This may come as a surprise after all my talk yesterday of how much I love horror games. What game series will I never play? It’s not hard to answer… I will never play Resident Evil.
I can hear you gasping loudly from behind your screens. “But, why? RE has this amazing plot and these bad ass characters!” “What about the successful movies? The remakes? It’s an iconic game!” “RE has set the stage for so many great game mechanics! Many games incorporate them now!” These may all be true. In fact, I really enjoyed some of the movies. And I have given a couple of titles in the RE series a try (Code Veronica, RE4) so my opinion is not without basis, though I’ll happily tell you I’m sure some (if not 90%) of my information is probably wrong.
I simply will never play Resident Evil because I don’t like it.
I don’t enjoy shooters. I don’t enjoy the story (the universe has gotten pretty complex). It’s really not scary. It’s full of gore. I don’t enjoy most aspects about this game series that make it what it is.
Not enjoying shooters is definitely just my personality and opinion. There’s plenty of people who absolutely love them and even prefer them. My husband enjoys shooters and has tried to ease me in with the Fallout series. It worked somewhat but I don’t have to constantly shoot shit in Fallout which is nice. I just run from it or let my companion do the work. VATS also helps with my horrible aiming.
Want to get into the story that is Resident Evil? Good luck. That virus mutates so many times it’s not funny anymore. And then there’s some new virus (or something?) in the other games! How can I enjoy this series when I can’t keep up with its complicated and twisted universe? It gives me a headache just trying to figure it out. Is there an ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5) for the RE universe?
And I thought horror games were supposed to be scary. The occasional jump scare does not do it for me. Gross looking enemies do not scare me. Heads being blow off do not scare me. Running from zombies/mutants/whatever does not scare me. Give me some of that good psychological, keep-you-up-at-night, horror!
Want to see more of the 30 Day Video Game Challenge? Want to try the challenge yourself? Read this post here!
What game series will you never play? Let me know in the comments!
I was going to point out that only the most recent Resident Evil was 1st person but you’ve played Code Veronica and Resident 4, so you’ve also experienced the more traditional 3rd survival horror entries. And yes, it’s more the Romero, Dead Alive or They Live kind of horror. Hideous creatures and jump scares.
As for plots, yeah you’re about right. It gets silly beyond Resident Evil 2. Resident 4 did a bit of a clean slate by adding in a new source of mutations completely different from anything before and set it in Spain of all places. Then RE 5 and 6 combined the thing with the mess from before and well, it got messy.
The Revelations games are pure survival horror goodness though, including the scrounging for resources part. I would say give those a go and maybe the RE1 remake, but that’s the part of me that wants people to like games I like talking hahaha
If you didn’t like Resident Evil, I might suggest staying away from Dead Space, as it’s a similar kind of horror, though Dead Space does have its own psychological horror elements and draws inspiration from Event Horizon, one of the scariest scifi horror films out there.
Great article, will be back to check day 10!
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I totally mixed up first person and third person! I will have to fix that. Thanks for pointing that out.
I’ll give Revelations a try. As much as I push my own favorite games, I don’t see any harm in taking some recommendations! Who knows, I might like it!
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Never played RE, partly because I am not a huge fan of FPS (not sure if Transformers Devastation counts – that was bloody awesome…). For me the one series I cannot bring myself to play is Dragon Age. And most people don’t understand why since it is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy playing. But it isn’t the gameplay mechanic that puts me off, it is a bit more convoluted than that. The short version. Part of me feels like the game designers ripped off some of my written work. This is due to things to do with the first game which are virtually identical to a story I wrote, and is available free in the public domain, years ago and years before Dragon Age. Now, I have no proof the designers ever saw my work, and it isn’t too hard to believe that coincidence might explain it, but the first time I picked up the box and it felt like I was reading my story knocked the wind out of me and I just can’t do it. On the plus side, I learned a valuable lesson about what sort of content I should and should not share (The stuff that I could realistically no longer use without court battle or people claiming I stole from them, I probably wouldn’t use anyway as my writing back then was not as good as it is now, so that is a silver lining)
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I am so sorry to hear that! Putting your own writing out there like that took courage, and to see it possibly used by a popular game is definitely a blow to your self and your work. I hate that for you, honestly.
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Thank you, I appreciate that. it was a long time ago and it knocked me back then but part of me realises it is probably just an amazing coincidence. And it did have the silver lining that I had to rethink my work, which did help it improve. But I still can’t bring myself to play.
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I have no interest in Resident Evil either. There are a lot of those AAA games series that I really have no interest in. I will keep to me indie games.
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I have definitely found so many indie games that I prefer over AAA titles. Maybe we should do an indie game challenge?!
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I really loved Resident Evil. Its a great co-op game, which means I can let the boyfriend do most of the work while I freak out a little as the giant axe wielding monster comes towards us, and look for collectables instead – I really enjoyed 5, even though a lot of fans of the series dislike it, it’s the first RE game I was introduced to, and have since played some of the others, though I still don’t enjoy them as much. Blasphemy I know.
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Hey, that’s not a bad idea. Hubby would probably be on board to kill at things while I scavenge! I love seeing the different opinions on these games though.
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Resident Evil… used to be so good. I can’t stand Resident Evil 7 because it’s an FPS and tries it’s best to be Outlast. I will admit that I’m a huge fan of the series though. I’ve enjoyed more Resident Evil games than I’ve hated.
A series that I will never play? That is a great question. I’ll have to go with God of War and Silent Hill. I love horror games, but I never saw the appeal of Silent Hill and if I haven’t tried one by now odds are I never will. God of War is just your generic hack n slash game and while I love those kind of games there are more than enough to keep me busy without me having to buy a Playstation console (PC gamer here) to enjoy them.
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Oh man, I love both God of War and Silent Hill! I totally get the hack-n-slash though. It’s a button mashing nightmare (but soooo good). If you ever get the itch to play Silent Hill… and I hope you do, give Silent Hill 2 a try.
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I’ll be honest I probably won’t ever get that itch lol. If I’m in the mood for a horror game I’ll play something like The Evil Within or Resident Evil :). I still need to play The Evil Within 2. And I really want the F.E.A.R. series to come back too.
I love hack-n-slash games. I’m a Dynasty Warriors nut and I already preordered part 9. I just never got the appeal to God of War. I saw my brother playing them on him on his Playstation and I didn’t think it was a series worth my time. It’s totally cool that you love it though :).
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I will never really understand why, but I just can’t get invested in Pokemon. It seems like the perfect series for me to love, but it doesn’t work for me. I like all other Nintendo franchises, and could even see myself liking the few I haven’t played much – Star Fox, Metroid, F-Zero, etc. But Pokemon is just frustrating to get into for no reason.
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I also found Pokemon hard to get into. I only played it after getting Pokemon X on my 3DS for free with some kind of offer (I forget exactly). It was okay to me, but I played it for all of 3 or 4 hours.
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I won’t be playing any RE Game as well just because I am way to scared haha!
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