Resident Evil, or Biohazard in Japan and Southeast Asia, is a Japanese horror game media franchise created by Capcom. It consists of survival horror, third-person shooter and first-person shooter games, with players typically surviving in environments inhabited by zombies and other frightening creatures. The franchise has expanded into other media, including a live-action film series, animated films, television series, comic books, novels, audio dramas and merchandise. Resident Evil is the highest-grossing horror franchise.
Survival horror is a subgenre of horror games. Although combat can be part of the gameplay, the player is made to feel less in control than in typical action games through limited ammunition or weapons, health, speed, and vision, or through various obstructions of the player's interaction with the game mechanics. The player is also challenged to find items that unlock the path to new areas and solve puzzles to proceed in the game. Games make use of strong horror themes, such as dark mazelike environments and unexpected attacks from enemies.
Half-Life: Blue Shift is an expansion pack for the first-person shooter video game Half-Life (1998). It was developed by Gearbox Software and published by Sierra On-Line. Blue Shift was the second expansion for Half-Life, originally intended as part of a Dreamcast port of Half-Life. Although the Dreamcast port was cancelled, the Windows version was released as a standalone product on June 12, 2001 for Windows. It was released on Steam on August 24, 2005.
Second Sight is a 2004 science fiction action-adventure stealth video game developed by Free Radical Design and published by Codemasters for GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows. Players assume control of an American parapsychology researcher, who awakens in a medical facility with no memory of their past and powerful psychic abilities, and breaks out with these powers in order to uncover their past and their involvement in a mission they undertook with a specialist taskforce of the U.S. Marines. The game's action is divided between gun combat and stealth, with emphasis on players making use of different psychic abilities to survive against hostile opponents and overcoming obstacles and tricky puzzles.
In Cold Blood is an adventure game developed by Revolution Software for the PlayStation and Microsoft Windows in 2000 in Europe and in 2001 in North America. The player assumes the role of John Cord—an MI6 agent who is captured while on assignment and tries to figure out who betrayed him through a series of flashbacks.
Resident Evil – Code: Veronica is a survival horror video game developed and published by Capcom and originally released for the Dreamcast in 2000. It is the fourth main installment in the Resident Evil series and the first to debut on a separate platform from the PlayStation. The story takes place three months after the events of Resident Evil 2 (1998) and the concurrent destruction of Raccoon City as seen in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999). It follows Claire Redfield and her brother Chris Redfield in their efforts to survive a viral outbreak at a remote prison island in the Southern Ocean and a research facility in Antarctica. The game retains the traditional survival horror controls and gameplay of previous installments; however, unlike the pre-rendered backgrounds of previous games, Code: Veronica uses real-time 3D environments and dynamic camera movement.
Dino Crisis is a survival horror video game developed and published by Capcom originally for the PlayStation console in 1999. It is the first installment in the Dino Crisis series and was developed by the same team behind Capcom's Resident Evil series, including director Shinji Mikami, and shares many similarities with it. The story follows Regina, a special operations agent sent with a team to investigate a secluded island research facility. Finding the place overrun with dinosaurs, Regina must fight through the facility to discover its secrets and ultimately escape alive with her team.
Dino Crisis 2 is an action-adventure video game developed by Capcom Production Studio 4 and published by Capcom for the PlayStation in 2000. It is the second installment in the Dino Crisis series, with designer Shu Takumi taking over as game director from Shinji Mikami from the first game. The story continues the story of special operative Regina who must deal with the fallout of a time-distorting event which transports a research base and the surrounding area through time. Regina and team leader Dylan Morton must battle against dinosaurs in order to find a way to get back to the present.
Resident Evil Survivor is a first-person light gun shooter video game developed by Tose and published by Capcom. It was released on the PlayStation in Japan on January 27, 2000, in Europe on March 31, 2000, and in North America on August 30, 2000. It is a spin-off of the Resident Evil video game series. It is also the first first-person perspective Resident Evil game predating Resident Evil 7: Biohazard by seventeen years. A Microsoft Windows version was released only in China and Taiwan on September 7, 2002.
Shinji Mikami is a Japanese video game designer, director, and producer. Starting his career at Capcom in 1990, he has worked on many of the company's most successful games. He directed the first installment of the Resident Evil series in 1996 and the first installment of the Dino Crisis series in 1999, both survival horror games. He returned to Resident Evil to direct the remake of the first game in 2002 and the third-person shooter Resident Evil 4 in 2005. In 2006, he directed his final Capcom game God Hand, a beat 'em up action game. Mikami worked at PlatinumGames to direct the third-person shooter Vanquish in 2010. The same year, he founded his own studio Tango Gameworks which has since been acquired by the American company ZeniMax Media. Under his studio, he directed the third-person horror game The Evil Within in 2014. He has also served the roles of producer and executive producer for many games.
Project Firestart is a cinematic survival horror game for the Commodore 64 computer system. It was designed by Jeff Tunnell and Damon Slye and published by Electronic Arts in 1989. Taking place in the 21st century, the game follows a government agent dispatched to a research station in orbit around Saturn's moon, Titan, to learn why the scientists there abruptly cut off communication with Earth. The game has been cited by various gaming journalists and writers as one of, if not the first, survival horror game, pioneering many conventions of the genre including limited ammunition, an emphasis on escaping enemies and puzzle solving over combat, solving a central mystery, and multiple endings.
The X-Files: Resist or Serve is a 2004 survival horror game developed by Black Ops Entertainment and published by Vivendi Universal Games for the PlayStation 2 video game console. It is based on the television series The X-Files (1993–2002), and is the third game based on the series, after The X-Files: Unrestricted Access (1997) and The X-Files Game (1998). The game is set during the seventh season of the television series, and the story is presented as three new "episodes" in which FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigate mysterious deaths in Colorado, where they learn about an alien artifact used to resurrect deceased people. The agents' investigation ultimately leads them to Tunguska, Russia, where they discover a spaceship that crashed there nearly 100 years earlier.
Galerians is a 1999 survival horror video game developed by Polygon Magic for the PlayStation. The game follows a boy named Rion who discovers he has psychic powers. He has amnesia, and in the process of learning his identity, he discovers that he is humanity's last hope for survival against the Galerians, genetically enhanced humans. The game has a sequel, Galerians: Ash on PlayStation 2.
Hellnight, known as Dark Messiah in Japan, is a first-person survival horror video game developed by Dennou Eizou Seisakusho and published by Atlus Co. in collaboration with Konami in 1998. The game is an adventure game with 3D.
Starting with Biohazard i Survivor in 2001, several mobile games based on the Resident Evil survival horror franchise have been released. The games feature different genres and settings, and were developed by the Japanese and Canadian branches of Capcom.
The Evil Within is a survival horror video game developed by Tango Gameworks and published by Bethesda Softworks. The game was directed by Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami and was released worldwide in October 2014 for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
The Forest is a survival horror video game developed and published by Endnight Games. The game takes place on a remote heavily forested peninsula, where the player character Eric LeBlanc must fight off cannibalistic monsters, while searching for his son Timmy after a plane crash. The game features nonlinear gameplay in an open world environment played from a first-person perspective, with no set missions or quests, empowering the player to make their own decisions for survival. Following a four-year long early access beta phase releasing in 2014, the finished game was released for Windows in April 2018, and for the PlayStation 4 in November 2018. The game was a commercial success, selling over five million copies by the end of 2018. A sequel game, Sons of the Forest, was released in Early Access for Windows on February 23, 2023.
Dino Crisis is a survival horror and action-adventure video game series created by Shinji Mikami and developed and published by Capcom. The plot focuses on recurring outbreaks of deadly dinosaurs in closed environments, such as a laboratory on an island. The series also includes comic books and merchandise. As of December 31, 2019, the game series has sold 4.4 million units worldwide.
Daymare: 1998 is a third-person survival horror game developed by Invader Studios and published by Destructive Creations and All In! Games on September 17, 2019 for Microsoft Windows, and on April 28, 2020 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Alan Wake II is an upcoming survival horror game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Epic Games Publishing. A sequel to Alan Wake, the story follows best-selling thriller novelist Alan Wake, who has been trapped in an alternate dimension for 13 years, as he attempts to escape by writing a horror story involving an FBI agent named Saga Anderson. The game is scheduled to release for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on October 27, 2023.
