HD remakes are a type of release that’s entirely a ‘norm’ now. Hell, predicting which games will get the treatment next has become a bit of a ‘game’ a couple of friends and randomly play. On the whole, I’m supportive of these endeavors — often they’re some of the best games of previous generations gone by, re-worked to play on modern platforms including miscellaneous tweaks from control adjustments to graphical and sound improvements to re-worked voiceovers and difficulty balances, even new content, sometimes.
Not that long ago, Capcom released the original Resident Evil in HD remastered form, and it was stellar. In my humble, not-a-RE-expert opinion, RE0 HD is of the same remastering-ilk and quality, although the game itself is not quite as good. Still, it’s a compelling game on the whole to be sure, and its much more Resident Evil-like than some of the other modern ones. Tank-like controls (although the HD remaster allows for new alternate controls that move the character in the direction of the analog stick!), inventory management, slow-door opening animations, those are all here in RE0, for better or worse.
Inventory management with RE0 has a notable difference however in that there are no item boxes to find and subsequently use. You can literally drop your items anywhere which adds convenience and time-savings, but ups the required foresight or planning needed to utilize this newfound freedom effectively. Another unique gameplay design of RE0 is that the two protagonists help each other out regularly, both incombat and puzzle situations. Players can switch between the two with just a button press, significantly adding to the strategy (they have their own unique pros/cons) and depth of the game.
So, quick tangent; one particular nuisance that perhaps only I’m annoyed by is world interaction. By that I mean when you look at an in-game object or ‘scene’, you press A or whatever to interact, and a description will appear as text, letting you know what’s up. What gets me is that, the way I play these kinds of games I want to interact with pretty much everything, just in case there is a clue or an item or some easter egg or story tidbit, etc. Now, I understand the lack of multiple lines of dialog for the same interactive object, especially for a game from 2002, but I wish that there was an easier way to know when I am interacting with the same thing to prevent this dialog rehash from popping up constantly, like some kind of visual cue or controller rumble, something.
That tangent aside, RE0 is, as its name suggests, a prequel to Resident Evil 1. The premise is that a string of murders is happening just outside the ill-fated place known as Raccoon City, and STARS are sent to investigate. En route via helicopter, they suddenly suffer engine trouble and are forced to crash land in a forest. They discover a wrecked prisoner transport that seems to have been sabotaged, its guards killed, and Billy Coen, a convict convicted of mass murder, is no where to be found. The STARs Bravo team splits up and players take the role of Rebecca Chambers, who may seem familiar as she was first introduced in the original Resident Evil.
After the opening cutscene, when control is handed over to the player, what struck me first were the visuals. For a game first released in 2002, Capcom has done a great job updating the graphics. There are plenty of original vs new screenshot gifs online, some even provided by Capcom, but the difference is drastic. RE0 looks like a modern game, but it doesn’t really play like one, which is perfectly fine if you’re either comfortable with that or even excited at the idea of playing a classic RE game. The sound package for RE0 is formidable as well and in 5.1 surround. The combination of the sounds and visuals (technical fidelity as well as camera angles and art direction) sets up a potent atmosphere that does everything for the sense of immersion that other elements like the door animations, repeated world interaction prompts (see above), and some cheesy character dialog do to break it.
On PC, the game can run at 60fps with a modest gaming rig, while Xbox One and PS4 are set to 1080p and 30fps (last-gen is stuck at 720p). The ability to choose between 4:3 and 16:9 is a big plus that was also present in Resident Evil HD. Other goodies with the HD remaster include some costumes with stipulations like having pre-ordered or beaten the game, (and they’re just cosmetic as far as I can tell), and a special unlockable mode featuring series legend Albert Wesker. At the time of this posting, I have not cleared the campaign so I haven’t unlocked this mode yet, but from what I have read and watched online it gives the player tremendous speed and practically unlimited ammo in the form of energy, making this hardly a survival horror game at all, but more of a stress relief mode after tensely wading through RE0 proper.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
