Resident Evil: Genesis Review for Blackberry Devices

Resident Evil: Genesis is a re-telling of the very first RE storyline that gamers were treated to on the Sega Saturn and PlayStation. On those consoles, the game was a creepy, mind-blowing tale of a virus outbreak and an all-out zombie freak-fest. However, on the mobile platform, the story is rather watered down. This is to be expected with the limited capabilities of something like the BlackBerry in comparison to a dedicated home game console, but excuses don't make the game any better.

The story is such a shadow of its former self that entire characters from the original title are either completely missing or barely get a name-drop in this version. Perhaps what it all comes down to is that Resident Evil is a survival horror franchise, and nothing on my Blackberry's screen has ever scared me, least of all Resident Evil: Genesis.

The biggest hurdle for any established game franchise when making the move to mobile is figuring out a control scheme that will not only allow the player to get a handle on the action but also not completely break the game wide open. Unfortunately for Resident Evil: Genesis (you're going to be hearing that a lot in this review), it not only trips over this hurdle, it falls flat on its face and is then run over by a speeding automobile while writhing on the ground in pain.

The action is presented in a 3/4 top-down isometric view, and your character moves about on screen via the use of the scroll wheel or the number buttons on the keyboard. This makes things far more complicated than they need to be, and something as simple as finding your way to the front of a door can sometimes become a challenge when your character just doesn't want to stop on the correct grid square. As you can imagine, this control scheme also makes combat a bit tricky. Firing in the wrong direction and wasting precious ammunition is an all too-common occurrence in Genesis.