the game that slowly revealed the events that happened at the mansion was a wonderful experience. There was so much I didn't expect to see, particularly the notes from people that were infected made me feel the atmosphere and the creepiness that the game is known for. I just can't overstate how amazing reading those notes is, how enjoyable seeing the story be slowly told to you and Jill, and how interesting it is to see the characters deal with all of these revelations and the monsters they have to fight. The story was top notch and probably one of the most enjoyable parts of the game for me.

The Bad

While the framing of the shots were often wonderful, what absolutely sucked were how often I felt there was one too many camera angles for some of the rooms. This happened to the point of frustration since with every camera angle I had to adjust how I was thinking about the controls. Holding forward always makes you go forward, but when the camera angle has so many changes what looks like forward at the first angle will look like backward from the second. It's a very frustrating experience. And with the cameras I often found myself getting frustrated because not only were there one too many angles, there was often a tiny, tiny amount of movement between all of the angles. This lead toward me moving a little, swapping angles and having to readjust to the controls, to me moving a tiny, tiny amount and it changing to another new angle and having to readjust again. It was awful. The camera angles would move up or down in some areas so I see no reason why they had to change so many angles when one angle that moved slightly would have been better and less frustrating. There were even moments in some save rooms where there were 3 fucking angles for the small ass room where 2 would have sufficed if the camera had just moved a little on one of them. I assume this was all trying to replicate the feeling of the Original, but as someone who never played that, it sucked.

Another thing that really bothered me is how few spaces you have in your inventory. I played as Jill and I absolutely hated having only 8 spaces. I understand this was used as a way to make you feel that survival horror shtick of balancing your inventory space with your guns, ammo, healing, and quest items. That, however, does not make the game less frustrating having to run back between the very few save rooms in order to store some items so that I could grab others. I found myself thinking I wouldn't need a space and going into a new room but ending up having to pick up an item in that room so I had to run all the way back to a save room and swap something over, then run all the way back. It sucked and just lead to frustration, not a feeling that had to be that way either. In the RE2 remake you still have to manage your inventory but you can also increase it and helped with your frustrations because of that. You can also drop items from your inventory, and if I could do that in the HD Remaster then I think I'd have less issues with it. Overall, this made me really want a 2/3 remake of the original so that I can replay it and not have to deal with the absolutely atrocious inventory system.

The Ending - Detailed/Reaction

**Start Spoilers**

I'm not going to do my usual ending thing here. It's been done to death. Wesker is the traitor, releases Tyrant, and you fight it, then have to blow it up on the helipad to end the game. Most people know the ending to the game if they've been in the gaming community for even a small amount of time because of how iconic it was. The ending was great. It was satisfying to finally get the rocket launcher and I enjoyed having the Eisenstein shot to watch that mutant explode. I do wish there was a bit more but I get it, the sequel expands on this concept a lot more. I really appreciated that since I saved everyone I could. That they all just kinda were in their heads dealing with the trauma of the experience. Overall, great ending, as most people in the last almost 30 years have thought.

**End Spoilers**

Film Note: And Eisenstein shot is where you see the same moment of a film, or cutscenes in a videogame, but from different angles all played out in sequence to make for a really satisfying moment. It was invented by the Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein who made films that were groundbreaking in the industry as a whole, not just Soviet Russia.

The Conclusion

Resident Evil HD Remaster isn't a terrible experience. It has moments of greatness, and you can really tell it had significant love put into it, but the game is held back, in modern terms, with the inventory system being so restricted and with the camera angles often seeming like there was one too many angles. I was routinely getting frustrated and it's hard to score a game well when I consistently was experiencing that. I feel partially spoiled from the Remake of 2 being so damn good but even keeping all that in mind, I can't just score a game super well because of the past, I score a game based on my experience with it.

Overall, if you are interested in playing the HD Remaster, you should give it a try but only if you're willing to deal with significant jank and annoyances. At the same time, I'd say only play it if you're craving that kind of thing. Otherwise, you should wait for the inevitable Third Person Shooter remake that 2 and 3 received because that'll significantly modernize and fix my only problems with this amazing game. I will almost definitely also review that when it actually happens and that will be the score that really defines the first game. If you don't want to wait for that Remake though, and you don't like dealing with jank, then you should probably just watch a play through instead so you don't have to deal with the amount of frustration and annoyance and you just get to experience the story and the atmosphere.

Meow,

Cat

Thanks for reading my Resident Evil HD Remaster Review! I hope it didn’t make you too angry! Subscribe for free to receive new posts every Wednesday and support my work.