Resident Evil Archives Comments by Kristan Reed

A shame they couldn't even be bothered to put in widescreen support. Who still has a 4:3 tv nowadays?

My Nan.

'A shame they couldn't even be bothered to put in widescreen support. '

This game has pre-rendered backgrounds... everything was rendered for 4:3. Converting it to 16:9 wouldn't be a simple case of increasing the camera's field of view like it is for some games, they would have had to re-render everything, surely it's obvious that this would not have been in the least bit cost effective.

I've still got to replay this and Zero on my girlfriends Cube, shame it's not touched up a bit for today I might of gone out and bought a Wii for it! A good game, the kind I wish Capcom still made.

/ shudders at remembering RE5

Erm....one thing though. The Gamecube version (which this release is from the sounds of it) is yours for at least half that price these days.....

That sems like a bit of a lazy convertion to me. I'll still have it though, I've not got any Gamecube memory cards or controllers so at leasy I wouldn't have to worry about those.

"I've not got any Gamecube memory cards or controllers"

So how do you play Cube? You do play Cube...don't you? ;)

I just stick the games in my Wii and attempt to move people with my mental powers. Doesn't work apparently.

I'm not sure whether I'll buy a Cube controler and card so I can' play all that good Cube stuff that's dirt cheap now, or just buy this. As a horder, I can see me doing both like a big idiot :P

"Again, learning the hard way might prove too frustrating for gamers used to modern day checkpointing and recharging health."
I hate that. it takes away from games any sense of urgency and danger. not to mention, you're not required to get better at it. you can just rambo your way in and then just stand still until you're health is up again.
I'm not saying we need to go back to game mechanics that belong in the eighties... but still. yea.
*makes an old man's voice*
ah, kids these days and their easy videogames. back in my day, games didn't take us by hand and guide us to the end! it was a competition! there was a REASON why we said "I BEAT the game"!

@SuperBas - "A shame they couldn't even be bothered to put in widescreen support. Who still has a 4:3 tv nowadays?"

I kept my 21" 4:3 Sony CRT TV specifically for use with the Wii, mainly for the retro and GameCube stuff. Seems it was a sensible choice IMO because even with component video most Wii games tend to look horribly jaggy on a large screen HDTV as I found out. I ended up giving my component video lead to my parents for their HDTV. RGB SCART on a CRT TV at least masks out most of the jagginess, thanks to the scanline technology, and every game plays without huge side borders.

As for Resident Evil Archive, it's exactly what I expected it to be given that the game used pre-rendered backgrounds so there was no way it was going to benefit from Wiimote controls in the same that Resident Evil 4 Wii did. I already have the original GameCube title so there is no need for me to rebuy it. Nice for those who haven't played it though but as noted in the EG review, you can probably pick up the original for under a tenner now if you look around.

"As a horder, I can see me doing both like a big idiot :P "

\o/

Not to piss on Capcom's parade but yeah Cube stuff is dead cheap now so worth looking at a controller and card Wii owners. I want the Rogue Squadrons next!

/ Picks up toy lightsaber - yes I have one.....


Edit - Oh, on the 4:3 issue, I'll say it again, time for a decent HDTV peeps. Those borders vanish at the press of a button (on Toshiba TVs anyway not sure on the rest).

@Bad09 - yes, pretty much every TV does that, but all you're doing is zooming in on the middle bit and stretching the edges non-linearly. You lose the black bars but also the top and bottom of the original image. Some people prefer that, some people prefer the full unaltered image.

Sounds like a missed opportunity this. Very lazy.

@ systems

True there is a trade off but personally I like the zoom, looks awesome on Soul Calibur! :)

My cheapo HDTV has about eight zoom settings that do all kinds of stretching, guess one will work okay, I think the Subtitles one is probably best as that keeps the bottom in view... hope most other decent sets would have similar features.

"As impressive as Resident Evil 5 is, Resident Evil 4 remains the Silent Hill 2 of the series, atleast for the moment "

Get out.

"It's a game that forces you to learn through exploration and through failure, and you'll discover that failure is usually your own fault - and even when it isn't, you'll know better next time. Success is always sweet."

Trial and error gameplay is for masochists with too much time on their hands. Don't confuse 'relief that some arbitrary thing worked' with 'sweet success'.

Reviewer left out the madening frustration of the lengthy and unskippable 'cutscenes' whenever you went through a door or up some stairs.

Hooray for fixed cameras! :)

@Chtulie

I think in the GC version you can walk up the stairs without loading, that's progress for you ;)

@ drumbaby "My Nan.":

And they are the target demographic of the Wii after all :)

It would be nice to have it in 16:9 but as Kenty's said, they're prerendered images used in the backgrounds so they'd need to re-render all the scenes again; and that's assuming they even have the 3d geometry/painted imagery (however they did them) beyond the original 4:3 aspect ratio to easily do that without having to go back to the drawing board.

I still have my GCN game like, so I'll stick with that I think! Maybe someone will remake it as a L4D map. hmm...

Whilst trying not to sound like a bellend, we all know what Resident Evil is about by now - why no detail on the Wiimote/Nunchuck controls further than "it's an option"? What does that mean? What button does what? How does it work? Otherwise it's just a review of Resident Evil for the Gamecube...

This iteration is arguably my favourite in the Resi series, but it's a bit cheap how Capcom have re-released it again, without any improvements and only with rudimentary Wiimote support.

I wish Capcom still made games like this. This game is so much better than Resi 5 it's a joke.

i think the gamecube reissues on wii just goes to show what a crap machine the WII is,and how short of ideas(outside of nintendo)the industry is with regards motion control.imagine the best games on 360/ps3 being last gen reissues they would never get away with it but the WII has unfortunetly.please burst bubble burst.

Converting it to 16:9 wouldn't be a simple case of increasing the camera's field of view like it is for some games, they would have had to re-render everything, surely it's obvious that this would not have been in the least bit cost effective

Err, no not surely at all. Especially when i'm being expected to pay almost 20 quid for the fucker. Cost effective works when its a budget title, not when its almost the same cost as some full price releases.

What is it with this fascination people have about putting up with shoddy behaviour and dubious decision making from Nintendo? Is it because they're just so relieved to actually have a decent game to play that they're willing to put up with laziness like this?

There's not a great deal to say about the controls, other than if you use the nunchuk option you can move/rotate with the stick, run with the Z button and do a quick 180 turn with the dpad on the remote. It works as well as it can, but doesn't 'fix' anything. At least they didn't put in motion controls. As previously, the default auto aim nature of the combat helps counter the inability to see your enemy half the time.

The respectable Gamecube version of RE was my first survival horror game. However, I'm currently playing Silent Hill 1 on my modded PSP and I can now fully appreciate just how much Konami did to make the genre genuinely scary; as opposed to just consisting of glorified puzzle games which happened to have zombies in them.

Just bought resident evil on the Gamecube the other day on Amazon. Playing through it now. The older the game in the resident evil series the better

@ yupyup

Well, you can't blame Nintendo for a Capcom release.

[Edit - can't spell]

I still think this remake of the original is the best RE game in the series, as the others just don't manage to capture the sense of fear and anxiety of being trapped in the claustrophobic zombie stalked hallways of the mansion. Just make sure you use the zippo and the gasoline to torch those zombie corpses though. I had to restart my game the first time I played it because I didn't know about that. Also if you play it on easy then ammo isn't such a problem.

Ah Resident Evil back when it was a horror game.

Just make sure you use the zippo and the gasoline to torch those zombie corpses though. I had to restart my game the first time I played it because I didn't know about that. Also if you play it on easy then ammo isn't such a problem.

Ah, I remember the sheer horror I felt the first time I realized that all the zombies I thought I'd neutralized were actually still alive and would soon rise again and come after me. Thankfully, I didn't have to restart the game; just rushing out on a panicky and very messy killing spree was enough to get me through it.

And thoughtfully conserving a limited amount of ammo is definitely part of the fun in RE. After all, what's survival horror without some hardcore resource management?

Now if we could get 2 and 3 remade in the same style...

I loved this remake. I played it through so many times on Cube. I want my Cube back.

one could argue that the game can't really benefit from a new wiimote control system, given it's limitations.

But I'm very disappointed that they didn't add widescreen support. In any case, I'll just dig out my old Gamecube copy, either that or code veronica. I actually preferred this style of RE over the killfest that was RE5.

Despite initial reservations, I really enjoyed Resident Evil 5 - but this game cacks on it from a great height - as do Resident Evil 2, CVX and 4.

But whether to buy REmake again for the Wii? Is it worth it for not having to rely on a 'Cube memory card and (pressumably) not having to change discs before entering the lab.

I like how people keep accusing nintendo for every re-release on the system.
I belive we're talking about capcom, here... you know, the ones whom have been selling us the same fighting game for nearly two decades now? you might have heard about it.

we know how they work, no point in complaining.

Wait, RE boasts satisfying puzzles?

Yeah, right.

@yup yup: You *DO* realise this wasnt made by nintendo dont you? Or are you REALLY that dim?

Another idea seemingly designed to cause intense player distress was and is the typewriter save system,

IIRC, it was designed with that in mind. It was explicitly chosen to increase tension.

@Oh-Bollox : I agree.. i loved the tension the typewriter caused. I just finished fallout 3, found myself quick saving all the time, and as such there was no "rush" to it.

Gamers seem to want games to be easy as hell to finish nowadays. I blame games like halo :-)

Whereas I agree, I like quick save as it allows me to play short bursts - then go to the pub, etc. If i'm going to be playing something like Resi - i know i need to devote long play periods, and play it when i have time accordingly.

smelly, I'd blame any game that has quicksave/load (i.e. on PC) over something like Halo. Which is buggeringly tough at times. I'm not quite sure how you can accuse a game of being too easy and then praise the ability to save at any time and consequently damage any chance of tension at various points.

REmake is still one of my TOP 3 games of all time.
I wont be buying it as the GameCube disc still gets loaded often......
but if more people get to enjoy this great :)

REmake 2 and 3 sigh.... I hope one day they will arrive... hope...
Now all I need is Silicon Knights to make Eternal Darkness 2, and I can re-live the good days of cold beer, dark rooms and scary games with the housemate :D

quicksaves are a tough matter. they encourage you to abuse them, but I'm not willing to prosecute them. they work perfectly in games like max payne for istance, where you walk through a door and BLAM suddenly you're dead. beats having to start the level all over each ambush you encounter.

My greatest gaming achievement was finishing the orginal PS1 Resident Evil, WITHOUT A MEMORY CARD.

That's right, when I had my PS1 I couldn't afford a memory card.
So you could imagine playign through RE with one mistake and you're back to the start.

The tension when the Hunters appeared was unbearable.

@RedSparrows : It was a joke - a lot of people on here know i'm not a fan of halo - and subsequently think im some sort of anti-mcrosoft fanboy or something. So I pick on it at any given opportunity (just for kicks)

>Now all I need is Silicon Knights to make Eternal Darkness 2,

The ONLY memory i have of ED was that the end boss was rock hard.. but to fight him you had to sit through a 10 minute long unskippable cutscene.

After 3 or 4 attempts i gave up and never played again.

i never did see the ending.. maybe i'll youtube it.

Man, the old RE inventory system is just crap. I got the gamecube RE and got tired of playing it. I spent all my time running around moving stuff to the magic box.

Have they changed the "freezing" between change in camera-angles?

If so, this is a must-buy!!

Actually to the people who say that the target audience for the wii are people who dont own HDTV's or widescreen ones they are actually fast becoming wrong.

You cant easilly but CRT standard def tv's nowadays. My Gran owns a 32" SONY Bravia. Nearly all shops only sell HDTV's of differing grades now. I have a friend who works in s sony derivative shop only selling sony's (therfore more expensive) and a great deal of their customers are older, they are also doing really good trade.

(Most people replace TV's every 5-10 probably closer to 5 soon most people will own HDTV's. The wiis lack of graphics potential looks shortsighted)

Also eternal darkness end boss isnt that hard if you explored properly early on.

Finally this game probably wont appeal to the demography that are even slightly lightly to own 4:3 TV's. It seems more like a last sweep of the mop to catch the final few people who are gamers who missed the game prevously, by age or chance, Basically oppertunism.