I recently bought the HD versions of both Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil: Code Veronica X from Xbox Live and upon completing the latter, I was left with a craving for more authentic, old-school Resident Evil. To remedy my problem, I had only two options, I could either play Resident Evil 2 again for what must be the fifth time over or I could do something drastic: get a GameCube along with the Resident Evil remake and Resident Evil Zero.
I chose to go with the GameCube. I am aware you can get both of the games mentioned for the Wii, but I refuse to buy one. And besides, the GameCube cost me only 25 euros and it is in perfect working condition as are the two controllers and memory card I got with it.
As for the console and its peripherals, I can only say this: this is the reason why I don’t like Nintendo. For some reason, they must always make their hardware look just utterly horrible. I wonder if the design choice of making the GameCube a small cube affect its potential performance. The GameCube wasn’t as great as the original Xbox, it still beats the Playstation 2 easily, but could it have been better if they didn’t make the choice to make it more appealing to the more casual consumer? The controller is just fucking stupid. Outwardly, it just looks like a baby’s toy, it really does. The ‘trigger’ buttons have this weird threshold when pressed down fully give out this annoying plastic clank. The face buttons are just all over the place and they’re all different shapes and sizes, the d-pad fits under my thumb completely and the controller has only one shoulder button, why not two? The most annoying aspect of the controller is the fact that the analog sticks have octagon-shaped holes that are, of all things, askew. You simply cannot point the stick forward, the octagon prevents you from doing that, causing the stick to point ever so slightly to the right. The octagon also makes it hell to maneuver in Resident Evil.
And on that note, let’s get to the games. First and foremost, why on earth were these games never ported to the Ps2 or even the Xbox? Both games sold between 1.25 to 1.35 million units. Which is quite a few, but couldn’t they have gotten more money, something companies ought to want, if they just had released them on more platforms? I mentioned how these games are available on the Wii, but to my knowledge, they are merely ports of the original GameCube versions and not HD revamps that RE4 and RE:CVX were. Why not make HD versions of REmake and RE:Z too? I would have bought them, day one.
The games themselves, these are the ultimate Resident Evil games there probably ever will be. The original format of survival horror the newer games have sadly all but abandoned is at its apex here. The graphics are amazing considering that they are only a couple of months south of turning ten years old. The pre-rendered environments are a must in the franchise, and they look awesome. The character models are also extremely good and the animations are fluid and they feel dynamic; zombies falling down dead is very pleasing to see.
Just a rotten shame Capcom didn’t keep this going. Maybe because they didn’t release these games on multiple platforms led them to stop making survival horror and go toward the piece of shit that is Resident Evil 5. It would have been sublime to play a true high-definition yet old-school Resident Evil.
Oh well, I guess it’s pointless to mourn for the unique experience a proper Resident Evil brings and seeing as the genre itself is dead, I look forward to the Silent Hill HD Collection.
Know Thy Games 