Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil 0 for Wii Reviews by Gamers

It's hard to say if love can truly blossom in the dark hallways of a zombie-infested training facility, but one can only imagine that it could. In Resident Evil Zero, Rebecca Chambers and Billy Coen are forced to cooperate in order to survive the ghoulish machinations of the Umbrella Corporation and its twisted employees. While there is obvious romantic tension between Rebecca and Billy, it's clear that Resident Evil Zero isn't about character development. It's about traditional survival horror gameplay in the Resident Evil format. And that right there kills the romantic mood for me, because the traditional Resident Evil format has some serious problems. It might have worked years ago, but it doesn't work now.



Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil Zero is a port of the original Resident Evil Zero that was released on Nintendo's GameCube in November of 2002. The Wii game is an almost identical copy of its predecessor with no new extra content or frills to speak of. In fact, there aren't even any motion controls in the Wii version -- only options to use the Remote/Nunchuck combo, Classic Controller or GameCube controller.





This immediately gives rise to the question: why produce this port when gamers can just play the original GameCube game on the Wii? The only answer I can come up with (besides the money Capcom would earn, of course) is that the GameCube version is difficult to find and -- when hunted for online -- can be quite expensive. The thirty dollar price tag for the Wii version, then, might seem more reasonable, but it's a real shame no new content was added.



In Resident Evil Zero, players control both Rebecca and Billy in an effort to survive the usual flock of zombies, zombie dogs, zombie spiders and zombie monkeys. Characters move around on pre-rendered, static backgrounds and solve puzzles while killing enemies. At any time during normal gameplay, players can switch between the two characters and control them independently or have the AI control one character while the player handles the other. This dynamic is Resident Evil Zero's main selling point, but it's horribly cumbersome. This is a co-op mode without the co-op, and the dual character control -- when combined with several other factors -- becomes quite the opposite of a good "selling point."



The first factor, of course, is the game's controls. Based on the now "classic" tank controls of the previous games, Resident Evil Zero forces players to turn the character left and right with the analog stick and then push forward to move forward. This means no strafing or free movement of any kind. Some gamers will swear by this control scheme, but I say it's an archaic design that -- when compared to modern 3D games -- just doesn't cut it. In fact, it's downright awful. When simple movements and corner turns become an agonizing ordeal of poor perspectives and clunky inputs, there's a serious problem. Again, this control scheme might have flown seven years ago, but the videogame landscape has grown considerably in that time.



Then of course players must deal with Resident Evil Zero's horrendous item management system, which restricts both Rebecca and Billy from carrying anything more than a pathetic handful of items. Players are forced to leave certain items on the ground and return for them later, with little indication as to which items might be helpful at which times. This results in an aggravating amount of running back and forth, which is exacerbated by the poor controls and obnoxious character switching. Players can't even swap a currently held item for one lying on the ground if their inventory is full. Resident Evil Zero forces players to drop items on the floor first, exit out of the menu and then pick up the other item. The entire ordeal is a total disaster.





These issues contribute to Resident Evil Zero's terrible pacing. Perhaps the developers intended the slow progression through the game's few environments to feel tense and haunting, but it just doesn't work. The animated door opening scenes, which play every time you enter a new room, certainly don't help speed things along, either. Their only purpose, I suppose, is to build tension, but they fail at that quite miserably.



In fact, Resident Evil Zero isn't that scary at all. The environments are dull and the enemies are barely threatening. I'm sure the game would incite a few more startled jumps if it didn't briefly freeze every time a change was about to be made to a pre-rendered background. When zombie dogs jump through the train windows, for example, the game stutters to load the window-breaking animation, which broadcasts to the player that something scary is about to happen. This is, for all intents and purposes, an "epic fail."

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