So last night I learned about this neat program called MouseInjectorDolphinDuck that, stay with me now, injects the mouse onto certain emulators such as Dolphin, Duckstation, Mupen64Plus cores on Retroarch and Bizhawk, BSNES, and the 1.7.x nightly PCSX2 builds. I tried this with a few games such as Shadow Tower and Urban Chaos Riot Response, making new controller mappings for each that best fit their needs, and it’s seriously impressive shit. There’s something to be said about how this might influence the difficulty for each game since you're now using K+M format instead of a controller, but in the context for the subject here, I have a feeling this won't be case-by-case scenarios and instead can be generalized into minimal altercations factored into the equation.

Resident Evil Survivor, with or without the injector, is woefully trite, and for a survivor horror and a light gun style game, that’s the biggest mark you can slash against it. Controls for the mechanics themselves are alright, but the two-fold issues are about the actual enemy design. Firstly, the AI for them are braindead, even more than they actually should be. I faced off against a Hunter in a library with just the starting handgun, and stunlocked it then ran away to have it reload, and it only managed to get one swipe at me for pitiful damage. I went up against two Lickers in a connecting alley earlier, still using the handgun, and their jump charge takes just enough windup to swiftly walk up left or right, and continue taking potshots at them, and even if they were to use their tongue attack that also has enough windup time to simply move out of sight. This can be said for so many enemies in the roster, INCLUDING the Tyrants where their AI was so poor they couldn’t even squeeze through the door in a room I occupied, and the final boss who’s attack loop is so easy to dodge and maneuver against that I only got hit a few times and downed it with just the starting pistol after my shotgun and magnum ammos were gone, no healing item available. The only times I died were against later groups of Hunters and a new enemy type called Cleaners, but the first death was cause I fucked up and accidentally activated turbo instead of the menu, with the remaining deaths being cause they did actually manage to overwhelm me. Part of the appeal of both genres is being able to visually see and mentally check for openings with each animation, striking them down when the time is right, yet here I never really felt the need to do so because the gung-ho, shoot first manage never mentality is almost always the answer to every encounter.

I say almost always, cause a chunk of the time the simplest answer is to instead ignore everything and everyone and just move on. I haven’t touch the classic style RE games since 2018, but I don’t ever remember it being this easy to squeeze by the flesh-rotted squalls, dogs, abominations, spiders, etc etc. It’s a double edged sword because I want to, ya know, feel invigorated and tense fighting all these baddies, but at the same time this being so easy to do means that I can tap into the speedrunning mindset more quickly and focus on bumrushing to the finish line instead, so… that’s something? The Resi staples are at their most diluted as well. There’s the herbs and first aid spray but you’ll rarely if ever need them since taking damage even on Normal doesn’t account for much, weapons such as the Shotgun, a Grenade Launcher, Magnum, and the Rocket Launcher if you clear the game with an S rank are all here with their limited (er, infinite in the case of the RL) pool of ammo but since the Handguns have an infinite surplus of those it basically means you’ll just default to one of the four variants and stick with it the whole game, which is again, what I did since I somehow bypassed the Grenade Launcher, puzzles are extremely simple “take item A to location B” types or nonexistent, even the obvious reuse of what have been series traditions like the self destruction sequence or sewer montage are so vapid and simple. Kind of just screams the game was sort of made as a holdover due to Code Veronica still taking its sweet time to release on the Dreamcast.

Yet, despite these issues, I’m quite frankly stunned at the substantial negativity this gets thrown. To reiterate, this is a game that takes a little over an hour, possibly even less if you factor in emulator usage such as turbo and save states, as well as the innate ability to skip through dialog and the aforementioned “ignore everything” mentality, plus easy damage output makes it a case where cheese strats makes an underwhelming game slightly better since you’re spending less time with it. This also extends to the writing, yea I would’ve appreciated at least something regarding a plot but since what’s here is shallow enough to ignore entirely I can’t quite say this is a complete negative. Hell, all cards on the table, I’d say the sound design is even good, the ambiance is on point as usual, each guns sound unique from one another, and the OST legit has no right being as good as it is. This still allows for some level of replayability in the way of three different paths funneling into one single ending, having you centered on one of three different secondary villains as a result. Sure, a far cry from RE2’s Zaps, RE3’s Live Selection, or even RE1’s Jill and Chris selections, but hey, credit where it’s due, it’s at least something to give a gander on, and even I was tempted to do it myself. Shit, I might just do it anyway, just cause of how easy it is to blow over an hour or two. Not to mention, streaming this game to friends made some moments even funnier than they should've been, such as the Tyrant encounter I talked about before, or just stuff like the spiders vibrating in place and four zombies shuffling along like Weezer Blue Album. Good laughs were had all around.

Maybe this is just a case where I’m far removed from the context to truly understand the ire. If I was conscious when Capcom first introduced this series with hit after hit after… well OK I think RE3’s very adequate but it’s undeniably of good quality, and this was the next game under the newly made goldmine, then yea sure I can see myself loathing it to an intense degree. As a 1999-born lad who’s only now able to play this thanks to the power of emulation, though? Meh. I’ve played worse inside and outside of the light gun genre, and I’d very much attempt to replay this over RE6 and Code Veronica, since I’m not being bombarded by the shlockiest and insane (pejorative) sequences of elements from far better games, or an agonizingly dull and tedious iteration of the classic formula. I’ve still yet to explore much of the spinoffs, but if one that’s frequently touted as (one of) the worst RE game(s) only gets a shrug from me, then I have no idea how the others' quality will fare.