Originally a N64 title remade for the Gamecube and (much) later ported to other systems. Resident Evil 0, despite its old school survival horror allure, is harshly let down by its downright dismal gameplay design choices that aimed to unnecessarily reinvent the wheel. Gloves off, dear reader. I’ve always despised this game. From its level design to its item & character management mechanics, its nonsensical story & characters, and finally its cringe falsetto-infused main theme. I remember forcing myself through this game back in the days because it did have all the ingredients of a classic old school survival horror game (the Gamecube was my favourite system at the time as it had all the essential RE titles) but it executes them in such a dismal way. The dual character dynamic is a damn neat concept and swapping between the two on the fly sounds great on paper -- it might've worked swiftly using the N64's cartridge medium -- in practice it's nothing short of tedious. It means babysitting the other character manually at all times. Unfortunately neither of them can be temporarily stuffed in a rusty dumpster like RE4’s whats-her-face. Getting rid of the magic item box in favor of dropping items anywhere anyone pleases is, once again, great on paper but in practice it's just messy, making the entire map a giant messy item box. The plot, pacing and its characters, the main villain, as well as the vast majority of enemies all have one thing in common; they are as ridiculous and dull as they come. The soundtrack overuses repetitive cues, whilst the rest of the tracks feel insipid. RE0’s cardinal sin lies in its storytelling inconsistencies. After the events of RE0, we see Rebecca teaming up with Chris in the Spencer mansion, but she doesn’t ever mention anything of her predicament in RE0. Which happened the day before... Not even a “Hey Chris, the craziest thing happened to me yesterday, you’ll never believe me! I was facing off a giant mutated scorpion inside of a train full of weird leeches and infected zombies. The train crashed and we ended up inside some sort of a training facility with hidden laboratory/factory/treatment plant below. And whaddayaknow today we’re stuck in this creepy mansion full of traps, zombies, mutants and whatevs. Like, ain’t that the darnest thang, Chris?” That’s the thing with unnecessary prequels. There was no need to tell this story. It serves no purpose, other than to muddy the core narrative. It’s great seeing most of the old school RE games on GOG, truly. Though RE0 is just a total mess of neat ideas poorly executed. It looks great, sure, but this is by far the worst entry in the old school survival horror era of the series.
TL;DR This isn't Silent Hill 2 from the old days. What it is however is an expertly made recreation by a talented team that respected the original enough to not crap over its legacy. A high quality SH2 Fan Remix, if you will. Not meant to replace the classic by any means, but more to act as a companion piece to the original I love. I'm pushing 40. A survival horror fan of the golden era which spawned some of the best & most definitive survival horror games ever created. To level with you, dear reader, gaming as a hobby has been losing its appeal to me for a while now. Quality horror games are few & far between, it's more likely I'll get my fix from a smaller developer (Tormented Souls, Crow Country, Withering Rooms, ...) than from a bigger studio handling a bigger franchise. You bet I was skeptical about a SH2 remake. Especially after Konami had milked the franchise dry with the godawful low quality spin-off train wrecks. I was convinced the franchise was dead & beyond saving, and that no developer could ever resuscitate it successfully. As of writing, I've completed SH2R 100% with all endings. As protective of the original Silent Hill games as I am, I don't feel the Remake has altered or tampered with its source material in such a way that would ruin the experience. Is it perfect? No. A handful of things bother me, most of it can be remedied by giving the NexusMods page a visit to fix that goofy looking Angela face. What cannot be fixed are the somewhat downplayed x-themes (thanks to DEI companies acting like the permanently offended puritanical conservative morality police, meddling with things they don't understand) & some of the voice acting; James has too much of that Hollywood gasping-at-every-line thing going on. Otherwise, I'm satisfied with this remake. Whilst damn close, it doesn't replace the original; SH2 is a classic. But there is definitely room for the remake to act as a what-if companion piece. Now about a proper OG SH remake..?
Interestingly it’s the logo redesign that perhaps reflects best which course is being served. Whilst the original 1993 DOOM logo had a labyrinth motif embedded, adequately hinting at the complexity of the level design found within, the new logo has been seemingly washed with bleach & stripped of its artistic nuance. What a perfectly apt illustration for this new iteration. Enter COD with demons, complete with focus-testing & tailored to a mainstream lowest common denominator market yearning after spectacular instant gratification kills for that micro-dose of dopamine, only to repeat it ad nauseam in a futile attempt to keep momentum going. Somehow this apple fell so far & hard from the tree, splattered on the ground into applesauce, lay in the sun to fester unrecognizably, until someone scraped up the remains and baptized it as "Apple 2016". One cannot possible claim with a straight face that a series that arguably started as a thinking man’s shooter boiled itself down to this, and still call it “true to its roots”? It demonstrably isn’t. Being merely in possession of all the ingredients doesn’t make one a kitchen virtuoso. If I (happily) want to turn the gore & violence dial to 11 whilst scratching that old school labyrinthine itch, there is always Brutal DOOM. But pushing 40, perhaps somewhat jaded, growing up with the OG iterations, the fact is that DOOM 2016 is wasted on me, no matter how persuasive the bad-ass Mick Gordon guitars & glory kills montages present themselves as.
Just got this for the sake of preservation because I don't want Bethesda to tamper with it like they did with the Remaster.
