Xbox 360
There is murder afoot in Raccoon City. Or, to be more precise, around the edges of the town; folk have been going missing, one (human) bite sized chunk at a time. So the Special Tactics and Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S for short) are sent in, and when the B team gets themselves all crashed, out of contact, and probably dead the Alpha Team, (and yourself) get sent in:
Touching down near the B Teams mangled chopper, your first sign of what to come (outside of the ominously stormy evening) might have been the severed hand of a colleague, had you not suddenly been set upon by some pretty ferocious pups and chased into a hugely eerie mansion because your scaredy pants pilot flew away like the team member he is.
Which is where you take control; as either Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield, you find yourself in the big ol' hoos alongside the Team Boss Wesker and loveable chump Barry. Almost straight away there's a gunshot and Wesker decides everyone should have a wander and find out what the craic is. Which is about when pretty much everyone disappears...
And so as you steer yersel' around a few puzzles you start to notice some strange things about the mansion (not least the undead zombie types wandering around).
Aside from finding an alarming amount of ammunition around the mansion (although it is the Midwest), you soon find a number of odd secret rooms and an bizarre tendancy for the interior decoration to be a bit... puzzley.
There's a giant plant waving its arms at you, and a dead member of Team Bravo (he was eaten by a zombie, no less... but how did he get there?). In between wandering and collecting bits of things to put into other things in other parts of the house, you find that the dogs have all been affected by something called the T-Virus, which has the apparent cross-species action of making everything a complete bastard, and a hell of lot sturdier than normal (hence the zombies... sturdy if nothing else).
Anyway, after a good mansion romp, which exposes both Wesker and Barry as being both suspicious and slightly retarded; Barry is a master of under reaction, "You were almost a Jill Sandwich", is his sole response after a roof nearly crushes you for no apparent reason - CHEERS BARRY. You soon find yourself exploring the gardens, finding a tortured T-Virus experiment gone wrong in the daughter or the bloke who designed the house and it's astonishing array of... secretness.
After legging it from her impervious ass, and after a fight with a giant snake, some giant spiders, a gianter plant (which in turn needs a fight with some sharks, oh AND A GIANT SHARK), you have found out that the mansion was - surprise surprise - actually a secret set of labs for the Umbrella Corporation, a pharmaceutical giant trying to weaponise the T-Virus, which was inadvertently released and made everything on the site go super dead. Or super angry. Or just massive.
Exploring these labs, you soon find that Wesker is a double crossing bastard, that he bribed Bazz to do similar things (Wesker kills Bazz when he tries to grow a conscience) and that he sabotaged everything to try and make you dead so that Umbrella can keep being bastards. Anyway, to try and make you dead one final time, he unleashes a ‘Tyrant', it's a crazy super T-Virused person. Which means that it's huge, super strong and has a giant pointy hand. A few minutes of grenade firing later, you are legging it out of the base (Wesker started the self destruct; what a bastard!), to the heli-pad via the labs prison cell where your counterpart (Chris/Jill) is chilling (having been imprisoned by captain bastard).
At the heli-pad, your pee pants pilot is hovering above (you managed to radio him earlier, but it was too boring to report), when BOOM the Tyrant pops up and you have to deal with him again. Only this time is easier as the pilot remembers the MASSIVE WEAPONS CACHE he has on board and chucks you a rocket launcher. Job done. Hop on the chopper, and away you go while the whole mansion goes, pop!
The End.
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More from the Ultimate Resi Guide:
Resident Evil - Team S.T.A.R.S, find a little house on a little hill...
Resident Evil 2 - Unlucky Cop and Foolish Female stroll unwittingly into Raccoon City, town of the undead.
Resident Evil Zero - Taking place before Resi 1 (just incase you were following things so far), we see how S.T.A.R.S team B got to be so dead.
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - Lady S.T.A.R.S. from game one must escape a city...
Resident Evil: Code Veronica - Foolish Female (from number two), seeks Unlucky Cop (from number one).
Resident Evil 4 - Unlucky Cop goes on holiday to Spain. Hates Foreigners. (Part two here)
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Image Credit: The wee word cloud is taken from the rather cool Wordle.net