What happens when you take a classic survival horror game and insert the chaos of randomization?
His name is Benn Powell and he has a cat. We all love cats, right? I know the internet certainly does! Benn is someone who has brought much joy and replayability to one of my favorite game genres of all time. Of course, I'm talking about Resident Evil. What is it that Benn has created? A randomizer! It's been around for a bit, but I'm only just now discovering its existence.
What's a randomizer you ask? Well, it is exactly what it sounds like. It randomizes things within the game!
What's a randomizer you ask? Well, it is exactly what it sounds like. It randomizes things within the game! This is super exciting to me as the original Resident Evil has a special place in my heart. Benn has created a whole new experience, adding to the HD Remastered version on PC, which you may acquire via Steam. Randomizers, in general, have been around for some time now, but I was unaware that one had been created for Resident Evil.
Resident Evil is about to become a special kind of crazy.
This randomizer, like others, is a work of wonders. It takes a game you may know everything about and turns it upside down on you - insert Symphony of the Night pun here. When you unzip the program you are to place the Seed Generator as well as Randomizer Trainer within your folder where the bhd.exe file is located. Afterward, you launch the seed generator, game, your trainer and then you're set. Don't worry, Benn provides detailed instructions on how to get things rolling.
Veteran players of Resident Evil will find themselves scratching their brains
Let me tell you, this is straight-up the craziest thing I've played in a while. In this randomizer, Benn gives you the ability to manipulate items, locks, enemies, and even doorways. What's that? You went through the dining room doors and now you're in the Umbrella lab? Now you're thinking- with portals! Not only does this bring a whole new level of replayability, but it also adds new levels of difficulty. Veteran players of Resident Evil will find themselves scratching their brains while taking notes on what door leads to where what item is in a specific location and where certain enemies may be. Speaking of enemies, let me add that there's nothing like going down a hallway where a zombie once stood and you see a shark swimming through the air to eat your face off. That had me rolling laughing the first time I laid eyes on it!
All of this is done extremely well, as with many similar generators. It ensures that the game is playable 100% no matter what settings you have chosen to be randomized. In other words, it doesn't break your game by making it unbeatable. I'm not sure how that's done as I'm not a programmer, but I can certainly, being an artist, respect it as an art form. As mentioned you're able to randomize items, enemies, doors, and locks. With this, you're even able to customize whether or not you wish to have certain items excluded such as healing items, ammo, ink ribbons, or defense items.
You may also choose if you'd like to have more than one Tyrant running amuck, Yawns slithering about, Lisas rattling their chains throughout halls, and even types of Tyrants. You can control what enemies are randomized and on top of all this, you can select all this for either Chris or Jill on normal or hard difficulties. It's incredible what Benn has accomplished with this. I don't mean just Benn either, but all of those who have created randomizers to keep us playing the games we so very much love. It takes old games we know inside and out and allows us to experience something new each time we want to play them. To that, I salute you all!
If you'd like to be able to play around with this then follow the link here so you may download this beautifully crafted tool: http://benn-gaming.co.uk/rerandomizer.html
As a note to those who do download this to try out; be aware anti-viruses will mistake it as a threat.