Resident Evil Survivor (2000)

Played through 3 times back to back on Normal. I was not sure what to expect from this game. I was pleasantly surprised that it included full movement and exploration rather than just being an on rails shooter. I took the first path each time there was a split because I had no idea there were multiple routes through the game. This did increase replayability but I was annoyed that I could not backtrack and check the other ways for loot. I mostly used handgun A. I found its faster rate of fire to be superior to handgun C, but C was better for long range sniping. I almost always saved 1 bullet in the clip to go into the menu for the good old fashioned combine reload, which allowed me to not waste combat time on reloading. There was not even the reloading delay and sound effect, so it was very unrealistic. I think it would have been better to disable menu reloading (except for changing ammo type on the grenade launcher) and instead encourage switching between the 4 pistols. I died at the first dual hunter group, mainly because there was such a delay before the health meter changed to danger that I was dead before I realized I needed healing. From then on I used shotgun any time there was more than 1 hunter. I had trouble hitting dogs and started using shotgun for them too. Though I finished lone dogs with pistol. Sometimes I ran away to the previous room after killing 1 enemy, and a few times I ran past enemies. The zombies were trivial, lickers were easy to pistol kite, and Mr X was shockingly easy to kill with pistol. This protagonist makes Chris, Leon, Jill, Clare and the others seem like incompetent weaklings given how easily he kills things and how much punishment he can take. Like hell you would see me taking on 1 licker or Mr X with only a handgun in the main RE games. I made it to the end of the game and used magnum to drop the final boss, which was a huge mistake because that part was easy enough to do with only a handgun. Then I got killed by the soldiers at the train. They could do a LOT of damage with their guns. Next time I dropped the closer 2 and ran for the train. Part 2 of the final boss was very easy as I figured out I could always avoid damage by moving out of the way and use target lock to quickly face him for an easy shot. Unfortunately I used up all my good ammo and went into the last phase with only some grenade and shotgun ammo. The difficulty spike here was huge and I could not figure out how to safely kill the boss. He jumped around off screen a lot, did a very difficult to dodge charge from range, and dangerous swipes and grabs at close range. I used all the rest of my continues trying to kill him, even killing the previous form with pistol to use all my acid and flame rounds for him. It did not help that I only had 1 green herb. I took too much damage over the course of the game.

I was very surprised to find that restarting the game gave me everything I had from the checkpoint before I died. So I had all the guns I found, a ton of regular grenades, some flame and acid, a few magnum bullets, and some shotgun shells. This time I took the 2nd paths each time and resolved to take less damage. I found handgun B and loved its extreme rate of fire; it was almost a machine pistol. The long reload time did not matter with inventory reloading, though the gun and bullets were annoyingly far apart. I wish there was some kind of inventory sorting. I probably spent as much time scrolling the inventory as I did shooting. It wrecked lickers and Mr X, and the fast firing could keep hunters from attacking. But hunters were very fast and I sometimes still took hits, so I decided to not take any more risks and drop them with shotgun, unless they were far away. I went into the final fight with 3 green herbs this time and dropped him with about 15 magnum shots to the heart. It seemed like the best thing to do was backpedal while shooting him to prevent any jumping around or charges, while not getting close enough to be grabbed. Taking some hits seemed unavoidable though, so 1 or 2 green herbs were needed. I was surprised at how easy he went down. Got A rank in just under 2 hours.

Then one last playthrough to try out the final paths I had not taken. When I got to the alley with only 2 paths I was confused and looked at a walkthrough. I did not even realize there was a path in the moth room of the prison, so I never fought the gators. I don't feel like playing again just to see what that is like. I did even better this time, though I did not have those few extra magnum shots, so the final boss took 3 acid shots to finish. Handgun D was pretty good with high damage per shot and fast reload. It did not have the dps of B, but I preferred it for zombies and the first 2 phases of the final boss due to not needing to inventory reload. D was even decent for dogs, though I think C was a little better at long range. This left A as the least useful gun, though it did have the largest magazine. I got A rank again even though I never died, did not use any first aid spray, was just under 1.5 hrs, had 81% accuracy, and had 130 kills. Maybe I ran past too many enemies.

This game was obviously made to a much lower standard than the mainstream RE games. I could see the signs of a light gun arcade game changed into a home console version. The core gameplay was decent but multiple buttons were not even used. Strafing and reloading buttons would have been useful. It should of had proper saving rather than continues, and been significantly longer. The story and characters were pretty boring as was the exploration flavor text. The premise of the protagonist having amnesia and believing himself to be the villain was a very interesting concept, but it was completely wasted here. It would of helped if there was a believable reason for him to have amnesia, like if he was captured and experimented on or subjected to mind altering drugs or something. I don't normally care about voice acting but here it was laughably bad. They should have remade the mainstream games in this engine/controls; that would have been gold.

6.0/10