About two months ago, knowing his response, I texted a ranked list of Resident Evil games to Sean. “Why isn’t this on the site?” he asked. Looking at my phone, I chuckled. “It’s preliminary work,” I replied. “It’ll eventually be a thing.” I had an idea. It started with wanting just to put a ranking on the site, but as I made a list, I realized it wasn’t quite right. I hadn’t played some games in 18 years and knew they weren’t getting fair consideration. I was afraid to commit to it, but I shared my plan for a Resident Evil retrospective with Sean.

Now that Part 1 of REvisited is live, I wanted to post my original ranking. I’m excited to see how this list changes as I play my way through the series. I’m not going to provide justification for any of the placements because I frankly don’t have any. That’s the whole point of the retrospective. As my replay progresses, I’ll be building a new ranking that you can follow here.

And now, the list:

1. Resident Evil 6 (2012)
2. Resident Evil Zero (2002)
3. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999)
4. Resident Evil 2 (1998)
5. Resident Evil (1996)
6. Resident Evil 5 (2008)
7. Resident Evil: Revelations (2012)
8. Resident Evil: Code Veronica (2000)
9. Resident Evil VII: Biohazard (2012)
10. Resident Evil VIII: Village (2021)
11. Resident Evil 3: Remake (2020)
12. Resident Evil: Remake (2002)
13. Resident Evil 4 (2005)
14. Resident Evil 2: Remake (2019)

There are two games missing from this list that will be part of the retrospective. When I originally made it, I hadn’t played more than 10 minutes of Resident Evil: Revelations 2 and didn’t feel it was fair to rank it. Additionally, Resident Evil 4: Remake is coming out in 2023, and you can be sure I’ll be playing it.

Anyway, that’s my list. Looking at it now, I can already tell the final list will likely be VERY different.