As is true with almost any long-running franchise, fans are split when it comes to deciding which approach is best, forcing Capcom to either find the best middle ground or adopt its extremes with each entry. Recently, with Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 8, the series has been returning to the slow-paced tension of its past, but the games have occupied every end of the spectrum. From the methodical, tense experience of the original to the high-octane chaos of Resident Evil 4, the games have never shied away from reinventing the formula. Over the years, Capcom has taken the Resident Evil series in many directions.
For those who have a harder time adapting to the standards of the PlayStation 1 era, Capcom has been remaking the mainline games with modern technology for a while now, to varying degrees of success. Twenty five years later, the series is still going strong, but those early entries haven't aged as gracefully as their sterling reputations. The original Resident Evil, released in 1996, not only kickstarted one of Capcom's most successful and enduring franchises, it also cemented years worth of survival horror genre conventions.
