Resident Evil Zero Review
Introduction
It's hard to believe that such a magnificent masterpiece came out 8 years ago. When the game first came out on Nintendo Gamecube, every video gamer was surprised at the fact that the platform was on Gamecube, not on Playstation 2. However, I soon came to realize that PS2's hardware wasn't good enough to run this game after playing the first part. First Came out on Gamecube in 2002, it was out again on Nintendo Wii, a sequel platform of Gamecube, possibly for the old resident evil fans like myself.
Graphics
The graphics in this game doesn't stand out compared to the current games which are on PS3 or Xbox360. However, considering the fact that this was released in 2002, it is still looks ok on standard definition TV though it looks more blurry and has a lot of noise on High Definition TVs unless you don't have a Wii component cable. I'm disappointed about costumes obtained after clearing the game are not reflected on the CG movies throughout the game. Nevertheless, it's better than any other games from previous consoles (PS2, Xbox and Gamecube) in terms of graphics and probably God of War 2 may be the only game that could be of a match for this game.
Balance
The game difficulty may be ruthless for players who play classic resident evil series for the first time, but it was reasonably good for the old fans. However, it has some serious in game balance problems if you play Hard mode even for hardcore players. In Hard mode, you run into difficulties like lack of ammo, Rebecca's extremely low health, the last boss's abnormally high health. This mode is even harder than the so-called professional mode of resident evil 4 and 5: It's impossible to clear the game without evading some monsters and Zombies due to very limited amount of ammo. Apart from this, each character has distinguishable features like only Rebecca is able to combine herbs and Billy can fire guns more rapidly than Rebecca. What drives me really mad is the elimination of the 4-dimensional magic box in which characters could store items, but instead can drop items wherever possible. It's not much of a problem at first, but it makes the playing time too long and tedious because you have to move your herbs, ammos and guns every time you move from one place to another.
Story
The story takes players back even before the mansion incident (resident evil 1 ), it thoroughly provides answers to unanswered questions like ' why was the bravo team wiped out?' ‘how did Rebecca end up in the mansion?’ and ‘who was responsible for the spread of the T-Virus in the Arklay mountains?’ Cut-scenes as well as documents obtained throughout the game help players' understandings of what's going on. There is not much to comment on the story since it is almost flawless and relevant to its sequel, Resident evil 1 though it's disappointing to see that the Wii version of Resident evil zero is indifferent to the Gamcube version in terms of contents, I hope there were some extra cut scenes exclusively on the Wii version.
It has been almost 8 years since I have played this game, and playing it once more in 2010 brings my memories back. This game still lives up to its name, not undermining the name value of Resident Evil Series. I really loved this game because it felt different to other classic resident evil series.