Resident Evil Remake Has Always Secretly Been The Best Resident Evil Game
6. Enter The Survival Horror
First up, it’s probably worth establishing that a lot of what makes the remake so good is obviously down to what made 1996’s Resident Evil a seminal survival horror experience. But while that title laid the groundwork, it wasn’t without its rough edges. It was famously a surprise hit for Capcom, who barely gave the devs enough money to cobble together voice actors and a localisation team to knock up a story. That’s how we got brilliantly stilted lines about Jill Sandwiches.
Though the title is ostensibly an “action” game, in that you’re head-shotting zombies and battling giant snakes, every piece of gameplay is treated more like a puzzle to be solved. Your limited inventory space requires you to equip items as tactically as possible, forcing you to weigh up how much firepower you want to bring with you, how many health items you want to rely on and how much space you’re going to need for puzzle items.
There’s constantly a trade off to every decision you make. For instance, you might have 30 shotgun shells saved up, but you might only have the space in your inventory to carry the 10 already loaded into the weapon, which reinforces the idea of limited ammo even if you technically have a lot.
Just because you've got plenty of bullets stashed in the item box doesn't mean you can actually rely on them at all times, which creates a strange dichotomy between how well-equipped the player is, and how powerful (or powerless) they actually feel.
In the early game you’ll probably find yourself clinging on to as many weapons as possible, but that only gets you in even more trouble when you have to backtrack through dangerous areas once you realise you don’t have the space for key items, which in turn could lead you to waste resources or take damage.
Consequently, growing in strength and confidence isn’t all based on figuring out how to scavenge the most ammo, but how to use resources smartly. By the end, you’ll know exactly how much ammo you’ll need to get from one end of the map to the other, freeing up space to to progress through the game as quickly as possible.