Resident Evil is one of those inescapably big franchises that rocketed to stardom, and then reached the point where it seemed like it would never end. Its ninth installment released on February 27th of this year, marking the tenth of what most consider to be the “mainline” Resident Evil games, with only more games and remakes on the horizon. 

I’ve been a Resident Evil fan for a few years now, after playing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard on a friend’s playstation for some number of terrifying hours. Now, I’ve been on the edge of my seat with news of Resident Evil 9: Requiem, with an intense itch for zombie shooter games and a desire to see returning character Leon Kennedy as a handsome old man.

To prepare for the newest game, I made the exhausting decision to play all the ones before it, in chronological order. As I mentioned before, there are a handful that are considered “mainline”, which are crucial in that they have overarching stories and characters. These games include Resident Evils 0-8, with 9 of course being the most recent addition.

I had my work cut out for me with playing all these games, but a big desire to review them, so I made a format that would be digestible and easy for me to do.

I played these 10 games, each one for at least an hour, and ranked them on 5 categories: Spook-o-meter, Monsters, Gameplay, Graphics, and #1 Character Choice. I compiled my ratings into infoboxes above each section.

In terms of game choice, I played the most recent version of every installment, meaning remakes over the older/original content. I will be going in-depth with my one hour experience of each of these games, discussing my most significant “pros” and “cons”. It would be nearly impossible to type everything on my mind, so I did my best to highlight the main points.

Warning – Spoilers Ahead!

This game was a headache even before it started. For the first few times I turned it on, it would fade to a black screen and stay like that. I had to reset my playstation once or twice to get it working. Once it did, though, I was greeted with a voiceover and a Star Wars-esque text scroll, talking about the outbreak incidents in Raccoon city (RE4), Rock fort island (Code: Veronica), Sheena Island (RE: Survivor), and the “mansion incident” in the original Resident Evil. 

This story takes place before all of those outbreaks. Honestly, I had a lot of frustrations with this game, and it was the one that singlehandedly convinced me to limit my gameplay to one hour, in fear of how long I might actually take to play through it in its entirety.

PROS:

• Cutscenes: Starting with the positives, I wanted to single out RE0’s cutscenes. I really enjoy in-game cutscenes, so anytime the action would pause and launch us into one, it was always my favorite part.  The ones in this game never lasted very long, but it gave us pretty good insight into Billy and Rebecca’s attitudes towards the whole thing, as well as important backstory tidbits about how they ended up where they did. A lot of the flashbacks were also what fed us information that would be important going into the next game (RE1), and cleared up confusion about character’s involvement with each other. They were a little awkward, especially in terms of voice acting, but I actually found them very charming. 
• Graphics: Another charming part of the game were the graphics, despite initial thoughts that the characters looked uncanny.  The game’s appearance lends well to the horror aspect. With the characters in particular, seeing them get attacked or interacted with by the monsters felt very cohesive because the monsters themselves were at the same level of uncanniness. The monsters still looked a little plain in this style though, at least separate from the other assets.

CONS:

• Camera: Right away, I was surprised by the fact that the in-game camera was stationary – which meant that while I could move my character, I couldn’t move my view of the room… It was limited to whatever angle the camera was already sitting at.  I played many of the remakes before this one, so the unmovable camera was a mechanic that I really, really had to get used to, especially because – I quickly learned – I could only see the monsters if they walked into frame. That limited my fighting ability, because half the time I could hear but not see them, and I’d open fire on an empty spot or completely miss.
• Resources (or lack thereof): I am not a good consolidator of healing items in any Resident Evil game, which I quickly came to find out was my first, very vital mistake. Having to play as two characters, I always had to monitor their health, because if either died the game was over. That became a challenge, as not only was Rebecca’s defense lower than Billy’s, but I would get continuously hit by zombies off screen and they’d both end up injured. The healing items in Resident Evil are herbs and first-aid spray, which I ran out of way too quickly, to the point where I couldn’t progress in certain parts of the game because one of the characters would be one attack away from death, and I had nothing to heal them with.
• Saving Problems: The saving mechanic was a typewriter, but it did something that I’ve never seen before – which was limit the number of times I could save my game progress. In order to use the typewriter, I needed to find ink rolls, and if I didn’t have any on hand… Well, I’d have to just hope that nothing would kill me anytime soon, because I’d lose all the progress I’d made. I didn’t love that because I felt like I had nothing to fall back on if I ended up making a bad call in battle (which happens a lot).
• No clear objective: This con will be recurring, and was honestly the toughest part of playing all of these games. This was less of a problem in the later ones, but RE0 would often launch the player into their situation with no clear indication of what they should do or how they should do it. It was a lot of exploration, and putting the pieces together yourself, which I do enjoy – but only for so long. Even if I were to figure out my next mission, once I satisfied it, I’d be back at square one with nothing to do. This made story progression painfully slow, as I was always back tracking to try and discover things to move me along, or having to look online to find the answers. RE0 is very guilty of having many means of progression, but not the explanation to figure out how to bring it all together.

This game highlights the notorious “mansion incident”, which happened right on the heels of the previous game and actually had some overlapping characters. I was a little nervous going into this game, mostly because it was on the same disk as RE0 so I wasn’t expecting them to be that different. For the most part, they were an almost identical experience, but there were interesting story beats that I recognized from playing the previous one.

Our two main characters Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine were part of the same Special Forces division mentioned in the previous game, and were trying to locate their stranded teammates. In a sudden ambush of zombie dogs, Chris/Jill (depending on who you chose) would be rushed to a nearby mansion for shelter, along with side characters and their boss, Albert Wesker (who, as previous game indicated, was secretly planning this).

The player is thrown right into the action, so I learned quickly that the content of my pros and cons would be identical to the ones from RE0. Instead of repeating the ones from before, I’ll mention the new ones that are game specific for RE1.

PROS:

• Beginning intro sequence: There were a significant chunk of good sequences in this one, but one of my favorites was before the game actually started. This game had the typical difficulty customization options, but there was also the added choice of character selection between Chris and Jill. The option screen was set up like a questionnaire, and in place of “easy”, “medium”, and “hard”, there were descriptions of what the gameplay would look like in each choice. It looked a bit like a job application, and I really enjoyed the stylistic appearance of it.

CONS:

• No clear objective(x2): Once again, I spent my whole hour wandering aimlessly around a mansion and periodically getting attacked by zombies. It was actually a little tougher this time because I was on my own, instead of having another character as a partner to fight and share resources with. It was a lot of going around in circles with no clear end, or accidentally doing tasks out of order and having to go back to places I already went. The introduction of zombie dogs didn’t make it any easier, mostly because I had to preserve my saves and didn’t want to get mauled to death trying to get through the wrong hallway. Especially for me as a player, it would have meant a lot to be pointed in the right direction.

RE2R was my oasis in a RE0/RE1 desert, and it was relieving to play a game where everything looked a little more familiar. There are two main storylines, which follow characters Leon Kennedy and Clarie Redfield as they (separately) try to navigate a zombie-ravaged Raccoon City. Originally, I played Leon’s route with a family member first, and coming back for my hour I decided to play Claire’s spin-off section, which shows some of the more major moments in her perspective. Surprisingly, the two ended up covering very similar ground.

PROS:

• Revamped menu: I felt a lot more at home with this menu, mostly because I started with RE7, which has a similar layout. All the buttons were what I had grown used to, and I had more item space, which was something I had taken for granted.
• Pinged items: Any item I could pick up or interact with had an icon that showed me it was there, which took out a lot of the guess work. Even while I was running, I was able to grab ammo or healing herbs along the way because they wouldn’t completely blend into the background.
• Mr. X: There are a few of these games that have a main “bad guy”, who serves as an unkillable enemy for a majority of the play time. They’re usually some kind of humanoid monster that was created as a result of one of the viruses, and in this case, the monster was a huge, grey man named Mr. X. He was verbally silent and completely terrifying, with the only way you knew he was there was being by his heavy footsteps. His appearance wasn’t constant, but the chase was one of my favorite parts, as it put me on edge, thinking he might appear at any given moment.
• Upgraded graphics: Just from looking at the cover, it’s easy to see the newer graphics of the remake compared to the older versions. Capcom leaned into way more realistic environments and characters, which they’d do consistently for their newer games as well. I think it makes it more frightening overall, just because of the realism of the visuals.
• Map functions: RE2R introduced one of my favorite map mechanics, which broke up all the rooms and color-coded them. A red colored room would indicate to the player that it wasn’t entirely explored, and that there were items there they hadn’t picked up yet. A fully explored room would be blue colored, and it made it easy to know when rooms were no longer helpful or worth the time to explore for supplies.

CONS:

• Zombie refusal to go down: I had this gripe with a few of the RE games in general, but sometimes, taking down a zombie is a lengthy process. Especially when there are a large number of them – attacking a few, only for them to get up and keep walking, makes it pretty complicated to get through certain sections. Thankfully, running is always a good option, but when the zombies are legitimate obstacles, it can get frustrating to get continuously chased by the same ones you already knocked down before.
• Claire’s resources: In the smaller version of her route I was playing, she was placed in a room with only a few bullets to start off. I was able to find more resources when I searched, but not before emptying the three or four I had on the nearest mob of zombies, putting me in kind of a precarious situation.

I had some fond memories of playing RE3R with my older sibling, up until we ran out of resources near the end and couldn’t progress any further. That was the main thing that stuck with me about it, so I was going in blind for the most part. In this game, we follow Jill Valentine (the same protagonist from back in RE1), in her efforts to sabotage “Umbrella”, the company who were perpetrators of the previous virus outbreaks. This all similarly takes place in Raccoon City, in a storyline occurring around the same time as RE2R.

PROS:

• Nemesis: Just like in RE2R, RE3R had a massive, beastly monster that chased around the protagonist – this one being named “Nemesis”, and looking significantly less human. One of the opening scenes of the game was a chase scene with Nemesis, and it was incredibly high intensity, becoming one of my favorite parts in my gameplay because of that. It was nice to get the opportunity to overpower Nemesis, even if briefly, as he’d slow from strong enough firepower. He was there frequently, but never overstayed his welcome, making him consistently scary.
• Characterization: The dialogue really showed through in this game, especially because (unlike in RE3R) the two protagonists weren’t completely separated. The player is able to learn the kind of person that Jill is, and her attitude, especially when juxtaposed with Carlos Oliveira, who is much more lighthearted. Their interactions with each other were always entertaining for me.
• Environment: My favorite of the RE games take place in cities, because it’s really grounding to see aspects of normal life in conjunction with the growing apocalypse. It makes the story feel more personal, even if it isn’t realistic at all, because it really looks like places I’ve seen in my normal life turned to ruin. It also doesn’t stray far from what I can recognize from the RE franchise, which is zombies terrorizing normal people.

CONS:

• Resources (Or lack thereof)(x2): I had to be pretty careful with my supplies for this game, which I already was, considering how that mistake had gotten our previous gameplay locked. I always found myself having to go back and find more supplies, which meant blowing through zombies that were still where I’d left them, and losing more ammo in the process. It was a bit of a rough time, but it made me even more grateful when I managed to get my hands on a substantial amount of items.

I’ve always thought my ideal game would be a mixture of RE3R and RE4R, because there’s quite a few things I’ve always loved about this one. Unfortunately, I’ve never played it in its entirety, but my hour of replaying it had me treading familiar ground. In this game, we follow the single protagonist Leon Kennedy, on his quest to save the president’s kidnapped daughter. It’s a bit of a switch up from what I’m used to with RE games, feeling more fantastical than a city overrun with monsters, but a lot of those differences boded well for it.

PROS:

• Leon Kennedy: This is Leon’s second game in the series, and his only as the primary protagonist with no other playable characters. It’s a shame to see him on his own, but he’s an absolute treat to play. He has a lot of capabilities that I first got introduced to through him, including roundhouse kicking zombies after the first few hits. He has an added melee option that’s always helpful, and it’s amusing to watch him stay relatively level-headed because of everything he’s already seen in the past. Another thing that’s always been consistent about him are his quips – he has so many quips, and they’re seriously nonsensical, so I kind of had to like them.
• Easy to defeat: One of my most treasured parts of RE4R is how Leon is able to properly take down the “zombies”, or infected people, in this game. In so many others, they seemed endlessly persistent, but it’s actually much easier to defeat them here. The reason for this, partially, is because zombie defeat is how Leon gets his supplies (money, more ammo, etc.), as this is one of the few installments that actually has a shop to buy more supplies at. However, I also appreciate how it makes Leon feel very capable, and me, as a player, feel like I’m actually making a dent in the monsters and overpowering them.
• Merchant: Like I mentioned before, there aren’t usually shops in RE games, but there was one here in the form of a vendor called “The Merchant”. He shows up mostly unexpectedly, with little introduction, and opens up shop at the end of a few major sections. They indicate his presence by a purple flame, and you can basically treat the areas around him as a safe house, as he’s also near saving typewriters (which you can thankfully use as many times as you want after RE1). It changes the traditional “searching for upgrades” into something to work towards, with an added incentive of treasure hunting and selling the merchant expensive stones you find lying around.

CONS:

• Knife usage: Part of the melee combat relied on Leon’s knife, but the issue was overuse of it would wear it down until it broke, rendering it useless. The game was good at giving me alternative knives later on, but once it was broken, you could no longer rely on it, leaving a gap in your choice of attack.
• Sticky aiming: There were some awkward moments where my gunpoint was trying to stick itself to different targets (similar to the “assisted” function) while I tried to take down the zombies, which made it a little frustrating when I was trying to pull it where I wanted to go and it wouldn’t do it fast enough.
• Lost: This doesn’t always have something to do with the game, but in some more than others, I have a tendency to get lost. It’s similar to what occurred in RE0 and RE1, except that, despite having my objective, I’m not sure where to go to fulfill it. In RE4R more than any other ones I felt this, mostly because (even from one hour of gameplay) the map was already massive, and there was so much ground to cover that there was no clear way for me to progress.

I got nervous once my time with RE4R ended, because I didn’t know what to expect from the next two games. RE5 was a strange experience for me, as I only knew it from secondhand knowledge, and none of what I heard had been any good. I still decided to give in the best shot I could, and played as Chris Redfield (back all the way from RE1), accompanied by his new partner Sheva Alomar, as they dealt with the spread of Umbrella’s bioterrorism in Africa. It might have been the longest hour of any game in my life.

PROS:

• Return of partner function: I felt a bit like I’d been brought back to RE0 as RE5 reintroduced a partner character you could interact with. You could trade items among each other, and tell your partner to fan out or stay close; I enjoyed it the first time, and seeing it return here was a pleasant surprise. I was able to survive most of the opening chapter thanks to Sheva’s quick healing items, and her assistance in battle made it much more bearable when we were attacked by the zombie horde.

CONS:

• Chris is too slow: The button to get Chris to run was awkwardly placed, but that would have been for the most part negligible, if his running hadn’t been very, very slow. It almost didn’t feel like he had any change in speed, and half of my gameplay was just trying to get him to the other side of the map where our next objective was.
• Unhelpful mechanics: Part of the “tutorial” section was two of the main mechanics, being the aiming and the map, but both of them functioned in really undesirable ways. Chris was completely rooted to his spot while aiming, making it impossible to shoot while moving away from the approaching target, and forcing you to shoot from much farther away. The map was also, for the most part, incomprehensible, and every time I opened it, it would also call my partner to me with a loud noise. Even now, I still don’t understand what the intention of the map was, because I opened it the first time and then never again.
• EVERYTHING is slow: It wasn’t just Chris’ problem; the story pace was incredibly slow, and only came to a head at the ending section where zombie upon zombie attacked in waves. It was as if all of the excitement was bottled up until that moment, which made the beginning portions incredibly lackluster and purely expository. When I finished the first chapter of this game, I didn’t feel like I did anything at all.

I decided to play RE6 late at night, with the only problem being my sibling and I had bought it for our PS3 instead of our PS4. I thought it’d be an easy transition to unplug one and plug in the other, but I spent a good 30 minutes messing with cords until I actually managed to find the right one and get it working. I really hoped it was worth the effort, but with how RE5 had gone for me, I was worried I did all that work for nothing. RE6 was broken up into four campaigns, similar to RE2R, with notable characters Leon Kennedy, Chris Redfield, and Ada Wong, along with a fourth man named Jack Muller. They were all intended to be played in a particular order, focusing on different play styles including horror vs action. The storylines are all intended to culminate in the end, but playing only an hour, I only got the beginnings of Leon’s campaign. Surprisingly, isolating what I’d played, I thought it was a good time.

PROS:

• Quick time events: These made up the starting section, which threw you right into the action with zombies and explosion galore. Honestly, I didn’t have the faintest idea of what was going on, all I knew was I had to watch for buttons to show up on my screen and click them as fast as I could before I missed by chance. I accidentally got Leon crushed by a helicopter on my first go around, which was hilarious just in the absurdity.
• Graphics and V.A.: I assumed the graphics would be closer to RE5 than not, but they actually looked a lot better. The voice acting also greatly improved moving on to this game, and with the action aspect of the story, I thought the way the game’s appearance complimented it well, even if not focused entirely on realism.
• Abundance of resources: The zombies just kept coming in this game, and like RE4R, they dropped supplies. The sheer amount of zombies I killed in one part of the game would have probably kept me sustained for the entirety of my play, which was a nice switch up.
• Cinematic: It was less of a game and more of a movie, with the set up of the cutscenes and the overall ambience. The quick time events added to this, because I’d have minimal work to do, and was just watching things spiral out of control. RE6 was like an interactive movie, with cutscenes interrupted by gameplay.
• Clear direction: RE6 had the opposite problem to the other games, in that the objective was so obvious that there wasn’t ever any kind of confusion. There was a built-in function that would actually create an arrow pointing you where you need to go to progress, which made it really easy to follow and find the necessary parts of the story.

CONS:

• Strange item menu: By far the most confusing menu in any RE I ever played. It was less of a menu and more of a list, something long that I could scroll through, and I ended up using it so little that I honestly couldn’t tell you how it properly functioned. But I thought the way it was set up was unnecessarily complicated.
• Too dark: Even playing this game at night, the lighting was so poor that I sometimes couldn’t make out farther parts of the room I was in. It led to a lot of sitting up and squinting at my TV.
• Exclusively autosaving: There were no save typewriters, or any saving machines for that matter, so you’d have to enter a new section before it would save for you. This wasn’t a problem at the time, but I know it easily would have been if I’d reached more critical parts of the game, as I’d have no say in where I landed if I made a bad decision and died.

This game is incredibly important to me, being my first introduction to the series, and it’s always the one I remember the most. It was comfortable to step back into it, but my familiarity honestly made me wonder if it’d scare me at all. Part of me was testing that during my one hour gameplay. RE7 is mostly separate from the main storyline (save for some cameos near the end), and follows Ethan Winters, a civilian man looking for his wife, who’d mysteriously disappeared 2 years prior. He unexpectedly got a letter from her, and dropped everything to save her, making a long trip to a dilapidated house in Louisiana.

PROS:

• Replayability: I’m happy to report that I still got legitimately horrified going through chase scenes I already knew, and getting lost in halls I’d played in before. It wasn’t scary in the way it might have been initially, but it definitely still had its charm, and stakes that put me on the edge of my seat.
• Good precedent: RE7 is another one that’s somewhat fantastical and unrealistic, but the first parts set you up very well with what you’re expected to see from the protagonists and antagonists alike. A main part of that is the characters’ resilience (ie: healing from fatal injuries), which even becomes an important plot point later in the series. It sets up the proper expectations for this game and its sequel.
• Ethan Winters: I spoke a lot about Leon in the earlier parts of this review, but truth be told, Ethan has always been my absolute favorite character in the franchise. He’s largely normal, and his incredulity of everything is part of his appeal. He’s not a character that’s ever had to deal with the undead, or monsters, so he’s having reasonably horrified responses about the things he’s being subjected to. Even in his sequel game, he carries the same confused determination while fighting things off. Despite being one of the protagonists we see the least of, I ended up finding his mannerisms endearing.
• First person POV: One of the most clear differences between RE7/8 and the other installments was the first person point of view, which was different from the typical third person camera that let you see the back of the character you were playing as. I didn’t know that it was different in playing it the first time, so it was never a big transition for me going into the other games. I really enjoyed the first POV for how it amped up the scariness due to the limited vision, because it felt a lot more daunting seeing things directly from Ethan’s eyes, and not from a place a little farther away.

CONS:

• Everybody is very calm: Mostly negligible, but some of the voice acting seemed a little tame considering what was going on. Ethan was clearly horrified by many of the going ons, but sometimes, hearing his voice, I wasn’t quite convinced of that and had to laugh.
• Mia’s hair physics: Maybe the only unnatural graphic in this game was Ethan’s wife, Mia, and the way her hair was moving. It’s been my experience in every copy of the game that I played, and at this point has become a staple. Her hair has a tendency to clip through her back, and glitch out sometimes, in some places stiff where it’s supposed to look flowy. It’s honestly kind of a hilarious thing to keep rediscovering.

The final game, RE8, was the sequel of Ethan’s game and another I enjoyed upon replay, despite how insane a lot of it seemed going back into it. In this part of Ethan’s adventure, his daughter, Rose, is taken from him, and he has to travel to a far off village to track her down. He’d tried to live a quiet, normal life after the events of RE7, but of course, he’d been pulled down another rabbit hole of monsters, with no other choice but to save his family again.

PROS:

• Storybook sequence: There’s a largely symbolic children’s book that Mia reads to their child at the start, and the stylization of that scene beautifully brought it to life. It was so textured, with a palette of black, greys and gold that gave a kind of Tim Burton-esque impression.
• Baby Rose: Ethan’s daughter is adorable, and I was as committed to finding her as Ethan was.
• Jarring moments: RE8 shows the moment that Ethan’s rebuilt life is shattered in front of him, and being thrown directly into the fray was incredibly jarring. Everything that happens is so sudden and bizarre that you start carrying questions with you that you absolutely need to be answered.
• Diary feature: After a lot of major moments, Ethan will journal what happens in his own words, usually just a sentence or two in wondering. Every entry has an accompanying drawing, and it’s a little piece of characterization that really stuck with me about him. Though you could never see Ethan (outside of his hands), the game used this to give us insight into more of his mind.
• Item completion map: RE8 marked the most recent return of my favorite map feature, which shows when you’ve picked up all the items in certain areas or rooms to prevent you from uselessly rooting through them again. Especially with the amount of ground RE8 is covering area wise, it was nice to rely on it again.
• Strong set up: Storybuilding and lore felt the clearest for me in RE8, setting up parts of the “village” itself, and all the strangeness surrounding the kidnapping of Ethan’s daughter. There are characters you briefly interact with that offer important glimpses, and give you just enough of an idea of what’s happened that you’re always looking for more to fill in the gaps.

CONS:

• Lost(x2): Considering the size of RE8’s environment, it was a miracle that I didn’t get lost sooner. But on the tail end of my hour, I ended up wandering aimlessly, even through houses I went through before. However, I managed to get back on track just as my time was up, which I was unsuccessful in during RE4R.

Being a player with a completionist mindset, it was difficult just to play one hour of each game then move on to the next. But, that being said, it was fun to be able to get small snippets of each one, especially the ones I had never played before.

From a person looking in, it can seem impossible to catch up on everything that happens in the RE universe, just because its spanned so many games. It’s easy to find it daunting, and for anyone looking to play but not knowing a good place to start, I’d recommend picking the game that looks the most interesting to you.

All of my knowledge of RE was pieced together during playing it. When things would get rough, or confusing, I’d consult the internet and find my answer, as well as answers to other questions I hadn’t even thought to ask yet.

Another solid choice for starting is choosing the most recent game, because setting yourself up with the current state of the franchise will make it easier to decide whether you’re interested in backtracking. The older games are definitely worth playing, even the ones I couldn’t bear, because in all that they were difficult, they were also entirely unique from each other.

My scattered gameplay with each of them got me all the more excited for RE9. At the time of writing, I’ve had my own hour or so snippet of the newest game as well, and, even after the past month of my life being consumed by all that was RE, I still felt that flurry of fear and excitement of starting a new story in this universe.