The Resident Evil series is one of the most successful horror franchises in gaming. In its 20 year history, Capcom’s flagship series has had its fair share of hits, but also its fair amount of disappointments. Many of those failures have been a result of the Japanese developer’s attempts to bring the series online. Operation Raccoon City failed to do much with the squad shooter idea it ran with, and it seems Umbrella Corps will be remembered in the same kind of way.

Resident Evil’s incredible history

There has been at least one online game in the franchise that delivered an authentic Resident Evil experience, though. Well, technically there has been two. Outbreak and Outbreak File #2 were the first attempts at taking the franchise online, and they are still Capcom’s best work in the Resident Evil multiplayer arena. Unfortunately, both games were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Outbreak released in late 2004 in Europe, where the integral online part of the game was completely removed. Capcom didn’t even wait a year to amend that and other issues from the first game, releasing File #2 in Europe in August 2005. With Resident Evil 4 now out in the ether though, critics did not take to the game as kindly as they did with the first. After all, it was a return to the tank controls that critics so gleefully proclaimed as dead just a few months prior, so why would they?

This is a massive shame because Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 is the finest game, control wise, in the entire “tank” era of the franchise. You could move whilst you fired your weapon for one, something that didn’t become a regular mechanic in the main franchise until the poorly received Resident Evil 6. The inventory also had to be sorted through in real time, which meant there was no break from the action, especially as the enemies moved from room to room. It all combined into something that really upped the tension in a palpable way.

Not only that but it was set during the events of Resident Evil 2 and 3, with parts of it canon, thus helping to pad out the lore further. Some series favourites even popped up or were referenced over the course of both games, including Marvin Branagh and Nikolai Zinoviev. If you’re an old-school Resident Evil fan, then points like that should definitely pique your interest. It definitely piqued mine.

As such, I was very quick to pick up a PlayStation 2 Network Adapter and a copy of File #2 when it launched. Much like its predecessor it had some intriguing ideas, taking the concept of Resident Evil 0’s multiple protagonists at once and doubled it. With a team of up to four running around a scenario together it was very interesting, even if the other characters were computer-controlled. The limited way of communicating with your partners meant splitting up relied on you trusting them to complete their tasks. Often you wouldn’t know they had failed until it was too late.

The limited way of communicating, however, put a lot of reviewers and consumers off. There was an “ad-lib” system which worked very much like emotes do now but back then people wanted voice chat. Nowadays people seem to prefer to game in silence with minimal communication unless it’s vital.

The ad-lib system helped to keep you immersed in the game. You were not having an annoying 12-year-old shouting at you about how they were going to do awful things to your mother, which meant you could be completely terrified by the giant Tyrant chasing you through corridors. If players were close enough they would hear cries for help but sometimes the responses wouldn’t always be positive, especially if you were playing it with AI characters. The reason for that is one of the things I liked the most about the game.

In Resident Evil Outbreak, not everyone likes each other. It’s an important point about the end of the world that doesn’t seem to be stressed enough in video games. When it all goes wrong you’ll rely on whoever you can to survive, regardless of how you feel about them. It’s something I felt the likes of Left 4 Dead also lingered on; and that’s not the only way the Outbreak games are similar to Turtle Rock Studio’s classic.

Although there are guns throughout the scenarios they can be limited and there’s a much bigger emphasis on melee weapons than there are in other entries in the Resident Evil franchise. It does, however, offer an almost MOBA-like twist that Left 4 Dead doesn’t have. Whereas the cast in Left 4 Dead all have the same move-set, the cast in the Resident Evil Outbreak games all have unique abilities and purposes.

There are characters that serve as tanks to help aid your team to the end of the level by absorbing and dealing more damage. On top of that there are healers and characters that can support the team by carrying more, or spotting hidden items. The characters also featured a lot more variety than what Resident Evil normally offered. Of the eight main protagonists, the job roles ranged from rookie cop to subway worker, and for the first time in the series not all of them were Caucasian.

This approach worked well and could change the way you played through a scenario. For example: Mark, the tank-type in the game, was too big to hide from enemies like other characters could. This meant in situations where ammo was low and enemies were plenty Mark would have to try and either avoid them or take some damage. Mark wasn’t too big because he was full of armour; rather, he was just an overweight man in his 50s. It was the normality of the characters that helped add an extra something to them that has been lost in newer games in the franchise. The protagonists have rarely felt completely out of their depth.

With various characters to warm to there was plenty for the community to choose from yet it seemed that the community understood what made a good team for a scenario and what didn’t. This could be in part due to how small the community was, due to unfortunately poor sales of File #2. However, it was something that worked in the game’s favour for its faithful user base. Gamers wanted to play the right way and were often helpful. If you needed to quickly do something they would push up against the doors to try and buy you some more time. If they turned into a zombie most would go to an area where the team were likely to go so that their body could be looted.

Turning into a zombie was something that you didn’t see as much in offline play, due to death meaning game over. Each character in the game is infected with the virus that has filled Raccoon City, as shown by a virus meter. If you take too long to complete a level, or you take too much damage, your meter reaches 100% and you die and join the ranks of the undead. As stated, most players would attempt to try and help the team if possible in this situation, but you could go and completely mess up a playthrough if you felt like it.

Needless to say, it was an interesting mechanic and the fact you could move freely, albeit slowly, through most of the level meant you weren’t left waiting around in one room in the off chance someone might appear. The virus meter also stopped you dawdling which added a higher intensity to the game considering that everything else happened in real-time and plenty of enemies had one hit kill attacks.

As a result, this meant that completing a scenario was something that felt all the sweeter. One wonderful victory of mine happened during the scenario, Flashback. In it you find yourself in an abandoned hospital with a mad axe man that can appear at any moment. I was so near the end and the only survivor left, in the penultimate corridor to the exit, when I heard him approach. With my health on danger my movement was slow. As quickly as I could I stumbled towards the door and as he looked to offload the attack that would end me I reached for the handle and dived in. I had survived.

Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 was full of moments like this thanks to its online nature adding a level of unpredictability that just wasn’t there in offline mode. That’s why it ended up being a game I put well over 100 hours into and still remember vividly today. It was addictive and offered the tightest controlled old-school survival horror experience I can think of in the franchise. Fans have even found a way to still play them online today despite the fact servers were shut down in 2007 in the West, which is a testament to the series’ enduring fan base.

In many ways Resident Evil Outbreak was a series ahead of its time on a console with terrible online support. Its character types weren’t just faceless mercenaries but people with their own stories and relationships with one another that wasn’t spoonfed to you (something that recently-released Overwatch is being praised for). A series that gave a chance for the supporting cast from other Resi titles to have a bit more time in the spotlight, it also took the outdated tank control input and made them work. Most importantly though, it took the essence of what a Resident Evil game is to so many fans and it made it work in an online environment.

Gamers have shown that they love old-school Resident Evil in recent years. Even the likes of Resident Evil 0 (a game that sold less than Outbreak when initially released) has sold over 800,000 copies so far with its remaster, and Resident Evil 7 has been a revelation. Indeed, a remaster of the Outbreak games could help generate some more money from an old property that’s just sitting there. Failing that maybe Capcom could make it the first PlayStation 2 classic with online support. All I know is the Outbreak series deserves one more chance to prove its worth on a system with a larger online community.