Resident Evil Survivor Retrospective

As a series with more spin-offs than a Beyblade battle, it’s always interesting to look back on where the Resident Evil series first started splintering off. Given the success of the first three games, it was only a matter of time until the series started introducing side-games for our enjoyment. It all began at the turn of the millennium with a first-person shooter.

Capcom’s decision to create a first-person Resident Evil game may have been a surprise to players at the time, but in recent years we’ve come to understand that the series was originally imagined as a first-person game. Tose, who recently worked on Scarlet Nexus, were the company tasked with dealing with this particular zombie-sidepiece.

                                        

Resident Evil Survivor is one of the series' more forgettable games. Sandwiched between the releases of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and Resident Evil - Code: Veronica, it definitely struggled thanks to Capcom flooding the market with their own franchise. Its only saving grace was being so mechanically different, but even that was marred by how similar everything looked when compared to Resident Evil 2. Which wasn’t a surprise, given that Survivor had ripped so many assets from the main series’ second installment.

Despite the visual similarities, the game is set on Sheena Island, a private island owned by Umbrella, as opposed to Raccoon City. Players take the role of an amnesiac who survives a helicopter crash. Fighting through a best hits collection of Umbrella’s bio-weapons, our protagonist is trying to reclaim their memory of why they’re here on Sheena Island. It’s a typical Resident Evil romp; you read notes to build the world, and track back to complete puzzles, before it all ends in a massive head-bursting explosion.

In fairness it’s an enjoyable story. Like most Resident Evil stories, the plot is nonsensical, which makes the two hour playthrough breeze by. More surprising is how similar the game controls when compared to its predecessors. The infamous tank controls return in first person. Holding down the R1 button to aim remains a core element to tearing zombies up. Even the inventory menu is the same - in fact the only difference is you walk around in first-person. Ammo conservation is a key element, with the exception of the pistol which comes with infinite ammo.

                                       

It’s still a sluggish shooter though, and dragging the cursor across the screen makes me sadder than having to pull my spoon through a morning bowl of oats. Originally, the game was packaged with a light-gun, although older reviews I’ve found seem to suggest the light-gun experience wasn’t too different from using a controller. Any accurately aimed shots also moves the player view to centre the target, acting like the worst version of auto-aim you could possibly ask for.

Shooting things was surprisingly average, given it was a first attempt, but where Survivor starts to fall apart is its monotonous setting. Sheena Island is a bland location that fails to live up to iconic settings such as Raccoon City or the Spencer Mansion. Everything is greyer than a British summer morning. With the exception of a couple of cool locations, most of Survivor involved you strutting around empty rooms.

I think this was mostly done to help the player navigate their way around the place. Survivor predates videogames making a full transition to analogue controls, so players are forced to find their way around like a capsized tugboat. It’s a shame the environment was gutted so heavily to allow players to adapt to the gameplay. There are some well-designed areas of the game, but they are admittedly rare.

Mobs suffer from being lifted from an older game too. Although the character models in Survivor looked good from the static camera perspective, getting up close and personal with the zombies really shows how dated they are. The closer zombies got, the less I feared them and the more I considered that they looked like someone had slung a teddy bear into a washing machine full of beans and mushy peas.

Survivor was a cheap cash-in on the Resident Evil name by Capcom. Despite spawning its own spin-off series that totalled four games, the main series wouldn’t attempt first person controls until 2017’s Resident Evil 7. I think general negativity made me hold off on Survivor for the longest time. It feels just as clunky as it does when watching any old clip of it, all whilst sacrificing a lot to accommodate such outdated game design.

Despite all that, I still found myself happily playing through until the end. Despite being mechanically poor, there is a true Resident Evil experience at the core of Survivor. It does benefit from its length, of course, but I enjoyed it enough to contemplate playing the next one. There’s charm, twists, and throwbacks to old characters we know. Having finally played it, I completely understand why it’s met with such disdain. Yet, the chaotic story and sluggish gameplay are exactly what remind me of classic survival horror games. Survivor is a bad videogame, but it keeps true to what Resident Evil should be.