The Resident Evil series is pretty much a landmark in the survival-horror genre. Ten years ago, the original game impressed and horrified gamers all over the world, and today Capcom gives us the chance to play it anywhere on the DS with a well executed port of the 1996 PlayStation classic.
While RE Deadly Silence offers a Classic Mode to make the retro fans’ delight, there is a new Rebirth Mode which offers quite a few twists to the gameplay and make good use of the capabilities of the Nintendo DS.
The storyline remains untouched. The S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team goes in search of the missing Bravo Team, who was reportedly investigating a series of cannibalistic murders in the outskirts of Raccoon City. As the Alpha Team flees to an old abandoned mansion, they come across a horde of zombies and what’s left of the Bravo Team.
You’re given a choice to play as Jill (Normal Difficulty) or Chris (Hard Difficulty). Jill is more fragile, but she’s able to carry eight items. She’s also handy with a lockpick. Chris is a lot more weapon-savvy and strong, but can only carry six items at a time. More characters become available as you complete the game.
The dual screen proves its usefulness by constantly showing us the map, equipped weapon and health status on the top screen. The Rebirth version offers a few new features specfic for the DS, making use of the stylus and the microphone, and resulting in more interactivity with the game.
In several occasions where opening a chest would happen at a press of a button, you will find a color code puzzle instead, with a dial and several gems that you must match with the respective colored rings in a limited amount of moves. To move the dial, you use the stylus.
Randomly while exploring the mansion, you get thrown into first-person view for a knife fight. These are actually pretty fun, since you get to use the stylus to slash and stab whatever comes at you. I got the hang of a triple slash combo right away, it’s all in how you move the stylus. Since these are spontaneous events, the only downside is that you have to keep your stylus handy at all times. You can use your finger, but it just doesn’t seem to work that well.
It gets cooler than that though: you get to use the microphone to actually perform CPR on dying allies by blowing on it.
Techincally, there are two game modes: Rebirth and Classic. But there are extras! If you make it through the game in Rebirth mode, you can unlock the Master of Knifing Mini Game. Then, there’s the Wi-Fi multiplayer mode that puts up to four players together in the same map (there are three maps to play on) in either cooperative or competitive mode. The purpose is to find the exit of the area as quickly as possible.
If you’re playing cooperatively, all the players share the same health meter so you need to act as a team to get through the stage. If you’re playing against others, you can’t exactly affect them directly, but you can make their progress tougher by killing as little as possible and dodging zombies instead.
The sad part about the Wi-Fi modes is that you don’t get to actually see any 3D representation of the other players, as they are represented by stars on the map.
Resident Evil Deadly Silence offers some new features but preserves a lot of the original game, including the grainy graphics and the bad voice acting (which somehow seems even more comical today). The clunky controls are also there, so if it was awkward playing RE back in the day, it will still be akward now, with the strange camera angles not helping. They do make up for the same”Oh crap!?” feeling that I used to get when I first played RE on a Sega Saturn though!
Although it could have used a few improvements – specifically better controls, live action video sequences, voice acting – Resident Evil Deadly Silence is still an experience that old and new fans of the series shouldn’t miss.