It’s a well known fact that it was Capcom’s original game that spawned the sharp increase in stature of the survival horror genre. If it hadn’t been for Resident Evil on the Playstation we may well have never had the Silent Hill franchise or Dead Space and the many other scary games which now adorn the shelves of stores everywhere, but even though we do have a lot to thank the originator for, do we REALLY need yet another re-release of it?
The PSX and Saturn was where it started; and we all know that, but since then it’s made an appearance on every Nintendo home console since, with the Gamecube getting a revamped version with some souped up graphics and extra areas within the mansion itself and the grounds outside. The Wii gets this more recent edition, but with no extra frills and only an additional control system being the main difference on show.
As you begin your march through the storyline again you start to realise two things. The first is that for a game that has been round the block a few times, it still seems to be as solid and playable as it was at the start, back in the days when Jill was still the “Master of Unlocking” (a piece of voice acting so bad that it will go down in folklore forever) and secondly is that even though it’s still as fresh as a spring chicken you HAVE been through all this before.
See, it’s hard to really be all complimentary and full of optimism when you stand back and realise that all this game is is a re-release. You could technically buy the Gamecube edition and a third party control pad for about the same amount and that would get rid of one of the biggest faults this new version has. The huge black borders on each side of the screen pretty much halves the playing area and on anything smaller than an old 28 inch TV will make it nearly pointless to enjoy the graphics, mainly because you’ll be squinting your eyes that much that people will begin to think you’re gazing into the sun on a permanent basis.
It’s not all bad though. The Wii remote control system does actually make things work rather well and simplifies everything to a point that even a child could get into it, although with it having a 15 certificate that could prove difficult. You wouldn’t think it possible with just the solitary wand of Nintendo’s current hardware, but within minutes you become quite accustomed to the way things are laid out and as I say, it works. Ironically the Gamecube pad is supported, but then considering where this conversion came from, maybe it isn’t much of a surprise after all.
If we move away from how it came to be and look at the game itself you can still see the quality seeping from every pore. The mixture of combat and puzzles is still a joy to go through and in my eyes much better than the “just shoot” attitude of the more recent additions to the series, especially 5. What the original Resident Evil did was keep your senses at their peak, with your brain working hard to move things on, whilst your adrenalin was pumping through your body in fear of another undead foe limping towards you. You always had to be resourceful with weaponry too, as there was never enough ammo to be comfortable. This all contributed to the love affair everyone had with Resi.
It is starting to look a little ragged now if you compare it to the new guard, but then that might be a lot to do with the aforementioned screen layout. That’s not to say there still aren’t some nicely grotesque zombies kicking around the mansion. The main thing that shows the ageing is that the game still houses characters running through a pre rendered environment, rather than one created by the power of the console it’s housed in. It did a great job back then, but in a graphic hungry gaming world that we now find ourselves in, poor Resident Evil has a little bit of trouble keeping up.
I think the best way to describe the Wii version of the original classic horror game is to link it to an old rock group, who think they have got one more tour left in them, but once they hit the road the fans can see it was one too many and things just don’t sit in the memory as well as they did. I think it’s a real shame that this came out because the conversion just doesn’t do it any favours at all. The screen is too small and the need for a game that everyone has played at least once in their lifetime is not high enough to wheel this out. There has been talk of the rest of the series getting the archive treatment, which is fair enough, as we haven’t seen the 2nd or 3rd titles since the Dreamcast, so seeing them again would be a welcome sight, but we would hope they would get the same treatment that the original Resi got from PSX to Gamecube and not straight ports.
If the series had by-passed Nintendo’s last console and this was its re-mastered debut, we would probably look on it a little differently, but as it stands this is one for the purists and collectors. The director’s cut of the original is available on the Playstation Network and is a fraction of the price; and even though the graphics won’t be up there with what’s on offer here, the gameplay remains intact, not to mention it will be less than half the price of this offering. I don’t want to take away from the fact that Resident Evil still plays very well, but the way they’ve delivered this horror classic to us is scarier than half of the zombies living in Raccoon City in the first place. If you genuinely haven’t played it before and were perhaps too young to enjoy the beauty of this game in its original form then I would recommend getting this. For the rest of us it’s simply a case of keeping hold of the memories, at least until they give us another re-release on Nintendo’s next console.
VideogameUK verdict: 7/10
