You do not spam out bullets in the Arklay mountains, you conserve ammo, loosing shots only when you know they’ll count so that you might eke out a little more life. You do not dash about solving puzzles, but plan your route and limited inventory space (six slots for Chris, eight for Jill) to gradually unpick the sadist’s puzzle box that is the Spencer estate. It’s a slow burn, but steadily the stakes mount and by the midpoint you’re jumping at clattering window panes, wary of the corpses on the floor that you’ve learned might not stay dead, and touching cloth every time the game breaks its restraint and deploys one of its orchestrated scares. It’s not terrifying in the way Alien: Isolation is – despite the similarities between limited typewriter saves and Alien’s emergency phone booths – but if you’re itchy (tasty!) for a survival-horror game that emphasises jump scares and the tense scrabble to stay alive, this will scratch that itch very nicely.
The REmaster even brilliantly amplifies the vibe with the upgrade to 5.1 surround sound. There’s no noise quite as fascinatingly horrible as the squelch of a partially decomposed foot taking a step just a few inches away off screen. Fires crackle with a warmth you can hear, and the gentle safe room music has never been a more soothing balm for tender nerves. In many ways, the audio does what visual polish never could, immersing you more fully in the rich atmosphere.
I’m less sure about the REmaster’s final addition: the new control scheme. Yes, Resident Evil’s tank controls are notoriously awkward, but that’s sort of the point. Mikami and co didn’t want you to feel confident, but powerless. I’m painfully aware, however, that I’ve trained my brain to handle them. Since you can’t control the camera anyway, after a short adjustment period it makes sense to me that pushing forward on the stick moves your character forward relative to their own eye line, saving you reassessing your thumb’s angle with every perspective flip. The new controls mean doing exactly that, but with one caveat: you’ll keep moving in the direction of your last tilt so long as you keep holding the stick. It’s just a different kind of awkward to my mind, but if it helps you sink yourself into Resident Evil, then that’s great.
And that’s really the story of this whole REmaster. It’s an often brilliant but uneven wrapper for a game that’s still, after nearly two decades, one of – if not the - best B-movies in videogame form ever made. Any visual low points are worth enduring because the game itself remains a cold-as-a-morgue-slab classic, and this version offers the best-sounding, most versatile way to play it yet.
Supply Gamesradar
Resident Evil (HD remake) review - App Review 4u
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