Hollowbody, Crow Country, Signalis, Post Trauma – over the past five years, there have been dozens of games that try to capture the style of classic survival horror, either paying homage to or standing on the shoulders of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. It’s fixed cameras. It’s low-poly visuals. It’s a ’90s or ’90s-inspired setting where clunky, tank-control combat meets inventive, sometimes surreal puzzles. But there’s one element of classic RE that seems to have been forgotten. Available to try right this second, Phase Zero convincingly captures this core characteristic of Capcom’s zombie icon.
Welcome to the small, harbor town of Flint Peak, and the year 1994. In true Raccoon City fashion, some kind of mutagenic virus has seemingly gotten into the water supply and turned everybody into zombies – or worse. Playing as two different survivors, you need to manage your inventory, solve puzzles, kill monsters, and escape from Flint’s formerly idyllic confines. If you scrolled past a screenshot for Phase Zero, you might assume you were looking at a screenshot from an abandoned prototype for Resident Evil 2. So, compared to some of the other, recent, throwback horror games, what makes this so special?
Think of the voice performances and the soundtrack in the original Resident Evil, or the arch Chief Irons in RE2, or the giant laser cannon that you use to kill Nemesis. Classic Resident Evil was funny. It was playful. It was kitsch. The guns were loud, the gore was plentiful, and the characters were absurd archetypes right out of central casting. Classic Resident Evil had a sense of humor.
And so does Phase Zero. I won’t spoil it, but there’s a puzzle sequence in this first demo that would put Re-Animator to shame. It’s imaginative, disgusting, and very, very…fleshy. Add some excellently designed pre-rendered backgrounds and blocky character models and animation, and this already feels like the closest you can get to a new-old Resident Evil game. Developed by Spina Studio, while we’re still waiting on the release date, you can try Phase Zero right now, right here.
Otherwise, try some of the best zombie games, or maybe the best survival games available today.
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