Resident Evil 7 is out and making waves as a return to the series roots. And while a few of us here at Critically Sane have played it, I thought it would be a good time to revisit the series and I posed the question of what the top three Resident Evil games were. Using a weighted point system I took those responses and came up with what we feel as a group are the top three Resident Evil games. Obviously with only six of us working on the site, and only four of us caring about Resident Evil and a fifth that has played some but terrified of them, the voting sample was small. Still while there was some consensus on what is in our top three, we had random outliers that deserve some mention. Zero, Code Veronica, 5, the Revelations games, and Operation: Raccoon City, all made an appearance on the ballots showing that the series really has a lot of love among us all.
But while those games all meant something to someone here at Critically Sane, here are the three that we feel most strongly about.
3. Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 4 is generally heralded as the game that brought the series into the modern era of games. And it really is an excellent game that shifted the way Resident Evil was played, for the better at the time but also arguably for the worse in the long run. It is a legacy that the series has failed to live up to in the main games since (although 5 is pretty good and an excellent co-op game). Still there is little denying that Resident Evil 4 was an influential game not just in the series itself but in gaming overall. Gears of War and a lot of other great games in the last ten years have drawn inspiration from RE4. And there is something perfectly Resident Evil about hiding the President’s daughter in a dumpster while you mop up some crazed locals.
2. Resident Evil
The game where it all began. Not only is the original game a fantastic title but its remake might be even better. Everything that we love about Resident Evil stems from here. Goofy dialog with even worse delivery, ridiculous puzzles to solve, nerve racking resource management, and most importantly a cliche setting and story turned on its head by even more ridiculous horror cliches. All of this has continued in some way, for both better and worse, to each and every one of its follow-up games. And it is almost perfect.
Note: I’ve included all voted on iterations of the original Resident Evil in the voting here which with them actually tied for the top spot (but lost out to our #1 due to having less first placements).
1. Resident Evil 2
When talking about Resident Evil I mentioned it was almost perfect. I said almost because I believe Resident Evil 2 to be the perfect example of this type of game. It hits everything that was great about Resident Evil but i amplifies it in every way. Moving out of the mansion and into Raccoon City proper, we find out that the city is just as wacky with secrets and weird monument puzzles, terrible dialog and worse delivery, and terrible creepy monsters created by the evilest of corporations. It’s the ultimate zombie survival horror game. Hopefully Capcom does as good a job on remaking this classic as it did with the original.
Those are our top three Resident Evil games, now give us yours.
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