Resident Evil

Review - Taking up residency in Russell's nightmares...

Umbrella Corp officially denies that a second incident has taken place in the Arklay Mountains near Raccoon City, the sight where, in 1996, they were accused of unleashing a deadly contaminant that disfigured and killed hundreds of company employees and private citizens within the area. Reports lately filed by local citizens mirror those of 1996, except that this time they contain such exceptional detail and horrifying scenarios that the Justice Department is considering investigating these claims, pending a report from Raccoon City’s elite team of investigators known as STARS. We’ll have more on this story as information is made available…

When Capcom announced that Resident Evil was being remade for the GameCube, most assumed it was going to be a simple graphical enhancement of the original title. Nintendo’s systems have always been short changed when it came to the RE titles, (with the exception of RE2 appearing on the N64) due to many factors such as Nintendo sticking to a cartridge format and their systems being geared toward a younger audience, so it was assumed that the GameCube version of the original would just be a pretty way to settle that score. Even this reviewer (who was working at Acclaim Entertainment at the time of the original’s release, and can attest to the entire staff talking about little else for a solid three weeks) had low expectations for the new version’s content… the original had been beaten “nine ways to Sunday” and “from hell to breakfast,” so what could a remake possibly have to offer? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot indeed.

First off, the graphical presentation is beyond stunning. This is what you would picture this mansion looking like in your head. Although it might be thought of as a step back in terms of technology (Code Veronica, released for the Dreamcast in 2000 used fully rendered-on-the-fly environments), the static backgrounds used up until CV are back, but tweaked to such a state of high-resolution perfection that you probably wouldn’t notice them if you were not told that they were there. Capcom has perfected a way to animate objects within the pre-rendered environments and use light-sourcing to such an extent that everything appears so realistic that by walking through the shadow-infested hallways, dank chambers, and long-abandoned rooms infested with various abominations, you actually begin to feel like you are inside this mansion… and about to die.