Resident Evil is as fun as it ever was, but now portable, cheesy voice acting in tact, but with some limited multiplayer
The classic, genre defining survival horror ‘Resident Evil’, despite being released 3 times on the PS1, and then remade spectacularly for the Gamecube, is rearing it’s zombie infested head on the Nintendo DS. While the game may be somewhat tame by todays standards, it still bears a 15 certificate, and somewhat helps to shift the ‘kiddie’ image slightly. Sure, it doesn’t put a dent in the masses of ‘family’ friendly titles, it provides some blood and gore for hot blooded male DS owners to enjoy.
The game itself features both characters from the original 1996 hit, Chris Redfield, and Jill Valentine, as well as a new game mode called ‘Rebirth Mode’ that features new item/enemy locations, smarter enemies, and some added minigames and puzzles that use the DS functionality. One such example is using the stylus to slash as advancing enemies from the first person perspective, another being to blow into the mic to perform CPR on a downed comrade, all of which work well and provide an interesting use of the controls, while it doesn’t add much to the game, they are not poorly implemented or out of place, so don’t detract from the experience either.
The game still has the familiar ‘tank’ control method that is a signature of the series (or was up until Resi Outbreak) which some people will take a lot of getting used to. A lot of people dislike this control scheme, and while it happens to be my favorite control scheme ever, I can’t ignore the sheer number of people that cannot get to grips with it. Other controls should be relatively familiar, however the addition of a ‘knife’ button (ala Resident Evil 4) gives quick access to the knife without having to equip it every time, keeping the action a little more fluid.
Graphicaly, Resident Evil: Deadly Silence is very pleasing for a DS game, character models look good and animate very well, the backgrounds are quite detailed, although due to the smaller screen size, there is much less detail than in the original backgrounds. The game performs very well, the majority of the time the game maintains constant, pleasing framerate, and offers responsive controls. However, one part in particular offers an inexplicable framerate drop which is highly noticeable, this is in the water underneath the guardhouse, in which the frame rate drops a lot. Fortunately, this doesn’t make too much difference as this section only lasts a few moments, it still detracts from the quality of the overall experience. The games sound is relatively well implemented, the voice acting all sounds (technicly) good, and the music and enemy effects are clear and sound nice, some of the weapon sounds are a little dulled though, but then they were never very loud on the original either.
Overall, Resident Evil is as fun as it ever was, but now portable, cheesy voice acting in tact, but with some limited multiplayer ability added, and a new game mode. These make for a good purchase, all the regular unlockables, as well as the two different game modes (classic and rebirth) give the otherwise short game a hefty amount of replay ability.
Such a high profile series landing on the DS is surely a landmark, and the gateway for future iterations of either this series, or many of capcoms other highly successful franchises to appear on the console in the future.