FA+
Shop
Resident Evil 1.5 Review (June 2018 Patch)
7 years ago
Today, I finally did something I've wanted to do for years. Play Resident Evil 1.5.
"What the hell is Resident Evil 1.5?" I don't hear anybody asking, but I want to answer anyway so let's pretend you did. Resident 1.5 is the name fans gave to the lost Resident Evil 2 prototype. See, after Resident Evil 1, Capcom started work on Resident Evil 2. However, 80% of the way through development the game was scrapped, and the team started over. That 80% complete cancelled game is what's known as Resident Evil 1.5.
Over the years, fans pieced together a rough idea of how the game was based on interviews, pictures in magazines, and what little footage existed. The game was similar to Resident Evil 2 in many ways. You had rookie cop Leon Kennedy, and a biker chick in red leathers called Elsa Walker. Various side characters in the actual RE2 had different, often larger roles in 1.5. There was also some interesting features like body armour and clothes becoming damaged as your character takes damage.
Years ago, the game was leaked onto the internet. The leak apparently involved a lot of drama between collectors of ultra rare games that I don't really know anything about, and honestly it doesn't really matter as far as this review is concerned. However, I was expecting some missing graphics, sounds, and a bunch of bugs, but the game was apparently broken beyond belief. Attempting to pick up certain items would result in your character climbing an invisible box, doors would lead to unrelated rooms and some even crashed the game, that kind of thing. I don't know if the version that leaked was the 80% complete build. I've heard others say it's not and I can believe it.
Eventually, fan patches were released and in June 2018, one apparently got the game into a playable state. Oh, hell, yeah. I want to be clear that I really appreciate the work of these fans that patched the game. It can't have been easy, and it's great to finally be able to play the game after all this time. I say all this because even with the patch, RE1.5 is technically playable in the same way that supermarket own brand cornflakes are technically food. You can run around the game, shoot the enemies, and a few cutscenes will even play, but the game as a whole doesn't really exist. There's not really any items to find or puzzles to solve. Most of the enemies don't stay dead when you leave a room and come back. I think it's also worth mentioning that there's no win condition. I didn't expect there to be an ending or anything, but where you get to the train, there's a couple of short cutscenes with no dialogue, but nothing happens after that.
But what is here is pretty great if you're a fan of Resident Evil 2 or prototypes and betas in generals. Getting to run around the game and see all the original 1.5 rooms and zombie models is fun. As is some of the placeholder backgrounds and text like "Insert riddle about poison here". But the main appeal is seeing what could have been, to play the interesting sounding but ultimately scrapped version of Resident Evil 2 that occupied my imagination for years.
There are many differences, some big, others so minor that only a die hard RE fan would care. I'm not going to list all of them. Just cover some of the more interesting ones.
First, the levels. The old police station feels sterile and cold compared to RE2, though that could because it's not finished. Some areas are more complete than others, with some areas being little more than grey boxes with a light in them, and some looking pretty much finished, though I'll get to that later. It could be argued that this version of the levels makes more real world sense. Take the police station again. Instead of a huge central lobby with mazes of hallways, the building has main hallways with rooms sprouting off.
Then there's the enemies. Many typical RE enemies are present. Zombies, dogs, giant spiders. But instead of lickers and plants, there's these weird half man, half spider things that are kind of like the lab monsters from RE1. They can spit poison, and have the ability to block attacks. Some of the animations reminded me of some of the later Birkin fights from RE2, or those weird crawling creatures from RE3. The other enemy type is zombie gorillas. Yes, really. They can punch you or hang from the ceiling. They're surprising common despite being introduced as a boss of sorts. I'm not surprised they didn't make it into RE2 though because they are kind of goofy as far as horror game enemies go. It's also possible to almost stun lock them with the pistol. There's only 1 boss that I saw in the game, and that's Birkin 1, the one with the pipe that tries to clobber you over the head with it.
What's kind of surprising is how much stuff remains the same. Things like the labs at the end are almost the same as in the final RE2. The freezer room in particular is pretty much exactly how it is in the final game. There's even the room with pointless "puzzle" where you have to flick a light switch to turn on the lights to 1 half of a room. In contrast, the sewer section is mostly missing from the patched version without teleporting, and seems mostly unfinished.
Related to this, there's a surprising amount in the game that's finished, or close to it. The music is more or less done, clothing damage is in the game as well. I'd have thought these things would have been added later, or be unfinished, but what's here seems complete. There's also some advanced effects too. A zombie's torso will be covered in blood if you shoot their head off, something that we didn't see until RE3. This is all the stranger when you realise basic mechanics aren't finished. Like how ammo doesn't automatically stack with existing ammo in your inventory when you pick it up.
Let's talk about clothing damage and animations. Changing outfits and using body armour isn't something that's implemented, but as mentioned, the fact clothing damage is in the game at all at this stage is a surprise. It's a well done, subtle effect too. Far removed from the bacon-glued-a-jacket effect of the Alone in the Dark reboot. Animations include REmake style realistic pistol holding animations, though there were removed in the patch.
Before I get to the story and final thoughts, I want to mention a few things that don't really fit anywhere else.
There is a debug menu by pressing select, and using the d-pad and triangle you can teleport to any room in the game, and in the item menu you can press select to enable debug mode there. L1 and R1 add any item to a slot, select to delete an item, and triangle to add more ammo to a weapon. You will need these commands, mainly to warp whenever stairs bug out and leave you stuck out of bounds. I also used them to access a post explosion version of the labs right at the end of the game. I say this because it's not clear at first.
There are some weapons like hand grenades and an auto shotgun, but they crash the game if you hit anything. There's also these strange high tech terminals where the storage chests usually would be. I've seen speculation that they might have been tied to a medicine mixing mechanic. Saving wasn't implemented, and typewriters are present, but there is a PC that implies you can save, and a PS1 memory card item that the description says is used for saving. Not important, but interesting. The names "Clair" and "Piers" appear in the dog kennels. Maybe it's a coincidence, or maybe those names are a reference or something because they would be used in later games.
One other thing I want to mention. Resident Evil has those door opening loading screens. Iconic, but kind of tedious. RE1.5 has these, but they are faster and clearly placeholders. The patch removes them entirely and ...honestly, the game loads pretty fast. Now, that could just be because I was on emulator, but Silent Hill managed similar load times on actual hardware. And like Silent Hill, the load times vary from a quick to a few seconds, but they are shorter than the door opening animations.
So, the story, and by extension playing this as a game. As said, there isn't much of a game here, but if you want a game you can play, Elsa Walker's campaign seems to be the most finished. That or the more straightforward story makes it easier to follow and fill in the blanks. It plays out similar to Clair's campaign in RE2. Only this time John is along for the ride. I assume this is the Umbrella employee Ada dated in RE1 and 2 but I'm not sure. His model is the one used for the Kendo gun shop guy in RE2. Sherry isn't irritating dead weight in this version either. You never escort her like in RE2 and she actually has knowledge of the Umbrella labs, so she is potentially useful. Leon's story has him starting on the roof of the police station and teaming up with Ada and Marvin (the cop who looked like Will Smith and hands you a keycard before turning into a zombie in RE2). There's some important gaps in his story, that or I missed the cutscene triggers, which results in it being hard to follow even with prior knowledge.
As I've hammered into the ground throughout this post, if you're coming to RE1.5 hoping for a new, stand alone game. Don't. It's clearly far from finished, and it's playable only in the sense of "the buttons work and it doesn't crash all the time". That said, if you have any interest in RE1.5, be as a RE2 fan or just interested in lost prototypes, then RE1.5 is worth playing, with the patch allowing you to see the content will the minimum of frustration.
"What the hell is Resident Evil 1.5?" I don't hear anybody asking, but I want to answer anyway so let's pretend you did. Resident 1.5 is the name fans gave to the lost Resident Evil 2 prototype. See, after Resident Evil 1, Capcom started work on Resident Evil 2. However, 80% of the way through development the game was scrapped, and the team started over. That 80% complete cancelled game is what's known as Resident Evil 1.5.
Over the years, fans pieced together a rough idea of how the game was based on interviews, pictures in magazines, and what little footage existed. The game was similar to Resident Evil 2 in many ways. You had rookie cop Leon Kennedy, and a biker chick in red leathers called Elsa Walker. Various side characters in the actual RE2 had different, often larger roles in 1.5. There was also some interesting features like body armour and clothes becoming damaged as your character takes damage.
Years ago, the game was leaked onto the internet. The leak apparently involved a lot of drama between collectors of ultra rare games that I don't really know anything about, and honestly it doesn't really matter as far as this review is concerned. However, I was expecting some missing graphics, sounds, and a bunch of bugs, but the game was apparently broken beyond belief. Attempting to pick up certain items would result in your character climbing an invisible box, doors would lead to unrelated rooms and some even crashed the game, that kind of thing. I don't know if the version that leaked was the 80% complete build. I've heard others say it's not and I can believe it.
Eventually, fan patches were released and in June 2018, one apparently got the game into a playable state. Oh, hell, yeah. I want to be clear that I really appreciate the work of these fans that patched the game. It can't have been easy, and it's great to finally be able to play the game after all this time. I say all this because even with the patch, RE1.5 is technically playable in the same way that supermarket own brand cornflakes are technically food. You can run around the game, shoot the enemies, and a few cutscenes will even play, but the game as a whole doesn't really exist. There's not really any items to find or puzzles to solve. Most of the enemies don't stay dead when you leave a room and come back. I think it's also worth mentioning that there's no win condition. I didn't expect there to be an ending or anything, but where you get to the train, there's a couple of short cutscenes with no dialogue, but nothing happens after that.
But what is here is pretty great if you're a fan of Resident Evil 2 or prototypes and betas in generals. Getting to run around the game and see all the original 1.5 rooms and zombie models is fun. As is some of the placeholder backgrounds and text like "Insert riddle about poison here". But the main appeal is seeing what could have been, to play the interesting sounding but ultimately scrapped version of Resident Evil 2 that occupied my imagination for years.
There are many differences, some big, others so minor that only a die hard RE fan would care. I'm not going to list all of them. Just cover some of the more interesting ones.
First, the levels. The old police station feels sterile and cold compared to RE2, though that could because it's not finished. Some areas are more complete than others, with some areas being little more than grey boxes with a light in them, and some looking pretty much finished, though I'll get to that later. It could be argued that this version of the levels makes more real world sense. Take the police station again. Instead of a huge central lobby with mazes of hallways, the building has main hallways with rooms sprouting off.
Then there's the enemies. Many typical RE enemies are present. Zombies, dogs, giant spiders. But instead of lickers and plants, there's these weird half man, half spider things that are kind of like the lab monsters from RE1. They can spit poison, and have the ability to block attacks. Some of the animations reminded me of some of the later Birkin fights from RE2, or those weird crawling creatures from RE3. The other enemy type is zombie gorillas. Yes, really. They can punch you or hang from the ceiling. They're surprising common despite being introduced as a boss of sorts. I'm not surprised they didn't make it into RE2 though because they are kind of goofy as far as horror game enemies go. It's also possible to almost stun lock them with the pistol. There's only 1 boss that I saw in the game, and that's Birkin 1, the one with the pipe that tries to clobber you over the head with it.
What's kind of surprising is how much stuff remains the same. Things like the labs at the end are almost the same as in the final RE2. The freezer room in particular is pretty much exactly how it is in the final game. There's even the room with pointless "puzzle" where you have to flick a light switch to turn on the lights to 1 half of a room. In contrast, the sewer section is mostly missing from the patched version without teleporting, and seems mostly unfinished.
Related to this, there's a surprising amount in the game that's finished, or close to it. The music is more or less done, clothing damage is in the game as well. I'd have thought these things would have been added later, or be unfinished, but what's here seems complete. There's also some advanced effects too. A zombie's torso will be covered in blood if you shoot their head off, something that we didn't see until RE3. This is all the stranger when you realise basic mechanics aren't finished. Like how ammo doesn't automatically stack with existing ammo in your inventory when you pick it up.
Let's talk about clothing damage and animations. Changing outfits and using body armour isn't something that's implemented, but as mentioned, the fact clothing damage is in the game at all at this stage is a surprise. It's a well done, subtle effect too. Far removed from the bacon-glued-a-jacket effect of the Alone in the Dark reboot. Animations include REmake style realistic pistol holding animations, though there were removed in the patch.
Before I get to the story and final thoughts, I want to mention a few things that don't really fit anywhere else.
There is a debug menu by pressing select, and using the d-pad and triangle you can teleport to any room in the game, and in the item menu you can press select to enable debug mode there. L1 and R1 add any item to a slot, select to delete an item, and triangle to add more ammo to a weapon. You will need these commands, mainly to warp whenever stairs bug out and leave you stuck out of bounds. I also used them to access a post explosion version of the labs right at the end of the game. I say this because it's not clear at first.
There are some weapons like hand grenades and an auto shotgun, but they crash the game if you hit anything. There's also these strange high tech terminals where the storage chests usually would be. I've seen speculation that they might have been tied to a medicine mixing mechanic. Saving wasn't implemented, and typewriters are present, but there is a PC that implies you can save, and a PS1 memory card item that the description says is used for saving. Not important, but interesting. The names "Clair" and "Piers" appear in the dog kennels. Maybe it's a coincidence, or maybe those names are a reference or something because they would be used in later games.
One other thing I want to mention. Resident Evil has those door opening loading screens. Iconic, but kind of tedious. RE1.5 has these, but they are faster and clearly placeholders. The patch removes them entirely and ...honestly, the game loads pretty fast. Now, that could just be because I was on emulator, but Silent Hill managed similar load times on actual hardware. And like Silent Hill, the load times vary from a quick to a few seconds, but they are shorter than the door opening animations.
So, the story, and by extension playing this as a game. As said, there isn't much of a game here, but if you want a game you can play, Elsa Walker's campaign seems to be the most finished. That or the more straightforward story makes it easier to follow and fill in the blanks. It plays out similar to Clair's campaign in RE2. Only this time John is along for the ride. I assume this is the Umbrella employee Ada dated in RE1 and 2 but I'm not sure. His model is the one used for the Kendo gun shop guy in RE2. Sherry isn't irritating dead weight in this version either. You never escort her like in RE2 and she actually has knowledge of the Umbrella labs, so she is potentially useful. Leon's story has him starting on the roof of the police station and teaming up with Ada and Marvin (the cop who looked like Will Smith and hands you a keycard before turning into a zombie in RE2). There's some important gaps in his story, that or I missed the cutscene triggers, which results in it being hard to follow even with prior knowledge.
As I've hammered into the ground throughout this post, if you're coming to RE1.5 hoping for a new, stand alone game. Don't. It's clearly far from finished, and it's playable only in the sense of "the buttons work and it doesn't crash all the time". That said, if you have any interest in RE1.5, be as a RE2 fan or just interested in lost prototypes, then RE1.5 is worth playing, with the patch allowing you to see the content will the minimum of frustration.
