Resident Evil

The Good
Resident Evil was probably the first game that I found to be truly terrifying. The visuals displayed beautifully rendered rooms and corridors with realtime 3d monsters that make your skin crawl. Music is, for the most part, wonderfully orchestrated haunting melodies and sharp, shock inducing starts that make you jump out of your seat. A lot of fears and phobias have been addressed. Hate spiders? You'll find giant ones in here not to mention all the sharks, snakes and zombies you'll encounter. The events are generally interesting enough to keep you going but it's the environments that really push you forward because it's always thrilling to see what comes next (I won't spoil them for you.) Gameplay wise there's a lot of adventuring to do and the exploration and battles are good enough to keep you glued to the screen for hours.

The Bad
The voice acting has gone down in history as some of the worst acting ever in a video game and with good cause. The dialogue and delivery are both horrible and inappropriate. The story is fairly weak and the combat system is fiddly at times. Lastly, the puzzles are far too simplistic for my tastes and have clearly been aimed at the common console gamer. There are very few exceptions to this rule and most of the time you'll only get stuck if you forgot where the door was that you have to unlock with the key you found.

The Bottom Line
Resident Evil is a great Survival Horror title which, while being surpassed by it's numerous sequels, has a certain atmosphere about it that none of the titles since have ever been able to replicate.