It’s a book about Resident Evil.
Okay folks, it’s time for another Book Club. It’s been a few months since I had a chance to check in on Boss Fight Books and in the meantime they have run a successful Kickstarter campaign for a whole new slate of titles including Red Dead Redemption, Resident Evil, Majora’s Mask, Silent Hill 2, and Final Fantasy VI. I meant to read and write my review of RDR before it published and I missed that mark by a long shot. I might still make that a book club review.
However I do have time to write about Resident Evil written by Philip J Reed.
Resident Evil released in 1996 by Capcom and is generally regarded as the game that brought survival horror to the mainstream and sparked a revival of the zombie genre. It is generally considered not as scary today as it was in its time, but a lot of people have nostalgic feelings for it. In this book Philip Reed focuses on the original title for PlayStation (with a small nod at the Gamecube remake) and its legacy as a survival horror game.
You’ll find that the Resident Evil book focuses more on the game itself talking about the narrative designs and how the experience is put together to build tension and fear in a game that is all about survival. Reed discusses and analyzes Capcom’s use of the camera, ambiance, sound effects, and the game’s controls to direct the player’s attention, highlight incoming threats, give the player a scare from time to time, and really tell the story in a way that connects the player to the character. Essentially this is a look at Resident Evil from the view of an art critic.
If you’re looking for a biopic of Capcom in the 1990’s or a behind the scenes of developers pulling 80 hour weeks, sleeping under their desks, and subsisting off Ramen, this ain’t it. Focus lands more on impact and nostalgia than the making of. Reed also talks about the arguments surrounding the building blocks of what can be considered survival horror, pitching his own suggested list for defining elements.
One of my favorite chapters in the book has Reed tracking down some of the performers and voice actors who played roles in the live action scenes that bookend the game. The ones we know the identities of anyway. There is a good amount of chatter with Charlie Kraslavsky who played Chris Redfield about the actors, how the scenes were shot, how little they actually knew about the game, and the very slapdash nature of the hiring for the roles. It’s interesting to learn that there was a bigger reason behind the slow, precise, often janky and poorly formed voice acting script than we might have thought.
I especially like how Reed peppers the book to keep the ongoing narrative fresh. It might get boring if he spent too much time talking about the game or about the various other subjects that the story broaches, but he swaps back and forth and allows each segment to run for just the right length to prevent it from getting overwhelming. It’s almost like watching a documentary and cutting to a commercial break before moving from subject A to subject B for a while.
As Reed states; “I started this book with the intention of figuring out what horror was, how it worked, how it functioned, and why it endures – but at every turn, I found good people.” There is a lot of nostalgia in Philip Reed’s recounting of playing Resident Evil as a younger chap, a feeling that will likely translate to anyone who reads this book at least partially to relive their own feelings of settling down in the late 90’s to play that crazy new horror game from Japan.
In my review of Postal I said that there was likely not a lot of new stuff for people well acquainted with the games but it was nice to see it all in a chronological line. I think even the more die-hard Resident Evil fans are going to find a fair amount of information they didn’t know about the game here. It’s also nice to have another mind to talk about the experience and nostalgia of it all. Also I know I’ve mentioned this a few times in the past but I love Boss Fight Books minimalist cover design. These are books I happily display on my shelf, even if they are paperback.
Verdict: 5/5, a fascinating tale of Resident Evil nostalgia. Buy your copy here. Length is roughly 180 pages.
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