'Resident Evil'- videogame questions

Cafe Society
#1

Okay, I finally got a Playstation 2- and I want to play all the Resident Evil games I can. I’ve never played the games before, but I just got into video games maybe 6 months ago, and I’ve decided that for a true gaming experience, I must play the Resident Evil games. I’m going to play them in order, starting with the first one. Some of the games are unavailable on Playstation, I know, but I’ll play what I can.

In your opinion, what is the best RE game for Playstation or PS2?

Should I get some of those strategy guides? Or download hints and walk-throughs off the internet? Basically what I’m asking is, are any of these games set up in such a fashion that they’re impossible without hints, or can you figure them out okay just from game play?

Are any of the games anything like the movie? The movie was okay, sort of mindless fun, but I don’t see how the plot could really have anything to do with the games.

Stuff I wonder about:

  1. If the zombies are always hungry, why don’t they eat each other?

  2. In Japan, Resident Evil is called Biohazard, which makes more sense to me, given the nature of the games. Why was the name changed for US release?

#2

I guess I’ll finally shed my long-time lurker status to post a reply to this.

IMHO, the best Resident Evil game for PS or PS2 would either be Resident Evil 2, or maybe RE:Code Veronica. Both of those had more actual gameplay than 1 or 3(which are also good).

Don’t bother with a strategy guide, most of the puzzles are easy, and if you get stuck, just try each item everywhere you can. If you get really stuck, a walk-though online can help. (try www.gamefaqs.com)

The movie was … OK, at best. It’s supposed to set the scene for the first one (I think). It has little to do with the rest of the games.

Other stuff:

  1. I remember reading somewhere (no cite, sorry), that the zombies craved living flesh, and thats why they attack people.

  2. There is supposedly a band named Biohazard in the US, so to avoid copyright hassle, they just changed the name. No biggie, although Biohazard does make alot more sense.

#3

I’ve only played 3 (Nemesis), but I enjoyed it. I’m worse at solving video game puzzles than any other man, woman, beast or child in the entire industrialized free world and I still “solved” the game without consulting any online sources or books. It’s pretty easy when all the items you might need gleam as if they’re made out of platinum and only has a single apparent purpose (gee, I wonder if this fire hose might be for the fire hydrant I just passed. The one next to the blazing fire blocking that door…)

#4

i agree with Pracylop, none of the RE games are really that hard, if you’ve ever played a game with puzzles, they will be a walk in the park, but if you have trouble you could always post a question here and im sure some one could help you.

          IMO, the first one and Code Veronica were the freakest because you didn't know what was going on  (Code VERONICA, IIRC, was about the T-virus)the horrible voice acting for the first is a little hard to get past, but is still a horrible game. Over all the RE 2, IMHO, is best of the series  
              
          the movie is completly different then the game, the game is scary because there is lots of silence with slight ambient music, the movie had a sound track by slipknot....nuff said.  the games are best played in the dark with the volume turned up :)

         also if it turns out that you like the RE stuff, i would recomend Silent Hill, its about 10 timse as freaky and quite a bit harder, but its based in the RE game engine so it shouldn't be that hard to get used to

  1. They do, there are numerous scene in the games of zombies eating other zombies. I don’t think it was addressed in the movie…

  2. Im not sure why exactly, but Pracylop does make a good point about Biohazard being taken by the Brooklyn based, 80’s rap-rock band, “Biohazard.”
    hope this helps.

#5

wait a sec…i made soooo many mistakes in my post…damn-it…this just goes to show the need to proofreading…im such an idot :frowning:

#6

To answer your questions:
I’ve played 1, 2, and CV.

I think 2 is the best one out of those.

As has been mentioned, You should be able to solve these without guides if you have any video game experience.

I avoided the movie – it looked really bad.

#7

I think they used “Biohazard” in Japan because “Resident Evil” doesn’t translate well to Japanese, but I could be mistaken.

RE2 is my favorite of the series, and can be found for $20 or less easily. Heck, even the PS2 RE:CV just went Greatest Hits, and is $20.

RE games definetly score big in the atmosphere/creepiness department, but I don’t care too much for their control scheme and they really haven’t done much with the game since it first began (Not as bad as Tomb Raider, but the franchise is getting long in the tooth).

And when you play though the game for the first time, play in the dark with the lights off and the sound up. There are some genuinely creepy parts that will get you sometimes even when you expect it.

#8

Alright, my b/f and I just finished the first Resident Evil game. Not bad, but not quite what I expected, either. Perhaps RE2 will be more what I imagine. It only took us about 6 hours to finish, and you guys were right, the puzzles are easy. But juggling your items is a pain. We played as Chris, so maybe that’s why it was so annoying. Is it worth going back and doing it again as Jill?

On to RE2 sometime later in the week. But first, some more stuff I wonder about:

There’s not much backstory to the first game- you only really know that there’s some accident at a laboratory and now some special commando team comes in. Later, the T-Virus is mentioned, and you do meet a lot of mutated creatures. Hardly any other info, though. So who do the S.T.A.R.S. work for? The character selection at the beginning shows Chris and Jill on Raccoon City Police Dept. ID cards. Is that who they work for? If so, why doesn’t Chris know who Umbrella Co. is?

Who does the mansion belong to? Who lived there? Who runs Umbrella? Obviously they’re doing some super-secret research and many nefarious experiments, but to what end? Bioweapons? World domination? Better living through chemistry?

Your character gets bitten by zombies during the game; why don’t you get infected? Why do you never turn into a zombie yourself, or need some sort of antidote for the virus?

On another note, I’m glad someone brought up Silent Hill. I played Silent Hill 2 and loved it, despite being completely baffled about the plot of the game. Can anyone explain it to me?
SPOILERS***************************

Some Silent Hill 2 things I’m utterly confused about:

  1. Who or what is Maria? Is she actually James’ wife Mary?

  2. Did James kill his wife? Why?

  3. Who the hell is the little girl that keeps showing up? How does she know Mary? And who are the other characters, and what are they doing in the town?

  4. Speaking of the town, what the hell is wrong with Silent Hill? Where are all the inhabitatnts? Some are dead, yes, but the rest? Did they flee when the monsters showed up? And where did the monsters come from? Or did the townspeople turn into the monsters? If so, why? Did the T-Virus from RE get loose in Silent Hill?

  5. Who or what are the weird pyramid-headed guys that keep showing up? What’s with the paintings of them? What’s with the weird history of the town?

  6. Is it all just a bad dream?
    And should I seek out the first Silent Hill game? Is it as good as the second? Does it clear up anything about the plot? I’m so confused.

#9

Silent Hill is a deliberately confusing game but there does seem to be some underlying order to it. While I’m sure other people have different interpretations of what is happening, this is what is going on based on my play of the games and what I have found on the 'net.

To answer your questions in no particular order.

There are really two Silent Hills (or maybe three, depending on how you count things). There is the real Silent Hill; a nice vacation town located somewhere, and then there is the “Twilight Zone” version of Silent Hill, which is where the games take place. I’ll call this one Shadow Silent Hill.

Shadow Silent Hill has two forms; Misty Silent Hill and Dark Silent Hill.

Silent Hill has a very dark and bloody past. Even the native American tribes who lived in this area treated this as an evil place. Something about the area seems to encourage evil and murderous acts.

During the American Civil War, there was a Union prison in the town. Most (if not all) of the prisoners there were tortured and executed. The guards at the prison wore pyramid-shaped helmets and executed the prisoners by impaling them on spears. These are the “weird pyramid-headed guys that keep showing up” and the prison is the one you spend some time in. The paintings and some of the writings you find are from the prison and explain a bit of its history.

At some point in the history of the town a cult arose which worshipped the evil demon “Samael”. At one point the cult attempted to bring Samael physically into the world in the form of a child born to the cult priestess. Unfortunately for them, only half of Samael was born into the child. Later, a second child is born with the other half of Samael.

With Samael in the world, Shadow Silent Hill came into existance. Misty Silent Hill and Shadow Silent Hill are creations of the two halves of Samael.

(I won’t go into more detail here since this is a major part of the plot of the first game.)

When certain types of people arrive in Silent Hill, they will find themselves in Shadow Silent Hill instead of the real Silent Hill. These seem to be people who have either done actual evil themselves in the past or people who are strongly conflicted within themselves. Sometimes, other people may get “pulled along” with these people when they arrive.

This is why there are almost no people in Silent Hill; this isn’t the real town.

The monsters and the like are creations of Samael and Shadow Silent Hill and represent the conflict and turmoil within the visitors. Not everyone who finds themselves in Shadow Silent Hill will see monsters and, if they do, they may not see the same monsters. The town also seems to have the ability to create “people” who can interact with the people who arrive there; apparently attempting to cause those in conflict to come to a decision. Probably the wrong one.

Now, some specifics. James Sunderland and his wife Mary have apparently visited the real Silent Hill many times in the past. Mary has contracted a degenerative disease which will kill her in three years. She is staying in Silent Hill, apparently because the environment makes her feel better and helps her condition some.

James cannot stand to see Mary dying and, partially out of mercy and partially because he does not want to be tied to an invalid for the next three years, kills her. Mary did not die three years ago; she died fairly recently. This is the conflict and act which causes James to be pulled into Shadow Silent Hill.

Maria is a creation of the town and exists to confront James with what he did. Like Mary, she is sick (notice her coughing and the pill bottles beside her bed when she rests in the hospital), but she is also very sensual (and has the key to the strip club in town), the thing that Mary could no longer be after she became ill. She dies several times in front of him, reminding him of what he did to the real Mary. How James treats Maria is one of the major things which determine which ending of the game you get. (You do know there are four possible endings, right?)

Also notice that most of the “monsters” James encounters are either deformed female figures or deformed nurses; both symbolic of Mary dying in a hospital.

Here’s something to try… Remember the letter and picture of Mary you have at the beginning? Don’t look at them after the beginning of the game and spend a lot of time with Maria; talk to her whenever possible, check in on her when she is sick at the hospital and so on. Then, later in the game (after crossing the lake when I played), look at the letter and picture. They will be blank.

Laura was a friend of Mary’s while she was staying at the hotel and apparently spent more time with her while she was ill than James did. (She confronts him with this several times.) She may be the real Laura, pulled into Shadow Silent Hill by accident. This is why she doesn’t see any monsters and why a small girl can run around town safely. Or, she may be another creation of Silent Hill that exists to confront James further with the way he treated his wife.

As for the others; they are visitors to Silent Hill like James. Angela was apparently abused by her father as a child. At some point she apparently killed him. For some reason she blames herself for this and this conflict is what has brought her into Shadow Silent Hill.

Eddie has felt that everyone is always laughing at him or making fun of him. He may have killed someone for this before coming to Silent Hill. At any rate, instead of monsters he sees people who laugh at him and he is killing them.

Is it a dream? Well, there is some question in both games as to if the characters are really in Shadow Silent Hill or if everything is simply taking place in their minds. Different endings seem to imply different answers.

There is also a theory that all of the characters have just died and Silent Hill is some sort of test for them before final judgement.

Would playing the first game help things make more sense? Not really. If anything the first game is more confusing than the second and things do not seem to be completely consistant between the two. I thought the first game was creepier than the second, if that means anything.

As I said, there are probably other interpretations out there but this is the one that seems to make sense to me. Hope this clears things up a bit.

#10

I’ve played 2, 3, and CV. Of those, I liked 2 the best, but there could be a bias since that was the first one I played so it sticks out more in my mind. There really isn’t a whole lot of difference between them in terms of gameplay. Explore an area, pick up an object in one room that give you access to another room which contains an item that lets you into a third room, and so on, all the while either destroying or avoiding hungry dead people. I’d agree with the previous posts that none of the series has been very hard. They fall more into the category of creepy fun than challenging fun.

I rented Silent Hill 2 and just couldn’t get into it. I’ll have to give it another try.

#11

Silent Hill 1 is my all time most favorite horror game ever, followed by SH2, then RE2.

Anyone who says RE1 was easy is crazy. I think one was very hard. I also thought Nemesis was rather difficult, but Veronica and 2 were simple enough.

I’ve always liked the RE games, but I can’t believe anyone here says the first one was easy.

#12

I never played the first RE for Playstation, but I have played 2, some of 3 and CV. The graphics for Code Veronica were very nice, and the story was very intricate and developed, but I found many of the puzzles to not be tricky, but just fucking annoying. All of the games have silly puzzles that require you to take one item from here, take it to there, then back to here, then over there again, and finally get the pass key, but the ones in CV were just too insane.

RE2 is probably my favorite. I love the opening sequence, and it’s more fun playing the “What the hell is going on here?” storyline than the “Yeah, stupid zombies again” trick. And there weren’t too many stupid creatures, and unlike the movies, the Lickers were pretty cool in this game. And Leon’s a pretty cool character. Do they ever say what happens to him after this game? The end to RE3 kinda left me feeling either Umbrella or some government agency wacked him.

RE for the Gamecube is pretty fucking sweet, as well. Not just because of the graphics, either, but I really like the fact that, if you don’t destroy the brain or burn the corpses, zombies come back stronger and faster. That’s pretty sweet. I can’t wait for Resident Evil 0 to come out.

As for Zombies eating zombies, I don’t recall that ever happening. Zombies crave living flesh, so they leave each other alone. The virus mutates those infected with it, so it could be possible those infected view other infected people as “kin” of sorts, and thus makes them unappetizing. As for why you can survive without being turned into a zombie after a bite, well…it’d be a pretty short game after that first bite, no?

#13

This may be a bit SPOILERIFIC so you are warned

The S.T.A.R.S. (Police Special tactics and rescue service)are like S.W.A.T. They are specially trained cops made to deal with variety of circumstances and missions. They are almost paramilitary as they have knowledge of high grade weaponry and tactics. No one owns them per say as they work for Raccoon City and are almost the exact opposite of your normal beat cop.

The city of Raccoon City is situatuated somewhere in the American Mid-west. This city was created by the Umbrella Corporation, a sort of uber-corporation with worldwide coverage and their hand in everything. Their public face is one of a caring drug producer to combat viruses but their main goal is Bio and Viral-weapon building. The city itself stands on top of the military wing of Umbrella with a mansion built over the main entrance to house employees and scientists. The mansion is owned by Umbrella itself.

As far as who runs Umbrella, well that is hard to say. They are a group of ppl for sure but no names as of yet (Other than Edward Ashford - the original scientist who proposed the T-virus and the Ashford family) The main location of the headquarters is based in Austria and they have much knowledge of what was going on in RC and have begun to exploit it and use it to their advantage. The belief is that Umbrella plans to use the T Virus as a weapon (hence why they are trying to get a pure sample of it in 2 and 3) and have already begun creating a sort of Super Soldier (human bio-weapon) with it (you meet up with him a couple of times in the the second one and he is a real pain in your ass in the 3rd one).

Most of the STARS are just basic soldiers and as this is a newly formed unit, they do not have much knowledge of how Umbrella is ingratiated within Raccoon City. Except for a couple (Albert Wesker for one)

The reason why you can heal yourself is sorta a mystery but one that may be left open to idea. As you played through 1, I will say its probably something that Barry found out from Wesker about a healing product of some kind and told the STARS beforehand.

#14

Thanks for all the info, everyone. I just found this site, which is full of info on all manner of games. (Did somebody mention this site before? I’m sorry if I swiped somebody’s link.)

Let me just say…WHOA! It would seem that people can get really into video games. I found all sorts of FAQS about the Resident Evil games, plus all sorts of translated Japanese press releases from Capcom.
SPOILER-ISH***************

Elvis-

From the translated version of ‘Wesker’s Report’, which was apparently some sort of bonus disc issued with ‘Code: Veronica’ (I think) in Japan, it would seem that Leon Kennedy is still alive and is working for/in the keeping of some unnamed gov’t agency, possibly the US military. He seems to be contributing information/support to yet another vague and unspecified agency or group dedicated to bringing down the Umbrella Co. Sherry Birkin is also still alive and in the keeping of the same agency, although Umbrella is apparently dying to get ahold of her.

Ada Wong may also be alive, but nobody’s sure where she is, what she’s doing, or who she originally worked for, although speculation is rife.

Yet another question I have: How in the HELL did Wesker survived being gutted by the Tyrant? Apparently he took some sort of super-secret stuff that made him superhuman but was also apparently NOT derived from any of the known viruses mentioned in the game. If this is true, then why would anybody want a sample of the G-Virus when they seem to already have a great super-soldier type of juice/potion/virus? Couldn’t Wesker just sell some of his blood samples for the invaluable info they undoubtedly contain, instead of risking super-life and limb to obtain a G-Virus sample, which is pretty worthless, considering it turns its host into a mindless beast? Or am I talking nonsense again?

I have decided that I must play the first Silent Hill. My take on the second was pretty simple- I just sort of assumed that James was in a sort of Sartre-esque hell, where all was of his own creation, being drawn from his own guilt and fear. Hence, my confusion about the other characters- what are they doing in someone else’s hell? (Bonus English Lit. major question: Or are the other characters actually projections of other, negative aspects of James’ psyche? Discuss.) Then I figured that the pyramid-headed fellows were, I suppose, demons. But apparently there’s more to the story. I can’t wait for the third game to come out.

#15

they are all great but start with the first one directors cut as if you play the later ones first you will end up not playing the first one coz it looks so crap compared with 2,3 and veronica

#16

Theres also a re game thats sort of like a light gun game thats called the worst re game out there …

It was a arcade gun game in japan but since gun games dont do so well they changed the format to a fps style of game

I cant for the life of me remeber what its called …

Allso if you like re try the dino crisis games the first one was jurassic park meets resident evil , I havent seen the second one

#17

Well it could be the same Wesker, but some people have speculated it may be a clone or twin of Wesker himself (The RE storyliners love screwed up families, if you remember the tale of Ashford kids). And as far as risking his life, I figure Wesker is either a full blown psychopathic genius or a yes man flunkie who does whatever Umbrella tells him (I tend to lean toward psycho)

#18

I’d also reccomend reading the RE books, they’re not too bad, better than books written abou the events in video games have any right being.

Silent Hill 1 scared the goobers out of me, I played it at a friend’s house during a snowstorm. Walking home after that was NOT fun, especially when some idiot decided to let his dog off the leash and I saw the damn thing running at me through the snow. Still gives me the shudders. I have the second one, but haven’t played it yet (and may not).