Resident Not Evil

 I've watching my way through Resident Evil videogames, done 1-3 and on Code Veronica, and I have one major observation: this isn't horror.

The game consists of 'wander around, find you can't go through doors until you get a key, which will generally be on the other side of the map, behind plenty of other doors you will need to hunt keys down for'. And incidentally there are zombies around. But they aren't horrific, they're just plain annoying. There isn't anything in the game about the fact that they are reanimated humans. The characters aren't bothered by this fact, any mention of T-Virus is in the background material files you find, there is nothing directly in the game, no cut scene or anything, that really cares about it. Instead the cut scenes are people just trying to get away from the particular locations, or dealing with boss battles. Because there need to be boss battles, which are not zombies either, but other creations, like the game can't be bothered with them for big enemies either, because zombies just aren't interesting.

Instead, it's all about the keys. With some really annoying obscure keys to get to. And, due to these games being on older machines, the rooms are like five steps big, then you go through door animation #33453 while it loads the next level! Half the damn game is waiting for the door loading screens!

Why did this catch on enough for there to be billions of games and several movies and colouring books or whatever? Was it just that there was nothing else to play?

People keep citing RE4 as a great game. We'll see...

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