The Greatest Horror Game Ever - Resident Evil Retrospective (2/2)
The gold standard of video game remakes
I have vivid memories of my first encounter with the Resident Evil 1 Gamecube Remake; it’s often called ‘RE1R’ or ‘Remake 1’ but in this review, I’ll be referring to it as ‘REmake.’
It was around Halloween in 2019, me, my brother, my then classmates and seemingly the whole internet had been binging Resident Evil 2 Remake but with a strange new virus rolling in from abroad and October not yet finished, I was still craving more of this franchise and so I bought REmake on my PS4. I was completely blind, assuming it was a simple remaster.
I closed my curtains, lit some candles, put on some headphones and readied myself for what I assumed would be a charming yet dated horror experience… I was wrong.
Even 23 years after launch, REmake is the scariest horror game I’ve ever played and my 19 year old self had to pause the game a few times every hour to calm down.
After a whole weekend of playing it I was finished and easily declared REmake one of the best video games I’d ever played, so good that almost every year since in October I’ve replayed it and I’ve bought it for basically every platform it’s on.
REmake is my 3rd favourite video game of all time. It also represents the peak of survival-horror and is, in my opinion, the best Resident Evil franchise has to offer. I’ve been looking forward to writing this post for months now so let’s get into it!
Background
By the new millennium, Resident Evil had grown into a gaming institution and an infinite money printer for Capcom.
The film was coming in a couple of years, Resident Evil 2 was the 14th best selling PS1 game at a staggering almost 6 million copies, gamers were lapping the series up and even a geriatric Sega had been sure to secure an exclusive Resident Evil game for the Dreamcast: Code Veronica.
Eager to shake the kiddy console image its upcoming Gamecube had acquired, Nintendo hatched a plan: get Resident Evil, all of it, for the plumber.
Shinji Mikami, returning to direct REmake having stepped aside for the Resident Evil sequels, had targeted the Gamecube as REmake’s platform of choice over the PS2, liking the smaller proprietary discs and feeling that Sony was one foot in, one foot out of the gaming market. Furthermore, he felt the technology of the next generation would finally enable him to bring his true vision for Resident Evil to life; the original was only 4 years old by 2000 but due to the advances in both technology and video game storytelling, it looked bloody ancient already. This gave Nintendo the opportunity to woo Capcom… and woo they did.
Mikami was provided with extensive technical help with the Gamecube by Nintendo and they were so helpful that Capcom decided to make Resident Evil an exclusive franchise with ports of RE2 and RE3: Nemesis to be released soon. This deal was later modified and then blatantly broken but it was still a massive win at the time.
No doubt owing to Nintendo’s help and Mikami’s clear vision, REmake took just 14 months to develop, beginning in the later months of 2000 and arriving on shelves in 2002 to critical acclaim and fan praise… but relatively weak sales. This game spent almost 2 decades as a cult classic: a beloved title shared only between RE fans until it’s 2015 HD release on modern platforms introduced newer fans to the peak of survival horror.
Version Rundown
For the sake of capturing screenshots with ease (and not digging my 2013 Xbox One out the cupboard) I’m going to be playing all of the Resident Evil Remakes on my PC via Steam and I’ll be using a controller rather than keyboard and mouse.
This modern, HD version of REmake is available on all platforms but apart from on PC, they all run at 30FPS, it’s not a huge problem (especially as my usual go-to is the Gamecube original) but considering any old potato can run this game, if you’re one of those people who’s absolutely allergic to anything below 60FPS then you should avoid the console versions and get it on Steam Deck or something. Less pleasant is the maximum resolution of 1080p, I’m sure those who can be assed with modding could fix that easily but… I can’t, I play on a CRT most days, I don’t care about a less crispy HD in my 5-7 hour game.
The HD versions feature Resident Evil 5-themed costumes for Chris and Jill as well as the choice between modern controls and a wide or original aspect ratio (4:3 or 16:9.) There are a few extra difficulty modes I believe but REmake isn’t too difficult already so Very Easy might put you to sleep.
I’ll discuss the controls in more depth later but if you’re going to play REmake I implore you to play at the original 4:3 aspect ratio, otherwise the game looks kind of stretched out and grainy.
And if you can’t handle the black borders on the screen then… I dunno, grow up?
I chose to play as Chris on Hard for my run of the game because I know REmake like the back of my hand and appreciate the extra touch of difficulty he provides and also because I’m a stud, I’m ballsy, I don’t get bit by anyone, I can run around the Mansion anywhere I want, I don’t have to find an Item Box or a Typewriter and wonder where I’m gonna go next like you, hohoho!
But Seriously…
Right off the bat, REmake cuts a more naturalistic and darker tone than its predecessor; no live action, no rock track, no credits, no cheesy animatronics we’re straight into the murky forests of the Arklay Mountains and following Alpha Team as their search for Bravo, inevitably goes south.
Once again, nestled within this short intro, there is everything you need to know about REmake: the cinematic fakes you out with a musical build up, you expect a jump scare only for Joseph to get killed a few moments later when the tension has dissipated; REmake toys with your expectations throughout and this is but a small taste of that. Seeing the poor guy get torn apart through his own bodycam and Jill’s shocked reaction to it, still squeezing the trigger on her empty handgun is so grim and chilling.
REmake will be a significantly more disturbing adventure.
You still get that fleeing scene in-line with the actual gameplay but they allude to Chris’s superior combat abilities by having him save Jill with a shot from his pistol, furthermore, I’ve always interpreted Wesker and Barry’s relative calm in this cutscene to be a piece of foreshadowing too, they’re the only S.T.A.R.S members with an idea of what was going on at the mansion and they’re the ones who don’t show any fear like our two protagonists do.
If this game was made today, no doubt this darker, less memeable intro would be dismissed as ‘soulless’ by a bunch of Redditors or decried for not being live-action but it fits the tone of REmake perfectly and it’s still uncomfortable viewing all these years later.
Unlike the original Resident Evil, there are no version differences or examples of region-exclusive censorship that I know of but for reasons I’ll get into later, the gore in this game has been toned down a little and unfortunately, it generally sticks closer to the censored, Western version of events.
Upon entering the Mansion a few things will become immediately apparent: this version’s interior strikes a much different style than the original, it’s filled with flickering candles, dusty carpets, rickety old furniture and other hallmarks of Gothic horror; the voice acting and writing were also completely overhauled for REmake.
Seriously, the jump in quality is night and day, take a look at these two versions of the same scene, even the camera angles are miles better.
I don’t want to overstate how big an improvement the new voice direction and performances are, after all, they’re still not exactly Metal Gear Solid but these characters no longer sounding like aliens masquerading as humans, or BTEC Level 1 Performing Arts class does wonders for the game.
Of course, make your way through the Dining Room and into the Tea Room and you’ll stumble across an ‘old friend.’
I mentioned before that I prefer the original version of this scene and while I’m not going to go back on my word there are elements of this reveal in REmake that I love a little more.
Look at the shock on Kenneth’s face, how he’s shivering… that’s pure horror. It looks like he’s still in his last few moments of consciousness too which makes Jill/Chris being just a moment too late feel even more of a damn shame, RIP Kenneth, we hardly knew you.
It’s here, if you’re playing Jill, that REmake pulls its first of many subversions of expectation on you.
As always, if you run back to the Dining Room then Barry will blast the zombie away… except not for good. This time, when you return again you will hear the zombie gurgling and the door to the Tea Room slam shut, this teaches the player that… Shinji Mikami is onto you. Zombies will no longer stay in set positions and can move between certain rooms, furthermore… you’ll have to deal with that one later.
There are numerous little subversive moments like this, areas where zombies can smash down a door and ambush you and scares that are coded to occur in specific places and under specific circumstances, so many that… I haven’t encountered them all! There are some famous ones like the dog jump scare in the L Corridor happening only on a second visit to the area but I don’t want to spoil anything for you. This is a game you need to play.
Every playthrough of REmake I start, year after year, a scare I didn’t know could happen completely shits me up and puts a smile on my face.
This run, it was the bathroom zombie.
This room circled in red, is the one and only bathroom in the Spencer Mansion; if you have IBS and you work for Umbrella, you are fucked.
In this room, there is a bath full of dirty water and when you drain it, a zombie leaps out and attacks you. As Jill? She stamps on its head in the cutscene, permanently killing it (and causing the poor lass to throw up) but as Chris? You either have to kill it or flee, I chose to run and save my ammo, confident that I could dodge it when it bursts out of the bathroom on a return trip. Sure enough, when I moved past the door to the bathroom a little later and it burst out, I ran right past.
What happened next is something I had no idea was possible.
This door I’ve circled is the door to the Art Gallery and there’s a zombie in this room too, this is an important junction between a nearby Save Room, the Courtyard and later becomes a vital shortcut back to the Main Hall, so I decided to kill this zombie. After dispatching him, I checked the gallery door and remembered I hadn’t gotten the right key yet, at that moment, the musical sting for a jump scare played and I heard the door I had just entered the room from swing open off-screen and the familiar, gross, moist plodding of undead footsteps.
The zombie had made its way from the bathroom, down the hall and straight to me. Never before have I seen this happen.
I’d say that 75% of my gaming diet is made up of games I’ve already played: most Triple-A releases don’t interest me and the only games I consistently play across the whole calendar are Paradox ones, so for me, replay value and lots of things to discover offer a massive incentive to purchase and is one of the reasons that Resident Evil is my favourite franchise alongside Metal Gear: I just cannot get bored of replaying these games.
Resident Evil fans often remark that REmake is the only remade Resident Evil that adds more than it removes and that’s an opinion I’ve come to share as more remakes have released.
Evening The Odds
In the original Resident Evil, there was basically no incentive to ever play as Chris Redfield: his campaign was harder, Rebecca was infinitely more annoying than Barry and his smaller inventory and only marginal gameplay benefits made him feel like a challenge mode. REmake significantly evens out the playing field so that, although Jill is still the default first time experience, picking Chris won’t make your playthrough absolutely miserable.
To begin with, Jill doesn’t get to skip an entire mansion key anymore. Something I forgot to mention in part 1 is that Chris and Jill get a lighter and a lockpick respectively, kept on their person at all times regardless of inventory. In the original game, the lighter was used in all of 2 places but Jill’s lockpick let her enter doors that Chris needed the Sword Key to pass. Not in REmake. Jill needs the Sword Key just like Chris now; the lighter is also vital in this game, for reasons I’ll get into later, it’s super useful that Chris has it on him.
In addition, Chris has gone from having only slightly more health, shooting speed and critical hit chance to being noticeably more capable than Jill. According to the web, Chris has 140HP compared to Jill’s 96, in practice? This means that you tend to die in 3-4 zombie bites as Jill but it can take as many as 6 to go down as Chris in my experience. I like to think of health in video games as my ability to make mistakes; a beefy health bar allows me to get away with more mistakes, so when playing as Chris you can make a mistake 2 more times than as Jill.
Critical hits: the chance to explode a zombie’s head, can be an absolute lifesaver in REmake and you really do notice Chris getting them more often.
Rather than a binary choice between easy or difficult, REmake turns the choice between the two characters into one of specialisation. Jill’s larger inventory, lockpick and access to the grenade launcher makes her less potent in moment to moment gameplay but removes a lot of the item ferrying you get with Chris’s smaller inventory and she can carry around an extra weapon to compensate if you wish. Chris on the other hand will have an easier time navigating the Mansion, clearing out frequent travel routes and gets a couple of free health refills from Rebecca but the need for Old Keys for certain doors, the added ferrying of items and the lack of an early shotgun or grenade launcher means you’ll need to have sharp dodges and careful planning.
Choose your hard: harder to play or harder to plan.
For a first time player, I’d recommend Jill on Hard mode or Chris on Easy, maybe Normal but my difficulty receptors have been fried by years of Arma 3, online Tekken and NES-era Castlevania so do with this info what you will.
Monster House
If the original Spencer Mansion was an unsettling, bleak liminal space: a facility disguised as a residence then the REmake mansion is a dilapidated gothic manor, looking like something from the 19th century but populated with the by-products of callous modern experiments.
A great example of this melding of gothic horror orthodoxy and Resident Evil’s own brand of sci-fi is with the new method for accessing the Courtyard.
Rather than collecting a bunch of emblems to unlock the back door, you now must descend into a deep, dark crypt in the Cemetery and return a total of 4 stone masks to their places, each time you do, a coffin suspended by chains loses one of its bindings and a torrent of blood pours out. ‘Evil will awaken.’ The book found down there warns you, I’m sure whatever’s in there is fun.
Beneath the veneer of gothic horror you notice that some traps are engineered with clearly modern technology, others spew out toxic gas and the journals you uncover make it very clear that whatever is in there, far from a vampire or supernatural being, is another poor victim turned into a shambling horror.
Of course, I can’t talk about REmake without mentioning the absolutely sublime cinematography.
The PlayStation trilogy of Resident Evil placed its fixed cameras in a very utilitarian fashion, for sure, heaps of detail in storytelling was woven into every screen but the actual camera angles themselves were not really used in a manner that added to that storytelling. REmake on the other hand, thrives on making you feel uncomfortable through the use of its cinematography.
The greatest contributor to this game’s nerve-wracking presentation though has to be the soundtrack, in no other game will you find a more eerie score than this one, even listening to these songs outside of the game makes me feel uncomfortable.
The Neptune Tank/Aqua Ring theme almost makes me feel physically cold, it sounds like drowning, like panic in deep, dark, icy water. So horribly ethereal.
The Kitchen is a single, small room with its own soundtrack already giving it an incredibly suspect feel, it’s also got a suspiciously rotten looking corpse at the back along with a ‘surprise’ when you try to leave, you can cut this music’s tension with a knife.
The Save Room theme is beautifully relaxing but is also underscored with that classic edge of melancholy and uncertainty, it sounds like stumbling across a cabin in the woods on a dark night; it’s warm and comforting but you don’t know why it’s here or how long it will last.
Off-topic…
Does anyone else think these 2 songs sound really similar?
Double Tap
WARNING: Massive gameplay spoilers, if you’re going into REmake for the first time it should be blind, I recommend skipping ahead if you’ve not played the game.
REmake introduces a number of fantastic refinements to the classic Resident Evil gameplay that sadly, would only be used in Zero after before the series abandoned fixed camera angles and tank controls for good. Firstly, in REmake you can find defence weapons: daggers are used with both characters along with battery packs exclusively for Jill and flash grenades for Chris; the latter of the two getting off better since the Flash Grenades explode the head of a zombie. These weapons allow you to escape a grab from the front completely unharmed should you choose to use one.
Another ‘innovation’ is the ability to use modern controls instead of the tank controls but the enemies aren’t programmed to handle that kind of mobility so it breaks the game’s difficult, therefore I recommend that you play with tank controls.
Head popping critical hits, the lighter, fuel canteens, flame rounds and flash grenades are all items you’ll learn to love in REmake… because failure to properly dispose of the undead will make your short remaining life hell.
This charming fellow is a Crimson Head.
In RE1 96, if you got proficient with the combat knife then the game lost all challenge. Apart from in the lab, enemies didn’t respawn meaning that an expert could knife every enemy to death, maintain the entire game’s stock of ammo and wander through the empty halls completely safe.
In REmake, this is not the case: every slain zombie is a mistake to be corrected.
The moment that thing hits the ground and you see the blood pool around it confirming it’s dead (again) that zombie becomes a ticking time bomb. As the minutes roll by, even off-screen, it’s skin turns a bright red, big veins crawl up its skin, nails turn to claws and before long, if you didn’t burn it or take its head off, the zombie will rise as a running, growling, huge-clawed Crimson Head.
The higher the difficulty, the quicker zombies turn which leads to the kind of hard decisions and careful planning I love in my survival horror games. Do I sacrifice an inventory slot to take fuel with me in case I accidentally bump off a zombie? Is there enough kerosene back at the save room for me to kill the one in this corridor that keeps catching me? Do I risk trying to get the shotgun head pop, or just run past? These are questions you have to ask yourself constantly while playing REmake.
My brain last night rushing back to the Save Room when I accidentally killed the zombie in the Tea Room and had no fuel on me.
As of writing, I failed to burn the body in time last night and I know in a couple of hours after dark when I load my save, I’m going to have to plan around that Crimson Head or deal with it when I get the shotgun.
That’s the sign of an amazing game to me: it’s still on your mind long after you close the program.
Terror Improved
WARNING: This section includes massive plot spoilers for REmake, this is a game you absolutely must play blind so if you’re sold already, I recommend skipping to the next section or coming back once you’ve finished your playthrough.
In Resident Evil 1996, the space below the Main Hall stairs was curiously empty. You could go back there and walk around: it even had its own camera angles, however, there was nothing to be found, not a thing.
In REmake, what you’ll find behind the stairs will chill you to the bone.
The first time I played REmake, that noise echoing from the depths made my hair stand on end. In a mansion full of dead, male Umbrella staff and scientists, what could be wailing like a woman? Was it… she confined to the tunnels below, or would I be sharing the musty halls of the Spencer Estate with whatever that is?
Little did I know it back then but Capcom had primed me for what was to be the worst scare I’ve ever had in a video game.
The broad strokes and layout of REmake are identical to the original but one addition that stands out is an extra section in the Courtyard where a cozy log cabin can be found with a fireplace. When you first enter this area, you’ll hear that familiar wailing in the distance… but otherwise it’s all quite safe and even calming, the first time I played this game, I felt a huge sense of relief at being outside the mansion’s claustrophobic halls and the din of crickets as I made my way up the path made for a nice breather.
The cabin interior is dusty and run down but that roaring fire pacifies you and the presence of a Typewriter: the universal sign of safety, melts your doubts and fears straight away.
If you go to the back of the cabin you’ll find the Crank and with that in-hand, it’s time to leave.
On your way out, you’ll hear the door open and a set of slow footsteps… this gave me yet another sigh of relief, sure the music got creepy but I assumed after the intense opening hours in the Mansion, the game would give me some cutscenes with Barry and ease off the throttle…
This human face-wearing, wailing, tentacled, invincible monstrosity is Lisa Trevor: REmake’s greatest legacy.
Lisa Trevor is part of an entirely new sub plot and heaps of all-new, absolutely grotesque lore. I don’t want to go through every logbook in the game (and even though this is the spoilers section, I don’t want to ruin it all for you) but essentially, this poor woman was the daughter of George Trevor: the Mansion’s architect, who died trying to escape and also designed all the traps and puzzles, you have this really dark moment where you discover his grave and final moments written in a diary; George Trevor is heavily implied to be the original identity of the monster in the hanging coffin too. Lisa was kept in the lab and experimented on for decades by Umbrella, wasting away her mind and body until now she wanders the woods and halls of the Spencer Estate searching for her lost mother; the experiments performed on Lisa were directly responsible for birthing Tyrant and refining the virus.
Lisa isn’t your typical Resident Evil stalker enemy, she only appears in set areas: all of which are new to REmake and there’s zero reward for downing her. Unlike Nemesis in RE3, this unfortunate soul is here to enrich the plot and brown your trousers.
I just love how they seamlessly they integrated her story and appearances into the framework of the original game, Lisa’s story is so horrific and sad that it creeps me out more so than any piece of Resident Evil lore since and the repurposing of old rooms is genius. That room in the Courtyard tunnels from RE ‘96 that had a broken generator? That’s a lift to her lair now. The empty space below the stairs? Well, that’ll take you to the lab and right through a crypt, it’s all so genius. Best horror game ever.
Of course, there are other lovely bits of lore scattered about too, like how the insectoid Chimera enemies are the product of implanting insect DNA in human embryos.
Lost Along The Way
REmake is usually touted as being so good that it makes the original obsolete; every single thing has been improved upon, or so they say. Having played Resident Evil ‘96 now, this is still obviously the better game, though there are a few things that got damaged in transit.
To begin with, REmake is definitely a lot more linear than its predecessor.
Whether Chris or Jill, playing on Hard or Easy, your first move in REmake (unless you want to grab the map from the statue room) is always going to be running this little circuit to grab the Arrowhead and unlock the room in the Cemetery. By contrast, in RE ‘96, you were free to go just about anywhere as Jill and even without the Sword Key, there were plenty of areas to check as Chris.
This linearity not only makes the first hour or so of REmake play the same every time but it also led to the removal of a few Barry cutscenes and optional encounters, which is a big shame.
Furthermore, while the original’s overabundance of healing supplies and scant Ink Ribbons has been balanced much better, I can’t help but think REmake swings a little too far. In original Resident Evil, Ink Ribbons were the rarest items and so every save felt like a big decision but in REmake you’re given loads of them, even on Hard, to the point where I honestly just save as often as I’d like and I’ve never run out; I was down to my final ribbon in RE1 Saturn.
There are 3 things I hate most: the Xbox One, iced coffee…
And this fucking door in the Mansion’s East Wing.
There are a couple of doors in the Spencer Mansion that can only be unlocked from one side, like the one closest to you in the Tea Room or the way back from the Arrowhead but this one takes it to a whole other level. In the first Mansion section, this door has a broken handle, so you can only walk through it twice before it completely breaks and becomes one-way, then you have to go all the way around the upper floor to return from the Save Room. Let me plot that out for you.
The board you use to imprint the upstairs map, the dog whistle, the shotgun, the fertilizer: these are just some of the key items you’ll find in the East Wing and have to keep going back for, with the dog corridor and some new obstacles making the East Wing much more hazardous than ever, breaking this door and having to navigate around its 2 uses is so annoying. It does get repaired later but by the time you return to the Mansion after the Guard House, that’s 2/3rds of the game finished.
Making a game more difficult shouldn’t mean making the game more annoying.
In the original game, Barry’s survival depended on two things: taking him at his word and waiting for him to return with a rope to rescue you after the second fight with Yawn and not making him go on ahead of you in the Courtyard tunnels, if you failed either of these two requirements, he’d die before reaching the helicopter at the end.
The player was rewarded for trusting their friend and for putting their own life on the line for a squad mate.
In REmake, this is dumbed down to a binary choice which essentially amounts to “Let Barry get killed by Lisa when you could have easily helped him, or don’t be a dick and let him defend himself.” Not exactly the Trolley Problem.
Punching Above Its Weight
As I mentioned in the beginning, REmake was kind of lost to time for a while. The game was exclusive to the Gamecube, a console that didn’t sell very well and whose target audience was much more interested Super Smash Bros. and Metroid Prime than soiling themselves; Resident Evil was a franchise made first and foremost for the PlayStation, so no doubt many were left behind.
Despite this, Resident Evil fans adored the game and Capcom have always seemed especially proud of REmake, diligently re-releasing it each generation just as much as RE4 until finally, in the mid-2010’s the gaming world collectively woke up to the fact that this is the best survival horror game ever made an YouTubers: the ultimate marketing tool, started to share their love for this masterpiece.
Chris Redfield in REmake was cobbled together from the faces of a couple of different men but Jill Valentine’s face model was Julia Voth, who seems to have still held a flame for REmake all these years.
Julia now regularly cosplays as Jill and I have to say, it’s uncanny seeing what is to my brain, Gamecube Jill in real life.
I don’t want to show them all because she’s cosplayed her RE counterpart many times and because some of them are seriously raunchy but it makes me smile to see a Resident Evil alumni celebrate their character so much, especially after the cast of the original game were in obscurity for so many decades.
Leaving Arklay
What else can I really say about Resident Evil Gamecube? To me, it’s the perfect Resident Evil game and really, one of the most perfect games ever made.
When I first played this game at age 19, I was at a point in my where I was convinced that I could never make the kind of gaming memories I did as a kid ever again; I had my favourites and that was that, I’d made my memories and from now it would just be fun if emotionally unfulfilling experiences. We’ll think of it as hooking up with games.
Then REmake came along and as I keep saying, it’s my #3 on the list now: a game I had basically no idea existed until I began playing it.
As the years have rolled by, my memories of that first playthrough have stuck in my deep consciousness and become a core part of the tapestry of my gaming experiences. I see a Mansion in a game? I think of REmake, I hear a grandfather clock? That’s the long and short hand puzzle, a new Resident Evil releases and this is the standard I hold it up to. Like the Le Grand K: the physical standard for a kilogram (Americans are scratching their heads right now) Resident Evil Gamecube is the original measurement for me, the sum total of what a genuine, authentic horror Resi title needs to accomplish. No horror game will hit this standard again but if you don’t contain the elements that encompass it then you’re in trouble.
I have to stop here otherwise I’ll keep going on and on. If you only ever play one Resident Evil then make it this one and if you don’t normally play horror games then please, find the balls to step into the Mansion, you’ll thank me later.
Thank you very much for reading to the end. As always, please like and share the article if you enjoyed it and subscribe to Scanlines’ Journal if you want to read more; I hope to chat in the comments below.
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It must have taken you a lot of time to prepare this post, it was great!
I hear the similarities but I still like the Dark Souls character creation theme even more.