At this point, the whole Resident Evil thing was running out of ideas. I mean, they already obliterated the damn city and gone to the Antarctic. How can we use the fifth installment to take the series into a whole new direction? Wait! Better idea; let's do a prequel instead and we'll have dumbass Rebecca and some completely new guy we never heard of as our characters.
The narrator sounds really bored but he sums the game up pretty nicely. In this game we cover the important events before Resident Evil and the origins of Umbrella and the T-virus. I don't like this idea because I don't find it necessary at all. Who cares about Umbrella's history or the T-virus for that matter? We know the city is already obliterated. Do we really need to go back and make up a bunch of complicated crap? I don't like to sound so negative but the story in RE0 is so bizarre. It involves leeches, creepy old men and rabid monkeys.
As we see in the intro, we finally discover the reason why Bravo team crashed. They had "engine failure". Why? Don't ask. That's as good as it gets. It's also an amazing coincidence that the Bravo team crashed near two important areas namely: the train car and the group dead soldiers. They crashed into the plot and I pity them.
Resident Evil: 0 was a Gamecube release in 2002. It was the last RE to use the old style of fixed angles and tanky third-person controls. The main gimmick of the game is that you control two characters: Rebecca Chambers and Billy Coen. They can travel together sometimes and then split up to do some puzzles. Billy's the more competent fighter and can take many hits. Rebecca can solve puzzles and shit that's too complicated for a meathead like Billy and fit through small spaces he can't. You know, it's the typical mild sexism you find in video games. Billy is strong enough to push boxes but since he's a man, he's obviously too stupid do the "smart" stuff. I know Rebecca's a chemist but poor Billy can't even mix basic healing herbs; a skill that literally every RE character ever made has.
There are also no item boxes. You take or drop items at locations. This ties in to the puzzle system it has with two characters exploring different areas. I guess it would be too easy if it used the magic teleporting item boxes the other games had. The graphics are also very nice and continues the style of the RE remake also on the Gamecube. This is a real pretty RE game.
The story takes place in an abandoned train car called The Ecliptic Express. It seems the Bravo team stumbled upon a ruined army car, discover that a highly dangerous felon had escaped and decided that splitting up would be a good idea. Rebecca ends up in the train car and meets Billy. At first, Rebecca doesn't trust a guy who was recently institutionalized and may have committed twenty three murders. But after the poop hits the fan and the Bravo Team members bite the dust, they team up to fight monsters.
Fun Fact: Billy's tattoo appears to spell out "Mother Love".
One annoying thing I must mention is the leech zombies. These guys have rubbery arms that attack considerable distances and make life hell for the player. They take quite a bit of ammo to take down. The best weapon to use against them are molotov cocktails since the leeches are weak against fire. You encounter them often and they even have their own scary music. It's annoying.
Billy saves Rebecca from the leeches and even manages to fight off a giant scorpion that just appeared from nowhere. The train suddenly moves and it all seems suspicious. There a creepy guy in white who has his own creepy choir music. The train leads to a secret Umbrella facility... my, what a coincidence.
The underground facility is a training center for the evil scientists of tomorrow. The facility is full of zombies now. You learn that the facility was once headed by a man named James Marcus, who resembles the first leech zombie Rebecca fought against. Oh, and Wesker and William Birkin are here too! Rebecca and Billy don't know it but Wesker and William are watching them through security monitors. I always suspected Wesker and William were gay. The man in white appears in front of the camera and tells them that he's gonna get 'em because he wants revenge.
Look, if it's the bizarre story you want, here's the summary. In the facility it's discovered that Billy killed a bunch of starving Africans based on false information and he totally didn't mean to machine gun them down with brutal efficiency.
Fun Fact: Umbrella mercs are usually composed of wanted men like Billy who are given a "second chance". No need to guess where that military transport was headed.
They discover that that James Marcus,
Ozwell E. Spencer and Edward Ashford, discovered the first virus, aptly called the
Progenitor virus. Combined with the Ebola virus, it created a
strain that, caused stuff to mutate but be sensitive to light.
When Ashford died, Spencer and Marcus decided to abandon his plans to create regenerative medicines for disabled people to make bio-weapons instead. Wow, what assholes. They used leech DNA and made the T-virus.
Fun Fact: The hunters in RE are revealed to have come from the facility in Zero.
Billy fights a giant bat, is attacked by a mutant monkey (yeah, really) and becomes lost inside an underground
laboratory. While searching for him, Rebecca meets up with her commander Enrico Marini, fights a released Tyrant and stumbles onto Billy. They fight the Tyrant together and eventually meet big bad Marcus. Marcus, as it turns out, was behind the outbreak on the train and in the Arklay mansion. William and Birkin didn't even know what happened. Thanks to some experiments, he is leeches now. That's the only way I can describe it. He is made of leeches who hold all his memories and consciousness or whatever, and Rebecca and Billy want to get the fudge out of there.
He becomes "The Queen Leech" final boss and in true RE tradition, a self-destruct sequence is initiated by William. Rebecca and Billy make it out alive despite all hardships and adversity. Rebecca is so grateful to Billy, the felon, that she never mentions him to Chris, the police or anyone else for that matter. In fact, the whole incident in the facility wasn't revealed by her either. Maybe Rebecca had amnesia or something from huffing too many green herbs. Billy is never mentioned again and Rebecca transforms into a useless piece of crap later when RE takes place.
What is it with crap one-liners and magnums? Hey, Queenie! You want STARS? Feast on this! Why would Billy call the boss "Queenie"? Did he know it was called "Queen Leech"? That's some fourth wall bullcrap right there.
Thankfully, at this point, we are done with the T and G virus shenanigans.
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