The long awaited time is here. Last year I picked up a Nintendo Gamecube for the express purpose of playing Resident Evil when it came out on said system. Well, actually I picked up the Gamecube because I really felt like spending money that weekend.

Here about three months ago I found out about an ultra-fancy version of the Gamecube released in Japan by Panasonic that is also a DVD player. Without a doubt it is the coolest looking game console I've ever seen. I did a bit of research and found that the majority of the Panasonic machines that get imported into the US are also modified to play both Japanese and American Gamecube games in addition to being modded to play any region of DVD. Once I discovered that I knew that I would be wasting money on one of these way more expensive cool looking Gamecube machines. I kept looking at my normal import source www.ncsx.com to see what they had in stock. This winter they had the Panasonic machine modded to play Japanese and American games but it only played region 2 dvds. Then a week or two ago they got a restock of them in with the all-region dvd mod. I promptly purchased one so that I'd be able to play Resident Evil on it rather than on an ordinary Gamecube. The machine showed up a couple of days ago, and I picked up Resident Evil yesterday.

The Resident Evil series is one fine batch of games. My friend Dean and I spent many, many hours beating the first one and getting the crap scared out of us back when it first came out. Then we played through the second one in an all-night session + a couple of hours the next morning. It was so great we promptly spent the next two or three days playing through it multiple more times in order to get all of the parts of the story and to see what else was in the game. All in all I think we beat that one like six times or so in less than a week. Then the third game came out. It took me all winter to get through that game because I would go up to my ski buddy, Chris', place the night before we would go skiing. Then we'd play RE3 for an hour or two before crashing out to get up early the next morning. It took all winter because Chris kind of sucks at the game, Hiya Chris and I was usually too tired to really try very hard. About a year later over at my buddy Greg's place we played through RE3 in a single night. I can't think of any games other than fighting games where I've actually beaten multiple games in the same series. Most games just don't grab me enough to make me actually finish them. That just shows how engrossing the Resident Evil series is.

Not only are the games incredibly good, they scare the crap out of me. There's nothing like being in a darkened room w/ the game running through the stereo to get the heart going. Running your character around half-dead, low on ammo, and dreading the next zombie dog, zombie mutant, or zombie whatever that is going to jump out at you, scare the heck out of you, and possibly kill you.

After that extended introduction here's what the new remake of Resident Evil on Gamecube is like: It is moody, scary, and a good game. The awful intro is redone. The dialogue isn't as stilted. The graphics look amazing. You can no longer distinguish the polygons from the prerendered in the game. The lighting effects are the best use of light I've ever seen in a game. The sound is quite good also. The controls are still the same irritating method of running around, getting turned around the wrong direction BS that all Resident Evil players are intimately familiar with.

The ambience in the game is scary. We are talking way scarier than the first game. Primarily this is achieved via the the excellent use of light and lots of shadow. The swaying overhead lights that cause your shadow to move beside you is guaranteed to creep you out since you know that sometimes a moving shadow is a zombie that wants to eat you. The improved background sounds and music really help keep you wound up too. Did you hear something crashing in the background? Uh, I hope not.

All in all it looks like a pretty good game. We've seen this mansion before and these characters before but they didn't look anywhere near as good last time. It is familiar without being a rehash due to the technical improvements. It isn't like Biohazard Director's Cut which was the exact same as Resident Evil but with a bunch of puzzles moved around.