The Best Resident Evil Games: Ranking All The Main Titles

Here’s our look at the best Resident Evil Games. Ranking all the main Resident Evil games released so far.

It’s Thursday, folks, and you know what that means. That’s right; it’s time to take a look at a beloved gaming series and rank its main titles. Oh, how I do love this day as I’m always guaranteed to annoy the bejesus out of someone. So what’s in my crosshairs today? I hear you ask. Well, if you’d looked at the title of this article instead of clicking on it just because you saw my name attached, then you’d know that I’m passing judgment over the original zombie franchise, Resident Evil.

The haunted house that Capcom built has been around since 1996, which means it’s 23 years old and probably been around longer than most of the people who bought the reboot. In that time we’ve had some cracking games, as well as some bog awful ones, and a film series that should just be swept under the carpet but which of the releases are the real face of terror and which ones are just Milla Jovovich’s crappy acting?

The Best Resident Evil Games

Resident Evil 5

Jesus H. Christ on a bike, I hated this game. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to take, something that had ostensibly been, a single player world of terror and make it so that you could play it with a friend should be feed to the nearest T-Virus infected dog. The whole point behind Resident Evil was that it was all about the singular player trying to survive so slapping in a co-op mode just smacked of Capcom trying to jump on the bandwagon of co-op shooters that, inexplicably, flooded the market for a few years back then. But if that wasn’t enough, they made it so that if you decided to carry on alone the A.I controlling the other character would, seemingly, be bloody awful on purpose, thereby forcing you to team up with another human in hopes that at least they’re competent enough to know that was my ammo drop you piece of shi…..

Resident Evil 6

Alright, alright, calm down. Put away the torches and the pitchforks, Resident Evil 6 isn’t a good game by any stretch of the imagination, but the one thing it does have is the fact that it might be crap, but there’s a lot of it. Play through the four different scenarios on offer to reveal an intricately woven plot about the usual T-Virus nonsense. Each campaign involved is wildly different than the next but there all still pretty poor. Even Leon’s, which is as close to the usual Resident Evil games as you can get, is buggy as hell and dull as dishwater. Still, as I said, there’s a lot of it, so you’re going to get plenty of bang for your buck.

Resident Evil

Now we’re talking. It may be dated, have the kind of controls that give you nightmares, and have the kind of voice acting that puts Peter Dinklage’s stint in Destiny to shame but I dare anyone to tell me that the first Resident Evil isn’t one of the most groundbreaking games in history. Along with Tomb Raider, it helped to put the PlayStation on the map, and I can still remember when I stepped down the hallway to the sound of munching, turned the corner, and found that zombie chowing down on some poor dead soul. It was nerdvana.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

Jeez, will you look at that guy? Now there’s a face that even a mother couldn’t love, but I’ll tell you this dear reader, that ugly son-of-a-bitch gave me nightmares for months and not just when I closed my eyes. Every time that I heard “Starz” as he came bursting through whatever wall or door I was cowering behind filled me with terror, and the fact that it seemed that you couldn’t kill the bastard just made it 100 times worse. Resident Evil 3 is a great game, with the usual terrible controls and static cameras, and the satisfaction that comes from putting Nemesis down once and for all was, at the time, unrivaled in gaming.

Resident Evil Zero

This game that was originally released for the Gamecube back in 2002 was a prequel to the original Resident Evil but had a far few more bells and whistles attached to it. The main new trick was that you could jump between the two main characters whenever you needed to and as each had unique abilities, then that would come in handy for specific situations. It could also see you dead pretty damn quick if, like certain people who shall remain nameless, you happened to load up everything on weak Rebecca and sent Billy into every fight with only a pistol and a knife.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica X

There wasn’t much different in Resident Evil: Code Veronica X that we hadn’t already seen in Resident Evil games, but there’s just something about this release that I enjoyed more than the others on this list. It might have had something to do with the fact that this used 3-D rendered backgrounds. Also, for the first time in the series, you could run in an arc, or maybe it was just because it had the returning Claire Redfield as the hero but whatever it was Resident Evil: Code Veronica X still has a place in my gaming collection as well as my heart.

Resident Evil 2

When Capcom announced that there was going to be a sequel to Resident Evil, there was much rejoicing, but there would’ve been even more if we’d had any idea just what they had in store for us. Two discs with the ability to choose which campaign that you played through first off were virtually unheard of before Resident Evil 2 did it and when you completed one and started up the other, what did you get for your trouble? Mr. X trying to kill you at every single turn. It was bone-chilling; it was terrifying; it was everything you wanted from a Resident Evil game.

Resident Evil 4

The game that changed the franchise, Resident Evil 4 took all the failings of the previous installments such as tank controls and static cameras and swapped them out for the over the shoulder look. It took a while to get used to, but as soon as you got your head around it, you were killing rabid cultists like a trooper. The only thing that about this game that sucked, and sucked hard, was Ashley. Proving from the outset that annoying companions that were always getting kidnapped or eaten weren’t the greatest idea.

Resident Evil: Biohazard

From the game that changed the franchise to the game that saved the franchise. By the time that we got round to Resident Evil 7, the whole series was circling the crapper, waiting to be flushed, then from out of nowhere, the demo dropped. We realized that we were in for a scare ride, unlike anything that had been seen since P.T had shown up, scared the life out of everyone, and subsequently been axed. The question was though, could the full version live up to the hype. Well, as you all know by now, the answer was a resounding yes and introduced the world to the horror that was the Baker family. If you want to go for the ultimate in fear though, you really should try it in VR. Yeah, that won’t give you nightmares at all, I promise.