Resident Evil: Biohazard - I almost quit. I'm glad I didn't

I haven't been involved with any RE games in a long time. I was there when they first started, 4000 years ago though Gandalf. I have played most of the RE games but I wouldn't say that I really sought them out very actively since Resident Evil 4 was released on the GameCube all those years ago.

There are spoilers in this

I did briefly play 6, but just like the general consensus online is, I did not care for the way in which they basically just completely ignored everything that RE has stood for up to that point and also turned it into a bit of a QuickTime event nightmare.

So Biohazard was something that I didn't really know much about and was excited when I finally started to play it. It was certainly not what I expected and there were parts of it that I didn't like very much but I trudged through and am not fully engrossed in the story and this is something that is quite rare for me.

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The way this games starts out, I was very reminiscent of RE4 and was halfway expecting to get absolutely bum rushed by a ton of villagers or something as I approached this large looking house in the middle of nowhere looking for my girlfriend who disappeared years ago.

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All of this is relatively simple and as far as I could tell, there wasn't really any way to fail in the first 30 minutes of the game or so while they teach the controls and introduce you to your surroundings. If I remember correctly you only encounter 1 person while outside and this man is easily avoided. I would kind of like to go back and see what happens if he does spot you.

Once inside you do this and that before eventually being captured by the Bakers and this is where the story takes a very bizarre and dark turn and is something that I was not expecting at all.

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These backwoods people seem very interested in making you a part of their family but it is clear right from the start that they are no normal people. At one point in the dinner the father and son have an argument and Dad decides to cut his son's arm off. The son doesn't seem to bothered by this and doesn't bleed out so yeah, that was strange. Then all of a sudden they get up and leave you alone, which is strange and doesn't make much sense as far as the story is concerned but they had to let you up from your tied down position somehow.

This is where the main game begins and at least at first, was something I found annoying more than I actually appreciated it. Jack Baker, the father, is the only enemy that you are faced with at all during this opening segment but the problemo is that he wanders the halls looking for you and he WILL eventually find you. He is also very strong, will kill you in a few hits, and it wasn't terribly clear at this point that it is pointless to try to engage and / or kill him. The strategy to use here is just to avoid him and run away and hide.

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Just like all the RE games that I have played in the past, ammunition is scarce, so while shooting him a bunch in the face will in fact take him down, he doesn't stay that way for very long. This is where you start to suspect the usual "viral infection" present in all the games has simply taken on a new, superhero type turn with this family.

Once you figure out that Jack is pretty easy to get away from, especially once you figure out the layout of the house, he isn't that difficult to deal with and the fear of him jumping into a room at any time, especially if you forget to close the door behind you, is a type of fear that is very effectively used. You will later encounter the same fear with his wife Marguerite although I would say that she is a bit more annoying in how quickly she can find you and hurt you in her level.

Now on to when I nearly quit. When you are in the "Jack" section of the game you mostly just deal with him until you go down to the basement where you are introduced to the first non family-member enemies of the game.

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The area you are in is already very dark and they are completely black, so seeing them at all can sometimes be a chore. Once you start to understand how they move and attack (they are very slow for the most part) they are not that difficult to take out but it is their introduction that is really frustrating. I mean, of course you aim for the head but early on you might do as I did and just go banana on head shots, wasting ammo. There is a certain animation period that they go through after a headshot and if you strike them again during this animation period, you are simply wasting bullets, of which, you always have very few. So do yourself a favor and headshot them, wait a damn second until they start their slow trudge forward again, then headshot them again.

Looking back I am upset with myself for not being able to figure this out faster than I did but then again, Resident Evil specializes in getting you so tense that you make mistakes, and I certainly did a bunch of that.

The first boss encounter with Jack is also something that kind of did my head in and nearly made me want to quit the game.

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You find yourself pushed into this tiny room that there is no escape from and Jack is pursuing you. By this point in the game you kind of feel as though there is no point in simply shooting him over and over again because we have already been down that road and what Jack says above has been very true up to this point. Therefore, you don't really know what to do. I kept shooting him in the head and then backing away (he isn't fast and there are obstacles in the way) and there isn't any real indication of the fact that this is going to be any different than the other times you have encountered him so for me and I think a lot of other people out there, you felt like you were simply wasting bullets by bothering shooting him at all.

As it turns out (and yes, I used a tutorial video to finally figure this out) you have to headshot him enough times that it skips to part 2 of the fight where you will then have access to a new weapon, the chainsaw.

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Once again, looking back it seems so evident to me that this was what you had to do but it wasn't at the time. Looking online I see that a lot of players went through the same frustration of there not being any really clear sign of what we are meant to do here.

I don't really like needing to check the internet for a first boss fight and it didn't give me much hope for any other boss fights in the future. Thankfully, this is the only one that is really like this and the ones I have gotten to ever since then have been a bit more standard "do enough damage and baddy goes bye bye" type situations.

I don't know if this was the right choice for them on a first boss, but it certainly is a gruesome first big fight. Upon finally defeating Jack the rest of the world really opens up when you are given access to the yard after this.

I think it was interesting and quite innovative for Capcom to take a very different approach with this story because there are no zombies and the enemies that you do encounter, well, their existence is just now being explained to me as I am I believe, near the end of the story at this point. I won't spoil that for you because I think it is a really good take on an out of control virus, and is very different from all the other ones I have played before.

I'm glad I continued and unless this game is substantially longer than I am suspecting (the reviews online would indicate that it is actually one of the shorter RE games) I am probably going to be finished with the game very soon.