Our Residence Evil
Other games were nothing more than a collective prologue.
By Tom Bissell
So it begins here, in your stepfather’s darkened living room, with you hunched over, watching as a dateline title card—1998 JULY—forcefully types itself across the television screen. “1998 July”? Why not ENGLAND, LONDON? Why not, “A time once upon”? A narrator debuts to describe something called Alpha Team’s in medias res search for something called Bravo Team’s downed chopper in what is mouthfully described as “forest zone situated in the northwest of Raccoon City.” Okay. This is a Japanese game. That probably explains the year-date swappage. That also makes “Raccoon City” a valiant attempt at something idiomatically American-sounding, though it is about as convincing as an American-made game set in the Japanese metropolis of Port Sushi. You harbor affection for the products of Japan, from its cuisine to its girls to its video games. To your mind, then, a certain amount of ineffable Nipponese weirditity is par for the course, even if the course in question has fifteen holes and every one is a par nine.
A live-action scene commences in which Alpha Team lands upon a foggy moor, finds Bravo Team’s crashed chopper, and is attacked by Baskervillian hounds, but all you are privy to is the puppetry of snarling muzzles shot in artless close up. To the canine puppeteers’ credit, the hounds are more convincing than the living actors, whose performances are miraculously unsuccessful. The cinematography, meanwhile, is a shaky-cam, Evil Deadish fugue minus any insinuation of talent, style, or coherence. Once the hellhound enfilade has taken the life of one Alpha Team member, the survivors retreat into a nearby mansion. You know that one of these survivors, following the load screen, will be yours to control. Given the majestic incompetence of the proceedings thus far, you check to see that the game’s receipt remains extant.
