RESIDENT EVIL
you could probably trace half the medium to a common strand of point&clicks, but thru alone in the dark & resident evil we see just how clearly the puttering adventure game mutated into the Fucked Up Mansion genre. almost every decision here retains the blatant adventurisms while reshaping them into something more accessible, immediate, and elaborate: woozed up, uncanny aesthetics; fiddly item interactions; bizarre puzzles in a bizarre house; the mischievous urge to fuck up the player without fanfare. AitD2&3's failure to evolve the formula in a timely fashion had unwittingly caused the series to dig its own grave, and resident evil buried it with its own shovel
as far as Fucked Up Mansions go, this one's extraordinarily good. everything being built around the three staircases and two item rooms is beautiful, and the structure finds a balance between an excellent amount of freeform exploration and problem solving while keeping the goals clear and the pacing brisk. each segment shifts the dynamic in slightly different directions as the player's familiarity with the game increases, and aside from some stumbling at the finish line (the resident evil tradition) i wouldn't change a thing about any of them. it's no surprise that an entire genre would xerox the broad strokes almost 1:1, cos while there was lots of room for improvement in the finer details, the bones themselves were rock solid from the start
its other biggest success was its layered approach to resource management. first you got the general resources (herbs&bullets) that appear with regularity, but without concrete guarantee; more concerned with the plausibility of scarcity than the reality, providing what's required while leaving gaps for unknowing to shine thru
then you got the limited item slots (eight for jill, six for chris) restricting short term availability and providing a perfect means of controlling the player's immediate use & access at any given time to any extent required, regardless of what they have waiting back in the item box. here the scarcity is concrete, not simply suggestive, and the burden of long-term itemization is relieved substantially thru mandatory short-term tradeoffs
lastly you got the ink ribbons holding everything together. rather than allowing the player to optimize everything room by room with checkpoints and/or savescumming, they force a longform session structure, pushing them toward taking risks, improvising, and living with the consequences of their choices while doubling down on the tension present in the uncertainty inherent to finite resources
it's just about perfect, so it's a shame that for all the success the series has had in recent years, only RE7 (Madhouse) & RE2R (Hardcore) have leaned into the blueprint without compromise. it's doubtful that true haters would've been suddenly won over by the inclusion of RE3R or RE8age Hardcore, but it would've been nice if that stuff wasn't dropped the second capcom no longer felt like they had something to prove. we're a long ways away from when chumps like me bought into their shameless bullshit about how leon's RE6 campaign was gonna be a "return to survival horror", but i'm still gonna be livid if the next one scams me out of ink ribbons in order to push point shop difficulties for a third time
always knew chris' campaign was the harder of the two (in the JP version they're explicitly called "hard" and "easy" respectively) but never actually got around to playing it despite chris being my favourite blockhead boy. you get less item slots, more&tankier enemies, no lockpick, no grenade launcher, no barry; it makes a bigger difference than i'd expected, even with the increased health & pistol crit rate
people say chris has no personality, but they're dead wrong: the man's been a clueless bimbo from day one. all those pockets and can't carry shit; no unique skills; can't play the piano; too thick to do the V-Jolt puzzle without assistance from a teenager; at odds with boulders; hates wesker. really, everything you need to know about the man starts here. jill's been a different character in every game she shows up in, but chris is forever. had anyone actually played his route the bit where he laughs in wesker's face and calls the tyrant "the ultimate failure" would be widely recognized as the best scene in the game
and lastly, since no one will shut the fuck up about REmake, i'll weigh in on that a little. REmake is a very good remix.. it's a very good companion piece.. but it's not a substitute. it will not provide the context required to understand the series' history, and its improvements come with noteworthy trade-offs. you cannot play both sides of the remake field; either you have respect for original works across the board or you lose your smugposting privileges permanently. preferring the remake is fine and good, but telling people it renders this one obsolete means i gotta write you up for pud behaviour
i understand that not everyone gives a shit about The Context and some folks just wanna rush to notch stuff off a checklist, but you should worry about the victory before the victory lap. it';s like six hours, dog. eat your broccoli