Remakes, remasters and re-imaginings are all the rage right now. Like the film industry, in gaming what once was old is new again… and again and again and again. While more contemporary redux versions of classics are getting all of the attention (see Resident Evil 4, Demons’ Souls Remastered, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth) the concept was never done better than when Capcom decided to remake the original Resident Evil for Nintendo’s GameCube console in 2002.
Of course, Capcom wasn’t the first developer to go back to the well for inspiration or reissue a classic. But they were the first ones to take an already solid game and turn it into a certified masterpiece, while still retaining most of the core concepts and gameplay mechanics.
Pushing the hardware limits of the GameCube, the developers brilliantly used beautifully pre-rendered backgrounds to recreate the gothic mansion and its grounds, which are the main setting of the game. Because of this, the 2002 version shockingly holds up, even more than 20 years later (though you should play the 2015 HD remaster version unless you’ve got access to a CRT Television).
Amazingly, the game works on two levels for the two different types of players approaching the game. For first-timers, it’s just as shocking and tense an experience as the original. For veterans returning to the Spencer mansion, the way the developers play with your memory and expectations of the original elevates the action and horror. While the story stays fairly close to the source material, there are new beats and locations to explore that open up the scale of the game without ruining the tight pacing of the original.
The much-maligned tank controls do return, but there are some small tweaks to make it more inviting for modern audiences. It could also be argued that had they decided to go completely 3rd person shooter like a modern RE game (as they did with the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes), it would lose the quirkiness and atmosphere that made the first three RE games the successes that they were.
The one new mechanic that is entirely new for the REmake (as fans have dubbed it) is how the players must deal with the zombie corpses that they’ve dispatched. Leave them for too long and they’ll reanimate as an even more difficult foe. You can burn them of course, but fuel is a finite resource — and there’s simply not enough to address all of them. It’s a great new addition to the core ideas of resource management and risk reward inherent in the series.
Enough can’t be said about this overlooked classic. It is available on nearly every console at this point — and if it isn’t, you better believe Capcom is already working on a port. If you are a fan of survival horror, horror games in general, or atmospheric puzzlers, then it’s a must-play.
