TOP TEN RESIDENT EVIL MONSTERS PART 2: THE LICKERS

Top Ten Resident Evil Monsters Part 2: The Lickers

18/3/2022

TOP TEN RESIDENT EVIL MONSTERS PART 2: THE LICKERS

The original Resident Evil -and its subsequent, superior Director's Cut- not only established horror as a primary genre of video games during the 32-bit era (helped along by sister franchises such as Silent Hill, Shadow Man and The Legacy of Kain), it also coined the term “survival horror” as a particular sub-genre; a form of horror that induces tension by placing the player in a state of privation and constant threat: In the original game, every turned corner, every open doorway, could mean a face-to-face run-in with various species of gribbly, bio-engineered death. This factor made every moment one of breath-baiting tension, the game designed to leave the player near-frantic with anticipation when the inevitable scares finally occurred.

Resident Evil 2 came hot on the original's heels; having struck -gory, arterial- gold with the original game, Capcom were quick to capitalise, creating a sequel that is the original's superior not only in technicals -superior graphics, arguably the best soundtrack and environmental design in the series- but also in terms of the horror influences it draws on.

Whilst Resi 1 is largely influenced by horror and science fiction B-movies, Resi 2 casts its net far wider, incoporating elements as diverse as Hellraiser, The Thing, the body horror of David Cronenberg and even more abstruse inspirations such as the artwork of H.R. Giger. As such, not only is the setting more expansive and atmospheric, the narrative more elaborate and compelling, the monsters are infinitely more inventive and diverse.

Whereas Resi 1 concerned itself -primarily- with various forms of T-Virus infected zombie (notable exceptions including the Hunters, Neptunes and various mutated and/or bio-engineered animals infesting the mansion grounds -more on those later), Resi 2 features a bestiary so diverse as to be difficult to easily catalogue. Furthermore, the various warped and mutated horrors make themselves known earlier than in the original, often through set-pieces that are expertly choreographed, making superb use of the limited, fixed camera angles, sparse but brilliant atmospheric sound design and some subtle visual hints to induce dread and tension.

Amongst the first of these beasties -and certainly one of the most consistenty terrifying- are The Lickers:

Before one even encounters these uniquely unpleasant, flayed-to-the muscle, exposed-brain monsters, signs of the carnage they have wrought are everywhere: as well as the various corpses mutilated and half-consumed by the numerous zombies hanging around Raccoon City, there are other scenes of human carnage, more violent and extreme than those wrought by the comparatively plodding and uninventive undead.

Exploring the manor-like police department, player characters Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield (sister to the original game's Chris Redfield) encounter rooms and corridors where people haven't merely been dragged to the ground and consumed, but elaborately eviscerated, partially flayed, strung up and dismembered. Whilst the characters themselves make no overt notes of this, it's clear to that something more is stalking the police department corridors.

After a time exploring, the player will find themselves casually wandering down a small, claustrophobic corridor with a window at the far end. There are no sound cues, no orchestra stings; as they approach the window, something indiscernible -but noticeably red- stalks across the outside of the window in the manner of a spider. Blink, and you'll miss it, the moment gone almost too quickly to follow. Cue those of us who were teenagers at time gasping, stopping dead, gripping our controllers in abject terror. Some of the more vocal amongst us -which certainly included me- might have cried out something along the lines of: “What the fuck was that?”

The moment has since gone down in video game history as one of the most terrifying not only in the franchise, but horror games in general. Something about the quiet, unexpected nature of it; the casual framing, makes it all the more effective. The moment is not set up or cued in any way; there is nothing to indicate it's even going to happen, and, when it has, it leaves the player in a state of heightened confusion as well as fear.

The minimal framing of the window and the strange, arachnid motions of the creature outside are designed to leave the player in confusion as to what they've witnessed; from that small glimpse and at that angle, it's difficult to discern precisely what the creature is. The only certainty is that it is wet, bloody and distorted. The situation of the window looking out over Raccoon City from one of the department's upper stories also lends an especial air of dread: clearly, nothing natural should be able to crawl across the outer wall like that. Similarly, it is obviously not a common or garden zombie, who lack the athletic abilities and coordination to scale that high.

So, the player is left in a state of exquisite anticipation: they know from that small signifier that something is coming. They just don't know when, where or in what capacity.

In the original version of the game, the tension is then strung out even further, as it's some time after that initial glimpse before we run headlong into one of the Cronenbergian beasties. Instead, the game allows the player to saturate in their tension for a while, providing one or two more hints and suggestions in various journals, gorily-decorated rooms and bodies discovered with their heads sliced cleanly off (one of The Licker's many death animations).

It's not until they emerge in a particular corridor; a corridor that lacks music, whose silence is oppressive and ominous in itself, that the feaces start to fly. A steady, disturbing drip, drip, drip drawers the player down the corridor, at the end of which they find a hideously lacerated body slumped in the corner. Turning the bend, they discover a pool of blood on the tiles, which the player character will automatically bend to examine. Cue the iconic cut-scene in which a tortured hiss and moan drawers their attention up to the pipes on the ceiling, where something straight out of a Clive Barker-esque nightmare crawls upside down, leering through a lipless mouth of needle-teeth, a long, prehensile tongue emerging to lick at the air.

This is our first, uncompromised shot of The Licker, and boy, is it a hell of a reveal. For those of us used to Resi 1, this was the moment the sequel revealed itself as a different kettle of fish altogether: In the original game, the more elaborate monsters occurred much later in play or during their own especial sequences (all of us recall the iconic moment The Hunters stalk us along the garden path we've only just walked, emerging through the door behind us). Here, a creature more hideous and mutilated than almost anything in that game occurs relatively early; a thing far beyond any mutated animal or shambling undead. In design, The Lickers resemble a hybrid between lizard, spider and flayed man. Each of their extended limbs ends in vicious bone claws, their knotted musculature flayed of even the least skin, leaving them hideously naked and exposed to the elements. Their heads are swollen to the point that their brains have burst from their skulls and are visible, eclipsing any eyes they might've once boasted. The feature that lends them their names is an insanely long, barbed tongue with which they “lick” at their victims, opening wounds in the same manner as a whip.

This first specimen drops down directly in front of the player character, undulating in a disturbing manner against the tiled floor, hissing and moaning like something in pain, but also something hungry.

The initial shock at the encounter is replaced by extreme discomfort at its proximity, the player's natural reaction to back away down the corridor, firearm trained on the monster. It's here that we see another highly disturbing -and utterly mesmerising- element of the monster's design: its strange, scuttling, inhuman motions. For a time, the monster does nothing, undulating almost flat against the floor, before either scuttling on all fours towards the player or sitting up on its haunches, whipping at us with its barbed tongue. The incredibly fast, unnatural nature of their movements makes predicting and targeting them extremely difficult, any encounter with them immediately fraught, especially if the player doesn't know what they're doing.

If they catch up, the creature will lash out with either tongue or claws, causing rapid, significant damage in a short space of time, before treating us to one of its many lurid death animations.

If the player manages to survive, they will almost certainly be left breathless, panicked and uncertain of what's to come next. Quite brilliantly, the game then waits to throw another Licker their way, allowing tension to build and build and build once again. Most encounters with the monsters at this early stage occur in set pieces; at one point, having recovered a key item from a statue in a room with a notable glass ceiling, the player will be frightened out of their skins as a pair of Lickers crash through from above, landing in a litter of glass and their own gore, already heaving, hissing and ready to pounce. Later, the player will encounter them in seemingly innocuous or safe rooms where they scramble through air-vents or emerge through adjoining windows. Almost every encounter with the monsters is a unique horror set-piece, marrying the disturbia of their design and animation to some sincerely heart-stopping shocks.

As though that wasn't enough, as the player progresses, the creatures evolve and transform to keep up with the escalatingly bizarre menageries of monsters, bioweapons and mutants the player encounters: by the time they've made their way down into the secret Umbrella Corporation labs beneath Raccoon City, The Lickers have reached their next stage of evolution: their flayed musculature developed to a black, chitinous shell, their claws fused into enormous scythes of bone and their general demeanours become much more predatory and aggressive. These enhanced Lickers are only encountered once or twice in the entire game, but they are always terrifying propositions, made all the moreso by the sheer amount of damage they can inflicts with just a few swipes.

The design of The Licker has become so iconic when it comes to the Resident Evil franchise, it has been reused, adapted and rejigged again and again. Not only do the monsters feature in the original film adaptation -a terrible, weightless C.G. Creation that, ironically, is far less visceral and significant than the 32-bit video game it's derived from- but also recur in other Resi titles down the years. For those of us who were children and teenagers when Resi 2 originally hit the shelves, The Licker will always be one of those monsters that occupies an especial warren in our memories and imaginations.

In the time since the original game's release, we've had the suplerative remakes of Resi 1, 2 and 3, meaning that, alongside every other iconic monster in those games, the comparatively humble Lickers have been dusted off and given a fresh lick (a ha) of -blood-tinged- paint:

Not only have they been lovingly recreated in stunning graphics for the present day generation of consoles, they've been totally reimagined in terms of their placing, framing and natures. The remake foregoes the cut-scene set-pieces that were de rigeur for the era and instead opts for introducing The Lickers in a more organic manner:

Rather than sign-posting their appearance too heavily, the game allows its -copious and brilliant- environmental details to do the heavy lifting: as before, the player will eventually find themselves in the iconic, curving corridor, only here, the atmospere is even denser, with sputtering, inconstant lighting, burst pipes, dripping water and far more in the way of elaborately mutilated corpses: Approaching the slumped body in the far corner, players are treated to a grizzly close-up of the mutilations worked on its face and throat by The Licker's claws. Standing, turning around, they will find once again the puddle of blood made by a continuous drip from the pipes above. Only here, it's not The Licker itself creating the puddle, but a corpse messily impaled through the back of the head and mouth on a jagged pipe.

The Licker itself does not appear until much, much later; not until after the player has found multiple, frantic and incoherent accounts of “something” loose in the police station, something much worse than the zombies, that is noted as being “blind” and “skinless.” This is an important dynamic for the new Lickers; lacking eyes, the creatures emphasise an entirely other species of horror than in the original game: here, the player can choose to try and rush by them, thereby exciting the creatures into violence by the noise and vibrations they make, shoot them down, which also excites the creatures into hostility, or can instead attempt to conserve health and ammunition by quietly, slowly sneaking past them. This makes The Lickers a very different exercise from in the original game, and introduces a subtle note of stealth and quiet tension to proceedings.

This time around, the monsters are first encountered in a darkened corridor where they are periodically lit by flashes of light through the windows and the player character's torch. Suspended from the ceiling, they are initially still and exceedingly distressing, the player waiting for them to explode into violence as they approach.

If they are excited, then they are far tougher than they were in the original game; quicker, more dynamic and acrobatic, they leap to and fro from adjacent walls, clamber across ceilings and leap significant distances. If they do manage to come into close contact, the player is almost certainly done, as they can eviscerate either Leon or Claire with a series of fluid swipes, leading to one of several intensely elaborate and grotesque death animations.

The character and natures of The Lickers is surprisingly removed from their original incarnations in the remake; designed to provide contrast with the various situations and set pieces involving zombies, stalkers such as Mr. X/The Tyrant (more on him later in this series) etc: here, they are not just another monster to throw at the player; they operate in their own hermetic eco-systems and require notable differences in tactics and approach in order to traverse. As with most encounters in the remake, there isn't one all-singing, all-dancing solution to navigating The Lickers: in some instances, it might be prudent to clear them from a transitional area through violence, so as to make the route safer, whereas in others, such would not only be a waste of ammunition but also counter-productive as the environment isn't ideal for a protracted fight with the creatures. Far more complex in terms of behaviour, the player must learn how they operate and respond to incidences such as sound and vibration, determining when it's best to ease around them slowly or to break into a full run and put as much distance between them as possible.

As before, The Lickers have a number of notable set-pieces, which are amongst some of the most effective jump-scares in the game:

In a nod to the “glass ceiling” room from the original, the player will, at one point, find themselves in an interrogation room, looking at the reflective side of a one-way mirror. As they negotiate the room, a Licker bursts through the mirror and proceeds to harass them until they either manage to kill it (difficult in those closed confines) or flee.

This difference in presentation and ethos is essential, given how familiar with the iconic creatures video game culture has become in the decades since the original's release. As well as evoking that original dread and tension, it was also incumbent on Capcom to sufficiently reinvent them in order to make their appearance in the remake more than an exercise in nostalgia. In this effort, they have succeeded superbly: The Lickers remain amongst the most terrifying, disturbing and notable creatures in the game, not to mention the entirety of the Resident Evil franchise.

Read Part One of George's new series of articles on the monsters of Resident Evil here