A Static Feeling

In prep for the newer Resident Evil movie releasing September 2026, I really wanted to play the old school Resident Evil games. I’ve only partially played RE 5 (between PC and Playstation 3), so my exposure was pretty limited. I also haven’t seen any of the movies that came out so I went in very blind.

I purchased the greatest hits directors cut version from my local game store, determined to finish it! From what I have read online, some people are super stingy about which copy you play on the playstation. I’d love the idea of one day owning the dual disc version that comes with the RE 2 demo, but I do love the cover of mine.

Coming off Silent Hill, I was ready for my next horror game adventure. Since I’m starting with the original PS1 versions, it will make me appreciate the future iterations I will play.

The funniest thing about this game is how unforgiving the saving and dying mechanics are. You only get X amount of saves in the game, and you have to find those yourself. I’m posting my end game stats to find below!

Another item that gave this game a lot of charm, were the live action intros and the end game outro with actual actors.

Starting the game you get to pick between 2 characters to play the game as – Chris or Jill. I opted for the infamous Chris Redfield. You also get to see another well known character called Wesker. The game throws you into a mansion where you quickly find some of the craziest creatures.

You find yourself exploring room to room, solving small puzzles to unlock new areas of the mansion area. You have to be wise on the ammo you spend and which zombies and creatures you decide to kill. You can progress through with different weapons starting with a handgun, then a shotgun, and finally to a magnum. The shotgun was my favorite.

The story was pretty easy to follow which made it even more addictive to play. As you are exploring rooms in the mansion, you are gathering bullets and items to unlock even more rooms. It was very important to keep track of which rooms I had explored on the map vs which ones were locked. Some of these rooms contained files that gave you more context to what’s going on at this mansion.

The biggest elephant in the room I haven’t mentioned yet is the fixed camera angles. In this game you cannot use a right analog stick on your controller to change the camera around. It can be a bit tricky at first if you aren’t used to it but it becomes a bit more natural the more you play.

I will admit that I died at least 4 times and I had to backtrack like 30 minutes worth of progress each time.

Something very cool for me (since I had no spoilers going in) was that the Umbrella lab was underneath the mansion. Exploring that area was pretty cool towards the end of the game. An obvious twist was that Wesker was actually a bad guy and turns on you. Now that I’ve played it as Chris, the next time I play I will get to have a smoother play through as Jill.

Now that I’ve wrapped this game I can’t wait to start up Resident Evil 2, also on the Playstation 1.