Resident Evil
US, April 26, 2002 - Director George Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead scared the hell out of movie-going audiences across the globe when it debuted so many years ago. The idea that deceased people could somehow rise from the grave again was only slightly less frightening than their seemingly newfound hunger for the living.
In 1996, some 25 years after the release of the movie, Japanese development house Capcom Entertainment released Resident Evil for PlayStation, and in doing so successfully recreated the suspense, thrills and gore of Romero's film as a videogame. Just as scary in its own right, the "survival horror" entry defined a new game genre, sold millions, and spawned countless sequels.
Fast forward to the present. For many the original Resident Evil has remained the scariest of the bunch despite natural improvements in technology and presentation for some of the follow-ups. Capcom director Shinji Mikami, who hatched the franchise to life on Sony's console -- a Romero for the digital age if there ever was one -- shares the opinion. With that, the videogame master has set out to recreate the original for Nintendo's next-generation console, using all of the advancements in technology to present the reborn game with a heightened sense of mood, style and atmosphere. And most importantly of all, to once again scare players as they have never been frightened by a videogame before. Have he and Capcom succeeded? Keep reading.
The Facts
* The original Resident Evil recreated, revamped and dramatically altered
* Third-person action-adventure
* Explore a haunting mansion filled with interactive puzzles and mysteries, many of them new
* Fight zombies and other gruesome foes including giant bosses
* Play as Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine (as well as some side characters)
* Noticeably different play experiences for Chris and Jill extend replay value
* Use a wide arsenal of killing weapons to viciously eliminate enemies
* New defensive weapons protect characters when being attacked
* Beautiful pre-rendered backdrops animate realistically and mingle with real-time visual effects
* High polygon characters, incredibly detailed textures and unparalleled particle, shadow and lighting effects
* Completely new areas of the mansion and its surroundings to explore
* New types of enemies
* More than 10 different game endings -- unique endings dependent upon play decisions and successes
* Surround Sound
* Single-player game
* * This game does not run in progressive-scan mode, support 16x9 widescreen mode, or run in Dolby Pro Logic II
Gameplay
The Raccoon City Police Department doesn't know what happened to the Special Tactics and Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) team it sent out to investigate the Arclay Mountain area on the outskirts of the city, where a number of people have recently gone missing. The unit's helicopter seems to have crashed in the woods, and it hasn't received any contact from the squad since. The department decides to dispatch another S.T.A.R.S. unit, the Alpha team, to check things out. But something goes terribly wrong.
Wow! Looks great, huh?
Have you ever seen better flames in a game?
A beautifully rendered FMV (changed completely from the original's cheesy opening) introduces Alpha team members Chris Redfield, a seasoned police veteran and the quick-witted Jill Valentine as part of the second group to find the crashed copter. Even before they can examine what happened, though, the group is attacked by rabid dogs -- seemingly diseased, rotting animals, in fact, but nonetheless totally vicious. One Alpha member is eaten alive and the rest run for their lives -- literally -- toward a big, dark, abandoned mansion. Once inside, the premise is explained, and it's a simple one: survive. It's not as easy as it sounds, as Chris, Jill and the others learn.
In Resident Evil for GameCube, like the original, gamers play as either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine -- each one delivers an altered play experience with slightly changed plot developments, weapon attributes, defensive moves and so on. Exploring the mansion as Chris is more difficult, but either way, everyone is in for a very challenging, thoroughly satisfying adventure -- one that genuinely scares and flows without a hitch or stutter.
Creepy stuff
One of the very moody in-game environments.
Gamers that have played the original Resident Evil will be wondering about the changes, particularly in regard to control. The basic setup has, unfortunately or not, remained largely intact with Capcom's GameCube remake, offering no true analog sensitivity. What this ultimately means for players is a control scheme that isn't poor, but isn't great either. It gets the job done, and in truth works quite nicely in some cases, but always feels decidedly old, sometimes over-responsive and robotic. There is no real precision -- it's impossible to tiptoe by an enemy, or to aim at a specific body part, in other words. One wonders why, when Capcom could overcome so many technical feats visually, it couldn't address some of the control problems inherent to the series itself. And yet most everybody will probably be willing to forgive any manipulation drawbacks as the end experience is otherwise perfectly tight.
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i'm in heaven now 
