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The Nightmare beings here)
Despite how much i've come to love the Resident Evil Series, i actually hated Resident Evil for years, for the wrong reasons though. This is back around 1997,98 and when i still have a young, fragile and easily persuadable 5 year old mind. I remember it was just another month of the official Playstation Magazine that my Dad and Older Brother used to buy on a regular basis, and as usual it came packed with demos (how far we've come). Anyway this particular month and they (My Dad and older Brother) were playing some game called Resident Evil 2. I can remember that the cover of the demo case itself was pretty creepy and watching Leon Kennedy shooting some Man-eating Police in the Cop Shop. I didn't know what zombies were then, but i would after they borrowed the game from my cousin a few months later.
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An awesome cover, did it's job of creeping me out)
Now the game itself, while scary to little Gibbo, wasn't at the point of absolute fear. But then my whole immediate family decided it would be funny to pretend to be Zombies and "attack" me. Being 5 years old and my only impressions of zombies being from Resident Evil 2, this scared the shit out of me and put me off Zombies and Resident Evil for the next few years. Sure i did recover slightly, by the time Resi 3 came out, i was "shooting" the "zombies" instead of cowering in fear but i still wasn't completely good.
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The game that would change my view on the Series)
Then this game came out on PS2 (at this point my family had lost interest in the series) and i decided that it was time to conquer my fear. And that i did. Not only was Resident Evil 4 was (and is) an amazing game but it set me on a path of monster destruction. Over the years i got more and more Resident Evil games and when i completed my Childhood fear, Resident Evil 2, i had gone from hating zombies and Resident Evil to loving it. And that was the other great thing, i also conquered my fear of the undead and have since watched some of the great zombie flicks.
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For example this film)
So that's my little story about the beginning of my battle with the creatures of Resident Evil. I still haven't got my zombie apocalypse plan yet though.
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that makes little sense
...but the complete lack of any noteworthy story in that title was almost unforgivable.
RE2 and 3 expanded upon the universe immensely, and the remake of the original Resident Evil could probably be called the best re-envisioning of any single game (MGS:Twin Snakes should really have taken some cues instead of bumping only the texture resolution). Seriously, I'd shit myself if they remade these for current-gen consoles, though the originals still fare well today.
RE: Code Veronica and RE0 were also amazing extensions of feel and story.
Resident Evil 4, however, focused on enemy design and combat mechanics, and they were great, but dropping cameo appearances of previous characters in a new area with little-to-no explanation of what's going on doesn't create mystique. It was just lazy.
There were individual files in the previous games that contained more plot than the entire game of RE4.
I'd like to see RE5 keep the amazing mechanics and enemy AI, but return to the roots of scary environments and intricate/convoluted plot.