I’ve talked a lot about Resident Evil for October, but there’s one more thing I want to cover. It’s one of my favorite scenes from any Resident Evil game: The appearance of the first zombie. Not exactly gameplay, at least not right away, but it’s an extremely important moment for setting up the foe you’ll be facing the entire game, making it ultimately impact the game in an extremely significant way. And that’s the question every horror game needs to ask itself: How do you introduce the monster that will scare the player for the rest of the game? Well, this is how:

That video shows the first zombie scene from both Resident Evil and its remake on the GameCube, and it’s really an excellent moment. Gorey but judiciously so; it’s about fear of the creature for doing it, not a gross-out moment focused on the victim. It’s a great scene that makes a frankly basic enemy seem very threatening, and immediately afterward you’re thrown into your first battle, often without enough ammo to fight.

I actually prefer the classic one, because I think retaining the human look on the zombie makes it a lot freakier (not to mention the severed head it drops), but they’re both great and I love it how in the remake, the background is black when the zombie turns.

Again, not really a gameplay moment but one just as crucial towards making the game play as it does, because it’s one of the earliest tone-setting scenes.

I want to give a big thanks to RelaxingMusic212 for making this video. Couldn’t have been hard but I’m infinitely happy that this comparison video exists. It needed to!