Resident Evil Survivor

For as long as the series has existed I've often found myself wishing I liked the Resident Evil games. Despite revolving around so many shared interests, and how I often get a good chuckle from the movie counterparts, RE has simply never drawn me in. Part of the problem is that I just plain suck at the series which subsequently means there's little fun to be had when playing it. It's not necessarily a matter of difficulty or suvival-horror tropes as I can handle the likes of ultra-hard games like Ikaruga or scary survivalist titles like Silent Hill. There's just something about the overall design of the RE titles that leaves me underwhelmed. Way back in 1998 I actually owned Resident Evil 2 and while so many others were lapping it up I was left in the gaming dumps until I was able to buy the much better, and so much harder, Final Fantasy Tactics. Every year around Halloween it's natural to get a hankering for some scary games which brings me right back to staring at this series I can't get into. This year I decided to try and change all that. After 23 years I was going to beat a Resident Evil game. So did I boot up any of the main entries that are readily available on the PS4? Course not. Instead I sought out a hated black sheep of the franchise. Naturally I’d love to share the whole silly adventure with you all.

Released back in August of 2000 Resident Evil Survivor (or Gun Survivor as it’s known in Japan) was a rather odd duck. The core series had already expanded to four installments with the most recent, Code Veronica, being quite the show-peace on the Dreamcast. The original Japanese version of Survivor was an experiment in creating a first-person shooter that was controlled by a light-gun, namely Namco's guncon. Stateside was a much different story as the novel control scheme was removed to placate parental groups who worried that video games were to blame for recent violent tragedies (nice to know things never change). Striped of its original identity and realized with very fuzzy graphics, Survivor was greeted with absolutely savage reviews declaring it a worthless game that existed as an insult to the brand. As someone who didn't even enjoy these games, save for some slight admiration of Nemesis, the idea of an extra terrible installment kept me far away. So what changed all these years later? Frankly it was the existence of a couple different articles and videos that still hated on the game but noted that it was incredibly short and fairly easy. Plus it seemed odd that for what was such a poorly received title it actually predicted the first-person future of the series.

Starting up the game soon yields all the usual series tropes, the dramatic menu voice, door opening animations, all the classic monsters, and magnificently wretched voice-acting. Even compared to the original the acting here is absolutely ripe with poor mixing and characters either lacking or expressing the wrong emotion for any given situation. The story at least had a simple opening hook with the player taking control of an amnesic survivor of a helicopter crash in an island town overrun with monsters. Even with all these standard elements there were a few differences that stood out.

The first change of note is how horror is handled in this game. The general fear of any Resident Evil title is whether or not there's a monster in the next room. As this is designed to be a shooter the question becomes how many monsters are behind that door? Damn near every room is packed with critters with some of the bigger baddies showing up rather quickly. Depending on how you go about it you'll be fighting giant spiders within ten-minutes. Sometimes the player barely has a chance to avoid the beasties with them being right up in your grill the moment an environment loads. Some of the rooms even repopulate should you find yourself backtracking. Combined with unlimited pistol ammo and the focus is to deal with an onslaught of foes by taking out every one of them rather than avoiding conflict.

While I mentioned backtracking you'll rarely such a thing because the game structure is so much different than its big brothers. The campaign is designed around focused linear areas with occasional junctions where the player chooses one of several branching paths. The effect on the story is minimal with certain characters simply appearing less often depending on your choices. However; certain items are only available down different paths which means you can miss out on a few nicer pieces of equipment depending on which branch you take. Thankfully all the primary upgrades like the shotgun and magnum seems to exist at the choke points. What this means for the player is that each environment goes by much faster with none of the puzzles the core games are known for.

After nearly forty-minutes of play a problem reared its ugly head. I'd been making good progress and it was time to feed the cats yet I couldn't find a single save spot. A quick search revealed something really bizarre. You can only save the game when your character dies. What stays in your save file are all of the weapons & ammo you've collected, not actual progress through the story. That means you have to take this on in a single sitting. I suppose this makes sense as it was designed around a more arcade sensibility but this was still a poor design choice on the developers part as the game plays so much better in short bursts. You're always being kept on your toes, fighting one wave of monsters after another, stretching that feeling for at least 90 minutes is more exhausting than interesting. Nowadays a creative person can find ways around this little hiccup which makes for a much better experience.

As mentioned earlier the story starts with the player controlling a crash survivor with amnesia. It doesn't take long before he begins to piece together the situation. This island town is owned and operated entirely by staff of the Umbrella corporation, and he may actually be the heartless commander who oversaw operations. Eventually he finds some kids who've manged to survive and decides to redeem himself by getting them off the island. Don't come in expecting any deep moral growth however as he remembers the truth later on and has nothing to make up for. Just a decent boring guy saving kids from monster island. And boy do I ever mean boring as this guy seemingly forgot his personality in the crash. Considering the branching paths some of the supporting cast barely appear depending on which branch you take. On my main playthrough a guy shot at me from a window while accusing the main guy of being commander Vincent and there was no closure to that point whatsoever. That same person can show up near the end but in my case it was the nameless leader of Umbrella’s command squad. Most of the finer story details are told through the typical files and diaries strwen about the island (stationery sales must be through the roof) though a number of these have glaring errors in grammar and spelling.

Clearly storytelling isn’t the main draw for Survivor so what about gameplay? Well it’s very straightfoward and almost acts like a distilled version of the mainline RE titles. You walk around with sluggish tank controls all while popping caps in monsters and collecting items for personal use or to unlock the next environment. It’s all very basic with the most complicated choice being when to lower your weapon and run to the other side of a room. Admittedly this strategic element sometimes vanishes either because the location is to small to maneuver around or because quicker enemies like hunters always block your escape.

Let's talk about those monsters for a moment. Most of the early franchise staples are accounted for be it zombies, dogs, lickers, etc. Some can only be encountered down certain paths so you can still have a surprise or two in later playthroughs. There is one enemy type I believe is unique to this game which is possibly one of the worst monsters ever placed in a video game. About a half-hour through the adventure some Umbrella commandos arrive to clean up the situation. In the introductory cut-scene they seem to be regular humans. When encountered in-game however they appear as these lanky, ape-like gimps who make wildcat sounds, bleed green, and melt when killed. It's as if the development team understood they should introduce something new and at the last second someone yelled out “chimps in gas masks!” No way are these critters keeping you up at night.

With everything mentioned thus far I still haven't tackled the most important question; was I having any fun? Actually... yeah, I sorta was. Don't get me wrong this game is loaded with problems in all areas. The controls are sluggish, the story is an absolute turd, there's tons of cheap hits steaming from the small environments, and the item menu is one of the worst in memory. At the same time the quick pace of the adventure coupled with alterations to series formula such as having unlimited item storage and pistol ammo made for a much more casual experience. In a way Survivor is a better b-movie simulation than its' bigger brothers could ever hope to be. Strange as it may sound I found a sort of nostalgia for this game despite never having played it before. Somehow it brought back the sensation of camping out in my teenage bedroom with the rustle of trees floating in through open windows. For an otherwise dumb game to provide that sort of feeling, well there must be something deeper going on with it.

Finally we come to the big conclusion of the quest to finish and RE game. The final area of the game is of course an underground laboratory featuring the toughest enemies and a Tyrant the player must go three rounds with. At this point I had stashed plenty of grenades, magnum bullets, and even shotgun shells should the former categories not prove enough. Out of everything the grenade launcher proved to be best as it would interrupt the attack animation of the final boss who tried to stop players from fleeing via helicopter. As a reward players are treated to one of the most ridiculous finishes to a boss battle alongside possibly the worst ending line in gaming history. When the two children ask what they will do now, our hero informs them “I don't know, but don't worry, we can fly as long as we have fuel.” Words to live by.

At last there was a Resident Evil title under my belt. Not only did it feel good to finally overcome this series but there's the extra bragging rights of it being such an often disliked and forgotten piece of gaming history. And despite all of the games numerous flaws the experience was still entertaining enough that I booted up a second playthrough to check out some of the other pathways while putting the more advanced weaponry to work on weaker enemies. While it may not have been a life-altering event playing this silly game on a cool September night was the sort of unexpected element to help the season feel complete.

Despite all the bad press here in the states there must have bee some level of success as the Gun Survivor series continued in different iterations with different development teams. This first installment was actually developed by a company called Tose rather than actual Capcom staff. This little developer has been around for decades working on all manner of games big and small including some of the key RE games. Capcom would take over for sequels, one an arcade cabinet shooter based off Code Veronica and another called Dino Stalker which served as a spin-off of my beloved Dino Crisis series. Finally Cavia would take over for Resident Evil: Dead Aim and later alter the formula for Umbrella and Darkside Chronicles on the Wii. Normally I wouldn’t care about sharing all of this with you but I’m so impressed by how much history stemmed from something otherwise deemed as a total failure. It’s like if the little engine that could was also a chemical train that derailed right into a gated community which, now that I think of it, would be a fantastic set-up for the next Resident Evil.

That’s all I’ve got for you tonight folks. Got a relatively busy weekend planned including a trip to Marshall, MI for something they call Skeletonfest. I’m guessing there will be skeletons involved. I’ll have a report on that up for you all in a couple days, probably the presentation of mood tables next week, and I’m gonna try and fit a regular update in for the site’s Super Sentai fans. Right now it’s a perfectly gloomy night to enjoy while devouring some Indian food.