Platform: Nintendo DS
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
ESRB Rating: Mature
Rating:

Pros: Nicely recreates the 1996 original, for better or worse
Cons: Archaic in every way; DS content feels tacked on; only three multiplayer maps

The granddaddy of the awkwardly-named "survival-horror" genre desperately needs to retire. Seriously, put the poor old guy out to pasture. He's old, he's ugly, he's not particularly scary anymore… stop the pain. This constant need re-release him on every new system is turning him into the Hulk Hogan of the videogame industry -- once a trailblazer, once a champion, now just kind of sad and droopy.

The Master of Unlocking

What you have for your Nintendo DS is basically a carbon copy of the original PlayStation game from 1996. Enter the house as S.T.A.R.S. members Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield, fight an endless stream of undead meatbags, homicidal zombie-dogs, and ravenous ravens (crows? Whatever) as you struggle to escape the nightmare.

Of course, escape is one press of the power button away. The problem with this is that Resident Evil has aged horribly. The graphics are ugly, and made even more so by the tiny DS screen; the tank controls (up to move forward, left or right to rotate) are archaic; and the scares just aren't…well, scary anymore in a world where truly disturbing games like Fatal Frame and Silent Hill have raised the creep factor so high.

In Capcom's defense, the company has updated the game a tiny bit. Jill and Chris now have a quick 180-degree turn command that was sorely lacking in the 1996 original. And "Rebirth Mode" includes a smattering of DS-exclusive content, mostly in the form of touch-screen knife battles (where for some reason you're not allowed to draw your gun) and puzzles. But it really does nothing to fix any of the game's basic problems.

The wireless multiplayer is a nice touch, as well, though after about three hours you've experienced it all. Had Capcom seen fit to include more than three multiplayer maps, things may have been different.

A Jill Sandwich

Making another groan-inducing return from 1996 is the downright laughable translation and voice acting found in the original game. Back then, it was hard enough to take Resident Evil seriously when the actors spewed forth lines like "You, the master of unlocking" and "you almost became a Jill sandwich" in their most grave tones. In today's world of Hollywood-caliber scripts and, indeed, Hollywood-caliber voice acting in videogames, it's just downright silly.

Silent but Deadly

As a nostalgia piece, Deadly Silence technically gets everything right. The fact that all the video and voice acting made it through to the cartridge format is impressive in itself. But there's no way it's worth full price.

Now, if "Rebirth Mode" was more than just the original game with some half-hearted minigames tacked on -- if it sported updated graphics and a more intuitive control scheme, things would be different. Deadly Silence, however, is only for hardcore RE fans that simply must own all 20 different rehashes of the same game.