Product Description

Best Playstation Game Overall!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5710 in Video Games
• Brand: Capcom
• Model: 013388210398
• Released on: 1997-09-01
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platform: PlayStation

Features

• 1 Player
• RPG
• Sony Playstation
• Rated M for Mature

Editorial Review
Zombies, an old mansion, and limited ammo. What more could you want? Resident Evil: Director's Cut plunges you into the world of B-grade zombie flicks, and does a first-class job of it. From the cheesy dialogue and voice acting to the confusing camera angles, you'll jump and squirm through a series of mind-numbing puzzles and heart-pounding attacks. The trick is: conserve your ammo, and learn to run.

The game is interspersed with movie-style cut scenes that all too often annoy rather than elucidate. The gist of the story is this: you and your special forces teammates have come to investigate the disappearance of the last team, and you have no idea what you're getting into. You spend the rest of the game trying to find your way out of the mansion in which you're trapped. The bottom line: If you like zombie flicks, buy it, play it, love it. And the best part--try blowing the zombie dogs' heads off with the bazooka. --John Cocking

Pros:

• Scary sound, camera angles, horror-movie action
• Sense of dread, dropping ammo count
• Zombies

• Horrible dialogue
• Back-tracking for puzzles
• The bazooka won't blow open a door

GameSpot Review
Not only was Resident Evil one of the first Sony PlayStation games that took longer than an hour to complete, it was revolutionary. By sacrificing the fully 3D worlds that were the trend of the time, for static, rendered rooms, the game's developers created backgrounds and characters that were better looking than anything anyone had seen up to that point. Perhaps even better yet, Resident Evil proved that "mature" themes could be justified within a good game at a time when the industry was still recovering from the attention Congress had given it sometime back (though Capcom did cut a slight bit of the game's violent cinemas). More than a year later, now that the company has a little less to fear from Senate subcommittees, it's released what it calls the Director's Cut, a version with all of the original footage supposedly left uncensored, along with additional new material to boot.

The game's storyline is equal parts X-Files and Night of the Living Dead. You select from Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, two members of a special police force sent into the woods outside Raccoon City to investigate a series of strange murders. After being separated from their team, Chris and Jill (you choose your character) begin searching through a mysterious house, hidden in a remote location deep within the forest. The characters encounter zombies, mutant plants, monstrous spiders, and other by-products of an experiment gone astray, as they attempt to gather evidence pertaining to the case, save their partners, destroy the evil residing within the house, and escape with their lives.

As first reported in GameSpot News, Resident Evil: Director's Cut fails to come through with its promise of providing the footage Capcom trimmed for the US release of the original title, supposedly because of a mistake during Sony's approval process. Though that seems to be the impetus of the game's marketing campaign, it really ends up being a relatively small part of the overall package, since the two new modes of play (training and advanced) and a Resident Evil 2 demo CD are clearly the main attractions.

Both new difficulty settings have something notable to offer players. The training mode, while sounding like some sort of idiotic play-by-numbers, is actually a version of the game in which the monsters do less damage, there are more typewriter ribbons to be found (which are necessary to save your progress), and there's enough ammunition present to wipe out the entire cast of creatures, almost twice. If you're like me, you'll probably prefer shooting zombies to solving the game's often-bizarre puzzles, so this setting surely holds some merit. Inside the advanced mode, the creatures, not surprisingly, do greater damage (you might get killed with a single chomp, if you're not careful), there are fewer ribbons, and ammo is a little more difficult to come by. But balancing out these frustrations are a few new challenges: The puzzles have been shuffled around, you have more monsters to fight, several camera angles have been altered (frequently giving you a better, more practical view), and there are a few nice surprises to find, as well. And it's really nice to be surprised while playing Resident Evil once again.

It's true that Capcom could've done a few more things to further enhance the value to the player, such as analog controller support, an updated translation, and voice-overs (it's arguably one of the most laughable translations in gaming history), and, of course, the omitted cinemas. But the new difficulty modes along with the beautiful, though painfully short RE2 demo make Resident Evil: Director's Cut worth buying. Those who don't already have Resident Evil should pick this baby up, and those who do should consider trading in their old copy for this year's model. -- Joe Fielder

--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.

Customer Reviews

3.5 Stars - This is where it all began
Resident Evil: Director's Cut (1997). The PSX re-release of the 1996 survival horror game.

Back when the PSX was first released, the system didn't have much in the way of standout games. Of course, there were a few noteworthy PSX launch games like Twisted Metal, Doom, and Tekken, but for the most part, the PSX didn't have anything outstanding yet. Thus, Resident Evil was made. Taking influences from the earlier survival horror series Alone In The Dark, Resident evil took all of its aspects to the next level and eventually became one of Capcom's most successful franchises to date, ranking just behind the Mega Man and Street Fighter games. In fact, the original RE game was probably the first PSX game to make the system worthwhile before other important games were released in the following years.

Most everyone who's played the games already knows the story, but for those who haven't, here's a brief synopsis: A strange murder occurrence just outside of Raccoon City has caused Police officials to be suspicious, so they sent two Special Tactics and Rescue Squad (STARS) teams to go investigate. You play as either Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield, both of them surviving STARS members. The teams end up getting stuck in the mountains, so they eventually find themselves inside a huge mansion, where the STARS members discover numerous creatures such as zombies, mutilated dogs, giant spiders, and other monsters. These were all created due to Umbrella Corporation's disastrous T-Virus. As the game goes along, more important discoveries are made.

Now let's talk about the game itself.

Of the three PSX RE games, this one easily has the worst graphics. We're talking first-generation PSX graphics here, if that's any indication. The character models are all blocky and easily stick out from the otherwise highly detailed still-screen environments. These environments are navigatably 3D, but the camera angles sit at fixed 2D points, which can be both good and bad, depending on the situation. By bad, I mean that some angles hinder the view of the action. The monsters (especially the zombies) have very limited animation and models compared to the later games, and its limited engine prevents the game from having more than 3 monsters on the screen at one time (not including the crows). So the only real decent graphical aspects are the rendered environments. But even they don't quite compare to the detail in the following games.

The sound effects are good for the most part. However, the zombies come off sounding more like moaning old men than actual monsters, and the voice acting... dear god? don't get me started. It's so hilariously bad that it's just fun to listen to. The dialogue doesn't help things at all along with the horrible acting which is bad even by B-movie standards. One of my friends almost died of laughter the last time I went through the game. The music on the other hand, is decent and suits the mood of each area appropriately. It's nothing special, but it does add to the overall suspense.

The controls are something that most people either love or hate. It took me some time to get used to them, but now I have no troubles whatsoever. Most people that hate them don't seem to realize that RE isn't just an all-out action game, but rather an exploration puzzle type game with action segments. The controls were a bit rough here, though they have been more refined in later releases. I do admit though, that it does get very tedious backtracking to the item box again and again because you can't hold all the items you want to. Between the two playable characters Jill and Chris, I personally found Jill to be the better one to control because she has more inventory slots and weapons than Chris, although Chris's voice acting isn't quite as nerve-grating as hers is. Both characters each have their own sub-character that helps them along game, such as Barry who helps Jill, and Rebecca who aids Chris.

Most people have said that this game was the scariest of all the RE games. I'm not sure I agree with that, but the atmosphere can be quite chilling at certain points. I suppose that the dogs breaking through the glass windows could've scared newbees to the series, but since I was introduced through RE2 and the fact that I've already played the MUCH freakier Silent Hill games, the original didn't scare me nearly as much as it should have. To the game's credit though, it does present the most puzzles, and a majority of them are real brain-benders. It's something that the series started to get away from as time went on. Plus, I thought that the game itself felt larger than all the others in the series, so it will take a while for new players to beat it. The challenge is also very high since there is very limited ammo to take out the creatures with. Even veteran RE fanatics still find the first game to be thoroughly challenging enough to come back for more.

This version of the game is a director?s cut edition, but it?s really nothing special. All we get is an extra mode that is more challenging and features different outfits for the main characters, but if you already own the original, there?s no need to get this version. Apparently the Japanese version also had extra cut-scenes, so we were cheated! So much for it being a ?director?s cut?, huh?

Although this game is extremely dated by today's standards, it's still worth checking out if you're a big fan of the series and want to see how the series got started in the first place. However, it's not really necessary now that a MUCH better remake is available on the Gamecube, so I suggest looking into that game instead. RECOMMENDED SPECIFICALLY TO FANS OF THE SERIES. NEW FANS SHOULD START WITH RE 2 OR THE GAMECUBE REMAKE OF THE ORIGINAL FIRST.

Amazing
This game is only for mature players,yet...I can't get enough of it.It combines a horror flick with cheez-E dye-o-log wit a action packed 3D game with great graphics and puzzels almost impossible to solve without a guide (or plenty of ammo)! I've played RE2 and RE nemesis,But this game still remains the beast in my heart.

One of the Playstation's Finest Games
"Resident Evil: Director's Cut" is great! Not another DOOM-like game where you blow everything to bits, this game is all about survival in an old mansion filled with zombies, mutant dogs, giant snakes, and other horrible mutations. The suspense and atmosphere will have you shaking in your boots, then you'll be scared to death when something goes crashing through a window just when you've calmed down. A must-have title. I even played "Resident Evil 2" first, and it's still a must-have! That's my two cents.