Resident Evil these days has not aged well. In the horrorsphere letting it's darker and more innovative successors take the totem. But however I love this video game no matter what people say. Resident Evil 1 is one of the best games of all time and I'm addicted to it and what a more better place to play on Nintendo DS?
STORY
The story or Resident Evil is complex yet cheesy. You are part of STARS who tries to look for their compatriots Alpha team. However they find out that they are in a nightmare. The STARS get chased into a haunted house known as the Spencer estate where they must escape and find Chris. However there are many plot twists and spoilers.
The story is non-Linear. You can play as Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield. Jill is the master of Unlocking and Chris is the weapon's guy.
GAMEPLAY
Resident Evil is survival horror at it's third finest in my book. You go around the mansion collecting and items solving puzzles. You conserve ammunition and health items.
There are many terrifying enemies about. Zombies that are green and generic, red zombies that are fast, killer dogs.
The mansion is a fun place to explore. There are many puzzles about that accumulate to getting 5 crests and eventually entering an underground lab. Many of locked doors. It's complex.
As for being a Nintendo DS game there is limited appeal in interactivity. You can interact with first person puzzles and fight in first person against adversaries like crows and zombies with a knife in hand.
GRAPHICS
Today these graphics aren't very scary nor pleasing to look at. Well at least for everyone else. The backgrounds are shiney and colorful and rather detailed but they don't build well enough atmosphere to keep the hairs standing up on your skin. As well as the character models which look far worse since they are running on 32 bit hardware.Not to mention the stiff animation. But it's still appealing at a distance. The camera angels are pretty cinematic though.
There are several FMV sequences. Most are too compressed and or live actors from Russia that act like crap.
SOUND
The Sound of Resident Evil is good which I can say as much for the music and sound effects. The music is creepy. The english dialogue in this game is laughably cringe enduing.
"Woah! That was too close! You where almost a Jill sandwhich!"
"Jill run for that house!"
"Stop it ! Don't open that door!"
"Captain Wesker, where's Chris?!"
OVERALL
Resident Evil DS is still a good game. Not the scariest but still I had a lot of fun with it. But please do yourself a favor and buy the REmake.