Gaming Target - GameCube: Resident Evil 0

Written by Chris Reiter on November 22, 2002

Full Review: You're not scared, are you? Oh wait, you are...
::pulls pants back up::

Since Nintendo's move onto the GameCube's scale of higher power compared with its inferior Nintendo 64, the company has had a few unexpected surprises for it -- one of them being Capcom's decision to target their zombie infested popular horror franchise, Resident Evil, exclusive to any Nintendo owner's claim. Resident Evil 0 was originally set to be one of the Nintendo 64's last known releases. And like Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, it was another horrific tale that had been given the proper treatment for its next generation showing. This is the story before everything happened that you already knew about. This is Resident Evil 0!

Strange occurrences are happening in Raccoon City's fair surroundings, with people that have been found murdered. These deaths have happened without being gunned down, strangled, or by way of poisonous fumes. It's that with the most inhumanly traces of evidence left behind that the S.T.A.R.S. Bravo team is called into action to investigate the Arclay Mountain region. When their helicopter malfunctions, leaving them no choice but to search the area -- and now out to put a former SEALs officer turned criminal into custody, the team will discover new sights, sounds, and smells most disturbing and nerve trembling when they embark on a quest to survive the terrible horror that has soon to engulf each and every last one of them.

Rebecca Chambers is the leading lady of Capcom's latest Resident Evil product, having before only been a shadow to Chris, one of the "S.T.A.R.S." of the first Resident Evil game (or, is it the second now?). Right beside her is Billy Coen, a former Navy SEALs officer now forced into the situation after escaping deadly circumstances, who decides to help Rebecca face the ordeal at hand. It's interesting in how Capcom has reworked their entire gameplay system to not only play as one person at a time, but also two people simultaneously throughout exploration of the game's hair-raising twists and turns. This new partner system operates in various ways, the first being that you're not the only one out there risking our neck. There's one other like you, doing the same thing by your side, and sometimes not. If one of you dies, you both die. Because of this, Resident Evil 0 is the first in the series that requires a lot more thinking on your part if you want to live to see another day.

Though there's not always times when you'll be buddied with your teammate, there are ways to switch between the two of you in the menu system so that each Rebecca and Billy have a sufficient amount of supplies to live and learn against the fright they will encounter. Exchanging items now is easily done by selecting the appropriate icons in the team's menu and giving and receiving as much quantity as you or the other person requires. This is also where you can put other options into drive, such as allowing Rebecca and Billy to remain in unison or not. As a team, the two move in and out of areas together. The solo mode on the other hand is just that. Whichever character you want left behind, they'll stay and stand their ground on their own. Where the team play is useful for just about everything, solo helps you out in areas where some puzzle completion is needed (i.e., one character is placed on top of a switch while the other runs through an open doorway to gain the prized item).

At other times Resident Evil 0 actually forces players to be separated for frequent amounts of time until every single puzzle in the area is solved, and the two are once again reunited. One such instance lies in the train area of the game. Rebecca is put into an enclosed room within the speeding locomotive. The exit out of there is locked...and if only Rebecca had a small enough metallic device, she could surely open her path to freedom. This is where Billy comes in -- having to search the train from top to bottom for special items to open doors used to grab other items and such, just to find the one desired piece of metal you'll need to regain control of your better half. But this is also an area that makes perfect use of the item carrying lift -- an essential tool you'll find often throughout your travels. Here Billy and Rebecca can part ways on their opposite sides of any specific location in the game that makes use of the small transportation device. By placing in smaller items, from health, ammo, or even certain puzzle parts, the two can trade between one another on different levels to solve problems on their own, and together.

Like any good Resident Evil title, 0 contains a healthy amount of backtracking to solve each facility's riddles and to defeat and defend yourself against any grotesque mutation in your way. And for the first time ever in the series, that known item box that transported anything stored within it to every position anywhere you went that had an exact storage bin like it has been erased from the picture. It's gone and done with. Over. Finito. Sayonara sucker! Worrying about the problem will only cause brain damage, because luckily for you, Capcom has landed a new way to move masses of items back and forth through one place to the next. This is what is called being able to now drop anything you want, where you want, and in about any position you want everywhere you're to go (except in some cases, there may already be too many items stored in the one room...or in times when you just can't leave anything in the parameter at all). If you're wondering how you can remember where you've left the item you've dropped, then it's easier done than said when opening the game's map screen and pressing the A button to receive a list of which items the multiple colored dots represent. The only kink in this drop maneuver may be that you've left an item somewhere that's bound to be infested by more creatures than you can shake a stabbing weapon at. So unfortunately, there'll be points along the journey that you'll have to waste a bit of ammo and/or health to get back what you want.

This time around, the situation's manifestations aren't heavily based around the creation of zombies. Instead, there's a balance between the chewing undead, enormous cockroaches, rotting dogs, huge toads, and even a new leech zombie that you'll encounter more often than your average zombie. Spawning sporadically as you pummel this monster, it attacks with its lengthy tentacle arms and ultimately busts in a rain of leeches. That's not the worst part -- it's that you'll never know when it's coming next. You can run in one direction, and it'll be silent until you arrive. So be scared, very scared. Against any of these abominations you have at your disposal the usual lineup of the handgun, shotgun, knife, grenade launcher, etc.; bunches of support items to collect from ammunition to herbs you can mix for health restoration; and then the puzzle items that range in wide difference, with some being keys, some being batteries, and one that's even a jar with a leech sculpture contained inside.

Not all puzzles require item usage though. There are some that will combine both or either of Rebecca or Billy's natural born skill. Billy is the strong man. He's tough, brave, and is able to push large crates around in a single bound. He also knows about fire by putting his trusty lighter to work. Rebecca on the other hand can't do everything Billy can do. She's basically a weakling when it comes to combat. However, she is very skilled in mixing herbs, and also flicking her brain to the ON switch in order to store and brew gases for suppression of different types of status ailments. With Rebecca's tool kit and Billy's lighter on the side in a "personal item" listing, the character menus now can only carry up to six items all together -- which is a bad thing considering the big guns, like the shotgun or the grenade launcher, take up 2 item slots. And as I've said earlier on, you'll find that there's a lot more strategy involved in playing the game to its end.

With the release of Capcom's Resident Evil remake last spring, GameCube owners now have that Resident Evil control scheme fresh on their minds and in their grips. It's a good thing too, because the control of the newest Resident Evil title doesn't change much at all. In likelihood, that's actually a bad thing. Gone is the ability to setup your controller's preference. All that is left is to hold down on the right shoulder button and press A to blast away. The X button lets you switch between Billy and Rebecca on the fly, Y opens up the game's menu. Z once again is for the map, Start commands whether or not your partner is going to stay or follow, and B, in combination with the analog control, allows players to make a 180║ turn around. The C stick, which was used in the remake to handle the 180║ turn, now functions as the "other character" mover. It's a little hard at first to manipulate one character forward with the analog, and the other with the C -- but it is effective, just not recommended at all times. The worst problem of all lies with the remainder of the series' never ending use of radio controlled characters. Up is up, down is backwards, and turning right or left goes the way they go, only that whichever way you're headed it'll be a rocky road to master if you haven't done so already.

Better. Much better. That's how far Resident Evil 0 has come in terms of its visual appeal over both its original 64 state, and its counterpart, last spring's remake. There is but only true terror that lives and breathes the game's worlds to life. Never without a moment's pause will you feel uneasy to step forth by peering upon caved in ruins, disturbingly thrashed hallways, rooms packing blood soaked objects, laboratories encasing test subjects that were once human, a train ride with pale and scaly skinned passengers mangled every which way, and other areas that always have their own distinct unnerving feeling and format of shaping themselves. What makes these places of play really cool is Capcom's extra ingredient of real time FMV scenery that literally mixes in with the game's 2D pre-rendered backgrounds. On the train for example, there's not just a little bit of rain droplets you can watch from inside the passenger windows as the lightning flashes and thunder roars in the background, it's outside too, where you can really see that it takes its own route to follow as though it were alive like the player.

Lighting and shadow effects act very much the same way. You may be in yet another gloomy hallway that melts the very skin off your body into hiding, as the source of visibility pattern goes from really dim, to a flickering of the overhead light off and on when it so pleases to. Even as characters pass through eerie pitches of black to bright, whatever affects them does so for anything else intact. Whether it's a human or not, each moving object on screen has a personality to its own -- one that's real enough to send shivers down your spine. Zombies will linger about and then stamp towards your direction in their slow or fast paces; bugs will slither across the ground and make haste of your meaty body as its supper; and even the Hunters this time never have looked better, with bent over hunches and those long, clawing arms they like to use as their meal ticket. How Rebecca and Billy look in motion just as well is nothing short of remarkable, technologically speaking. Their bodies are perfectly pieced together, from great looking hair to the very bottom of their footwear. When they move, they move! Billy even has a handcuff wrapped around his wrist that dangles appropriately with his every twitch, giving the game that certain effect that you're actually witnessing one of the most beautiful, yet scariest games of the next generation in gaming.

It's a moaning, groaning, zombified Resident Evil world out there. Be lucky that you have two ears to indulge its every unearthing audio effect to absorb in what will shock you senseless. It appears Capcom has noticed players are spoiled of the game's linear path by now. They figure you'll recognize that scrape at the wall as just some zombie, or that hustling of footsteps your way as possibly a mutagenic dog. Playing with the idea, Capcom has removed in certain parts the very sounds of what would make some "things" do anything. In effect, this silenced measure actually pumps the scare meter up a notch or two, and most of the time you'll never know what'll happen next. What you will hear though is a mess of other stuff, like the bangs of your weapons firing upon legions of the undead, rattling of objects, bubbling of water, flowing of sewage, and of course your feet stomping across surfaces of concrete, metal, wood, liquid, aside a bevy of others.

Once you've experienced the chills and thrills, and maybe even a few spills of Resident Evil's nature intended, scare heavy game, then you might stop and realize that the soundtrack edging you forward or holding you back is one dark trance after another. Ominous as ever before, and maybe more so, the music has been tweaked for the better with tons of fantastic caliginous tracks, and even a few fair ones to balance together the perfect gothic-like mood. It's surprising to say the least, but Resident Evil's series has grown up from its original pacing, and lately has had some of the best voice acting in the biz. The stars of the latest game only give it their all, with voiced scenes that make you feel like you're watching a movie, rather than a sickly game such as this one. Keep it up, Capcom!

Resident Evil 0

Full Review: You're not scared, are you? Oh wait, you are...::pulls pants back up::

Full Review: You're not scared, are you? Oh wait, you are...
::pulls pants back up::