That wasn't likely to happen though.  What was more likely to happen is that, instead of converging storylines, they converge gameplay.  Since The X-Files is a show and has no gameplay, the convergence of X-Files and Resident Evil means one thing: take Resident Evil's gameplay and leave the rest behind.

I'm not usually in favor of Resident Evil clones, but The X-Files: Resist or Serve has a great soundtrack.  The music is very dark, very haunting.  It's powerful enough to carry the game through thick and thin, just as Parasite Eve's soundtrack did in 1998.  Parasite Eve also had a great story, great characters, and even though the gameplay's cheapness induced headaches, it was very unique.

This game has none of that.  It's not cheap.  It's not challenging.  The story isn't as good as the show or as good as The X-Files movie.  What is it then that's compelling about this game?  I'd tell you now but that would make the following points much less interesting.

With Resident Evil's gameplay at its core, you don't really need an explanation of the controls.  When a deformed creature approaches, hold the "draw weapon" button, press fire a couple times, and watch the enemy drop to the floor.  This would have been acceptable and even exciting at times if there was something scary about the game.  It's rated M, which is one rating higher than the show.  But they didn't take that rating and expand on it any way.  The intro is somewhat horrifying, but that's only because no one wants to see a baby get hurt.  (A strange explosion kills a man and a woman, leaving their baby for dead.  The baby looks terrified as this eerie purple goo begins to surround it.)

Then you enter the game as either Mulder or Scully.  You walk around, shoot anything that looks dangerous, and try to unravel another X-Files mystery.  The story is supposedly a lost episode, and could have worked really well on the show, or could have been turned into a TV mini-series.  But the game is too slow and boring, the graphics are sub-par, and the CG movies aren't effective enough to make the story work in this game.

I've said many times before that graphics aren't nearly as important as gameplay.  That's still true.  But The X-Files: Resist or Serve made me realize that, in the case of a survival/horror game, where the eerie setting can enhance the gameplay, graphics are very important.  Resident Evil wouldn't have been scary if the graphics were dull and washed out.  The same goes for Silent Hill.  Gamers can't be attached to a world that doesn't emulate their own.  That's the problem with this game.  The lighting effects alone are nearly a console generation old!  It's the kind of thing that could have been achieved at PS2's launch.  The backgrounds are too grainy to be scary.  And most of the characters look like they were made using a DDK (Dreamcast Development Kit) and then ported to PS2.

As far as the voice acting goes, The X-Files: Resist or Serve is fairly decent.  This isn't the actors' best work, that's for sure.  Voice-overs in games differ greatly from those in movies due to time and budget.  For example, Pixar records their voices no less than two years before completing a film.  That kind of planning is not currently possible for video games, at least not with a lower-budget title like this.  So I'll give the actors the benefit of the doubt on this.  We all know they're capable of great things.

So what is it then that makes The X-Files: Resist or Serve compelling?  The answer is any number you can come up with times zero.  If you don't know your math, then you're just going to have to play the game yourself to get the answer.

Gameplay: 5
Can you resist the temptation...to laugh at this game?  Probably not.  It's not every day that a survival/horror game is released without using any scare tactics.  Maybe that wasn't their purpose.  But this game has Resident Evil-style gameplay and a spooky soundtrack.  What could they have possibly been trying to achieve?

Maybe they wanted to make it a thriller.  That would make more sense, except for the fact that there's nothing thrilling about it either.

Graphics: 4
The X-Files: Resist or Serve is ugly.  Not just the monsters – it's okay if they're ugly, in a realistic and creepy sense.  Everything you see is lacking in PS2 power.  It could have been a Dreamcast game.  If it had been released a few years ago that's what most people would have thought it was...

Sound: 7.5
Very good music, so-so voice acting.  You can skip the story and avoid the voice-overs, but that would only bring you back to the gameplay.  Is that really what you want to do?

Difficulty: Easy/Medium
Nowhere near the challenge of the game it borrowed all of its assets from.

Concept: 3
It's one thing to copy Resident Evil and improve the survival/horror genre (as done with Silent Hill).  It's entirely another to copy a game and butcher it.

Overall: 5
Incase you didn't get the message, this is not a game I would recommend for purchase.