You Can't Really Kill Something If It's Already Dead.... Right?

When Resident Evil was released back in 1996 on the Playstation console it was revolutionary, and even innovative for it's time. This game shocked players around the globe; Resident Evil was one of the more gruesome games of it's time, and it even managed to create it's own genre of games; the survival horror game. I played this game for countless hours, even days and it was a very pleasant experience and Resident Evil went on to become one of my favorite games. Well as with all games Resident Evil soon became a little boring, but Capcom was ready with a sequel to the game, and all was good again in the gaming world. Most of us know that concepts are often overused in the world of video games, and after a couple of sequels the franchise becomes bland; but what happens when a company won't let a franchise that's already past it's prime rest in peace? The games get bland, and innovation isn't even attempted, and this brings me to the Resident Evil remake for the Nintendo Gamecube...

Capcom stunned the whole world the day of September 11th (I think) when they announced that their popular Resident Evil/Biohazard franchise is now exclusive to Gamecube for a couple of years, but the even better news was the original Resident Evil would be remade for the Gamecube with souped up graphics. Naturally my excitement for this game skyrocketed, I downloaded tons of videos for this game. About a month before the game's release the hype I felt towards this game began to slowly die down, but I still ordered it a day after the game's release, but thanks to EBgames I didn't get the game until a couple weeks later. Well did I love this game? Yes and no, but for the most part no.

In case you didn't already know; the main premise of the Resident Evil games involves finding items, solving puzzles and capping some of the meanest monsters since the movie "Night of The Living Dead"'s debut. The main enemy in Resident Evil is the zombie, this creature has become one of the most overused creatures in the movie world, and has since begun slowly infesting the video game market. The idea of playing a game where you relentlessly blast away mindless zombies sounds great, and it was pretty cool for the longest time, but it does get old.

The first time I booted up my jet-black Gamecube with Resident Evil inside I was amazed. The game boasts a pretty cool opening FMV sequence, and an equally creepy cinema that plays when you choose to start a new game. In my opinion the original game has a couple of advantages over the remake in the presentation field. First of all I for one enjoyed the real video shot for the original Resident Evil; even though it was cheesy as hell it set a certain mood for the game. The acting was horrible in the old game, but I liked to laugh at such remarks as "The Master of Unlocking" and "If I Had Arrived Any Later You Would Be a Jill Sandwich". Capcom may have improved on the game's dialogue, but the voice-overs are crap; Capcom should have forced the voice actors to do a decent job, but it doesn't take too much away from the game.

Ok so as I was explaining earlier, the zombies in this game are the most commonly encountered enemy, you would probably know this if you've played any Resident Evil game before. In the original Resident Evil I could usually drop a zombie using only 2-4 handgun bullets, but in the remake you'll be lucky if you can kill one in 7 shots. As you can imagine this game is more difficult than the original game, but it's not agonizingly difficult; it's about perfect difficulty wise. Something else that adds to the difficulty level is the amount of ammo you stumble across; there isn't a whole lot of ammo, but there are plenty of things to shoot. Conserving ammo is a little difficult though, and you'll have to do a lot of it. I don't care what anyone says, the knife is in no way a weapon worthy of replacing any gun!

The Artificial Intelligence
The artificial intelligence (AI) in this game is really lacking, even though they are zombies they really should be able to work their way around a desk instead of trying to walk through it. This AI can be used to benefit you though, as you can simply hide behind a piece of furniture and slice away at the dead flesh with your knife to conserve ammo. Still, the game would be a little more difficult if the zombies had the brains to climb over objects, or even just movie them, if they're really that hungry then I'm sure it would take more than a desk to keep them away from you.

Defense Items; Finally a Way To Fight Back
Not all of the new additions to this game make it more difficult; Capcom has taken it upon themselves to add a feature which allows you to save yourself from being munched on by a hungry zombie, this feature comes in the form of Defense Items. These items allow you to damage these monsters if they grab on to you, and they are forced to let go of you. The main Defense Item is the dagger; it's the only really common Defense Item in the game. While you are equipped with the dagger and a zombie grabs on to you your character will slam the dagger into the side of the zombies head, this causes the zombie to fall down. Of course each character has a defense item exclusive to them, Jill has the taser and Chris has the grenade.

Speaking of the characters, I guess I haven't mentioned the two playable characters in this game yet. When you first boot up the game and arrive at the options menu you are given the choice of loading a game, starting a new game, or even tinkering with the game's options. After selecting NEW GAME you are given the option of choosing a character, either Chris or Jill. Each character has their strong points, Chris is stronger than Jill, but Jill can carry more items with her than Chris can. Choose whichever character you like, but if you are looking for the easiest way to play the game then play as Jill. The storyline unfolds differently for both characters, they have different encounters and they have seek different goals sometimes, but the game is basically the same no matter which character you play as. 

Now to describe the game's puzzles; unrealistic and sometimes overly difficult. Capcom usually tries to strive to make the Resident Evil games as realistic as possible, but here is one of the puzzle scenarios for this game; In a room full of crows you must inspect a group of paintings on a wall in a specific order to gain an item. Now when would the Mansion's personnel have time to hide an item in such a way? Something else that annoys me; sometimes you have next to no clues as to how a certain puzzle must be solved, I had to check gamefaqs.com a couple times just to figure out how to solve these strange puzzles. Really though, since Capcom is striving to make the RE games more realistic shouldn't they make more practical puzzles? Also, I really hate the tactic of “finding an item and backtracking”, this is a very common thing in any Resident Evil game, and can become pretty frustrating.

Resident Evil for Gamecube has got one major advantage over the original game; the Gamecube version is much more frightening. Ok picture this, you are running down a hallway that you’ve gone through many times, when suddenly a bunch of zombies come crashing through the window, the scariest thing about this game is that you can’t always predict which time the monsters are going to jump through the windows, and so most of the time you will be unprepared when they finally do. This game will scare you in more of a “boo” fashion, instead of trying to creep you out in a more psychological manner like the Silent Hill games, Resident Evil mainly relies on creatures jumping out at you. To be honest with you, I have actually been so surprised at some points that I’ve even dropped the controller.

A new addition to the game that I liked is the “Crimson Zombie”, in Resident Evil for Gamecube you can’t just leave a zombie’s body on the floor after making it bleed all over the floor, because if you do it will come back later as a crimson zombie; these guys are kinda like super zombies, they have a set of claws and can run very fast, the only way to prevent a zombie from coming back as a crimson is to either burn it’s body, or decapitate the poor little guy. The bad thing about the crimsons is that you must carry around a lighter and oil canteen to burn them; item space is a constant worry in this game.

My Ratings For: Resident Evil

Graphics 10/10
This is the prettiest game I’ve ever seen on a home console, but lets face the facts; this game is in no way a technical achievement. To my disappointment, Capcom decided to use the old form of pre-rendered backgrounds, what this means is that Capcom drew out the backgrounds so as to avoid using the Gamecube power to create them, but if they had used the Gamecube’s hardware to create the backgrounds the game would be much more interactive, most people are impressed with the amount of interactivity that goes on between the characters and the pre-rendered backgrounds, but I think it was a bad idea to go the way of the pre-rendered backgrounds. The amount of interactivity ranges from blood seeping into the carpet to lightning lighting up a room, but still they just added polygons to the backgrounds to accomplish this, which is hardly a technological feat. Well anyway, since very little of the Gamecube’s power is used to render the backgrounds most of the polygons went into the highly detailed character models. These models look really awesome, and pretty realistic also, but there are some bad things about them; for one the character animations could definitely be improved, and Capcom didn’t get rid of that whole “run into the wall and keep running”, meaning that you can run straight into a wall and your character will just keep running, but won’t get anywhere.

As I just mentioned, I believe that the character models could have been improved upon, but it doesn’t really mess with the overall feel of the game. The models are highly detailed, and the mouths even lip sync the words that are being spoken but sometimes during cinemas the game will stutter a little bit, this isn’t very major, but it’s something that’s hard not to notice; I believe this is because of the loading times.

The lighting effects, textures, and colors are all well defined; the lighting effects are especially good in this game. Lightning will strike outside and the light will shine through the window and cast heavy shadows. Speaking of shadows, this game is chock full of them, impressive ones at that. The lighting works great with the shadows; the shadows will cast differently depending on where the light source is. Characters aren’t the only thing that have shadows though, all the monsters can cast shadows of their own, but what really impressed me was how realistic the flickering candles looks, and they even slightly manipulate the shadows. Now if only every other aspect of this game was as good as the graphics.

Story 8/10
I particularly like learning about the happenings in the Resident Evil universe, and even though this game retains almost the exact same story as the original, I really didn’t mind being told it again. There are ways to expand the story; you can play the other Resident Evil games, or even read a document called Wesker’s Report to learn all about the mysterious character Wesker. It’s pretty nice how there are 2 characters you can play as, mainly because the story unfolds slightly different for both of them, and it adds a little bit of replay value, being able to play as the other character and all.

Strange events have been recently unfolding in the area around Raccoon City, groups of people have been reportedly attacking families; the victims have been found to have been eaten… The Bravo team was sent to investigate, but eventually everyone lost contact with them and they have not yet returned, so the Raccoon City Police Department’s special unit; S.T.A.R.S. has been sent to investigate the strange happenings, and to find the Bravo team, but what awaits the team? I’ll give you a hint, it starts with a Z and ends with an S.

Controls 8/10
Resident Evil has always been a tough game to learn, but Capcom has added 2 new control settings to make it easier for everyone. The default control setting is the standard fare for these games, I can’t really remember the second setting, but the third setting makes the game much easier to learn, and makes moving around much less of a hassle, however it’s still not totally perfect. For one thing, setting three switches the button used to hold up your weapon to the opposite shoulder button, and Run is the other shoulder button; I found myself trying to draw my gun a couple of times, but just ended up running into the zombie’s arms. Well really how scary would a Resident Evil game be if you could actually run away without any problems? I think that if the control were simplified anymore that the game wouldn’t be as enjoyable.

Sound 8/10
The game’s music really sets the right mood; the music is often subtle but will start up once something major happens, like say a bunch of half rotten dogs suddenly jump through the window at you. A couple of times I would hear a slight noise in my room while playing, and I would automatically assume that the noise came from the game, and I would be extra careful not to get surprised. I couldn’t give this game a 9 in the sounds department; mainly because the voice overs still range from crap to mediocre, and some of the voice actors (Wesker’s actor comes to mind) couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag, everything else audio wise sounds pretty solid though.

As I just mentioned, the voice-overs aren’t too good. One scene in particular that I laughed at was during the first cinema in the woods, Wesker yells out “Chris! This Way!” but he sounds incredibly phony. The voice-overs are decent sometimes, especially the ones by Barry who is the most believable character in the whole game.

Final Recommendation
As time has passed I've had a complete change of heart; Resident Evil for Gamecube is awesome. It's one of the moodiest, scariest, and best designed games for Nintendo's purple cube. This is the near pinnacle of the entire series, and here's to hoping that Capcom goes back and remakes more games from the series in this vein.

Overall Score: 9.4