Gaming off the Beaten Path

Welcome Claire! Consider the area you're in a...special playground I have prepared just for you. Please try and keep me amused, and do not disappoint me by dying too soon! Halloween is here, so that means it's time to get spooky once again. It's been a while, but we're finally getting back to Resident Evil. I am not a huge fan of horror in general, but Resident Evil is one of my all-time favorite gaming franchises. It has the third most games in my personal top 100, behind only Mega Man and Final Fantasy, and is tied with FF for the most games on my 10s list (three apiece, for the record). Last year, I reviewed the absolutely incredible Gamecube remake on Halloween. Maybe next year I'll review Resident Evil 4, another 10/10 that just recently received a big budget remake. Both of those are all time classics, they are not only personal favorites but also important touchstones in the gaming industry as a whole. But, as great as they are, as revolutionary as they were,

  I knew I was going to get here eventually. For what feels like a decade now, I've heard about Sweet Home, the NES game that served as the basis for Resident Evil. It's one of those games I knew I was eventually going to review, and it looks like now is the time. I think a lot of gamers know the story by now. Resident Evil started as a remake of Sweet Home, with the latter's director Tokuro Fujiwara working with the former's originator Shinji Mikami. After realizing the technical limitations of the relatively new PlayStation hardware, as well as a variety of other snags, the project evolved into the zombie-filled survival-horror icon we know and love. It's a title that most people know is influential, even if all they know about it is its name.   You know, for all of the talk about how influential it is, I barely knew anything about Sweet Home's gameplay. I was totally expecting some level of action game, maybe akin to the original Metal Gear. I was shocked, p

 Last week, we looked at the 2002 Resident Evil Remake for the GameCube, a game I believe to be one of the greatest of all time. In that review, I talked a little bit about the gaming industry's obsession with remakes, especially in recent years. That led me down a massive rabbit hole, one I wanted to explore a little bit deeper here. There are times where it feels like literally every popular game from the 90's has, or will get, a remake, or at least a remaster. Final Fantasy VII, Secret of Mana, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, the original Resident Evil Trilogy, the list goes on and on. And it's continuing to grow. Remakes of Silent Hill 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, The Witcher and a boatload of others are on their way. At this point, it's not even just big-name games either. They are, honest to God, remaking Lollipop Chainsaw. Let that sink in. There's a Joe & Mac remake on the way too. Remember them? Don't get me wrong, I think it's cool that

  (Re)-Enter the Survival Horror The days are getting shorter, the temperature is dropping and another Halloween is in the books. I guess now is as good a time as any to finally dive into Resident Evil.   I don't think Resident Evil needs any introduction. It was an instant hit when it was released in 1996, but I can't imagine anyone at Capcom ever saw it becoming as big as it did. It has the second longest running continuous lore of any video game franchise. It has tons of sequels, spin-offs, major motion pictures, crappy Netflix shows that will soon be mercy killed , animated features, you name it. It wasn't the first horror game, not by a longshot. You had games based on horror properties as far back as the 70's. Games like the 7th Guest, Alone in the Dark and D all predate RE, as do more cinematic horror games like Phantasmagoria. But the first Resident Evil was what really put the genre on the map while also coining the term we still use for games of its ilk today: