Resident Evil: Is It Still Fun Today?

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Ah! ages i think the last time i genuinely played this game was near its launch window and my cousin had it on his playstation and i was much too young to play it so the second that like fmv cut scene of the zombie or it's the cg cut scene of the zombie turning around i got way too scared and ran out of the room i was like no i'm not doing this i can't handle this i got a weak constitution i gotta go uh but you know i'm ready to face my fears and michael you actually played this on your own earlier this year, right? I did. I was getting excited for RE9, aka Resident Evil Requiem, and I've been doing a whole playthrough of the series, so I did start with the original. I played the remake, though, but I think for this I am going to play the original PS1 or find a way to play the original PS1 version. It also came to Saturn, so if you have a Saturn lying around... I super don't. I've got one out there. I will say, the one thing I'll say is that I think I'm getting to the age in which I am finding games, old games with clunky controls to be fun. That might be my answer already. As long as you know what you're getting into, the challenge comes from the controls, right? Oh yeah, 1000%. Sam, it is known to Scoop Nation that you love Resident Evil. When did you last play the original? Yeah, so I, weirdly, probably a rental, but at my cousin's house. That's exactly what happened to me too. I was between liking video games at the time, so I wasn't super into the PlayStation one, but I do remember these games having black compact discs instead of silver. And it blew my mind. And then I remember thinking the FMVs were just so bad and I couldn't believe that people were into this game. And then I played the remake on a game cube. And of course I, I, I fell in love with that game and residual zero at that time. Um, I don't have a lot of experience playing the actual PS1 version. I 100% have it on disc and I have a PS1. I also have a PS3 that can play PS1 games, the, you know, 60-git one, I think. So I got to figure out how I'm going to pull this off. If not, what do you recommend, Damon? Well, I'm going to play the 20... There's a 2015 HD remaster. I have it on PlayStation. It's also on PC so I can play it on Steam Deck as well. That's technically the GameCube one, right? So that's where I'm playing that. Oh. And Nick, you're playing on PS1 and actually you're going to capture it in 4K, right? Yes. For all of our B-rolls. So we're going to have a beautiful B-roll thanks to Nick. Thanks to the power of IGN and One Dave Tool. I've managed to hook up the IGN office, or he managed to hook up the IGN office with a RetroTink 4K. So I got my PS1 connected to that RetroTink. So now it's just, I really want to play it with scan lines, but I'll do a test footage and see whether or not that looks good on your YouTube video because the scan lines are just so pretty on the RetroTink 4K. It's true. What do you do? Is it just RCA output or is there like S video? Like what do you do? I am currently doing the RetroTINK has RGB. I have a modded PS1, so I can do RGB out. Oh, you have a modded one. Yeah, you're all set. It's going to look really good. It's going to look very good. As good as a game on compact disc from 1996 can look. Very crispy. Yeah, yeah. So we have all played before. Some people had commented on the first video that we should have someone on the panel who has never played the game before, so they're not influenced by nostalgia. I count. I didn't play a lot of it. I didn't beat it. Well, I just want to say that's a great idea that we'll definitely implement in future episodes. So, all right. Resident Evil, the original one. It has a 91 on Metacritic. EGM gave it an 8, a 9.5, a 9, and a 9. So definitely well-received at the time. We are going to enter the Spencer Mansion and replay Resident Evil 1996. We're shooting this cold open right before we head out for a holiday break. So we'll be playing over the holidays and shooting the full episode early in the new year. It is time to find out if the OG pre-rendered backgrounds, tank controls, hilariously bad dialogue, and jaggy polygons of Resident Evil 1996 are still fun today. You were almost a Jill sandwich. Thanks, Barry. Astro of Unlocking. Resident Evil. Resident Evil. And we're back. It's a whole new year. We spent the holidays turning rooms green in order to determine whether or not the original Resident Evil is still fun today. And I think we're all in agreement that it sure is. Although my recommendation comes with a little asterisk. Let me paint you all a picture. It was the nights around Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except Damon on the couch, lit by the light of the Christmas tree, cat in lap, steam deck in hand, headphones on, playing Resident Evil, and I had a blast. This style of Resident Evil game totally holds up, even feels refreshing because no one is making games like this anymore. We'll dive into all the details, but my high-level takeaway is, yes, still fun, especially if you played the old style of Resident Evil games back in the day. If you didn't, and all you know are the modern style games from RE4 onward, there are a couple of big caveats that I would warn you about, but let's dig in. I played the 2015 remaster of the 2002 remake, which is readily available on modern platforms. I played as Jill. Sam, you played the same? Yeah, I did. I played as Jill. It was great. And I played on my Steam Deck by the Christmas tree with the cat in my lap as well, if that's what you're asking. Jill's right, man. Goose Camp, Birds of a Feather. Now, Michael, do you play the 1996 version over the holiday? Man, I wish I did, but I did not because I played it on Switch. the version that is available on the switch eShop which is the 2015 yeah remaster of the remake and yeah sure it turns out it's still fun but like you damon there are some caveats that i will tell folks who want to play this version because i do think it is essential especially if you are getting into resident evil or if you are you have some gaps in the series you have to play this version but you gotta know what to expect yeah yeah that i would agree with that but nick you really went all out because you played you did two runs of the 2015 version and also the 1996 version and you captured them all so all the footage you see here is captured by nick it's no judgment on the gameplay because man those dogs are a real pain in the ass um yeah no yeah uh resident evil one as i talked about in the cold open which was now you know prior to christmas uh it was a big blind spot for me and i was like you know what i'm nick lamone i gotta play all of these games just to see plus i'm nick f and limone yeah and i'm a big sucker for just that early polygon like playstation style and i think that a lot of people my age in in general are really have nostalgia for you know we see games like crow country that are evoking original resident evil and it i couldn't think of a better thing to just check out the one that started it all and i had a blast granted i did only play through jill campaign on the 1996 version but i played the original version of the game no dual shock no director's cut just that one and man i and then i did uh chris and then i did another jill run and then chris in the 2015 remake on pc with the help of some uh lovely fans who did a beautiful job with the re stored mod that upscales all of the um like pre-rendered backgrounds up to 4k and so all the footage that you're looking at is in glorious 4k even the playstation one which i had connected to a mr i'm sorry a retro tink 4k uh and it's beautiful scan line so enjoy all the lo-fi uh beauty that you are going to see but yeah i love it i wanted to mention that i did try to get this up and go and i have the director's cut which we were just talking about has the um the dual shock uh upgrades to it and a few other things it's of course on the black CD-ROM disc for people that don't remember how cool PlayStation was for doing that. But I ended up playing the remade version, which I think has so many improvements. But I also, one other thing I wanted to mention about playing along with this game is that I used a strategy guide for large portions of it and spent that time updating our strategy guide. So if you're out there and you're playing this, I actually meticulously went through a paragraph by paragraph and made sure that the writing and stuff and the puzzle solutions were up to snuff. And it was a lot of fun. So I had a fun time writing and playing. Dude, that's that brand synergy we're all about here at IGN. So people who watch this episode, you use the guide and you're going to get a definitive 2026 experience. Yeah, and I do think Mastered the guide. But Damon does have one tip for playing this game, which he already mentioned. And what is that, Damon? Turn the rooms green. If you are turning the rooms green, you're playing Resident Evil, man. so okay a hot take here i never once considered doing that playing resident evil because i i'm just like yeah i got the item i think i need let's get out of here and go like i'm not trying to spend more it's too creepy man i'm not trying to spend more time in these rooms it's funny because that becomes the way when you play it that way it adds this it adds a different type of fear to the game because what you're doing by doing that is making sure you get every single plant yeah and ammo when you don't have any inventory room ever. So that's already difficult, right? So you're juggling that. And then also while you're doing that, you probably expend some of that very plant juice in ammo, plant powder. I don't know what it is. And, uh, you know, just getting everything. So you really, it comes out of wash. You're like, I'm going to make sure I have all the ammo. So I, you know, don't run out. And then it's like, you spent all this time backtracking and what happens? Bunch of dogs come through a bunch of windows and you're bowed. Dude, those dogs, I swear, they're in Devil May Cry, and I'm just in a Resident Evil 1 game. Those dogs are so fast and basically every death I had in the game was because of the dogs in both the original and the remake One dog is going to bite you If the math is there one or more dogs in a room one of them is going to bite you It's just going to happen. You can aim your gun downwards up into a corner. It doesn't matter. It's going to hit the dog after it bites you. All right, let's talk a little bit about the graphics. I think this 2015 remaster is very pretty. I was actually kind of stunned that it still looks so good. Everything from lighting, shadows, candles flickering, lightning flashing through the windows. Capcom, they did a really good job of making good use of their pre-rendered backgrounds and foregrounds. In that main hall, one of the angles is Jill, and those candles up real close to the camera. It looks great. I couldn't believe how good this looks. It's like the cinematography, right? They're just like, oh, wait, movies have come out. We know movies. let's do that and uh there's just so many like things that stand out to me there's like beautiful shots where the second time you fight the yawn snake boss there's a part where you're entering the hallway and it's the camera is just outside the window of the mansion and so the window is in the foreground with jill in the background just like this is just so beautiful or when you're walking through the graveyard they just take so many interesting angles and honestly i know that people have their gripes about the tank controls combined with the fixed camera angles but i think that it's a beautiful blend of tension and art direction where this angle switch combined with the tank controls is the tension when you are trying to fight an enemy and the fact that you hide zombies in every single corner when you have five camera angles to dang room and that's the best part because you know a zombie's coming towards you so you do the thing that every horror protagonist does where you back up and it was like i think i have a big enough vantage point here and you're just holding your gun out like waiting and it's like such good dramatic effect because you wait for the zombie to get as close as humanly possible to pop off a shot and you're going to do a little bit more damage and potentially headshot it yeah yeah that's a that's another thing too is that when when i think about the pre-rendered backgrounds and especially what the limitations were of the era of the ps1 and the the 32-bit era um is that there's a lot of intentionality with fixed camera angles and like you might think of it as dated design but that is like that is how that game was made the puzzles are centered around the idea that you're looking at your environment in a very specific way certain items glint in the corner of rooms and then it like piques your interest like oh okay like i need to see that out but there's a gate here and then like i need to think about uh like when i go to this room what's it emphasizing here so there's so much intentionality with you having pre-rendered backgrounds that they can make them look as artistic or as nice as they want but there's it's also conducive to what you're supposed to be doing from room to room or from whatever part of the room that you are currently exploring so um that ties into i'm gonna probably be mentioning this a lot is that not just because it has pre-rendered backgrounds but as also as sam mentioned uh before we got on here it's like the cd-rom era of games point and click adventures were kind of the that was like the hottest stuff on pc especially and having replayed this this game is like you know we think of resident evil as an action survival horror franchise but playing through re1 this almost feels a lot like a point and click adventure game especially once you start trying to rack your head around what the puzzle solutions are what items did i miss what room should i go to next what what room what doors does this key even apply to and then i found myself like backtracking a lot and you know getting a little frustrated here and there but once you find a solution you're like oh my god i'm a i'm a genius and that's a consequence of the game to being designed almost like closer to a point and click adventure game that also plays to how the game is stylized it really is it's like the CD-ROM era of that you have like Seventh Guest is that what that was called when you have games and then there was of course Return to Zork and Mist and stuff like that these games you have an inventory that you fill with like pieces of a crank and then you combine them and then you use them that's the entire gameplay of those games this adds some basic you know shooting and running around and avoiding things and action elements to it that that's the innovation right like the rest of it is really drawing from those kind of those point and click it from the what's it called scum engine yeah lucas arts games uh taken into the the the 3d era and i wanted to mention one thing about the graphics i think that there's we already talked about camera angles like they can get bad right like they're not good all the time oh yeah for sure you go down a hallway then you reach go back down that hallway you go down and go back down it over and over again because you're trying to find which way is forward in the hallway and then there's also a contrast issue that's just kind of even in the hd remake or whatever the the the drawings they don't show where like a staircase down is very well or where a door is very well you end up you really that's why i end up using the map so much right it's because like that really tells you but until you until you have a map it's really hard because there's this kind of this muddy single camera perspective um and that doesn't work for me all the time but it's pretty funny and then one last thing about the graphics the doors opening is ridiculous well and it's not necessary anymore and it's very funny that i was gonna go back and forth through our doors i was gonna say that i like that because so there's a loading screen in between every room and they show the door and i appreciate that every door is bespoke it's the door you're opening the stairs are best even if it's an elevator you see what you see the exact thing that you've traveled through I appreciate that. If you go outside, this doors are metal. I love, I really like the doors. I will, I love the remakes. Don't get me wrong, but I do lament the door transition because I think it's such a, a great way of building dread. Like what am I about to see next kind of thing? They're in the remake and you can't skip them. I know that's what I recommend. In the RE2 remakes and stuff like that is what I mean. But real quick, I want to go back. You see, it's a skip button. Like you don't need to load the room. A little silly to me. I want to go back a little bit to what you guys were talking about with the point and click adventure, because 100% it reminds me of very like evocative of the King's Quest era of like Sierra point and click stuff. But I'm doing a little bit of research. You know, I read the book Itchy Tasty, which is kind of a recounting of the development of all the RE games, along with I checked out the Sphere Hunters channel on YouTube, which she's fantastic. She does a lot of like long form survival horror video essays, and she's fantastic. and then I did some of my own independent research and one thing that stood out to me is that for the original 1996 Resident Evil it was created by a man named Tokuro Fujiwara who is the director of Sweet Home which was a Famicom survival horror RPG so turn-based Final Fantasy horror game but he wanted to remake Sweet Home on the PlayStation 1 as a first-person shooter. So RE1 was originally going to be a first-person experience, but then he ended up, like, they lost the sweet home rights, and they handed it over, the reins, to Shinji Mikami, his prodigy. And he was like, oh, this dude's a scaredy cat, so I want him to make a scary game. And thus, he did that. And also, for all the scoopers out there, Tokuro Fujiwara was the director on Bionic Commando. Oh, my gosh. And Ghouls and Ghosts. Oh, my gosh. wow so it's all coming from good pedigree and if i may go on one super quick tangent because i'm never going to be able to do this in my entire life sweet home is a video game adaptation of a movie in japan uh that was produced and directed by two of my favorite japanese filmmakers it was directed by kiyoshi kurosawa who's done uh the a modern masterpiece called cure and it was produced by juizo itami who's made one of my all-time favorite japanese films called uh tampopo so it's really fun to trace all of this pedigree back and be like man they had some really cool people working on over at capcom on all this stuff okay let's talk a bit about the music and sound and the voice acting first of all how about that save room music oh it's so good it's good I just every time I go to Save Room I'm just gonna chill here for a little bit and listen to this it's it's and it's atmospheric and I love I think everything they did with the soundtrack in the RE1 remake the 2002 to 2015 remake is phenomenal music-wise like it's it's a very full score like you can really just uh you hear all the instruments is what I'll say is it the same Save Room music in the 1996 version it's a similar you can tell it's the same song but I think i prefer the original playstation one whatever i'm not sure if it's red book audio or blue book audio on the playstation one but i think it's especially for like all the lo-fi kids out there that combined with the early polygons and jill's very cute idol animation in the original game it just all comes together to be like yeah i'm just want to i want this to be like a splash screen lo-fi beats to hunt zombies to or something yeah yeah since you can't look around a room sound is really important in this game and i think they're smart about it every time you go into a room since you can't necessarily see what's in front of you depending on the angle there's always an audio cue right either you can hear the footsteps or you hear the and you learn something you learn what enemy is in the room even before you see them because that's how distinct all of the sound design is you're like oh i know that there's uh what are they called the hunters yeah uh hunters are in here it's like oh that's that's really clever that the game teaches you this stuff implicitly yeah i like there's like a there's kind of a scored violin uh like suspense like just tone just like do and then that'll happen until and it might crescendo while you're fighting a zombie and then if it's not fully dead that it won't go fully silent. So, but once everything in the room is dead, it dead silent which is also just a really smart cool effect Yeah Dead silent You mean like the DS game Resident Evil Deadly Silence Yes. There's also a particular tune that plays in a puzzle room that's also really good. So the original famously has really hilarious voice acting. It has the you're almost a Jill sandwich. This mansion is gigantic. We could get into trouble if we get lost. We should start from the first floor. okay and jill here's a lock pick it might be handy if you the master of unlocking take it with you jill you the master of unlocking take this they re-recorded it for the 2002 remake so obviously they are a little bit embarrassed by the clunkiness of it but it's still terrible right like i i think three i think three quarters of the performances are pretty good i think near the end once you get into the laboratory, I'm like, okay, something happened here. They're like, we gotta get this game out on Tuesday. Hurry up, everybody. It does get worse. And like the very end, like the finale when you're like at the rush away from the tyrant and it's you and Barry and Chrissy. It just gets laughably bad. I do forget. The Kenneth part is really embarrassing. He's like whining the whole time and sniffling and then you heal him and he just like lies on the floor. He's like, bro, I thought you were special forces. What's going on? Yeah, I read in the manual that You got fired from the military because you were too badass, and here we are sniveling on the floor. There's a hilarious moment with Barry halfway through when he's like, this mansion's starting to get to me. I'm going to step outside for some air. It's like, what? He's like, no, don't do that, Barry. You ran into the mansion because you were being torn apart by dogs outside. That's where the dogs are. You're trapped in this nightmare mansion trying to find a way out. I'm going to step outside and get some air. So the big difference between art, there's a lot of like drastic differences, but my favorite is when you open the front door in the original game that you come in through at the start of the mansion, like at the very beginning of the game. In the original, you just get a cut scene of CG dogs trying to jump at you. But if you open the door in the remake, the dogs enter the foyer and you now have to deal with like three dogs at once. And it's like, oh Jesus. That's so smart. That's so good. Jill. Barry, I heard someone talking. Oh, you heard. I think age is starting to take its toll. Talking to myself is becoming a bad habit. Talking to yourself? You alright? What's gotten into you? I'm getting you worried, aren't I? But don't, I'm alright. I guess this creepy mansion has gotten to my nerves. Anyway, I think I'll go outside, get some fresh air for a change. Okay, controls. They updated the controls in the 2002 version. Are they better than the 1996 original? Are they easier to grasp? The tank controls are borderline the same. That said, if you're going to play the Steam version, the 2015 HD remake, uh just do the alternate controls it's so much better yeah is yeah okay go ahead michael i was gonna ask if this was one of your nymphs i i think uh for so if you're coming into this from a modern sense yes i think it'll make a lot more sense to use the the modernized controls but there's uh kind of going back to the like when we talk about fixed camera angles and intentionality yeah tank controls listen they will take maybe an hour to get used to it takes some work try like i know explain what tank controls mean to people so tank controls not a term we just around yeah absolutely um so if you know regardless of where the camera is pressing forward or up on the d-pad will move your character forward whichever direction they're looking and then you change the direction with left and right and then you press up to move forward regardless so instead of you know using a joystick to move left right up down whichever direction you want and the character will respond to the according direction so the the sense is that you need to like shift the character to the direction you want to go and then press up which sounds extremely inconvenient but hear me out the way the original resident evils were built with the camera angles the fixed camera angles and the way enemies pop up at certain points and the way you navigate certain rooms pressing up to just go straightforward regardless of where the camera is going to shift is i i almost want to say it's my preferred way to play the game although it does take some getting used to and maybe also because i'm so speed run pilled with the resident evil games but like speed running the speed run community always uses tank controls when you uh play these games but it is also once you get used to it it is easier to navigate like I found it easier to navigate boss fights because in rooms where the camera is changing a lot and you have to be quick on your feet and like you want to like dart to certain points in the room and you like sometimes you might stumble like, oh, the camera is going to change this way. So then you need to like instead of pressing up, you got to press left to keep moving forward. It's little things like that where I think it does matter if you want to have like that true experience of Resident Evil when you think about intentionality with how the game is designed. again I'm not saying like oh if you play with modernized controls you're playing it wrong it's like no no you're perfectly fine the fact that you are engaging with the game on any level it's perfectly fine with me but I do when I did play this game replay this game I took a moment be like do I want to do tank controls and then once I got once I gave it like half an hour to an hour I'm like okay yes this is kind of how I need to be playing this game so that is something that I would at least encourage Try it out, yeah. I mean, even the modern controls, there's some uncomfortableness with it. Because, like, let's say Jill is facing the camera down a hallway. So you would press down the controller for her to walk. But then as soon as the camera switches, now she's moving to the left and you're still holding down. You still have to wrap your head right there. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's also probably important to realize that a lot of people are probably trying to replay the original RE1. to get not gaming literacy, but to get some sort of understanding and like kind of center yourself in a time and place of the time that this was made. And probably not a lot of people are going to be a weirdo like me and play all of the games back to back. So I think there was that moment of revelation. I was like, whoa, it didn't have to always be like this kind of thing. But no, yeah. The only reason they're playing is to know what happened in Raccoon City. Dude, what happened in that? What the heck happened in that Spencer Mansion? Captain Wesker, where's Chris? stop it don't open that door but chris is what is it maybe it's chris now jill can you go i'm going with you chris is our old partner you know okay let me handle this yeah now that i think the one thing that will trip up people returning to this game is not the directional controls. It is the aiming of the gun. I was going to ask about that. It's fine with me because I remember the first time I played this on GameCube and I was like, this is so stupid. I cannot believe how stupid this is. And then I played Resident Evil 4 and then like, you know, I loved it so much. And now I go back to him like, I understand, like, this is a product of its time. But like, you really you don't expect to aim in this game. The most aiming you're going to do is like kind of being stuck in a corner and like either pressing up or down where you just shoot a wildly wrong direction and the thing reacts to it anyway. You don't, it's not, it's more like an adventure game where you're just clicking to shoot. Yeah. You're just clicking to shoot. It's a very generous auto aim, right? So even if you're sort of, if I realize, if you're the zombie, if I'm going to hit you, if I'm shooting like this, right? And there is something satisfying too because of the auto aim in the remake where when you wait for a zombie to get really close and you have a shotgun and you aim up, you're going to nine times out of 10 and shoot their head off and it is so satisfying. The awesome. Like you said, like when we talk about sound design, when it comes to like the guns and like, just like gushy sound of getting a headshot with a shotgun is so disgusting. I kind of love it. It rules. Yeah. So then the other big control based thing I think is the inventory and there's a good thing that the inventory pauses the game. That's not in every Resident Evil game. And thank goodness that it does. Cause you have to do a lot in your inventory system And you have to manage your inventory by running back to item boxes. And at least for the first part of the game, the save rooms are not easy to get to. They're annoying to get to, and they're far away. So saving is also a pain in the butt, because you have to have an ink ribbon. You have to take it out of a box, take it over to save, then put it back in the box so it doesn't take up an inventory slump. All that stuff is nonsense, right? It doesn't need to be in the game. It doesn't make it scarier, but it's a holdover. And you'll learn a little bit about this game this way. But back to the inventory beyond the ink ribbon part, Like a lot of this game is like, you don't have enough inventory slots. And then when you have the inventory thing that you need, you don't know when you need it. And you always need to go in your inventory and look at it closely. So it's like, there's just a lot of like things that you're not gonna know because no games do that anymore. Yeah, I was gonna bring that up as one of my big gripes. So let's jump to the wrap up here. so this is a metroidvania right yeah yeah i mean what do you yeah i mean it's the way that remember it's because it has lots of platforming yeah wait hold on we gotta start using terms to define these things yes uh what is it uh metroid dread is a platformer damn it um i i would say this is a this is a puzzle game well you gotta bring the right tool for the for the puzzle okay but the The basic gameplay loop is starting from a save room. You're going to see how far you can make it in the mansion. You either make it to the next save room or you have to backtrack, which is the exact same loop as Symphony of the Night. I love it, Damon. I love it. I was tying it back to that for you, Sam. You're constantly pushing outward on the map. Usually in Symphony of the Night, you get abilities that change how you move about and interact. You get new verbs. You have to run around the corner perimeter of every room just to make sure you've 100%ed that room and found all the doors. It like Symphony you gotta go whip all the corners In Metroidvanias you get new verbs that you interact with the environment with but I would argue in resident evil pick you become the master of unlocking but it just a glorified key right like that all that all it all is it just every permanent key every item is a key i could see it if the weapons interacted differently with the environment but this is where i draw my line in the sand right here yeah i got i'm with nick i gotta draw a line come on y'all are too old to be doing this y'all should be gatekeeping these terms no we get the troll because we were there and we thought that we're stupid to begin i'm i'm all joking though it genuinely is and i think that's my favorite part of resident evil games in general because there is this idea where you are operating within the very confined inventory space you know exactly where you need to go you have the items you need and there's just this flow state you enter where you're guiding and flying through enemies and you're just wishing past them, you're wishing past the crimson head dude who you swore you've killed like four times at this point, but you're still making it through, and that's what always stands out as being feel-good to me about Resident Evil. When you know where you need to go and you have the tools that you need in order to fulfill something, and nothing feels better than that in these games. And I like how you can settle into this gameplay loop, going from room to room, picking up items, using items to unlock the next area, but then Capcom will sprinkle in little surprises. Like, very early on. Jill, I'll just say because I was playing as Jill, she rounds a corner. You can't see what's happening. The game takes over. Jill backs up and a zombie comes out. It's just like moments like that. For the most part enemies can't follow you through doors, but once or twice they can. So it's like, what the F? Boom. Boom. There's a lot of... It's such a good sound effect. There is a lot of subversion of expectations coming from the original to this. Whether it be the addition of new areas, the addition of the crimson heads, which didn't exist in the original game, the burning of the bodies. All that stuff is pretty clever. Granted, I'm not a huge fan of the burning body system, but it's just another thing that takes up two inventory slots. You get two slots. That goes into my rant, this realization that I've had over the holiday break of Chris is the most fun way of playing the game. Yes, he only has six inventory slots compared to Jill's eight. But I would argue that the game's design and the way the map is laid out, because in place of the lockpick, Chris gets mini keys that are disposable keys that you use to unlock doors that would otherwise be lockpicked. But the route that the game takes you through as Chris, I would argue that its designs make it so that you actually never have the situation that you often run into Jill where your inventory is full and you need to go backtrack because you got to dump stuff. Because they made the almost the procedural unlocking of the mansion logical with Chris. But then with Jill, they're like, we're going to make an alternate route. She was always like the B route. When you have more room, you end up using that room. And then you kind of, it's not soft locking, but that's kind of what I call it when it's like, okay, the frustrating part of this game is where I have to go back, hike all the way back. That's the whole thing. In the RE1 remake, you mentioned earlier in the west wing of the mansion, the door that leads into that save room will break after a while. It's the east. It's the east wing, yeah. That's not in the original game. And I'm like, one, what a clever thing to add to this remake. but two, what a colossal pain in the ass. It's such a troll. It becomes one way, at least, you get to the room, but you can't get back. And that's the final area of that part of the mansion. So you're in that area a lot, and then you have to go up and around over and over again. It's very clever, though. I like it. The restrictive inventory, I would say, is the biggest sort of, like, warning to anyone who's going to play this game who hasn't played it before. Because it's so limited, you can't take much at all with you. You don't have an item box, but you have to dump it in there. So you're heading out to explore more of the mansion. You can take maybe your pistol, your keys, and a green herb. You make it far, and then you get to the next place where an item needs to be used. Oh, I need the crank. And there's no way of knowing what you're going to need. So you end up either backtracking or just loading your save. There's no way, and this is all joking, Sam, but I would love a modified guide where it's just like, don't tell me what to do per se, but just at every point in the game, Just tell me what items I need to have in my inventory, and then I'll figure out the rest. I definitely did that as part of the chapter heads, or as like, before you leave the save, I need to take this. But you could just do that. It would make the game a lot more fun. My big recommendation is, you know, I think it is fun to use a guide for this game. But my biggest recommendation is play another Resident Evil first. Don't start with this. And I used to always say play four first, even though it was the most different. But now you can play two or three remake. And then why I'm saying that is because those are a lot more they will condition you to things like save rooms and inventory management and puzzle solutions and keys and and the types of like the kind of flow of weapons through a game which is like you have a handgun you have a shotgun then you get a choice from like a bunch of different things and some of them are kind of crappy like you need to know these kind of resident evil essentials and then you can go play the annoying stuff in this game will be far less annoying than just going and being like well i'm going to start at the beginning don't do that yeah there's a there's a certain like design language that comes with resident evil that is consistent regardless of what which which one which entry you play there's some things are consistent so when you work backwards and when you when i came back to the original resident evil i'm like okay like there are certain things that just haven't changed uh and like i like that there is a consistency that you see a lot in re7 and resident evil village and i i from what i from from the little I played of Resident Evil Requiem, still consistent to this day. And I love that as much as Resident Evil changed, I had a dark time with five and six, I would say. That is, it kind of like, it gained its, it remembered what it was about. And so if you go back to RE1, you're like, oh, this is the origins of it. Yeah, it's frustrating in parts. That's what makes it so fun. Yeah, but I think it's important, and as I get older, I've valued the friction that came with older games. Yeah. And I wouldn't say the inventory stuff makes the game what it is. Like that stuff is very frustrating. And I don't say like, oh, like you should play this game the way it is intended and you're supposed to like it. It's like, no, I did not like that stuff when I replayed this game. But it's important to engage with it to know what that game was at the time and how far it has come around. And like part of it is like, hey, you get a better appreciation of where games were and where they are now. So as frustrating as that stuff might be, it's like, got to eat your vegetables. And, you know, it's and when you ask, is this game still fun? Like, I think the core, the game itself is still fun. But I also think that in the process of playing the game, it is also fun to, you know, to know what it's like when games came out at the time. And it's a kind of a relic of the past that has been modernized in some sense. But I think that is also fun to look back and be like, oh, this is a series that I really like. That's where it was. And now I have that institutional knowledge. Now I have that design language as a series continues. Because, again, this is a series that's going on to this day. 20 years at this point, still going strong. I play a lot of it. I eat a lot of vegetables in my games. I love going back and playing crappy old games. I know Damon does this a lot, too. He'll roll the dice on like an old, you know, a system and try to play something you never played and just suffer through it a little bit that I love doing that. This game is a lot more fun. It is the ketchup of vegetables. Yeah, sure. Yeah. It is, it is a hundred percent like just a down and out great fun experience. I will recommend it to anybody and I will not recommend, you know, chubby cherub to anybody. It is a very unfortunate side. Yeah. uh two observations before we wrap things up i think the actual scariest part of the game is the sharks oh 100 percent like waist high water saying that too waist high water with a giant shark chasing me both the 96 version and this one filled me with such dread of like it's the subnautica thing right when i'm in a body of water i move slower and i know something's after me and it's just that again i was terrified of sharks as a kid so it's just it just evokes this like primal fear in me that I truly cannot explain but the sharks are really good looking in the remake and that one explodes real good too. I love how you run through the water and then you go up the stairs and you're in the sort of control room and you go down and then there's like a porthole and you can see the sharks swimming around in there. It looks so cool. And then when you try to like, you know, do your stuff, they start ramming the glass when you're in that room and it's really good. It's a great moment in the game. I'm trying to think, the scariest moment is and I think the sharks are are scary when they're out of the water too. Cause you're like, they're flopping around evil. Yeah. Are they just going to bite me? Cause they're flopping around. And then one's huge. Yep. Like there's just like a huge one. That's a good set piece. That's a really good set piece. Yeah. One thing that you guys missed though, because you played as Jill in the remake, right? Did you all play as Jill is Chris. And what's the dude who's face, who faces the giant snake when you're playing as Jill. That's Kenneth. That's Kenneth. So Kenneth has an incredible death. against the Neptune shark, where it's basically like that scene from Deep Blue Sea where Samuel L. Jackson gets ripped apart by the shark, and it's that, but Kenneth, and his arm gets lopped off, and you get to use his semi-automatic shotgun once you find it, and it's like, hell yeah. Great death. Also, Resident Evil predated Deep Blue Sea by three years. Well, there you go. Deep Blue Sea stole from Resident Evil. You heard it here first. Finally, the funniest part of the whole game, I hope you caught this, Sam, when you get down to the labs, and you find a photo of the team of scientists that made the T-Virus. They're all wearing their white lab coats and one of them is Wesker. He's wearing his white lab coat with his sunglasses on. Sunglasses off the wall. It's incredible. You know he has his infinite magnum under there too. And he can teleport too. You just don't know it yet. This is a really fun one. That's the best part about this show. A great excuse to revisit old games. There you have it. Nicely job Capcom. The original Resident Evil is still fun today, especially if you played it back in the day If you've never played the pre-rendered Resident Evil just know the controls might take some getting used to and Expect to do a certain amount of backtracking if you're not sure what items you'll need next But Sam did just updated the IGN guide so Thanks for watching. We have more is it still fun today episodes planned more games from 1996 in celebration of IGN's 30th And also games from other years as well I will not rest until we know whether or not every game is still fun to play. Thank you, Nick Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Michael. Thank you to Tayo working behind the scenes to make this episode possible My name is Damon and we'll see you on the next one Jill, you did a fine job