Editorials
Looking at the PlayStation’s Many Curious ‘Resident Evil’ Clones
We dig into some of the more obscure series of survival horror titles that hit the PlayStation and tried to capitalize on ‘Resident Evil’s’ success.
It’s been well over two decades since the original Resident Evil first hit the PlayStation and forever changed survival horror gaming for the console. Capcom wouldn’t necessarily “perfect” the Resident Evil formula until its sequel, but the first game in the series showed many other developers not only what could be possible but that there was a very viable market for survival horror titles. The first Resident Evil is a charming, groundbreaking video game, but it’s also incredibly rough around the edges. It’s because of the thought and care that was put into the title and its world that make it rise above its imperfections and become a classic. Some comically bad voice acting doesn’t hurt either.
It would be two years after the release of Resident Evil that its sequel would come out and many companies took advantage of that window and tried to replicate Resident Evil’s formula and make their own popular horror franchise. Judging by the fact that the Resident Evil series is still going strong and the majority of these clones came, went, and were forgotten rather quickly only speaks to the resilience of Capcom’s survival horror hit. However, since so many of these games turn out to be such bizarre disasters, here’s a look at a number of PlayStation survival horror games that did their best Resident Evil impressions to middling success.
Countdown: Vampires
Imagine Resident Evil…but with vampires! That may be an oversimplification of Countdown: Vampire, Bandai’s attempt at the survival horror genre, but that’s pretty much what’s going on here. Casino City is evidently no Raccoon City and this is a lesser version of Resident Evil in every way, right down to the item menus, which are nearly identical. There’s a highly monotonous mix of fighting monsters, solving mild puzzles, and acquiring key cards. Even though Countdown: Vampire’s bestiary of creatures expands to werewolves and giant insects, the fact that it looks quite poor for a 2000 release and plays worse than the original Resident Evil when the third title was already out at this point erase much of this goodwill.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the title is that it allows you to even anesthetize and save the vampires that you encounter, or just kill them, with this ultimately affecting your final score and which ending you’ll receive. The problem with this mechanic is that it takes so much more work and time to save a vampire that it instantly becomes not worth it and a lost cause. It also features some voice acting that even puts Resident Evil to shame in the cringe department, which makes this title worth checking out for the morbid curiosity factor alone. The most infuriating aspect of Countdown: Vampires is that the game requires you to play through it in its entirety at least twice, and under certain conditions, in order to gain access to the full story.
OverBlood 1 and 2
It’s kind of adorable to see EA making a go at the survival horror genre, but their game OverBlood deliciously mixes together survival horror with sci-fi and weaves together a narrative about genetic experimentation gone wrong. This is certainly a more interesting slant than just zombies, but OverBlood tries to cram a whole lot of gameplay into the experience with different playable characters (one of which is very Barry Burton-esque) and the ability to shift between both first- and third-person camera perspectives. OverBlood adopts the same basic combat and light puzzle elements that Resident Evil does, but it even tries to emulate more of an arcade and platformer experience with some of its tasks. OverBlood is heavy in the exploration department, but many critics cited this as making the gameplay too slow and uninteresting. The title was met with mixed responses, but still looked impressive enough and offered enough originality to warrant a sequel the following year.
Strangely, the game’s sequel only saw release in Japan and Europe, while an American port never happened. That being said there are some absolutely terrible localization errors that happen here, such as a level at a “warehouse” being interpreted as “whorehouse” and a grenade launcher being referred to as the very literal, “hand bomb-throwing device.” Overblood 2 pushes the story to the year 2115 and looks at a crooked corporation that wants to destroy the planet before packing up and heading for somewhere else. An overly complicated storyline, lengthy, unskippable cut scenes, and slow loading times plagued the sequel and made sure that Overblood never became a trilogy.
Galerians
While some games on this list try to separate themselves from Resident Evil by the monsters that prey on the heroes, Galerians takes an even bigger swing by taking guns completely out of the equation and giving the protagonist psychic powers. It’s a very cool shift for the Resident Evil formula and even though tank controls still hinder gameplay in some ways, the telekinetic and pyrokinetic powers go a long way. The psychic powers in the game come with a highly complex system where there are three gauges to manage that deal with his health, psychic powers, and mental exhaustion from using these abilities. Accordingly, maxing out the AP gauge will push the character into a psychic berserker mode that instantly kills enemies, but will also make you go insane and kill yourself if you let it do on too long.
Galerians is a refreshing exception to the rule here and rather than it being a lazy copy of Resident Evil, it’s actually a game that tries to do too much and overcomplicates the formula, if anything. This title has some great ideas that show up in a more refined sense in acclaimed action-adventure games years later. Galerians is a flawed experience, but it’s still a unique, worthwhile early survival horror title that did well enough with critics. It gained enough of a following to earn a sequel on the PlayStation 2, Galerians: Ash, which takes itself even more seriously and doesn’t exactly push the material in the most interesting direction.
Devilman
The Devilman franchise has a lot more cache in Japan, which likely contributes to why this PlayStation title was never localized, but new additions to the canon like Devilman: Crybaby have definitely put the violent, weird franchise on people’s radars in North America. The Devilman anime is yet another series that actually isn’t a bad fit for a Resident Evil clone, it’s once again a case of poor controls that bring this one down. The Devilman series deals with a human who wields a dangerously powerful demon alter ego. This game ambitiously tries to translate that idea over to the survival horror genre, albeit with mixed results.
For the beginning of the game you play as Akira and defend your way against demons like you would in Resident Evil, but then you gain the power to turn into Devilman, which makes the slaughter of monsters even easier and more entertaining. It’s like when Resident Evil eventually lets you play as a superpowered Wesker, but ages before that was in the cards. Even though this adds some variety, it’s flawed in its execution. All in all though, it’s not the worst game on this list and it’s still enjoyable to play and a decent property tie-in title. Plus, it features some especially bonkers CG cut scenes that reinvent the ‘70s anime in impressive ways. It’s just a shame that this level of attention to detail and passion doesn’t translate over more to the gameplay mechanics.
Evil Dead: Hail to the King
Video game titles that try to take advantage of existing franchises are always tricky business. Sometimes they can be the perfect synthesis of ideas or at other times they can enrage a passionate fan base. Evil Dead: Hail to the King had potentially even more on the line since it some ways it claimed to be the continuation of a then-dead franchise. Taking the universe of Evil Dead and putting through the filter of Resident Evil isn’t inherently a bad idea, it’s just something that needs to be done right. Unfortunately, from a glance, Hail to the King may look like a serviceable Resident Evil clone, but it actually borrows the worst gameplay and control aspects from the title. This game is hard to control, the gameplay is highly repetitive and not at all fun in the way playing as Ash Williams should be, and it’s short. It’s very easy to beat this game in one sitting (although somehow it spans two discs), which is pretty inexcusable. It’s like they set out to do the bare minimum and once it was hit they decided to end the game. The combat system is also pretty atrocious and the kind of thing that makes you curse because things aren’t working as they should (there are some serious issues with the hit boxes and collision detection that are not groovy), even if there are still some creative deadite enemies that you get to fight.
Vampire Hunter D
Jaleco’s Vampire Hunter D survival horror entry has its undead heart in the right place and has the assistance of a franchise to back it up, but the result is a rather choppy mess. Vampire Hunter D boasts the traditional pre-rendered backgrounds and look of Resident Evil, but it also incorporates light puzzle solving and copious key collection to progress. Not only does Vampire Hunter D involve vampires in place of zombies, but you also control a vampire (who in turn has a VP—vampire power—meter) and get to take advantage of his bloodthirsty powers. In addition to more traditional combat, D’s primary weapon is a sword, which is also a refreshing change of pace and conjures an early Devil May Cry vibe. There are also a number of defensive maneuvers, like jump, dodge, and strafe, which you’d think would add more variety to Resident Evil’s combat system, but they really just complicate and muddle the gameplay. Inflicting damage on enemies is an immensely frustrating experience and the title doesn’t even do the franchise justice in the way that the Devilman game is at least respectful of the source material.
Men in Black: The Game
This may not seem like a conventional survival horror title, especially when the Men in Black film is more of a sci-fi action comedy, but Men in Black: The Game borrows so much from Resident Evil that it’s hard to not draw the comparison between the two. The game utilizes a fixed camera third-person perspective as you go around fighting aliens and solving light puzzles as well as negotiating your way around a myriad of key cards. Put a different skin on the characters and it is a Resident Evil game. Unfortunately, as can be the case with movie tie-in titles, Men in Black: The Game features an overall laziness that even extends into some very tired voice acting performances. The game takes some creative swings and it goes beyond the events of the first film and adds even more monsters into the mix, like spore frogs, a riff on The Thing and a Chupacabra hunt. This material is encouraging, but it doesn’t really matter when the controls are already so broken. This is definitely one of the more critically maligned Resident Evil clones and it was hated so much that UK gaming mag, Computer and Video Games gave it a 1/10.
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
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