It’s always a pleasure to get reacquainted with an old classic, so what’s better than the chance to get reacquainted with three of them all at once? It’s a bit of a bumper week on the Nintendo Switch eShop right now, with Resident Evil Zero, the 2002 remake of the original and Resident Evil 4 all suddenly available.
A finer cross-section of Capcom’s series you’d be hard-pressed to find. There’s either ends of Resident Evil’s first era, defined by those slightly awkward camera angles and the pre-rendered backdrops, and perhaps the biggest surprise is how well both games hold up today.
The original Resident Evil – in its sumptuous remade form, of course – is every bit the timeless classic, retaining so much of its majesty and malice. It’s funny how so many of the quirks that were held against it in subsequent years – the fixed camera angles, the tank controls – now feel like conscious design decisions, all playing into the sense of helplessness and fear.
