Resident Evil Gaiden

"I almost cried"

Resident Evil is the reason I bought a Playstation and Gamecube. Ever since I've played the first version I've been a zombie freak ever since. That was about, what, 3 or 4 years ago. You can imagine my disappointment when I played this game.
Capcom is one of my favorite video game companys in which they dish out classics like Mega Man and Street Fighter. I suspect this game was a rush week prank by these same people.
The game starts with a new underground team of old S.T.A.R.S. members and Ex-Umbrellas scientests trying to put the Umbrella company down. Barry Burton, one of the stars of the first Resident Evil is called on a mission to explore the luxury ocean cruiser STARLIGHT, after Leon S. Kennedy, star of RE2, fails to report in. Barrys mission is to find his young ally and find a BOW that has gotten loose in the ship. That's when Barry remembers a mysterious poem he had learned as a child. Despite what you may think Leon is the star of this game, and this also introduces a new charcter Lucia.
Anyway, as soon a you turn the game on you can see the games biggest problem, you can hardly see it! If your sitting out side to play all you can see is a transparent screen and a little brown vest running around. In fact the game is so strange you can actually see better in artificial light. What's that? You've been poinsened some how? Take it inside and squint real close at the screen and if your lucky you'll see the zombie lurching towards you.
The way the battles are conducted are new and interesting but add a set of problems by istself. To enter a battle you must press and hold the B button on the overworld map and highlight the cursor over the zombie and then let go to enter the battle. Then you must try to hit the A button the moment a flying cursor hits the white area on the lower part of the screen, which means you hardly have any control in fights. Hit in between the two white bars and you score a critcal hit. Plus you can switch to any other charcter during the fight by simply pressing B, and can switch weapons and heal simply by hitting select. However, I seriously doubt if your fighting a monster your going to be swinging your gun back and forth like a maniac. After a bit of trying you'll get the hang of it and I don't think too many people will have too much of a problem, until you get up to the Rocket Launcher as the cursor is running left and right like a man on fire.
Trying to use item in battle is tricky since as soon a you hit the Select button the game doesent pause and the zombies seem to start rushing at you at an incredable speed.
During battles sometimes the enemy seems to deliver too little or two much damage. Sometimes the monster will the strike and nothing happens, other times you'll be in the green, and one strike will take you down to mid-red. Luckily they give you plenty of herbs to heal with. However this makes the game a little easy acutally. I fought the BOW twice with the combat knife and won. Some zombies are actually tougher than this guy.
If your hoping for Mutant Dogs, Giant Spiders, Hunters and the lot forget it. Capcom left all of them out. The sounds of the game are rather lack-luster. The zombies moans are staticky and at the beginning of the game there is a voice that says the ever popular ''Resident Evil.'' It sounds more like ''mmm mmmm.'' Maybe the sounds of this game is just too much for those tiny speakers. Hopefully this game isn't trying to be scary because the sounds not helping.
The musics not the greatest although I rather like the up-beat tune in battle.
The controls are very simple to learn, although contorling the movements of your charcter is a little tough at times.
If your a die-hard Resident Evil fan this game is worth buying just to see what happens next in the saga. Anyone else, sit down and play a nice game of Resident Evil Code:Veronica until Resident Evil 0 comes out. If you really want to buy a game with the money you saved up for this, go buy one of Capcoms better creations like Mega Man Battlenetwork 2, or buy those Yu-Gi-Oh! cards you've been eyeing all summer. Until next time gamers!

Final Verdict 6/10
Graphics 5/10
Sound 6/10
Control 7/10
Gameplay 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/02, Updated 08/09/02