No, you’re not crazy. Summer is basically over, even if this godforsaken heat is hellbent on lingering for another few weeks. Kids are going back to school, hoodies and jackets are about to come back out, and I’m going to stay my ass indoors and start enjoying horror games and movies while staying warm under two blankets. If you’ve got a similar plan, boy do I have the bundle for you.
Humble Bundle, which regularly packages a slew of games for dirt cheap, is at it again with a new Resident Evil bundle. This collection, which has been dubbed “Decades of Horror,” is made up of just about every mainline entry in the series’ nearly 30-year history. There are a few notable exceptions, like Code Veronica, and some remakes are there in favor of the classic versions of these titles, but for the most part, $30 will net you just about every Resident Evil game.
These bundles are known for having tiers, though, and there are a few to work through. For example, beginning at $3, you can pick up the HD remaster of the first Resident Evil, Resident Evil Revelations, and the first episode of Revelations 2. The first title is obviously a classic that defined the survival horror genre, and gave us some of gaming’s most enduring characters in folks like Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, and Albert Wesker. Though remakes and remasters can be hit or miss, the Resident Evil series actually has one of the most sterling track records in this department, and it all more or less started with this game.
I’ve never gotten around to the Revelations sub-series, which curiously began on the Nintendo 3DS, but I remember hearing at the time that they were a refreshing return to the series’ roots. After some time, the Resident Evil games started to become more synonymous with outrageous plotlines and non-stop action than horror, and while some welcomed the evolution, others missed what made them love the series in the first place. Revelations was a bid to win back that hardcore audience that missed slower, scarier games, and the success of them seemed to pave the way for the mainline games to return to survival horror as well.
Speaking of the screwy path that the Resident Evil franchise eventually found itself on, the next tier of the Humble Bundle packages in a ton more games. For $7, you can pick up everything I already mentioned, as well the critically beloved Resident Evil 4, its less acclaimed action-centric follow-ups, Resident Evil 5 and 6 (and their respective DLCs), Resident Evil 0, and all of Revelations 2, which was released piecemeal. The legacy of 4 is well-established (and it has a pretty great remake from last year) but both 5 and 6 have divided fans for years. Some are in favor of the gung-ho, balls-to-the-wall action of these increasingly ludicrous games, but for others, this is where the series really jumped the shark. I think if you are a person capable of shutting your brain off and being a part of really dumb sequences of events, such as punching a huge boulder, then you can’t really go wrong checking them out.
Resident Evil 0 and Revelations 2, like the first Revelations game, are slower, and far more typical, installments in the franchise, though neither is particularly beloved. If you just want to round out the bases, though, it can’t hurt to pick them up.
For $20, you get all of the aforementioned titles, Resident Evil 7 biohazard and its DLCs,
and the recent remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3. This widely beloved trio of games have more or less ushered the franchise into a renaissance since the late 2010s. The first brought the mainline games back to survival horror but also shook up the formula by putting the action in first-person. This romp through a decrepit manor in the Louisiana bayou was creepy as fuck, and introduced Ethan Winters, the corny catch-phrase spewing protagonist of the game and its immediate sequel. While it’s definitely a little clunky, RE7 is the most atmospheric and unsettling of the modern games, in case you’re looking for the most frightening prospects.
Resident Evil 2 and 3, meanwhile, are currently held up as the gold standard of remakes across the industry. They both maintain the spirit of their original iterations while modernizing the controls and visuals in a from-the-ground-up reimagining. Even if people are down on 3—which I believe mostly has to do with the fact that people never really liked it as much as 2 to begin with—you’ve got two absolute bangers here that Capcom managed to develop in tandem and release in back-to-back years.
Finally, the biggest bundle is the previously mentioned $30 one that brings everything, including the most recent mainline entry, Resident Evil Village, as well as its DLC. Village maintains the first-person perspective of its horror-focused predecessor, but shifts gears once again. Stylistically, it’s like a first-person Resident Evil 4, and plays a lot of the same hits, like opening in a creepy village in the middle of nowhere, but it also takes some even wilder swings in due time. It is also the game that gave us Lady Dimitrescu, otherwise known as the big woman that the internet wanted to step on them.
Even if the ending of the game dragged on a little too long for me, I’m pretty confident that Village is actually my favorite RE game, since it pretty successfully melds all of the disparate things the series has been over the years into something that’s mostly cohesive and, importantly, ludicrously fun.
For as little as half of a retail game, you can play the most legendary survival horror series in games. Considering that Capcom unceremoniously announced a sequel earlier this year, now’s as good a time as any to jump on in.