Resident Evil 0 / Biohazard 0 HD Remaster

Resident Evil 0 HD Remaster is a third-person survival horror game and a prequel to the events of the original Resident Evil. You play as Rebecca Chambers, an 18-year-old S.T.A.R.S. medic, who teams up with Billy Coen, a military convict on the run, after their paths cross on the Umbrella-owned Ecliptic Express - a luxury train overrun with zombies, leeches, and significantly worse things. The setting shifts from the train to a vast Umbrella training facility, and the whole run clocks in around ten hours on a first playthrough, with experienced players able to cut that down sharply once they know the route. The headline mechanic is partner zapping: you can switch freely between Rebecca and Billy at almost any point, and each has distinct roles. Billy absorbs damage better and handles heavy objects for puzzle-solving. Rebecca is the medic, the only one who can mix herbs or synthesize chemicals. The system sounds deep on paper, but in practice most forced co-operation amounts to sending items up a dumbwaiter or keeping one character in place while the other goes ahead. The potential is there; the execution is uneven. Item boxes are gone entirely, replaced by a drop-anywhere system that sounds like a quality-of-life upgrade until you realize it just turns the game into a scavenger hunt for supplies you left somewhere three rooms back. Each character carries six inventory slots, and big weapons like the shotgun or grenade launcher eat two of those. The hookshot, which you need in specific areas, takes two more. Plan carefully or you will be retracing your steps past rooms full of Leech Men - enemies that essentially force you to always keep a molotov cocktail on hand, which burns yet another slot. The HD upgrade brings widescreen support, 5.1 surround, and optional modern controls alongside the classic tank scheme. That modern control option genuinely helps in the tight corridors of the train sequence, which is by far the strongest section of the game. The atmosphere there is legitimately good - confined spaces, dim lighting, the sound of zombies shuffling from off-camera. The pre-rendered backgrounds still look reasonable, though the cutscenes were not updated and the visual gap between gameplay and cinematics is jarring. After the train, the game moves into a more generic Umbrella facility and a linear final stretch that most players find significantly weaker. The bosses are forgettable. The story, which is meant to explain the origins of the Mansion Incident, ends up not adding much of consequence. The villain sings opera. Draw your own conclusions. Post-completion, Wesker Mode unlocks, which swaps Billy for RE5's Albert Wesker - complete with superhuman abilities and the ability to detonate zombie skulls telekinetically. It is completely overpowered and an excellent stress relief after the main campaign. There is also a Leech Hunter mini-game where you race to find 100 stone leeches across the facility. Replay value is real, especially if speedrunning appeals to you, since optimal routing is a learnable skill and the game rewards it. This one is for committed fans of the classic fixed-camera RE formula who can tolerate backtracking and inventory friction as part of the experience, not bugs to be patched. If you bounced off RE1 Remake's pace, this will be worse. If you finished REmake and wanted more, RE0 delivers the atmosphere and the tension - just not the tightness of design that made REmake a standout. Fred, Scout Team