Resident Evil: Deadly Silence

"Resident Evil: Deadly Silence should have stayed Silent."

Intro:

Everybody has heard of Resident Evil. A very successful franchise that has been going well over 10 years and has spawned three movies (which never really captured the atmosphere of the games in this reviewer's opinion). It created an apocalyptic world in which the boundaries of science and reality converged. It gave us a clever storyline with normal characters struggling to survive. But best of all it gave us Zombies to kill. So why did they do such a bad remake of a classic game that had been successfully remade already on Nintendo Gamecube?

Game Play:

The game follows the standard format that is familiar with all the Resident Evil games. You play either of two characters which in this case were either Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield. Jill was the weaker character with more bag slots for items and the lock pick ability, Chris had more health, less space for items and no lock pick. Playing as him is pretty much playing the game in hard mode.

It follows the typical format of a scary game. You are chased into a mansion and slowly discover its foul secrets. You do this by unlocking areas, defeating bosses, collecting keys etc and you are alerted to items of great importance as they shine. It's not original, it's just lazy. Some of the puzzles may take two attempts to figure, but they don't distract you from the fact there is nothing here to challenge you. You don't feel like you've accomplished anything.

The most challenging thing about the game is the control system. It was bad years ago and low and behold, its still bad. The camera angles just don't work. Targeting enemies is a nightmare and operates on luck alone and movement is so slow and sluggish that before too long you are getting chomped on by a zombie. This spells disaster if you are Jill as you are almost dead after one attack. Not my idea of fun.

Graphics/Sound:

Very poor on both counts. The graphics do not do the DS any justice whatsoever. They are blurred which give off the appearance that somebody has painted something and smudged it. The music is quite haunting, but fails in creating any fear in the game because the graphics make everything look cartoony. The cheesy dialogue which I swear has gotten worse over the years just adds to the crap factor. It destroys the illusion with its cliches and by the second cut scene of the game I was quite ready to feed Jill to the nearest Zombie that came along.

The music itself is often repetitive. The same ominous tones accompanied by the odd sound effect (like when you are in wet tunnels you hear dripping). On most occasions the game lives up to its name of "Deadly Silence" because you don't hear much of anything. Its like watching a horror movie on mute ... it simply doesn't work.

Replayability:

None. There are a few features that enable you to link up with another DS but to be honest it's just another gimmick.

Conclusion:

I rated this game 1/10 because in my opinion it was one of the worst games I have ever played. And I am a fan of the Resident Evil games. If you are new to the franchise, then avoid it. The graphics are an eyesore, and the game play is mediocre and unchallenging as you spend most of the time running through the same areas. The chance of landing a decent shot on an enemy is luck based so you waste ammo which is scarce already and the whole game is let down by cheesy dialogue which is so bad that not even the characters can take themselves seriously.

Resident Evil fans will play it. But anybody looking for a decent zombie outing on the DS won't find it here.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 12/18/08

Game Release: Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (EU, 03/31/06)