Resident Evil: Deadly Silence

"This game can be summed up in one word: horrible"

PROS: It's got zombies... zombies are cool; it's a classic game remade for this generation

CONS: Not enough new content to make it feel fresh; terrible, archaic controls; graphics are blurry; awful camera angles; DS screen is too small to handle this game; voice acting would win Golden Raspberries; save system is stupid; no health bar; not much fun at all

Ever since Resident Evil 4 came out for the GameCube, the series has been getting a lot of hype. Their latest port is on the DS is a remake of a game ten years old. Capcom clearly made a stupid decision to put it there.

Resident Evil: Deadly Silence is, in fact, a DS version of the original Resident Evil game for the PS1 and Saturn. Sadly, this "classic" has aged with time- and you can tell by playing this hunk of junk. You play as one member of a SWAT team- either Jill or Chris, each with their own "abilities." Of course, they really aren't all that different. This game came out in 1996, remember? On the Playstation 1? Ah, yes. You likely remember. Jill can pick locks. Chris has higher health. Chris also has fewer pockets. That's all of the main differences between the two, and gameplay doesn't really differ between them. You just have to make it through a mansion and kill zombies. Much like today, zombies were cool in 1996. By today's standards, the zombies in this game are far from it. They look like rehashed mannequins and they don't have much variety in their movement. Their arms just stick out and hardly move… and that's considered an ATTACK? Lame. In fact, almost all the animations are dated.

And the graphics are even more dated. They're blurry and at times, you can't see something you were supposed to see. In a picture hall, for instance, I died five times before noticing a sixth picture in the distance, too small and under-detailed for the average eyes to see. This made me mad. It wasn't me, it was because graphics like this on a handheld are a big no-no. The third-person views are annoying because they don't move with your character, like most third-person games do nowadays.

This remake boasts a new feature that the PS1 version didn't have, "Rebirth mode", where you have "knife battles" with zombies. This isn't much fun. You just hack and slash and it's easy to get through these without a scratch. The zombies don't even have knives. And since it's in first-person view, this makes it even easier. No one will have a problem with this. No one. This isn't at all enough to give the game a new, modern feel to it. It just adds a small and crappy gimmick to the gameplay to make it better for today… and it fails.

The main problem with this is that it was a console title trimmed down to fit a handheld. Did Paris Hilton think of this? The bottom DS screen- the main screen here- is way too small to see what you're doing. This makes aiming a huge pain in the rear. You'll run out of ammo because you'll miss your target too many times because you can't see exactly where your gun is trained. But it doesn't stop there. The camera angles are horrible. It'll change when you move around, making it very hard to see your target at least half the time. And if you fire a shot as it changes… I won't go there. It causes frustration. This game was good back by 1996 standards... but 10 years later, it's at the bottom of the barrel.

And you'd think that the controls are good because everything else sucks, right? Wrong. The controls are awful. You press the up button to move forward, even if your character is facing toward the screen. The right and left buttons are for rotating your character- in place. This movement looks dumb. Since this is from a third-person view, the controls fail horribly. With the bad camera angles, you'll be changing directions a lot and crying in frustration after a while because you can't make it very far in this piece of filth without causing wall-impact damage to your DS. The rest of the controls are decent… but could be altered to make the aiming easier. The stylus is only used for the knife battles and the occasional mini-game. And the mini-games are usually pretty simple.

The voice acting would win awards... Golden Raspberries, that is. And I thought Halle Berry was bad in Catwoman. "You almost became a Jill sandwich," is said in the worst possible tone you could imagine: boring, uninspiring, and dumb. It's so bad that it's funny. I have never heard anyone talk like that ever before. It made me think that they put no effort into the sound whatsoever. The music is forgettable, too. Wait… is there even any music in this game?

There are a few more bad points to speak of. One is the save system. You have to find reels of film called "ink ribbons" to save your game. They're an item that you store in your inventory and once you've used one, it disappears. Since the DS screen is so small, these are hard to find. And when you're out, you're out, meaning that you can't save the game. This is stupid. It takes up inventory space that could be used for health items, which are also hard to find because the DS screen is so small. In fact, it's hard to know when you're health is starting to deplete because the game failed to include a health meter. The top screen, which contains the map, flashes annoyingly red when you're low on health, but it doesn't tell you how much health you have left. And since the actual game is on the bottom screen, they could've included it there. Plus, having to look at the bottom screen for a game with graphics this bad can cause neck problems if you're used to looking at the top for other DS games (like New Super Mario Bros.) or playing a game with better graphics (like New Super Mario Bros.).

Since there are so many things working against it, this game isn't very fun. Sure, they did include a little multiplayer, but there isn't much depth to it- only three maps. Everything about this game is archaic, and we can see why this series needed a fresh look for Resident Evil 4, which was the best game of 2005. Resident Evil: Deadly Silence started with a good idea to update a classic game, but failed to update it at all. It's not worth any amount of money- just stay away from it. Resident Evil: DS is only for zombie-lovers and no one else. Heck, zombie-lovers shouldn't even bother playing it because it's this bad. Stay away from this game. If you like scary stuff, go buy a Castlevania DS game instead. You don't want something like this that gets a 2 out of 10, do you?

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 07/19/06, Updated 04/05/07