Resident Evil.

The original survival horror and the game that smashed zombies into the gaming scene. Originally released on the Playstation one when I was about 13, I first picked it up when I was 16 and immediately got hooked. It was a game like no other at the time, survival horror at its finest and storytelling at its height.

When they first decided to release the game they were told it would be suicide but Capcom pushed ahead with it and it soon became one of the most memorable games of all time. The graphics weren’t fantastic but the story was superb and the characters even better.

Soon Resident Evil 2 was released and that was also a massive success and then three followed almost immediately afterwards. It was followed by games such as Dino Crisis and Silent hill and soon the genre exploded on the scene. But Resident Evil set the precedent and none of them even matched up to it.

There have been too many resident evil games to name, but I have played all of them except for the ones on the WII and PC. I even played Dead Aim, the game that was mix of third-person and first person and took place on a cruise liner.

But since the release of the next generation consoles, they seem to have gone off course. Resident Evil 5 was the first big release for the franchise in a long time and it removed zombies and out those weird parasites from Resident Evil 4 in there instead. I thought that was a bit weird and to be honest, the two main character working side by side thing doesn’t work too well for resident evil games. I always thought it was about going it alone with little ammunition and braving the horrors that you’re confronted with.

Then there was Operation raccoon city, which was, in a word, dreadful and incredibly disappointing. It was more of a stop gap for fans before Resident Evil 6, which had a heavy advertising campaign and promised to go back to its routes.

In fairness it did and it provided us with some cracking zombie fights and the occasional mutation that looked like something out of John Carpenters the Thing. It had a good story line and it was impressive; but not resident evil.

The games spawned films and books; much like gears if war and for some reason some models not action figures. The books are worth reading but the films have kind of lost the plot a little bit and I am starting to get the impression that it is beginning to kill itself (think Nightmare on Elm Street films) and it is forgetting its roots constantly.

What I want to see is it go back to what it was originally. I want a resident evil that was scary, full of cracking puzzles and also enough action to get you hooked. I want to see what was unique about resident evil on the 360, which is survival horror.