Capcom's Resident Evil Zero remains a controversial game in the Resident Evil franchise, so it's only natural that such a controversial game was subject to a very rough development cycle. Originally being developed for the Nintendo 64, Zero's development was completely restarted for the GameCube when it became abundantly clear that the N64's storage constraints were insurmountable and the 64DD add-on sold too poorly to justify development for it. Director Koji Oda made a point to differentiate Zero from previous games, partly due to hardware constraints and partly due to wanting to innovate on the survival horror formula. These departures have received a variety of reactions, some praising them for shaking up the formula and some criticizing them for being unintuitive. I'd say I generally lean more positive than most, but I'd still argue the game has some glaring flaws.

The original screenplay was written by Noboru Sugimura, writer of Resident Evil 2, before being significantly retooled post-reboot by Hiromichi Nakamoto and Junichi Miyashita. Resident Evil Zero serves as a prequel to the original Resident Evil. You play as Rebecca Chambers, the rookie medic from the first game, investigating the strange murders occurring within the Arklay Mountains with the rest of the STARS Bravo Team. After a dangerous helicopter crash and increasingly hostile weather conditions, she is separated from her team and boards the Ecliptic Express, an abandoned luxury train now populated by the living dead. On the train, she meets escaped death-row inmate Billy Coen, with whom she forms an uneasy alliance. Together, they must survive the horrors that lurk beyond.

Zero's story is a mixed bag, to say the least, suffering from often ridiculous tonal shifts and a general lack of focus. The biggest problem with the narrative is the antagonist, a mysterious man who controls an army of shapeshifting leeches, which he controls by singing opera. This feels entirely out of place and only gets more ridiculous when his true nature is revealed. Another issue I had with the story was its connection to the rest of the series. Despite being a prequel, Zero does very little to expand on the first game in a meaningful way, only really delving into what Rebecca had been up to before it. Characters from previous games like Albert Wesker, William Birkin, and Enrico Marini appear very briefly simply to remind you that this is a prequel, and their inclusion feels like hollow fanservice as a result. Like previous Resident Evil games, most of the narrative is told through memos that can be found in the environment, and these memos do wonders fleshing out Zero's story. However, previous RE games told you their stories with both memos and more traditional cutscenes, but Zero seems content to stick to the former. Because of this, the game lacks narrative flow, and it's hard to stay invested when the writers themselves seemingly aren't. You need to have a balance between the two, and Zero simply fails to achieve this. It's not all leeches and zombies though, there is one narrative aspect that Zero's writing succeeds in, and that is the relationship between Rebecca and Billy. Initially hostile, they eventually become blood brothers on the battlefield. The scene where Billy opens up to Rebecca about his PTSD from his service in Africa, reminiscing on how his squad was ordered to fire upon unarmed civilians, is genuinely emotional and you can hear the pain in his voice. The two feel like a real pair by the end of the game and it's heartwarming when Rebecca, despite her orders to capture Billy, decides to falsely report him as a casualty instead of turning him in. It's the only element of this story that actually works and I wish it were part of a much more engaging narrative.

Zero's most controversial element was its gameplay, originally designed by the legendary Hideki Kamiya before being iterated upon by a myriad of other designers. The biggest change is the partner system. RE2 had the "zapping system" which showed that Leon and Claire were working together, though in actuality it was a thinly veiled illusion. Zero, however, gives you control of both Rebecca and Billy simultaneously. Although this has proved controversial as all elements of Zero have, I found it to be a refreshing innovation in the Resident Evil formula, especially after Code Veronica had done so little to change it. It fundamentally changes how you strategize and divide resources, after all, now you have two mouths to feed. This forces you to think a lot more carefully than you would in a comparatively easier game like RE2. The puzzles designed around this mechanic were generally quite fun, too, minus a particularly repetitive box puzzle in the late game. The partner AI is pretty decent, and you can even give it commands if you don't want it wasting ammo on every zombie in sight. You can also leave them behind in a safe room if they've taken too much damage. It's surprisingly very intuitive for a mechanic often described as "cumbersome". The lack of item boxes, on the other hand, I am not fond of. I don't think it makes the game "unplayable" as some reviews have stated, far from it, but it doesn't really add any new strategy to the game either. Any seasoned RE player will just dump all of their nonessential items in the main hall, where nothing will attack them, and just leave them there until necessary. It trivializes any potential difficulty or strategy that the mechanic could have brought since I don't have to worry about backtracking to some potentially dangerous location to find ink ribbons, I can just go back to the always enemy-free main hall. Since the new inventory system doesn't really add anything, Capcom should have just stuck with the traditional item box system, which would have at least made some of the backtracking less tedious. That's another problem this game has: the backtracking. Backtracking is just an inherent part of survival horror and isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in Zero it feels a tad excessive. For the most part, it's a little uneven, but generally fine. However, in the final stage of the game, every single puzzle is spread out so far from the rest that it becomes an act of herculean willpower to actually get through it. The game's difficulty balancing is also fairly unrefined. I played on hard mode, as I want survival horror games to push me to my limits, but Zero goes too far at points. Despite having two health bars to tend to, the game only gives you barely enough to maintain one. The game's new enemies are also ridiculously frustrating at points. The mimicry marcuses aren't too bad, they are the "elite mook" of the game similar to the hunters and lickers in the previous games respectively. The threat they represent is genuinely terrifying. The problem is, the game has two more elite mooks in the form of the hunters and eliminators, so a good amount of the game's enemies can really put the hurt on you. It feels excessive and leads to many frustrating encounters.

When you complete Zero, you unlock an extra game mode called Leech Hunter. In this mode, you have to collect as many crystal leeches as you can throughout the training facility. Essentially, this is Zero's battle/mercenaries mode. Each leech is either blue or green, and each color can only be picked up by one of the characters respectively. I only gave Leech Hunter a brief spin, as it did not hold my interest for too long, but I found it to be an interesting little minigame. The most interesting part is how it doesn't have any timer whatsoever. You can explore the facility collecting leeches to your heart's content, leaving whenever you feel you've got enough. This does mean the mode lacks the tension of The Mercenaries, but I can imagine spending more time on it at a later date. It's decent for what it is.

If the gameplay has so many flaws, why exactly have I rated the game so highly? Well, because when it works, which is most of the time, it's a very solid survival horror experience. The flaws are hard-to-ignore and drag the experience down, but the moment-to-moment survival gameplay is still as fun and tense as usual. It's a wonder it still manages to be as fun as it is despite all of its warts.

Resident Evil Zero's visuals are the highlight of the experience. Capcom's previous title, the Resident Evil remake, was a graphical showcase itself, but Zero bests even that. Zero still uses the pre-rendered backgrounds of old but uses them so masterfully you'd have a hard time differentiating them from the 3D elements when playing on a real GameCube with a CRT TV. REmake's backgrounds were also a thing of beauty, but Zero increases the realism further by animating them. The animated pieces layer realistically over the 3D elements, which always had my jaw on the floor, asking "how did they do it?". The way the lighting affects both the backgrounds and the models simultaneously, casting real-time shadows on what are essentially two-dimensional videos is mind-blowing. It's just so seamless. The models look great too. They've been touched up for the HD Remaster, and in some ways look superior. Rebecca no longer looks twelve years old, which is a plus. Billy, however, looks kind of strange at points, and it's hard to put a finger exactly how. Speaking of 3D elements, it's especially impressive how the mimicry marcus enemies can transition so seamlessly between their human form and their swarm-like leech form without missing a single beat. The FMV cutscenes also generally look good, obviously boasting superior fidelity to the in-engine cutscenes. However, the facial animation looks a bit strange at points, with both Birkin and Enrico's lips seemingly not entirely matching what they're saying. The cinematography is also rather silly, with fast pans emphasizing the action, which is at odds with the distant camerawork of the in-engine cutscenes. Nevertheless, they are technically impressive and fun to watch, even if they lean a bit on the ridiculous side.

Although the game's technical presentation is excellent, the art direction has some issues. It ranges from excellent to uninspired, which can cause quite a bit of whiplash. The Ecliptic Express is the best-looking location, and the general fanciness of the luxury railway makes for an interesting and highly immersive setting. The training facility, however, is essentially a rehash of the Spencer Mansion from the first game. It's rendered well but doesn't really have any defining traits that make it memorable, which is a problem as the majority of the game takes place there. The laboratory generally looks a bit more inspired but is still nothing to write home about, and although I appreciated the return of RE2's marshaling yard, things don't really pick up again until the treatment plant, which provides the scale necessary for a final level. The monster designs are also problematic. The mimicry marcuses look fantastic, and it's really cool how they mimic the look of their creator in blind fanaticism. Their transformation into a swarm of loosely connected leeches also looks awesome. However, the majority of the new monsters essentially boil down to "animal but big and rotting" and it's not particularly creative. Sure, previous games have had plenty of monsters befitting that trope, but they had more original freaks of nature to balance it out. Regardless of these issues, Zero is generally a fantastic-looking game, with a few questionable artistic decisions here and there.

Zero's soundtrack was composed by Seiko Kobuchi, and even by the franchise's high standards, it's rock solid. Kobuchi favors sorrowful pianos for more dramatic moments and distorted strings for moments of horror. Taking a cue from Akira Yamaoka, he uses industrial droning noises for ambiance, though perhaps without Yamaoka's signature variety. I think the mimicry marcus' theme got on my nerves a bit, but it's not a bad composition in and of itself. I'm not a huge fan of the opera bits, but I cannot deny they are well performed. There is genuine beauty in Kobuchi's compositions and they perfectly fit every situation they've been placed in. It's not as memorable as, say, RE2's ost, but it works perfectly given the context.

Discussing voice acting within the context of Resident Evil is always going to be an interesting discussion. Many bemoan the cheesy performances in some games, whereas others see them as part of the b-movie charm. I've always been somewhere in the middle, adoring RE1's ridiculous voice acting and appreciating RE3's surprisingly good performances. Similar to the rest of the game, Zero's voice acting is rather mixed. James Kee and Riva Di Paola do pretty solid jobs as the two protagonists, effectively performing emotional beats. Kee manages to make the "gruff badass" voice work, which is rather rare in media, and Di Paola is more expressive as Rebecca than Hope Levy was in REmake. However, that's where the good performances end. Richard Waugh returns to play Wesker, but unlike Code Veronica, I don't think his performance works. He can't seem to tell if Wesker has a British or American accent and it's rather distracting at points. Wesker had an American accent during the events of RE1, so it doesn't make sense that he'd randomly slip into British pronunciation with certain lines. Although it is unknown who exactly voiced Birkin, his delivery is incredibly stilted and provided us with the infamous "I will take over your research! Ha ha ha!". Lyon Smith plays the mysterious leech man, and while his performance is fitting for the character, it shares the same issue of being too over the top to take seriously whatsoever.

After reading the discourse surrounding Resident Evil Zero, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect of the game going in. I'm surprised to have enjoyed it as much as I did. Zero is a pretty good survival horror game that, despite issues with difficulty, storytelling, mechanics, and art direction, manages to be a rather fun experience overall. Zero is kind of the ultimate filter, as in I can't imagine the average gamer enjoying this at all, but I'd imagine survival horror junkies like myself will get quite the kick out of it. As for Resident Evil diehards, if you haven't checked Zero out yet, it's definitely worth a shot. Despite its flaws, it's still a worthwhile experience.