Being (almost) completely new to the Resident Evil series I decided to just start from the beginning. I had played a couple of hours of RE2 before moving on to something else and of course, have heard bits and pieces about the story through friends and such. I've seen a few of the movies as well but wasn't sure how they connected to the games.

With this in mind, I'll say that I did really enjoy this first game. Although, the first few hours were a bit rough. The camera angles were really hard to get used to and I kept switching between the alternate and original controls to see which worked best. I settled on the alternate controls pretty quickly. Even after settling on the controls, I still struggled with the camera angles, mainly right as the camera angle switched I would push my joystick the opposite way I was moving to counteract it even though that isn't how the game works. I had to fight against my instinct to do that and keep pushing my joystick forward even if that meant I would be moving down on my screen while pushing my joystick up. It was quite frustrating in the beginning and especially when enemies were around but I did end up getting used to it after a few hours. There were still times I'd be awkwardly running down a hallway dragging my face across the wall as I'm going but it was the best I could do lol.

The shooting and aiming run across the same problem of just being a bit janky and not super intuitive at first, mainly with the turning to aim. This was also something I just got used to with time and wasn't the worst mechanic.

The puzzles were a bit confusing at times and I did have to end up referring to a guide a lot. Most of the time it was just because I couldn't find my way back to a room I knew I had to go back to. I got lost a lot lol. Overall though, the puzzles were fun and pretty creative. I find myself playing a lot of puzzle games but nothing quite compares to something like this where a story and a great environment are involved. Not to mention the monsters trying to kill you constantly as well.

As for the atmosphere, I absolutely loved it. A creepy old mansion just does it for me I guess. I loved the art strewn about the place and how it was constantly dark with the thunder flashing in the windows occasionally. It was really cool! I also just finished playing Nier Replicant and realized there's a whole mansion in the game that is just one big Resident Evil 1 reference and it went way over my head. It even had the same thing with the camera angles and I was complaining about it while playing that game too! But overall, I love the atmosphere a lot. I also really enjoyed going outside the mansion and going to the creepy old shack in the woods. It was all very cool.

The story isn't anything too deep or crazy to where you can't follow it. It's got its mysteries and twists that are quite fun. I had myself second-guessing all the characters around me. I also liked that they didn't overload you with too many characters at once as I liked the aspect of exploring the mansion alone. But I just kept playing so much because I wanted as much of the story as I could get.

Anyway, this seems to be a super great intro into what seems to be a super great series. I'm planning on playing the rest of the main games in the franchise.