Lower left and upper right: screenshots from Resident Evil (1996); All other images from the Resident Evil franchise are courtesy of CapcomGraphic: Libby McGuire
Update: In recognition of the release of the 2023 Resident Evil 4 remake, we’ve updated our ranking to take into account Leon S. Kennedy’s parasite-filled trip through the Spanish countryside. To see how the remake fares against the rest of the series—including its source game—click on through and see where Capcom’s latest ultimately lands.
Although 1996's Resident Evil wasn’t the first big entry in the annals of video game horror—co-creator Tokuro Fujiwara lifted plenty of elements from his own 1989 Famicom game Sweet Home, and designers like Infocom, Human Entertainment, and more had been mining the gaming potential of fear for years—it has proven to be its most prolific, and probably its most influential. Because while you can argue that, say, Konami’s Silent Hill franchise has had higher highs, or that individual games like Amnesia or Alien: Isolation have produced more potent scares, no gaming franchise has covered a wider gamut of the horror experience than Capcom’s zombie/Ganado/creepy moss monster-slaying series.
From first-person haunted house games to action-heavy run-and-gunners and light gun shooters, the roughly 30 games in the Resident Evil canon have varied wildly, in both focus and, to be frank, quality, over the past two-and-a-half decades. And thus the genesis for this ranking, which tackles the 12 main series titles and their various remakes (along with one Dreamcast-centric also-ran as an honorable mention), asking which games came the closest to living up to Resident Evil’s true potential. Are the remakes better than the originals? Can Resident Evil 4's hyper-influential action gameplay win out over more traditional scares? And which game is worse: Resident Evil 5 or Resident Evil 6?
Step up to that spooky door, let the creepy loading animation play … and let’s find out.
Despite officially being a spin-off of the main series, Code: Veronica isn’t any less canonical than the actual numbered entries. It’s also not even all that different from the first three numbered games. Unfortunately for Code: Veronica (and its stars, reunited siblings Claire and Chris Redfield) it simply debuted on the Dreamcast instead of the Playstation, which means not enough people played it… at the time, or in the years since. Had it become a massive hit that propelled Sega’s Dreamcast to the stratosphere, that might’ve changed, and Capcom might’ve decided to count it as the official fourth game in the series. But there’s no point in imagining the beautiful and utopian world we’d all be living in right now if the Dreamcast had been a success. Code: Veronica is good, but for the purposes of this list, it doesn’t count. [Sam Barsanti]
13. Resident Evil 5 (2009)
Resident Evil 5 - Gold Edition Trailer
Stuck between 4's action pivot and 6's launch into hyper absurdity, Resident Evil 5 is an awkward and unrefined entry. It’s too stilted and clumsy to be a great action game and too set-piece-focused to be a great horror game. The result is not a thrilling mashup, but a mind-numbing expanse of wasted ideas. This is without even mentioning how unforgivably racist the game is, with a principle plot that amounts to “imperialism transforms its subjects into monsters that are worthy of death.” Bad game. [Grace Benfell]
Resident Evil 6 was such a low point that no one would have been surprised if it had finally killed the series for good. In the second attempt to build on the more action-packed Resident Evil 4's success, the designers completely abandoned the survival-horror genre. Instead, they made a bland, nonsensical action game without a shred of tension or intelligence. Each of the four parallel storylines that composed its campaign managed to be more mediocre than the last. Luckily, it’s only been uphill from there. [Mike Rougeau]
11. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999)
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis Trailer 1999
Hideki Kamiya’s Resident Evil 2 got all the plaudits for ironing out the original’s kinks, but Resident Evil 3: Nemesis was by far the more adventurous installment, fulfilling a promise that lingered since its predecessor’s striking prologue: letting the T-Virus wreak havoc on the thoroughfares and back alleys of Raccoon City. This is a game that favors blind panic over claustrophobia, the interconnected streets designed for protracted chases. A rampaging rhino of an antagonist facilitated exactly that, his rocket launcher and frenzied charges dismantling any notions of a “safe” distance. More importantly, with the Nemesis-T Type, Capcom gave us a glimpse of the franchise’s most precious and constant asset—the capacity to reinvent itself. [Alexander Chatziioannou]
On paper, Resident Evil 2 does exactly what a sequel is supposed to do: take the original’s core gameplay and maximize it in every way possible, sending incoming protagonists Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield through a decent-sized chunk of zombie-apocalypsed Raccoon City. (It even plays a bit with the original game’s approach to replaying, by incorporating playthroughs from both characters into the plot.) But Resident Evil 2 was also the start of a trend toward repetition in the franchise that was only broken with Resident Evil 4; simultaneously, moving the action from the focused locale of the Spencer Mansion to a bigger chunk of real estate highlighted some of the silliness of the series’ more absurd bits of map design. Resident Evil 2 does have one great idea, though—one that Capcom would massively refine years down the line—in the introduction of the idea of an unfightable threat who could pursue its heroes to hell and back. [William Hughes]
9. Resident Evil Zero (2002)
Resident Evil 0 - Official Announce Trailer
Fresh off of the Resident Evil remake, Capcom took some lessons from that game and simply did a back-to-basics prequel with one risky gimmick: You don’t play as two characters with their own separate storylines, you play as two characters at the same time. That’s two people to keep safe, two sets of items to manage, and two-person puzzles that require swapping back-and-forth between new guy Billy and classic Resident Evil side character Rebecca. Even before the recent RE-naissance, it proved that Capcom could still get the job done when it didn’t overthink it. [Sam Barsanti]
8. Resident Evil 3 (2020)
Resident Evil 3 - Nemesis Trailer | PS4
After the Resident Evil 2 remake so strongly validated a proof of concept, its follow-up was bound to get lost in the shuffle for being more—and, when it comes to runtime, less—of what came before. A leaner and more focused game than Resident Evil 2, the concentrates its action to the point that there’s little time to tire of its premise before the credits roll. For all it gets right, though, replacing Jill Valentine’s original look (tactical tube top; waist-tied accessory sweater) with more plausible zombie-fighting wear is an unforgivable affront to video game camp. [Reid McCarter]
7. Resident Evil (1996)
Screenshot Capcom
Two-and-a-half decades of sequels, remakes, and variously successful homages have blunted memories of the sheer apprehension and uncertainty one felt exploring the Spencer Mansion for the first time. Granted, director Shinji Mikami owes a debt to Sweet Home for its postmodernist mindfuckery, and to Alone In The Dark for its disorienting visual lexicon. But blending these influences with his own unhinged vision produced a monumental convergence—the right game, on the right platform, at the right time—to deliver something so singularly unsettling it took a new generic label (“survival horror”) to describe it, one that for a long time would become synonymous with the entirety of videogame horror. [Alexander Chatziioannou]
6. Resident Evil (2002)
Resident Evil - Trailer 1
It’s a shame that this, along with the other Resident Evil remakes, has overshadowed their original versions. At least in this case though, it is easy to see why. The Resident Evil remake is one of the best-looking mainstream games ever, with startlingly moody pre-rendered backgrounds that bring constant campy delight. The additions also provide truly singular scares. There is nothing quite like watching an enemy you already killed stand back up, far more dangerous than before. [Grace Benfell]
5. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017)
Resident Evil 7 Biohazard Official Launch Trailer
In the wake of Resident Evil 5 and 6's blistering mediocrity, fans had little hope of the RE series ever returning to its former glory. So we of little faith were pleasantly shocked when the seventh entry jolted the franchise back to life, not unlike the family of zombie mutants that serve as the game’s antagonists. With a fresh first-person perspective, but an old-school environment and puzzle design, recaptured the greatness of the best games in the series while feeling totally new—and scarier than ever. [Mike Rougeau]
4. Resident Evil 4 (2023)
Resident Evil 4 - Launch Trailer
might be the single most polished entry in the series: A precision-engineered effort to distill the original’s genre-defining action gameplay into its purest form. Deeply satisfying, and astonishingly well made, it loses a few points on creativity: Unlike the next entry on the list, it chooses to recreate, rather than reinvent, some of the source material’s most iconic moments—and it lacks the spark of creative madness that the franchise’s best installments grasp in their hands and run with. Nevertheless, a deeply enjoyable roller coaster of a game. [William Hughes]
3. Resident Evil 2 (2019)
Resident Evil 2 | Launch Trailer | PS4
The isn’t just an improvement on the original game, it’s a seemingly miraculous reflection of what the original game has become in the hard-to-please minds of both fans and newcomers. Old Resident Evil 2 players will find a game that looks and plays better than it did in 1998. But at the same time, the remake has enough DNA from the original game—the well-defined (if absurd) setting, the old-fashioned puzzles, the constant threat of Mr. X—that new players will still recognize what made the originals so good. [Sam Barsanti]
2. Resident Evil Village (2021)
Resident Evil Village - 3rd Trailer
The most recent Resident Evil—until the remake of 4 arrives in five months, at least—exemplifies many of the series’ highest highs, and a few of its mid-est mids. An attempted marriage between the in-your-face frights of Resident Evil 7 and the “rampage across an ambiguously European hamlet” shooting gameplay of Resident Evil 4, runs its deliberately faceless (and, occasionally, hand-less) everyman protagonist Ethan Winters through a whole “Monster Mash”-worth of classic creepies. At its best—the sprawling castle, with its intricate exploration and memorable pursuers, or series-best horror sequence House Beneviento—Village offers some of the most stunning images, and most satisfying gameplay, of the franchise’s entire history. At its worst (hey, Moreau), it’s still a solidly satisfying shooter, never descending to the depths of the series’ nadirs, even if it mimics a bit of their over-the-top silliness. [William Hughes]
1. Resident Evil 4 (2005)
Resident Evil 4 Ultimate HD Edition PC Trailer
One of the best action video games ever made also happens to be the finest blend of county fair haunted house, B-movie thriller, and clockwork puzzle box that the Resident Evil series has managed to date. Resident Evil 4’s autumnal gloom, its deliberately-paced tour through a list of locales ranging from a foggy, monster-inhabited lake to a Gothic castle ruled over by a pint-sized villain in a Napoleon hat, and the bloody arithmetic required by limited ammo counts and waves of enemies, combine to create spooky shooter perfection. It doesn’t hurt that the sound effect of landing a headshot on a groaning cultist is sicko ASMR par excellence. [Reid McCarter]
