Pros: good graphics, good sound, awesome atmosphere. A classic not to be missed.
Cons: bad voice acting, aged gameplay
The Bottom Line: Even though the gameplay is a little outdated and the voice acting is bad by todays standards (or any standard) it's still an awesome and intense game experience.
twofish72's Full Review: Resident Evil: Deadly Silence for DS
Resident Evil...original japanese title Biohazard. One of the most known games in video game history. It's not one of the most influential ones, not one of the most original ones or (some people say) not even one of the best ones. But almost anybody who ever owned a gaming console has heard of Resident Evil.
Chances are that you know what Resident Evil is. You know the story, you know the cult and you have played a lot (or all) of the other RE games. You only want to know how good the Nintendo DS port is and if it's a good idea to get the game. In this case, jump to the paragraph titled "Differences to the original" and continue reading from that point on.
If you have no clue what Resident Evil is, or you only vaguely remember hearing the name once in a while, sit back and read everything about
RESIDENT EVIL Deadly Silence
The story...
July 24, 1998. Racoon City forest. The fateful day and location that marked the beginning of one of the most extensive horror trips in gaming history. We join a elite police unit... S.T.A.R.S. (Special Tactics and Rescue Service) Bravo Team. They are flying in a helicopter over the forest near Racoon City. Bravo Team is on the lookout for the helicopter of Alpha Team, the other S.T.A.R.S. squad. Alpha Team has disappeared during a mission to bring light to very brutal murder cases in the forests Racoon City. The murder victims appeared to have been eaten by something... or somebody. After actually finding the wreck of Alpha Teams helicopter things get really, really bad really really fast. While searching the crash site, the team gets attacked by dog like creatures. One team member gets killed right away. They other four, Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton and Albert Wesker (S.T.A.R.S. Team leader by the way), escape into a nearby mansion. The team stumbles into a horror adventure including zombies, genetically engineered monsters and a big conspiracy where nothing is what it seems and nobody is who he says.
The presentation...
When the game originally came out in 1996 (on the Playstation 1) it was sometimes regarded a copy of Alone in the Dark another horror genre game which featured a similar game experience in terms of gameplay and graphics. Alone in the Dark was groundbraking at the time in terms of the graphical style of the game. And Resident Evil was very similar. Instead of a 3D - first person shooter kind of graphic or a completely pre-rendered 2D adventure kind of setting the game featured a mix of both. The backgrounds in the game where pre-rendered images (amazing detail at the time), while the protagonists and monsters where 3D objects (again, amazing detail) moving around in those "pictures". This way, a level of realism could be achieved in a way that has not been seen before. On top of that, whenever the player reached the border of a screen, not only did the screen switch to a different one, but also the camera angels where changed, most of the time radically. This gave the impression of movie-like cuts and gave the game a very cinematic feel. Eerie and creepy sound effects and ambient music made the horror experience even better.
While the graphics from 1996 on a PS1 can't hold up against the remakes on the Gamecube or the games still to come on the PS3, it's a pretty amazing thing on the DS. Capcom put all the original graphics in there. Backgrounds, 3D Objects, textures and (drumroll) all the cutscenes. Fans of the original crappy cult intro movie will jump for joy (more on that one later). Also, all the sound effects and voice overs are present. So graphic and sound wise, Resident Evil DS is a one to one clone of the original PS1 classic! I was expecting shortcuts in the graphics, omitted sound effects or having the cut scenes reduced to a comic style slide show without the voice overs. But no, its all there. Sweet.
The gameplay...
On the gameplay side the game was and is very simple (do not confuse with easy). With the joypad, you move your character through the maze that is the mansion. And even though the camera angles constantly change with the player running through the screens, the steering remained the same. Pressing the joypad "up" made the character go forward. This way, a good player could more or less blindly run through the mansion and didn't have to worry about adjusting the direction depending on the camera angle.
Shooting is only possible while standing. Not only more realistic but also more difficult and tense. Pressing the right trigger button on the joypad (or DS) makes the character aim his/her weapon. Pressing the "A" button makes him/her shoot. To aim, you have to move you character left or right (sometimes even up or down) to adjust the stance and direction of the character holding the gun. This makes for some tactical decisions instead of just blasting away with your weapons.
Speaking of which... all your guns need ammo. And... there is not much around. Conserving it and choosing your battles wisely is one of the things you have to do in the game. Throughout the game you find various items to use. Most of which have to be combined or used with something to solve puzzles. Some of those puzzles are clever, most of them are simple "find the right item" riddles. One problem with the puzzles though... they are out of sync with the rest of the game. With out of sync, I mean "unrealistic". Most of the game is more or less grounded in reality. While the whole background of course is horror-fiction, the game world itself is pretty realistic. Weapons have the correct amounts of ammunition per clip for example, most of the game mechanics are realistic and right.
The puzzles though seem to come out of an early 80's text-adventure. Entryways are hidden by bookcabinets. Doorlocks consist of stone plates to be put into holes to open the door to the back garden. Most puzzles seem to fit into a medieval setting, but not in todays world.
The game lets you choose between two characters in the beginning. Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine. Differences include the amount of items the characters can carry (Chris - six, Jill - eight), difficulty setting (Chris - hard, Jill - normal) and a slightly different storyline with slightly different endings.
Depending on the decisions you make while exploring the game, the storyline also slightly changes. So the replay value is pretty high. If you want to see everything, you have to play the game at least 2-3 times.
The DS displays the main action on the touchscreen. The upper display shows the map of the area and the weapon currently equipped. If you press START, the bottom display switches to the inventory (and pauses the game action while doing so). Here you can examine items, combine them, equip other weapons or use items on anything directly in front of you. You can also look at all the maps, notes and information you have collected or found in the game so far. Sometimes you will find written notes of people, giving you a clue what happened (in general, nothing good). First aid items can also be used in this screen to refresh your health.
Your health meter is a little heart rate display, like an ECG. When you get hurt, your heart rate changes and the color of the display changes from green (everything's fine) to bright red (better get the casket ready). This system makes it a little hard to actually guess if you can take another hit, er... bite or if the next attack might be the last. But that's good...it adds to the suspense.
The differences between the DS version and the classic PS 1 game...
As I said above, graphics and sound are virtually identical. Capcom "only" introduced some new extras: The DS features four game versions. The classic one, another one called "rebirth" for single player and two multiplayer modes (Against each other and Co-Op).
Classic is just that. It's the original 1996 release plus some tiny little additions like the 180 degree turn, the knife button from RE4 (left trigger button always readies the knife-not necessary to equip it or waste a item slot) and the ability to cancel most of the cutscenes and the door opening sequences.
Rebirth takes advantage of the DS touchscreen to implement some nice little extras. First, there is the first person attack scene. In some rooms, the first thing you see is first person view of the area. Zombies and crows in this room come up to you to kill you (big surprise here...). Now you need to move you finger or the stylus quickly over the touchscreen to slash enemies with your knife. Combos are possible and timing is essential. Makes the game more challenging as you have more enemies against you. Sometimes, the Zombies leave health items or other things.
Second, additional crates and chests are standing around with items in them. To open these, you must solve a puzzle by using the touchscreen.
Personally, I didn't like the rebirth version as it does not add anything really cool. And the original game is hard enough for beginners anyway.
Multiplayer gives you two settings to play either against each other (who kills the most zombies?) or in cooperative
mode (escape the mansion together). Note that in either mode, you can't really "see" the other characters. The game just tracks, in which room everybody is and acts accordingly. For example,if you are in co-op mode and two players are in a room with a zombie, both get an attack bonus. Or another: In co-op mode, the health-meter is shared. If one player gets hurt, all players loose health.
The intro movie...
People who have seen it think it's cult. People who haven't have missed the worst in movie making since Ed Wood. The two minute or something intro movie tells us about Bravo Team searching for Alpha Teams helicopter and ending up in the mansion. It's horribly acted, voiced, edited and has horrendous special effects. The camera work is crappy, the cliches are overwhelming and extra cheesy and the script has to be non existent. It looks like it has been shot in a one hour session in the backlot of Capcom with the help of some softair guns and a fog machine.
Why am I pointing all this out? Because it's so bad that it's good. It's just hilarious and goofy. It's like Monty Python has tried for a serious movie in hope of getting an Oscar. It has cult status amongst day-one-Resident Evil fans. Don't judge the game by it's intro is the only thing I can tell you. See the intro (and the ending movies too by the way) as a little bonus. If you can watch an extremely bad movie and appreciate the fun that can come of that, you will enjoy it.
To all the people who have seen the original... you will feel like looking back in time.
The final judgment...
Graphics - outdated on a full fledged gaming console but very cool for the DS. Fluent 3D graphics with awesome animations, paired with detailed background pictures. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would say 8.
Sound - Original PS1 sound. Awesome. Nice ambient sound track, creepy sound effects. Adds a lot to the suspense. Complete voice over for all the characters and not just text to read make the sound a 9.5 out of ten. The only drawback is that the voice overs are sometimes as goofy as the intro movie. But that brings a very unique B-Movie charm.
Gameplay - Good replay value, two game modes and even multiplayer options offer a lot to go through. While the game does not really take advantage of the touch screen in terms of completely having a new interface and gameplay, it still offers nice little add-ons. The replay value comes from the classic game itself. As with most Resident Evil games, you have multiple outcomes.
Atmosphere - very good...intense...scary and frightening. Well, if you are into zombies and monsters. If you are looking for a psychological kind of horror, you are wrong here. This is gore/splatter/George Romero kind of horror. While the voice overs are goofy sometimes, the atmosphere still works. Good, solid, movie-like experience.
Who should buy this game...
Everybody who loves Resident Evil, and wants to go through the classic once again while on the road. Perfect for long airplane flights or car trips. It's a nice little retro-trip for the die-hard Resident Evil fans.
Anybody who has never played the original... should get it too. If you started later in the franchise and you only know the gamecube versions, get to see how it all started. And you HAVE to see the original intro movie. There is a reason why Capcom replaced the actors with a 3D movie in Resident Evil 2 already...yes it's that bad. But hilarious!
Anybody who wants a "mature" game for the DS and is tired of Mario and his friends.
Who shouldn't buy it...
People who always want the best graphics and find every game that doesn't at least offer graphics on Gamecube or PS2 level boring. But in this case, you probably don't have a DS anyway, you are most likely a PSP owner.
Kids under 12, better yet 16. It's violent and bloody. Even though you can switch the blood to the color green, the fact stays that the only thing you are supposed to do when you encounter something that moves is... slaughter it. Even though the games has puzzles, they only make up half of the game. The rest is gore. The game opens with the classic Resident Evil Warning: "This game offers explicit scenes of violence and gore". The warning is there for a reason.
Anybody who doesn't like gore/splatter-type horror games.
So...
Personally, I love Resident Evil.I have played all the games (except the shooter/lightgun ones and the online variant) and I have to buy anything that contains Romero-Zombies anyway. Or any product that has a combination of letters on the box that make the words Resident Evil. That said, I like the first game. Of course, technically it's outdated, as it's identical to the 1996 release. The fact that they were able to copy an entire PS1 CD worth of data (the PC version was about 300-400 Mb big) onto the tiny cartridge of the DS is pretty amazing. Makes me hope for maybe even Resident Evil 2 and 3 being also converted to the DS as they offer the same graphics and interface. Capcom didn't revamp the graphics engine until Resident Evil: Code Veronica, which initially came out on the Sega Dreamcast. So technically, there could be coming more... For now, I can only recommend getting Resident Evil: Deadly Silence. And hopefully in the future, I will be able to recommend the sequels.
Note: 100% Compatible on Foreign and Domestic DS Console A remake of the first Biohazard game with the DS's unique feature set in mind as you w...More at VideoGameAll
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