series. There are no quick time events, multiple character arches, or overblown action sequences

to be found: Only green herbs, ink ribbons, and the distant moans of the undead.

It's been seventeen years since the first Resident Evil pushed the survival horror into

the mainstream. It makes those of us who can clearly remember the exact moment that those

zombie dogs came crashing through a set of windows, feel kind of old.

Thankfully the experience was remade in the 2001 remake of the original Resident Evil

for the Gamecube, Capcom made sure a new generation of gamers would collectively s*** their pants,

whilst forgetting about the terrible live action film that had just released.

Hot off the remakes success, Resident Evil: Zero would be released just a shy year later,

and three years before the entirely revolutionary fourth game in the series that has since been

cited as the series best. And while 4th game is a marvel of game design and truly worthy

of being named one of the best games of the past decade, Resident Evil 2 will always be

my all-time favorite of the series, which may be why I enjoyed Resident Evil: Zero so

much. Taking place before the events of the first

game, you play as Rebecca Chambers, the series favorite S.T.A.R.S medic, who has found herself

stranded aboard a train that has just been ravished by man eating slugs. It doesn't take

long for Rebecca to partner up with Billy Coen, an escaped convict her team was after.

Zombies find their way into the equation and the their partnership seems reasonable so

long as giant scorpions and androgynous villains are about.

The game's biggest deviation from the remake is the abailty to play as both Rebecca and

Billy, switching between the two by the press of a button. Both characters have their own

special attributes: Rebecca can mix herbs and chemicals, while Billy can use his brute

strength to solve the block pushing puzzles the series is infamously known for.

Partnering up with a serial killer, under already frightening circumstances seems right

for the narrative picking. In the traditional Capcom way, the story and writing is so bad

it's almost a parody of the way Hollywood action characters speak. Which isn't a complaint,

as the cut scenes helps to balance the jump scares with brief moments of unintentional

laughter. The other welcome change to Zero is the ability

to drop items. Instead of having to run back and forth between item boxes, you can just

drop items wherever your character stands. Which helps cut down on the already heavy

backtracking one will encounter. Resident Evil Zero is as classic of a Resident

Evil experience as you'd expect. Its biggest problem is that it's okay with satisfying

what's expected and not much else, making the experience feel more like an expansion

pack, than its own full-fledged game. And I'm okay with that.

As a huge Resident Evil fan, I'm willing to look over the lame enemy design, which resorts

to me to imagining the designers turning to one another and asking "what animals haven't

we oversized and zombiefied yet?" The oversized bugs, evil monkeys, and entire exclusion of

the Crimson Heads, feels lazy. The rest is still that zombie evading, key

collecting, mansion exploring, and obtuse puzzle solving, that we fell in love with

in the first place. Those looking to satiate a nostalgic hunger for a Jill Sandwich, look

no further than Resident Evil: Zero.