After having a generally good time with the remake of the original Resident Evil, and a frankly excellent time with the remade versions of Resident Evil 2 and 3, the next logical step would have been to move on to the remade version of Resident Evil 4.  Right?

Well, I took a moment to look at the series timeline and realized that both Resident Evil: Code Veronica and Resident Evil Zero were actually released after the original version of RE3 and before RE4, so naturally I wanted to play those.

I didn’t last long with Code Veronica.  Like, five minutes in I had decided to just watch a movie version of the storyline off Youtube and get back to it if and when it’s remade.

That left Zero.  All I knew about that one, going into it, was that it was set on a train.  And the train part? It’s pretty awesome.  Sure, managing your limited inventory with no item boxes is a little annoying, but once you pick a general area to drop your spare items it’s not too bad.

Oh, and the fixed camera angles weren’t too bad.  You’re in a train.  Rooms are pretty much straight lines.

I had never heard, not even once, that there were levels AFTER the train.  That should have set off alarm bells.

At first, I was kinda stoked about it – especially once I realized that the training facility is what the Resident Evil level in Nikke was based on!  It was an oddly pleasant feeling to see the place again, from a different perspective.

So I gathered up all of the items that had been scattered around at the end of the train segment, and I carefully ferried them up to the main hall of the training facility, and then I found that there’s a limit to the number of items that you can drop in a room so I picked a couple of other nearby rooms and dropped the rest of the items in them, and I was roaming around and finding new quest items and…

…and then Billy got grabbed by something off screen that I couldn’t properly see because of the camera angles, and I couldn’t figure out how to kill it before it killed him and I got my first GAME OVER and…

…and suddenly I was back in the main hall of the training facility, with all of the items I had carefully gathered and organized still back at the train crash site or scattered throughout the mansion and I was looking at spending probably a half hour just collecting items again and that is where I said to heck with it.

AFTER coming to this conclusion, I took a look at the Steam Achievements for this game.  Roughly 50% of people finish the train level, which I think is surprisingly low considering it’s a pretty quick level and pretty neat.  Less than 30% finish the training facility.  That’s a pretty big drop-off and I am not particularly sorry to be part of it.

I have seen rumors that Capcom is working on modern remakes of both Code Veronica and Zero.  These may just be wishful thinking on the part of fans, but that’s the only way I am ever going to play either of these.

On to Resident Evil 4!

Followup:  OK, I’m 90 minutes into Resident Evil 4 remake, just finished chapter one, and this was definitely the correct decision.