The State of Resident Evil

I enjoyed playing the old resident evil games like Resident Evil 2 which is my favorite horror game to date. Resident Evil 2 was so good that it had the perfect atmosphere and the spine-chilling music and sound effects to haunt you for life. When i think today about the game i can still feel it's scariness chilling inside. What made it so atmospheric is many reasons:

1. The Music silences and trembles down your spine, the feeling of it makes you feel abandoned, alone and very unsafe. The Sound effects slowly tapping you make you feel like someone's there and the shocking and alarming sounds when you encounter your near-death experience.
2. Static camera's are those camera's you want to move by yourself so you can see where's that sound coming from, but you can't because the view is forcing you as a player to experience the horror's of mystery and scariness to bear. The graphics and background on the static camera's gives a realistic look but what makes it very unique is that not everything is dynamic and distracting but it's more on the horror that becomes more of the attention.
3. Scarcity of items is what makes this game almost perfect, having used all your ammo on few zombies then walking to the next room encountering something far to dangerous and horrifying - it's no matter if you run of out of ammunition and even health you would have to brave your guts past many scary and gut-drenching nightmare creatures.
4. Unexpected shocks like the interrogation room which would traumatize your sanity, the windows shattering with darkness breathing in, the zombies breaching into somewhere it was once a safe area and peaceful hallway to pass, and having to face those nightmares going back through that scary route to find the jigsaw to your next puzzle.
5. The fear of dying with ink ribbon saving makes you feel more engaged and alarmed when you encounter zombies, even those zombies who have been shot to death and are laid to the ground, even that single bite or floor grab can result death.

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With Capcom insisting that the next Resident Evil 7 game will return to the roots, to truly bring back the atmosphere they would need to look how they made Resident Evil 2, with so many people who enjoy RE2 are demanding a remake to that game because it is truly a horror masterpiece, like how fans have praised that the Police Station was in Resident Evil 3, fans demanded leon for Resident Evil 4, fans demanded a backstory for Claire Redfield for code veronica etc. the interest of that horror and suspense is hugely demanded but currently horribly ignored expect for indie horror games and few games upcoming like The Evil Within.

Never played the older Resident Evils, but I would love if the newer games returned to that horror formula I keep hearing good things about.

Thats all nice and all, but wheres the Co-Op ?

The old Resident Evil games were very good, but I do think nostalgia does give them a bit of an undeserved rose-tint. 4 was easily the best, and 5 was still very good but lacking. 6 was pretty bad. I enjoyed 0.

The RE 5 game DLC was pretty scary, I have to admit.

Well maybe I was scared because I was always running out of ammo and forced to run with a flash bang.

Never played the original PS games.

My personal favourite was 5, mainly because I could get my gf to play it. The best in terms of quality was 4 imo.

Dead Aim was pretty fun, if you had a gun.

Outbreak was the worst, nearly unplayable. A teamwork oriented game with no mic support, instead you had a soundboard with 5 commands, which means the voices got repetitive real fast. The load times were legendary, especially playing with people outside your country. Since i live in Canada, that happened often.

@ Evdne971

Yes I loved the Lost In Nightmares chapter. Although very few people have actually played it.

i miss old RE atmoshere RE code veronica on dreamcast its my best game of the series

I agree 100%! Resident Evil 5 felt like a step back and then 6 was a complete monstrosity of a game! I hope Capcom really do take the game back to its roots and revive the series, but I suspect they'll still try to make it a bit like 6 and it'll end up a mess.

@I-AM-N00B: Actually they said that TLOU is a good an example of what games want in a survival horror. The oldest Resident Evil game that I played was 0 and the reason why that felt more like a survival horror game was the way that controls were and the limited capabilities of characters. I would say that giving the player the ability to hide is enough to put a huge spin on things.

@drekula2: "The old Resident Evil games were very good, but I do think nostalgia does give them a bit of an undeserved rose-tint. 4 was easily the best, and 5 was still very good but lacking. 6 was pretty bad. I enjoyed 0."

Yea I think that's very true in most cases (nostalgia). I actually started on RE4 & went back to the old RE games and enjoyed them. RE3 is my favorite of the old school Resident Evil games.

RE5 Lost In Nightmares DLC was great too imo

resident evil 1-3 were the best in the series imo 4 5 and 6 just didnt do it for me

RE 2, RE 4 and RE Remake were the best ones for me (RE 0 was also good).

But my fav horror game would have to be Silent Hill 1.

For me resident evil code veronica was my favourite along with resident evil 2. I thought they had the perfect atmosphere and they perfectly balanced the resources available i,e if you didn't think about what you were doing and waisted ammo you may as well give up, it was more of a thinking mans game in my eyes because you could one minute have a lot of ammo and easily take down zombies, but then walk around the next corner to find you waisted what you had and had to get out of there quick, it still to this day makes me panic about getting away quick enough to survive, something no other game has given me yet.

I think the nearest game to those in a resident evil 4 style was a game called cold fear on the ps2. It was done in the same way as resident evil 4 but had the balance of the other 2 and that at the time was one dam jumpy game. I have played code veronica and resident evil 2 at least 7 times each and i still enjoy them, that has to say a lot as i don't usually play any game through more than once.

With regards to the last of us it has the best story i think i have ever seen with expertly done character's but i found it slightly to easy as most enemies could be taken down without the use of a gun although still done extremely well, i still only got through it once and that was it but still a very very good modern take on the genre that many others should take note from especially the resident evil creators.

Agreed its the limited controls I think that made the older ones work. I think this is why Deadspace series made u kill enemies in a specific manner it added that concept in a new way.