Resident Evil Survivor
FORMAT PLAYSTATION / PUB EIDOS INTERACTIVE / DEV TOSE / RELEASED 2000 / BEST WITH… G-CON45
Survivor was a stark departure from Resident Evil’s usual style. Not only did the game use the Namco G-Con45 lightgun, it was the first title in the series to have a first-person perspective – the previous three games had a third-person point of view.
Some might say it was also the first entry in the series to miss the mark on quality, owing to poor implementation of the technology plus slow and ponderous action. So why have we included it on our list? Because it’s a landmark title. It not only went on to spawn several (much better) sequels, it was the only real rival to Sega’s popular House Of The Dead.
The House Of The Dead series didn’t arrive on PlayStation until the third instalment hit PS3 in 2012, and it featured full PS Move support rather than using a lightgun. Before that, if you wanted to emulate the zombie shooting arcade classic, you had to make do with Survivor. This was a time when developers weren’t entirely sure what to do with the lightgun hardware and not everyone wanted to emulate the arcade experience.
I WILL SURVIVE
Survivor’s developers definitely struggled to find the right approach, and the game featured a combination of using the controller to guide the protagonist in free-roam with switching to shooting with the lightgun for the action sequences.
It was a mixed experience, then, and one only possible in Europe and Japan, where players would find the full experience as described. In America the lightgun support was stripped out completely owing to the unfortunate timing of the game’s release, right after the Columbine High School shooting.