I’m about to spill the beans about why RE: DS can’t satisfy my needs in the next couple of typical paragraphs, ranging from storyline to sound. As usual the game starts with an intro movie. The ten minutes (forgive me if it’s shorter or even longer) that are shown gave me shivers all over my body. Not because of the enormous tension and suspense but because of the sketchy acting skills. The climax is reached when one of the characters tries to adopt a certain level of drama by shouting: Noooo, don’t gooo”. You have to possess incredible powers to be able to maintain your poker face after seeing this. You’ll understand that this isn’t a great starting point for a horror game. This didn’t immediately give me the feeling of: “ah, let’s sit down and spend my whole free day playing this game”.

After the humor of the intro I get confronted with the voice acting which is, if possible, even worse. The controls are also giving me a flashback to earlier Resident Evil games. Moving forward is achieved by pushing up on the D-pad, no matter what angle the camera is in. This takes a little getting used to in the beginning, but it’s really the least of your concerns. The DS-possibilities are also used to their full potentials if somewhat in a weird kind of way. In certain fights the camera angle will change to first person view and your shotgun will be replaced by a silly kitchen knife (ok, it’s a bit more violent than your ordinary kitchen knife, but you get my point). Now it’s your duty to move your stylus over the lower screen to kill these evil zombies. Apparently the guys over at Capcom were thinking: why easy if we can make it hard? We know you have a shotgun with at least six bullets left, making it fairly easy to give those zombies a decent beating but wouldn’t it be much cooler if we, all of a sudden, give you this small knife to fight the half dead? Well, no Capcom, even if the killing with the stylus is a bit easier, it’s a bit of an odd twist. Especially when you’re carrying bazooka’s, shotguns and handguns and you’re stuck with a knife all of a sudden.

The addition of bad acting with strange controls made me leave the game after a good hour. I’m sorry, who knows what more this game has to offer after two hous, but frankly I don’t care. Develop a game that’s interesting from the first minute, this makes it a lot more easier for me to write about it. Because this isn’t working for me, Capcom. My reliability as a reviewer is pushed further into the doubtful zone because I can’t get it over my heart to play this game extensively before giving an objective, yet somewhat subjective view on the game. You can however suspect a decent amount of puzzles in the game, all making use of the DS functionality.

Graphically this game isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. The graphics are fairly identical to those of the PSone version. Pre-rendered backgrounds with doubtful 3D characters; we’re used to better things, but overall it’s not bad. This however, can’t be said about the sounds. Although the sound effects sound great it’s mainly the voice acting that leaves you hanging with strange feelings.

Ok, the typical paragraphs I mentioned earlier haven’t really come up in this review yet. Let’s make a little effort. Two teams (alpha and bravo) have gone to this dark forest to go and investigate some strange activities that took place there. Bravo team disappears and Alpha seeks a hideout in the big mansion. Once in the mansion they look for a way out and try to find their comrades of the Bravo team. The further they get, the more they unravel the mystery of the mansion and its activities. In the beginning you get to choose between two gameplay modes: Rebirth and classic. The first fully uses the DS-functionality while the classic mode gives you the original Resident Evil of way back on the PSone. Aside from this choice you’ll also have the option between two playable characters being Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine.

Next to the single player is of course the multiplayer with game modes such as: Versus and Cooperative. In versus mode it’s your task to escape as quickly as possible or kill as many as possible zombies. With cooperative you’ll form a team with up to four players and you’ll have one life bar to escape alive.