Resident Evil - Tunnels
Resident Evil is a masterpiece when it comes to ramping up the tension. One of the ways it manages to do so is by introducing new enemies deep into the game. The player is always on the backfoot because of the uncertainty these new entries create. Throughout the game I never felt I had full control of the situations Jill was being thrown into. Loss of control has been the theme running through the entirety of Resident Evil. I have talked about it multiple times. Creating a sense of vulnerability is a staple of horror movie genre. But the movies are consumed passively as opposed to the video games which are actively consumed media. To be able to make the player feel helpless without literally taking away control (by constantly switching to cutscenes for example) can not be easy. Instead the game relies on changing camera angles, introduction of new enemies, jump scares (and rarely switching to cutscenes) to never let the player settle down. At any given moment, it feels like Jill is only one misstep away from getting seriously injured or dying. These clever mechanical as well design decisions are the reason why Resident Evil has aged so well over time. RE:make is not a “from the ground up” rebuild like RE:2. Yet it holds up as a genuinely fun game to play.
Once Jill finds herself outside of the mansion, there is a path leading to the residence with a small shack on the way. In here she finds Lisa. Lisa is a thoroughly misshapen monster. She chases Jill down, slowly but still faster than the usually shambling zombies. To top it off, she is also invincible. There is nothing Jill can do except to run away. I emptied all my ammo into her multiple times as she clobbered Jill to death before learning my lesson. First there was tension in trying to kill this thing as it just kept coming at Jill. Then there was helplessness because nothing I did would take her down. Finally, it dawned on me. This is not the kind of a game where we need to kill everything. The game has been hinting at this throughout, with scarcity of ammo and giving ample space for Jill to go around the enemies. But in the heat of the moment I still forgot all about it. In fact, Resident Evil had explicitly punished me for killing off zombies and leaving their bodies unburned. These zombies turn into Crimson Heads. They run faster, hit harder and take longer to die. The first time Jill walks into one of these is an unexpected jolt, especially more so if the player has been keeping track of what rooms the zombies are still in. The real kicker is these downed zombies don’t come to life right away. Jill may walk by the dead body a few times and a nothing would happen. When you least expect it, Jill opens the door to find an angry red zombie waiting to exact some revenge.
Jill does her thing at the residence and heads back to the mansion. As she enters the door, the camera immediately switches to first person. But this is not Jill’s view. Whoever this is, they are running much faster than anyone else has moved in this game until now. This thing is following the same path Jill just took, so clearly she will have to face it very soon. This was one of those rare instances where the game uses cutscenes take away the player power. The dread of inevitability is a brand new kind of fear I had not yet experienced in this game yet. I found myself muttering “NO, NO, NO” as the thing came running at Jill. Once the mansion comes in to view, we are back in control of Jill. A brand new enemy, Hunter, is here. He moves fast and bullets barely faze him. I just blindly shot at him in panic until he was down.
Even the whole of mansion has been explored, as players we feel the same trepidation, we felt the first time we came here. I am now dreading to find out which zombies I had not burned and how many hunters are lurking here and behind which doors. This deep into the game, Resident Evil still maintains the air of uncertainty. Jill makes her way to the tunnels only to find Barry is already here. You would think sticking together would make Jill safer, but you would be wrong.
All the misgivings I had about Barry are coming true. He tells Jill to go on ahead and scope out the place. As she is making her way forward, Jill hears the elevator leave. Barry has once more flaked out and abandoned her deep into the tunnels with unseen monsters. I am really starting to not like Barry. Jill is going to have to go through the tunnels and find a new way out. And there are spiders in there, only made more terrifying with upgraded graphics. After burning down one that is about four times the size of Jill, small spiders start popping out. I am glad I play this game with the lights on.
Lisa is back. And with the claustrophobia inducing narrow tunnels, it is harder to get out of her way. So many of these new enemies have popped up on me, by this time I am running low on ammo. I have more hidden in the storage, where it is of no help to me. All I can do is curse myself for not picking up another gun or a few more bullets. Whatever ammo Jill was carrying, has been used up while taking panic shots at the hunter. This is the perfect time for RE to sneak up a real nasty surprise on me. One that the developers had anticipated and set in place much earlier, at the beginning of the game.
Upon exiting the tunnels, Jill lands into the kitchen. She had been here earlier at the beginning of the game when I was trying to find my way through the mansion. There was a lonely zombie here, who I decided to put out of misery without thinking too much about it. This is before, Jill finds some lighter fluid to burn the zombies down. The horrifying memory of killing this zombie comes flooding right back as the angry Crimson Head takes a running start at Jill. With no ammo left, all I could do was call the elevator and run around to avoid Crimson Head. After what felt like an eternity, elevator shows up and Jill gets away.
Once Jill comes up to the shack again, there is a zombie walking about. I was relieved to have not shot him up earlier, because by this time I have no more energy to fight off another Crimson Head. Jill easily avoids ‘normal’ zombie’s lunge and heads back into mansion. It is time to enter the final area of the game. The Labs.
6/7/20
