I don’t remember this. I mean, I remember the game. I remember the different bosses, the over dramatic locations, and zombie monkeys. I even remember the item swapping between characters. What I don’t remember, however, is how God-awfully fucking cheap this game can be at times.
I played and beat Resident Evil Zero way back in 2002 when it released on Gamecube. It followed up the excellent REmake, but I guess more of the same wasn’t good enough for Capcom, they had to add a (now recurring) partner to the mix, with their fancy hot swapping between the two of them. This would be all fine and dandy, but Capcom figured, as an extra kick in the nuts, they’d get rid of the convenient item boxes that RE was so famous for. Instead of hiding away your valuables in a magical box that transcends time and space, you can trade items back and forth between the two characters.
The only problem is that both Billy and Rebecca can only hold six items, respectively. Even less if you’d like to equip one of them with a shotgun or grenade launcher (which require two slots) so they’re not completely fucking useless. So what you see is a bunch of this:
No not the poor health, though you see a lot of that too.
Because the fact of the matter is, as if constantly trading items back and forth wasn’t enough of a pain in the ass, the game throws far, far more items at you than you can possibly hope to carry. So what to do with said items, since there are no storage boxes to be found? Well, the grand Capcom wizards made it possible to drop items! Yep, just toss it on the floor, wherever you are. Capcom even had the foresight to realize this was going to be a problem when you literally have random items littered about the map, because they included a function on the map screen that will tell you where all your items are! That’s right, Capcom knew their system was shit enough to require a cheat sheet that basically reminds you where you dropped that extra 6-pack of acid grenades and those two boxes of magnum ammo you found way before you actually get the magnum. What are you supposed to do with something you literally can’t use for an undetermined amount of time? That’s right, just toss it on the floor! Don’t fret though, you’ll soon have your own system worked out, because fuck Capcom’s. You’ll find a central location (most likely the main foyer of the training facility) in which to dump all your unneeded cargo. So it’ll start looking something like this:
And that’s after picking some things up! The real twist on the ballsack though is that you will have to keep returning to this place to pick up the shit that you need, as you need it, even after moving on to different areas of the game! A perfect example of this bullshit is the hookshot. You get it on the train and use it once to get on top of the passenger cars. Then it’s completely fucking useless until the later parts of the game, where you realize that you need it to get on the roof of a church. So where is this seldomly used object? Well unless you grabbed it after the train wreck, it’s probably still in the subway under the training facility. Have fun going back for that!
The constant backtracking to retrieve items is such a waste of time, precious ammo, and health. It’s an exercise in frustration and tedium and I honestly don’t know how this stupid, stupid concept ever made it out of the Alpha stage. Somebody at Capcom had to know this was a piss-poor game mechanic. Granted it was 2002, and we still mistook poor game design for “challenge,” but knowing what we know now, this would never make it as is, and if it did, it would get patched as fan outcry would bury them in Facebook memes.
To be honest, I remember the item swapping being slightly irritating when I was younger, but it didn’t bother me so much. Maybe it was because I was younger, sharper, and probably a bit more skilled, or maybe it was because I just didn’t know any better. Or maybe I was just glad to be playing something new. It was a time when big budget games only hit two or three times a year, so we had plenty of time to master the ones we bought. Nowadays this game, which was once an anticipated release in my favorite franchise, now sits in a Pile of Shame backlog and I’m having a really hard time sticking it out through the end. My, how times have changed.
As part of my Backlog Bingo, I want to complete it, but I’ve hit a famous Resident Evil roadblock. I have very little health, and very little ammo, and very little patience. I seem to be in a constant state of Danger, meaning I’m one or two hits away from death. And in Resident Evil 0, cheap hits are the name of the game. To get hit once by the monkeys is to get hit a half dozen times, since their attack triggers a stumble animation that keeps you from doing anything at all until the animation is over, which gives the monkey just enough time to take another swipe. Getting caught in that animation loop wastes precious health, and that’s IF you can get out of it before it’s too late. Then you have molotovs that take forever to throw, the weakest pistols in the series (with maybe the exception of Code Veronica), and a partner that just loves to waste that ammo. Sure, you can make them passive, but then what fucking good are they? They basically become Zombie Chew because they won’t run away, they’ll just stand there like a goon and let the zombies come at them. And that wastes health, which is even more scarce than the bullets.
I just don’t know if I can get myself to start over. I don’t want to take it off the board as a DNF (Did Not Finish) but it’s taking up valuable real estate, and precious time. I have some very, very long games I still need to crack the shell on. But we’ll see. I’m not ready to give up yet.
