I played through this on stream. You can watch the YT playlist of it here. (The video will be uploaded to YT on Friday, but you can see it on the Twitch VODs.)

Preliminary: A lot of nostalgia for this one. I remember being proud as a kid managing to beat a Resident Evil without a guide or help, which was unheard of since the puzzles were always so illogical or difficult, not to mention the action/gameplay/ammo management. Now, I’ve read this was intentionally quite easy, but whatevs. Sounds like it might be my kind of game then! I like easy and fun! Haha.

Look: 7/10 I don’t mind bad graphics but sheesh some of the excitement or horror really is lost when it’s a pile of pixels lol. Interestingly, it seems the latter half of the game improved the graphics at least for the final boss and the laboratory scenes in general. Plus, I guess I shouldn't really judge. I only think RE2 and RE1 look good cuz I'm so used to them heh. And I should be grateful this has my favorite enemies (tho I always dread seeing them in-game :-p) the Hunters and Lickers. Anyway, as cool as the Tyrant was, something just felt missing in the Look.

Sound: 8/10 Some great music, I love the use of drum n bass during the first portion. They kinda stopped using it halfway through lol, but then stuck with the creepy or hypey classic Resident Evil sound. The voice acting was.... entertaining.

Play: 7/10 They made this game very replayable not only by the usual RE ranking at the end, but also by having different routes to take. Neat that they had the different routes not just be, well, different routes, but also have you meet different people, be different difficulties or lengths, affect later parts of the game, etc. Nice little touch that makes the game feel different every time. Others have said what I thought when I was young–it seems items and enemies are slightly different each game regardless of what choices you make too. So a lot of variability, especially for an RE game, which adds a nice touch to an otherwise infamously easy game–sure it’s easy but then do a handgun-only S-Rank speedrun or something right? Haha

Welp, as usual with me, I did not find this as easy as people said, or that I remembered. I think once you play it once or twice it becomes that easy, now that I know the tricks to last-second dodges for Hunters and the final boss, that how close you are plays a huge role in how much damage your shot does, and more. For instance, I wrote "I wish there were a quick-turn-around feature" but as I got deeper into the game, it was quite clear L1 was meant to do that (tho it was decidedly flawed). Still, little quirks like that I think are what led little me to be able to actually complete this game, just probly after trying it a few times and learning its quirks. This probly should get a 6 for Play, but I'll carry the clunky movement controls and lack of fun over to the Feel section instead, because well, this is a good ol' tank control RE even if it's in first person :-p and I gotta give respect to that haha

Feel: 6/10 I love how big their hands are compared to their heads lol. But anyway, this would be great as a rail light gun shooter, but as it is, it just feels awkward. I wonder how well it worked with the G-Con with the Japanese release (I've read the movement controls were not great). But this North American release… it’s as rough as everyone said. I think it’s one of those games you really only enjoyed because it’s all you had and played it over and over, or you rented it and wanna crank it out real fast not really fall in love with it. It just feels disappointing and dull throughout most the game, and the clunky first-person controls make it feel like a chore. In many ways, it was just fun that was missing in this, and what leads to the lower Feel score. The nostalgia and replayability boost the Attachment though.

Attachment: 7/10 The last part of the game got a lot more solid, though: the test tubes, the look of the Tyrant, the dark pathway (if you take that way) to the lab. I can’t deny I love seeing the classic RE enemies, Lickers and Hunters, in a first-person setting, even if they’re pixelated as all get out, and the Hunters in particular were super frustrating to deal with with clunky controls. My biggest complains are, they should have had a way to allow both aiming and shooting at the same time. And they should have improved the L1 lock on feature, perhaps using more of the trigger buttons o.O gasp. Because I was all excited it had a lock on feature (unlike Buffy haha), and then found out it's all-encompassing: nearest item, door, or enemy. Which really can cause some awful moments when you're trying to lock on to the nearest enemy but the game decided the Green Herb farther away is more worth locking on to mid-battle :-p Anyway, very replayable, have some nostalgia for it, deep-down I appreciate it as an absurd perspective for the RE series, but mostly frustrating in practice. Kinda like how you remember some movie or game from your childhood but know better than to replay it or rewatch it because it wont feel as great--that's kinda how this went :-p

For the record, all the Continues (and most the struggle) were just at the final boss heh. Pro-tip: proximity determines how strong your weapon is, at least as much as which weapon you're using!

Completion: Main Story on Normal Mode Playtime: 2h 50m

I still remember playing Resident Evil: Survivor for the first time as a kid. It's hard to recall how little information we had about games we were interested in before the internet. I understood that the game was different in that it was first-person, but I think considering how young I was, I didn't totally comprehend the significance of what a "spin-off" generally entails. I was accordingly pretty disappointed when I did play the game to find that it's only about an hour or two tops in length and is generally far more linear than previous titles in the series, featuring a greater emphasis on action to take down enemies with well-placed shots rather than the "shoot in the general direction of the enemy" common to the fixed-camera titles that preceded it. All that said, coming back to Survivor now in 2024, I found the game quite different from what I remembered and was surprised that it was actually not too bad, even if I still didn't love it.

The gameplay of Survivor is in some ways the same as the original trilogy and in other ways totally different. The most striking difference is that the game is fully first-person (outside cutscenes). However while it looks a lot like an on-rails shooter in most respects, you do have control of your character and how you navigate the environments, which, despite the perspective shift, works pretty similar to the classic fixed-camera games. You take down enemies on your way to locating keys or item puzzle clues or ammo, progressing through a deadly environment in hopes of escape through a maze of rooms and corridors. Ammo conservation is a bit different in that you have infinite handgun ammo, but will have to watch your ammo for use on the bigger, badder enemies. While the exploration is generally a bit more bland, I was surprised on this replay to find how much it really was mapping the gameplay of the original trilogy.

While it's nothing amazing, I would actually consider the story of the game kind of good, at least for a game of this scope. If you think about it, attempting to have a fully-coherent and engaging story that fleshes out the Resident Evil world, introduces, develops, and deals with whole new characters and setting, all within an hour-ish long game, is a fairly tall order. With that in mind, I think Survivor does a good job at succinctly accomplishing these goals. We control Vincent, who has just awoken on an Umbrella-controlled island and doesn't remember anything about who he is or why he's there, only learning his name from someone who recognizes him and is terrified of him because—as we quickly discover numerous times—Vincent is a pretty bad guy who has done some pretty shitty things. This is actually a pretty intriguing character arc since Vincent now is essentially horrified at learning about what he himself has done and who he apparently is, despite not remembering it. But there are more twists and turns with the plot as it goes on even beyond this. It's not the most original plot, but I thought it was pretty well-done considering the confines of the game. The setting of the game is somewhat interesting and acts as a unique departure from the previous titles which all focused on activities in and around Raccoon City. This game helps to demonstrate that Umbrella has fucked up operations all over the world, a detail only hinted at in some of the files and lore of the previous games. While the voice acting mostly isn't much worse than other early Resident Evil games, I must say, the clip of Vincent's mother calling him might be the worst in the series and is worth a listen and a laugh. I couldn't find a clip of just it, but it's the first 40 seconds of this video:

As far as my issues with the game, there's not much specific other than emphasizing that most of my praise for Survivor bears the caveat of "for a super short, not overly-detailed spin-off title." I think it's somewhat non-linear and there are some choices in pathing but I didn't really notice much replayability; otherwise there's just not much to the game. The enemies are all recycled monsters and while the island has some development for the kind of (resident) evil shit Umbrella gets up to, it all feels very self-contained and like it doesn't really add that much new to the franchise. The gameplay functions better than you might think for a PS1 shooter with manual controls, but it is still unsurprisingly jank at times and combat often varies between painfully easy and frustrating. Still, it was an experimental title and while I don't think it succeeded in pulling the series in a new direction permanently, I wouldn't consider it a total failure and I'm glad it does exist.

While this is less relevant to my view of the game itself, it was such a weird feeling revisiting this game because I had very distinct memories of it that I could see vividly in my mind if I thought about it and they were almost universally...totally wrong. For instance, I remembered distinctly that the game was on-rails (it's not), that your character portrait is on screen like the original Doom (doesn't happen), and I recalled several specific shots of the environment from the game that never happened. In fact, though I do recall beating the game after renting it from Blockbuster, almost nothing about the game was all that familiar. Really disorienting experience, but to be fair, maybe that helped me to view it from fresher and less disappointed eyes so I was able to appreciate Survivor for the somewhat successful experiment it is.

My other Resident Evil reviews:

• Resident Evil (1996) - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 2 (1998) - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 3 (1999) - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil: Survivor 2 – Code Veronica - ★★
• Resident Evil Remake - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 2 Remake - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 3 Remake - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 4 VR - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 4 Remake - ★★★★★

Released in 2000, this Resident Evil is different from the original trilogy for three reasons: It's a first-person shooter, there is unlimited ammo, and you can use a light gun as a controller.

Well, unless you play the American version, where you have to use the D-Pad to shoot, as Capcom USA decided that it would be in bad taste to release a videogame with light gun support when the Columbine tragedy just happened. A stupid choice, as I doubt people would be offended by that, especially when franchises like The House of the Dead were really popular, and I don't think a niche Resident Evil spin-off lacking the option of using a toy gun made a difference in the occurrence of real-life shootings.

However, this didn't make the game harder to play, just more tedious. You can finish a run in under 2 hours, and the ending you get depends on the buildings you decide to explore, something the game never tells you and you have to discover by playing multiple times or reading a guide. The gameplay also lacks the classic puzzles of the franchise, and you just pick keys and random items that you use in the same room you found them.

Even the shooter mechanics are lackluster, as enemies aren't scary or challenging, just annoying, especially when a hunter attacks you 0.5 seconds after entering a new room. Also, you can't save, so you have to complete the whole experience in one sitting, which means you can't take your time if you don't want to risk losing your entire progress because something more urgent in your life comes up.

I understand spin-offs don't need to have the same gameplay as the main games, but the only thing related to Resident Evil is that you see the Umbrella logo in the background, you fight like 100 Mr. Xs, and there are files scattered that expand the lore and even mention events of the third game, which I enjoyed, although sometimes they were a little too edgy and explicit when compared to previous one. They even mention children being tortured and killed without any kind of censorship, which makes the whole light gun compatibility removal even funnier.

And related to the files, the story itself is kind of silly. You get amnesia and fall from a plane in the middle of an island where you have to escape while trying to remember who you are. The "plot twists" are very predictable and the characters you meet barely add anything interesting to the narrative. The previous games did a way better job with a simple story that never distracted from the experience, and this one could have been more effective if they removed the amnesia element, which is just an excuse to justify the lack of personality of the protagonist.

In conclusion, Resident Evil Survivor is lacking as a Resident Evil entry and as a light gun shooter game, but it's so short and easy that you don't waste a lot of time trying it just for curiosity's sake, just be sure to look up how to get the canon ending if you care about the lore and plot.