The First Crimson Head – Resident Evil Remake

This is a personal favourite for mine and Peter’s, as we have both played this game and felt the same when this occurred.
The first time I played the Remake of the original Resident Evil game, I did not know anything about the Crimson Heads. This was a new feature that Capcom had cheekily thrown in the game and only given us the slightest of hints as to what they are. A memo told us about shooting them in the head and burning the bodies, but being based of the classic George A Romeo zombie films, we think nothing more of it. We also find a little flask and a couple of barrels of kerosene near some of the save point tape writers. But I had no idea what I was in for.

I killed a zombie in a hallway by simply by shooting it head. Nothing special. I left the room and did a little puzzle elsewhere, only to return to this hallway and notice that the body was still there. I was amazed as normally games just remove the bodies of fallen enemies when you leave the room, but the GameCube Remake had remembered this body and left it there for me to walk past every time.
A few more journeys back and forth passed, and I noticed that the body was still there. Then, one time I passed by and noticed it was gone. It was a big moment for me as I thought to myself that the game WAS in fact like every other and that the body must have been removed for memory purposes. I didn’t think nothing of it as it was not a massive deal, merely a nice touch. As I went to leave the room I noticed in a mirror down the hall something move past it. The hallway went around a corner and I decided to head down there. It was only then that from around the corner came a RUNNING ZOMBIE with his hands held high, brandishing sharp claws and looking 100 times more terrifying than any other I had faced. He almost killed me before I finally took him down.

After that I had to re-read through the memos and found out that you need to burn the bodies of the fallen zombies, or else they will all get up and become Crimson Heads, aka Super Zombies.
Worst still, the kerosene had a limited number of supplies, so you had to tactically think of ways around the zombies you had “killed” in order to avoid running into contact with another.

It was at this moment that I realised that the remake of Resident Evil was more than a lick of paint and a polish. The developers had really made the effort to make it, quite possibly, the greatest remake of any game, and it had opened up a whole new world of terror in the franchise… that was never used again.

It’s a short clip but here it is in all its glory. Scared the living shit out of me!

Please follow and like us: