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Let’s just ignore the fact that Resident Evil Archives is a simple Wii port of the Game Cube game from 2002, okay?
You’re not going to get enhanced graphics. You’re not going to get Wii motion controls. What you’re going to get is an old game that you can play on a modern system without having to muck around with controllers on wires or save game cards.
Is that enough to buy Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil Zero? If you’ve played it before, no. If you haven’t, then it’s worth going with the Wii disc as opposed to finding the old Game Cube version just because it’s easier to get going with it (and likely cheaper at this point).
Who’s the Real Enemy Here?
By now, you likely know the modus operandi of Resident Evil games. There are zombies and spiders and dogs. You shoot them. When you’re not shooting zombies and spiders and dogs, you’re solving bizarre riddles to open doors. When you’re not shooting zombies and spiders and dogs or solving bizarre riddles to open doors, you’re playing inventory Tetris.
In fact, the inventory system is worse here than in Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil. Although you have control of two characters, both have a painfully limited amount of items you can carry. You can swap inventory between them, but this is a pain because you’ll often have to drop items to clear room to accept an item from the other person. When you drop items, they’re difficult to identify, making them awkward to pick back up.
Even more perplexing, you can only drop a certain amount of items in a room. The first time I was told I didn’t have enough room to drop more items in a gigantic foyer of a mansion, I thought it was a typo. It’s ridiculous to increase the difficulty of a game by making you choose between a shotgun and health, or to force the player back to the beginning of a level because he didn’t have enough inventory space to carry the weapon/item he needs to proceed. This was barely acceptable in Resident Evil. It’s not at all acceptable here.
Zombie Killing: Share It With the One You Love
But let’s talk about this two character dynamic, because it’s pretty interesting.
You play the game as the adorable Rebecca Chamber and the typical Billy Coen. Rebecca’s a medic, or something. Billy’s a murderer, or something. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that at times you’ll have both characters on the screen, swapping control of each to solve puzzles or kill zombies. You can control how aggressive the non-player character is, although the choices are limited. You get aggressive or idle.
“Don’t be an idiot” should’ve been a choice, as aggressive causes the character to waste ammunition needlessly, whereas idle will see him/her just stand there and get attacked. Also, the NPC is never smart enough to take health when needed.
And, yet, I like the overall dynamic because it opens up the game to some new puzzles. The result is that you never really feel like you’re playing alone, and although the lack of isolation hurts the overall creepy-factor, it means you get less dead air, so to speak. Rebecca and Billy develop a logical and fun relationship through the proceedings that, combined with the copious cut scenes, gives the game a more cinematic feel with a more urgent pace than Resident Evil.
Familiarity is Not Frightening
Somehow, though, this doesn’t come together as well as it should. I’m going to blame this on two factors.
First, single-player co-op aside, we’ve been here before. There’s just not enough happening in Resident Evil Zero to make it a logical upgrade from its predecessor. This wouldn’t have been a major problem back when the games were released with a couple of years between them. But it’s been less than six months since Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil, and that’s not enough to prevent you from growing pretty bored with this pretty quickly.
Second, it’s not scary. Again, maybe this is because we’ve all grown used to this by now, but any sense of terror you may have felt in the first game will likely be replaced by eye-rolls in this one.
The “Zero” is for Reasons to Play it Again
I didn’t mind working through this game because I’ve never played it before. As fan of the series, I felt I had to.
Second, Rebecca Chambers sure is a cutie. She’s vulnerable—much more realistic than your typical video game heroine—and that made me want to work all the more to save her. Same goes for Billy, actually. Despite the ex-marine gruffness, he’s portrayed as a guy who’s not sure how to survive, but he’ll damn sure give it a try. I’ll always take characters like this over, say, the invulnerable Wesker and Ada Wong. I want to feel that video game characters need my help, not that they get pissed at me when I let them die.
In the end, Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil Zero is a passable game. There are certainly worse games out there for $30, but you can also do better. Buy it for your collection if you haven’t already played, but there’s nothing here to make a repeat helicopter ride to the Arklay Mountains worth the trip.
Site [Resident Evil]
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