Resident Evil 0 | The Prequel RE Forgot

[Music] prequels generally don't have the best reputation most franchises that go on long enough will eventually try to look backwards attempting to fill in blanks and give additional context to characters and events occasionally a prequel will fully justify its existence further enriching already rich lore but more often than not these trips into the past feel wholly unneeded mysteries better left up to the imagination will be fully explained answers will be given to questions absolutely no one was asking or something will end up conflicting with the firmly established timeline a lackluster prequel won't ruin a series but it can leave you wondering what ultimately was the point of it in the first place and with that said this is resident evil zero [Music] resident evil zero came out in 2002 the same year as the acclaimed re-1 remake with only eight months separating the two titles on the surface that might lead some of you to believe zero was some thrown together rush job made to ride the coattails of alpha team's debut but in reality zero was in development for many years in fact it was originally conceived for the ill-fated n64 disk drive before ultimately being rebuilt for the gamecube re 0 is a weird title for me among my childhood consoles the gamecube was basically the resident evil box so i played zero when it first released and i remember liking it i replayed it multiple times but once resi iv came out and the series has a whole shifted direction i rarely ever thought about it again until it was remastered in 2016 alongside the resident evil remake while i went on to finish re1 again and have since revisited it several times over the years i didn't do the same for zero i bought it i booted it up but i only made it about halfway through before walking away and not touching it again until now nostalgia is usually a powerful force i'll go back to childhood games and have a great time with them flaws and all but that just doesn't happen with this actually the main feeling i associate with this game is indifference and replaying it today only drove that point home i don't hate re zero but i also don't really enjoy it and given the larger series never seems to acknowledge it i don't think i'm alone in that set the night before the infamous mansion incident we begin with a train speeding through the arkley mountains region and all seems peaceful until swarms of deadly leeches controlled by a mysterious opera singing man enveloped a locomotive killing everyone aboard [Applause] [Music] we then cut to rebecca chambers and the rest of star's bravo team in their helicopter on route to investigate the mysterious murders plaguing raccoon city only for a sudden engine malfunction to force a landing deciding to search the area the team come across an overturned military transport and learn from recovered documents that prisoner billy cohen was being transferred for execution since billy is nowhere to be found captain enrico has everyone split up to look for him because characters in horror media are dumb like that now on her own rebecca comes across the now eerily quiet train from the opening and decides to investigate one problem prequels tend to have is that they assume they're mainly being experienced by established fans that already know what to expect and while not an incorrect assumption to make it generally results in a rush to get things started and zero is definitely guilty of this you encounter zombies in the second car you enter less than 30 seconds after taking control and despite this canonically being the first time a protagonist has ever seen these undead freaks rebecca acts like this is business as usual barely flinching while gunning down all the threats if you take the time to clear this cabin you also get this extra blink and you'll miss it reaction scene what just happened i thought they were dead oh my god i thought they were dead they're zombies this is crazy shortly after this rebecca encounters fugitive billy on the same train and the interaction goes like this i'm a loner who doesn't trust anyone i'm taking you in no you're not dang it and with a loud crash we get the only non-cinematic interaction rebecca has with another bravo team member the forest is full of zombies and monsters zombies and monsters you make your way back through the train only to run into billy again who in the span of five minutes has come around to the magic of friendship and suggests cooperation although rebecca declines choosing to search the upper cars by herself um excuse me sir sir she gets attacked by a strange leech man quickly being overwhelmed only for billy to come to her rescue he's beginning to believe and that friends is the exact moment any hope of this game being scary went out the window our duo catch a glimpse of phantom of the opera before the train suddenly starts to move and with nothing to lose our heroes finally decide to team up and this leads us to the biggest gameplay differences zero has compared to other entries the basic gameplay is what any fan of the originals would expect tank controls fixed camera angles and an emphasis on exploration and puzzle solving fun fact re zero would be the last mainline game in the franchise to use this classic formula but what sets zero apart is that while past games would have you choose a singular character to play as here you're controlling two at the same time rebecca and billy are almost always together other than specific instances where they're forced to split up you can directly control either character switching between them at the push of a button while whoever you're not piloting is maneuvered by ai you can technically move the secondary character with the other thumb stick but that's really only handy for a few moments where they might be slightly out of position for a switch you can command your partner to follow or hold position and set whether they're passive or aggressive toward enemies though i recommend defaulting them to an idle state on rare occasions they'll fulfill their role of walking turret adequately but during my playthrough my computer-controlled partner would often refuse to fire a shot even when in immediate danger it's just more reliable to take care of business yourself rebecca and billy both handle the same but have a few slightly different traits billy is more resilient able to tank a bunch of damage and can move heavy objects when necessary while rebecca is the only one of the two that can mix herbs that tends to make billy more reliable to play as since rebecca requires a heal after one or two hits making her more suited to a support role each character also has a unique item with billy having a lighter and rebecca carrying a mixing set but each is only used twice in the entire game while playing with two characters is certainly different it isn't actually the most significant shake-up no that would be how inventory management was altered first off two characters means two separate inventories to sort and with only six carrying slots per person you'll constantly be trading objects back and forth effectively doubling the amount of time you'll spend on this screen but that's only the beginning of the micromanaging nightmare resident evil 0 also made the bold choice to do away with item boxes entirely there is no universal storage for the stacks of crap you pick up during your journey to compensate for this absence all items now have a constant presence in the world when you remove something from your inventory it will permanently stay wherever you left it instead of disappearing into the void allowing you to go back and retrieve it whenever you want naturally this causes a major increase in backtracking sure older res had plenty of backtracking too but you only ever had to go as far as your nearest storage chest but now if you left the necessary puzzle item on the other side of the map you'll be running all the way to the other side of the map want to see me raise the blood pressure of every re veteran with one word hook shot as for combat resources like health and ammo leaving those scattered around isn't very practical so you'll sort of naturally create your own storage area by ferrying what you find to a safe centralized location like this main hall here at least until you realize memory limitations only allow for so many items in a single room i ended up keeping all my herbs and ink ribbons in here and made this second floor conference room by armory of sorts since i know a lot of players tend to do something like this i don't think it would have hurt anyone just to have the normal storage chests we're used to if you want to force players to plan things out more then maybe have less of them have them spread out or limit their capacity but at least have them especially for later in the game having to run all the way back to earlier areas to grab supplies isn't tense it certainly isn't fun it's just tedious there are three major environments you explore in re zero the train the umbrella training facility and the treatment plant and in my opinion the quality of these places decreases from one to the other the opening train section is the best part of the game it's a unique location it's relatively small it doesn't contain many of the annoying elements that later areas have and is paced well taking about an hour to get through of course this ride inevitably ends the same way as speed and our duo finds themselves in the aforementioned training facility which is where the majority of the game is set now this place isn't bad or poorly designed really but it can't help but come across as a discount spencer mansion and i think one of the main reasons why is its general lack of inner connectivity the main hall of the mansion is iconic and you'll pass through it often but other areas weave in and out of one another there are hallways that connect to each other and stairs leading to other floors you'll spend good chunks of time remaining in and searching one side of the estate here in the facility however the main hall is where all expeditions tend to start and end you'll go in a direction find a room or hallway check what you can check and return the way you came you spend so much time running back and forth through this one room especially if you're routinely coming back here to pick up supplies as i did and you get pretty sick of looking at it the treatment plant is the last environment in the game and again while not poorly made per se it's not a particularly interesting location not helped by the fact that one of the first things you do here is this boring ass box pushing puzzle and even though it's the final area it doesn't feel like it there's nothing that really stands out and you end up kind of stumbling into the last boss it's like there should be one more thing to see after this but no this is the big act three zone and it's kinda lame speaking of lame the enemy roster isn't much to write home about either we have some of the usual standbys zombies but no crimson heads a few spiders some crows couple hunters typical re monsters as for bioweapons unique to zero the main guys that stand out are these pissed off monkeys who might be the most annoying enemies in this franchise they come in packs they jump around they take more damage than they should and if you're really unlucky they can stun lock you for extended periods everyone hates these guys and for good reason there are also the leachman whose theme song is guaranteed to get a jolt out of you the first few times you hear it [Music] [Applause] fighting them though isn't very fun they're fast they're tanky they can stretch armstrong you from range and if you kill them with anything other than fire they'll explode into a bunch of smaller leeches that latch onto you the most memorable baddies in re zero don't stick with me because they're scary or intimidating it's because of how annoying they are to deal with sadly bosses aren't any better re1 had yawn ari 2 had birkin ari 3 had nemesis and re 0 has giant scorpion and giant centipede and giant bat the devs were really scratching the bottom of the barrel at this point sure previous entries weren't above some of their bows being oversized animals but not only are the ones chosen here not as universally threatening as a snake or alligator but all of them show up without any fanfare they just appear because we needed a boss fight they lack any sort of staying power aside from tyrant who also shows up out of nowhere but i mainly remember him because he highlights a glaring issue with a particular character and on that note it's about time we got back to the plot since it's the main reason this prequel exists in the first place an opening text crawl lays out what this story seeks to answer when was umbrella founded who founded it and how was the t-virus created and to its credit the game does reveal these things over its runtime umbrella was founded in 1968 by oswald spencer edward ashford and the previously unmentioned james marcus and it was marcus that developed the t-virus via research with leech dna okay good to know but these were never exactly pressing questions and end up being details that feel more at home in scattered documents which is how a good deal of the info is parted anyway these revelations don't make you see future events in a new light they don't really change anything at all it's also revealed that marcus was betrayed by spencer and assassinated for his research 10 years prior only to be reanimated by the leeches he worked with into the american idol hopeful we've been seeing and in order to get his revenge he's the one responsible for both the outbreak we're dealing with here and also the one in the iconic mansion i personally think the idea of it being a freak accident that snowballed was way more cool but okay the leech guy did it still doesn't change anything and if you're wondering why i haven't mentioned wesker and birkin watching things play out from behind the scenes it's because they don't add anything either they're just staring at monitors so without very interesting gaps to fill in you'd hope the personal tale of survival of our two leads would pick up the slack but that doesn't happen either as a team rebecca and billy don't really have much chemistry a rookie cop and a dangerous convict setting aside their differences to deal with a greater threat is a tried and true idea but after the opening any sense of distrust vanishes and outside of spread out story moments they don't talk much the game is leaning on the two helping one another out during gameplay to build their bond but that's not enough especially when all the pair say to each other outside of cutscenes is follow me or i'll go alone as for the individuals billy is pretty bland he's not involved in what's going on he doesn't have any connection to umbrella he's just there the rude and crude attitude he has when first introduced disappears once he becomes a playable character and his backstory that reveals he was in fact framed for a war crime he didn't commit won't surprise anybody though it does lead to my favorite line in the game did you kill 23 people i'm not going to judge you there is one brief moment where he and rebecca find a pile of human remains and there's a quick flash that maybe implies some sort of ptsd but it comes late in the game is over in a second and is never brought up again but whatever billy's a new character him being unremarkable isn't all that big of a deal the true issues lie with our heroine rebecca rebecca is a rookie the newest member of stars and yet she has no issues dealing with the crazy [ __ ] she's seeing there's no fear or confusion from minute one she's gunning down all sorts of nightmare creatures like it ain't no big thing and over the course of the game she's learning all about umbrella their experiments the t-virus so by the end she's a knowledgeable battle-hardened zombie-killing badass and that creates a massive inconsistency as every resident evil fan knows rebecca is a character in re1 in that game when you're playing as chris you run into her and she comes off as inexperienced not useless she helps out at points but she definitely relies on chris to do the heavy lifting he even has to rush to save her from a hunter as she cowers in a corner but this is supposedly the same girl who less than a day ago was taking on multiple hunters at once the same girl who less than a day ago single-handedly brought down a tyrant she's the last person that should need saving also rebecca never thinks to mention anything about what she went through by this point she knows umbrella is involved she knows the location of the lab from re2 oh yeah by the way she briefly stumbled upon the entrance to birkin's lab but decided it wasn't worth exploring she has more experience with this situation than anyone from alpha team and yet doesn't say a word about it this rebecca and this rebecca feel like two totally separate people it's a glaring plot hole that everyone points out the only explanation i can come up with for this sudden competence downgrade is that after rebecca said her goodbyes to billy and began to make her way toward the mansion she tripped bonked her head on a rock and forgot everything that happened yeah i know that's pretty dumb but hey at least i unlike the writers came up with some kind of reason for her personality shift [Music] resident evil zero's biggest crime is that it feels inconsequential it's like one of those youtube surveys that sometimes pop up before videos sure you could finish it but you're not getting much out of it if you do xero doesn't expand on the lore in any vital way aside from creating one blatant inconsistency and the gameplay while familiar relies on new ideas that seem interesting in concept but mostly just increase the tedium everything about it feels like it takes longer to do than it should its middling nature isn't done any favors by the fact that it was released between two widely acclaimed masterpieces while i've been negative toward re zero it's not really a terrible game it's just kinda boring honestly this review is coming out later than i originally planned because it took me a week to get through this game not because it's all that long or difficult but because i couldn't play it for more than an hour without wanting to do anything else there are resident evil games that i adore and others that i strongly dislike but in both cases there's at least some sort of passion behind my opinion but when it comes to resident evil zero it doesn't elicit anything more than a half-hearted shrug [Music] hey thanks for watching the video do you actually love re zero hate it feel the same indifference i do discuss it in the comments below and be sure to leave a rating and if you want more resident evil content subscribe to the channel and check out some of my other reviews

Channel: Critical Nobody

Views: 100,644

Keywords: critical nobody, video games, gaming, gameplay, criticalnb, resident evil, resident evil 0, re0, resident evil zero, resident evil 0 review, resident evil zero review, re0 review, prequel, horror, survival horror, action, adventure, partner, cooperation, tank controls, fixed camera, inventory management, puzzles, rebecca chambers, billy coen, james marcus, umbrella, train, training facility, water treatment plant, leech man, gamecube, hd remaster, capcom, overview, review, funny, opinion

Id: ns5fXuzPy6A

Length: 21min 24sec (1284 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 21 2022