Resident Evil Archives

The desolate mansion of Resident Evil

Resident Evil, released in 1996 for PlayStation 1, is hilarious—it’s so funny. The voice acting is ridiculous, the plot is sensational and the live-action cutscenes look like they’ve come from a porn parody film. In fact, that’s Resident Evil in a nutshell: from the campy character and costume design through the cheap music and sound effects, Resident Evil feels like a high-end fuck film, only without any fucking. Look at Jill. Look at Chris. Look at BARRY. This is a cast of actors straight out of a Brock Landers movie. Resident Evil has become the beloved low watermark of videogame production value, but designers…

Feature

How videogames are changing the action movie

Something strange happens with the camera at the start of Spectre (2015). The movie opens with a wide view of an elaborate Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City. We’re then shown a villain before focusing on James Bond, who starts to follow this villain. Bond and a woman then go into a hotel and he leaves her by exiting through a window onto the rooftop, where he prepares to shoot his target. It’s a standard set-up for a Bond film, but throughout all of this, the camera doesn’t seem to cut away, not once. The entire opening is…

Feature

Resident Evil Zero is where monster movies go to die

2002’s Resident Evil for the GameCube was a luxurious, Gothic remake of the 1996 PlayStation original. It came out a year after Fatal Frame and Silent Hill 2, slotting perfectly into their bleak new visions of horror: unrelentingly dark, art-directed to the nines, and tense as shit. Resident Evil is creepy despite its ludicrous premise: you poke around a huge, dark mansion while fending off zombies and various oversized snakes, spiders, and sharks. Central to the game’s success is its atmosphere: the vivid, lush pre-rendered backgrounds buzz with animated touches, like flies around a lamp or lightning flashing through a…

Article

Shut Up, DOOM 3

This article is part of a series called Shut Up, Videogames, in which critic Ed Smith invites games old and new to pipe down, or otherwise. In this edition, he looks at the most recent addition to the legendary first-person-shooter series, DOOM. I know DOOM has a contingent of fans and critics who enjoy discussing it—its level structure, its weapon layouts, its enemy design—in excruciating detail. I know that, for some, a single room in id’s 1993 shooter can warrant microscopic inspection, lest the mathematical precision with which John Romero laid the game out go under-appreciated. I know what DOOM is supposed…

News

Sir Michael Rocks’ new video is an anime come to life

Japanese culture and hip-hop have a long relationship, from the genre’s mid-90s kung-fu obsession to Kanye’s mid-oughts evocation of Japanese pop art up through its current commingling in the very production of Drake’s ubiquitous “Hotline Bling.” The Chicago emcee Sir Michael Rocks has always been a nerd, but in his new video “In My Mode” he goes the full cosplay: it’s essentially a three-minute homage to modern shonen anime. The first half is a back-alley brawl, all close-ups of eyes and stylized violence, recalling Akame Ga Kill and Sword Art Online. The rematch takes place in an open field, and is…