Parents' Guide to Resident Evil: Deadly Silence

Game Nintendo DS 2006
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Common Sense Media Review

By Chris Jozefowicz , based on child development research. How do we rate?

age 18+

Same gore and quirks as original -- adults only.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 18+?

Any Positive Content?

Parent and Kid Reviews

age 13+

Based on 1 parent review

age 10+

Based on 4 kid reviews

What's It About?

RESIDENT EVIL: DEADLY SILENCE, a remake of a PlayStation title, is the first Mature-rated game for Nintendo's DS system. An elite police squad is sent to a seemingly abandoned mansion to investigate the disappearance of other members of the team. Before long, the team is blasting zombies, demon dogs, spiders, crows, giant snakes, and a variety of other mutant monsters as they piece together a story of secret experiments gone horribly wrong.

On DS, the action plays out on the touch screen and the upper screen displays a map. A new \"Rebirth\" mode puts the features of the DS to use: Players solve puzzles using the system's touch-screen and microphone. They also engage in some fun first-person battles in which they must knife monsters to death with swipes of the stylus. (Players can also play a \"Classic\" mode, which is very close to the PlayStation original, without touch-screen interaction.)

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say ( 1 ):
Kids say ( 4 ):

The zombie killing action gets intense and exciting at times, but this version only half-heartedly updates the 10-year-old gameplay and lacks the truly creepy atmosphere of newer installments. At its heart, this version is like the original. It's still one lightly armed cop against an army of mutants -- and beasts could be lurking around any corner. The violence is still intense: Players blow off zombie heads with guns, incinerate mutants with flame grenades, knife sharks to death, etc.

Players also run into familiar frustrations, such as clunky controls and odd camera angles. Nevertheless, there is a reason the Resident Evil series is legendary, and mature fans of the original will probably enjoy the remake.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the role of gore in horror games. Do games need to be gory to be scary? Families may also want to discuss violence against monsters and violence against humans. Is violence more acceptable when it's directed at fantastic creatures instead of people?

Game Details

  • Platform : Nintendo DS
  • Pricing structure :
  • Available online? : Not available online
  • Publisher : Capcom
  • Release date : February 27, 2006
  • Genre : Third-Person Shooter
  • ESRB rating : M for Blood and gore, Intense violence
  • Last updated : August 25, 2016

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