There was a time, that unfortunately seems to be long gone, when Resident Evil was a synonym for horror and thrill on every gamers' dictionary. By locking up players inside a mansion inhabited by creepy undeads, and by limiting the players' view of the scenes, like an incredible director that knows how to create suspense through camera placement, the game set the standards for how 3-D horror should be done. Its installments were anxiously awaited by adults who liked experiencing the feeling of being in a horror movie where you are the central character, and by teenagers who saw the action of playing a zombie-ridden game as an act of bravery and, most importantly, a overwhelming roller coaster of fear and suspense. Resident Evil, in its own frightening niche, excelled, thrived and mesmerized in its ability to terrify and freeze in fear even when scares were expected, and for years the franchise glowed under that spotlight.

The came an era where the gaming industry transformed into a geekier version of the movie industry, and where most of the blockbusters that created fortunes and made companies famous were first-person shooters. Lacking the mass appeal of those titles, the men behind Resident Evil decided that, instead of limiting the series to innovating inside its familiar space, the franchise should stretch its tentacles out of the horror realm and into the land of blood, gore, excessive ammunition and, consequently, big budgets and towering sales. Resident Evil could have remained a fantastic, albeit dangerous, oasis in the middle of a bland boring beige desert, but - carrying its signature name - the game slowly merged into an unrecognizable shape, becoming a rather generic face in the middle of a crowd whose kings and queens are too well known and have too strong of a grip on the market and critical opinion to be dethroned.

Resident Evil 4 started the mutation, but its little tweaks and changes were so nicely done that rather than stripping the game of its remarkable characteristics, it simply made them visible through a new perspective and added some extra action spices to punctuate the situations of sheer despair and fright. Sadly, Resident Evil 5 had such a poor control over how far action could be added without removing the franchise's face that the result was a game that tried to compete on a field where it clearly did not belong, and when compared to pure action games like Halo and Gears of War, the supposedly horror turned action software landed with a disappointing thud, failing to generate any reactions differing from I think I have seen this before, and in much better shape. And when things seemed like they could not get any worse, Resident Evil 6 is unleashed and, despite a campaign that does try (and succeeds to some extent) to revive the standard pacing of the franchise, it is a game mostly packed with so much absurd that some screens and gameplay sections feel like a watered down version of Call of Duty. Worse than becoming a bland action title, Resident Evil has turned into a humorous caricature of both its genre of origin, and its new niche.

In the midst of this horrifying debacle - not the good kind of horrifying, clearly - it is pleasant to look to the sight of the wreckage and notice that there are still honest survival games out there; titles that try to refresh the genre not by adding ridiculous action elements to the recipe, but by looking around and simply acknowledging the game design possibilities that naturally exist within the genre. It is a simple organic kind of game development, and the result - possibly - is one of those games that is so natural that it is hard not to wonder how come nobody else had tried to do something like that before. The game might be compared to Red Steel, Ubisoft's promising launch Wii game that ended up being a failure, but Zombi U seems to master the Wii U's control and use it in its favor, instead of fumbling with it while trying to use a capability that is simply not there, which in the case of Red Steel was trying to accurately map sword controls to the limited Wiimote.

The ability to use the game pad to scan your surroundings for items and other collectibles seems to go along perfectly with the game's lonesome and tense atmosphere, as removing the eyes from the screen can be awfully rewarding in terms of what you will encounter, but also positively dangerous in terms of who might be lurking around the corner while you examine the nearest cabinet. It is unquestionable proof that there is value on Nintendo's newly found control scheme, and what is even better, is that it is proof, effort and creativity coming from a third-party rather than from Nintendo themselves. And if control innovation is not enough to show that there is still fresh oxygen to be processed by survival horror games, the game also brings the fantastic mechanic of actually killing your character and turning him into a zombie that can be tracked down and killed by whatever character you gain control of next. Not only does it add an extra layer of tension, as players will probably lose a character and also be removed from the exact location to where they had progressed, but it is also delightfully cohesive in a thematic sense, walking side-by-side with the post-apocalyptic vibe the game oozes.

As a visible disaster occurs, it is always uplifting to look to the side and notice that, in the middle of chaos and destruction, there is still a bright spot and a possible escape for the situation, even if such escape features zombies, death and a not-so-touristic version of London. If Resident Evil 6 is the moral, maybe temporary, death of a franchise; Zombi U might be the dying last breath of a zombie that is about to get up, and provide some real thrill.