An excellent example of how to remake a game, with a near-perfect balance between imaginative new ideas and respect for the original. It’s stunning how little this game has aged nearly two decades after its release. It still looks fantastic, with the verisimilitude offered by higher-res graphics arguably being its number one advantage over the original game. In the 1996 Resident Evil, the seedier details of the Spencer Mansion were largely left to the player’s imagination due to technical limitations. In the remake, nearly every room and hallway has some kind of unsettling environmental detail. This is the Spencer Mansion in its full glory, as the developers must have always intended it - a puzzle box with an atmosphere of dread that is invoked whenever you turn a corner or walk through a door.

The numerous other additions and changes to the original are also to the remake’s advantage. The script has been rewritten to edit out some of the more ridiculous dialogue from the original - this still feels like a B-movie, but you’ll never have to stop and wonder if the voice actors are people randomly pulled in off the street like you did in ‘96. The story additions not only perform an admirable job of eliminating dangling threads (now we understand why this house is full of obtuse puzzles and deadly traps), but also provide a scary yet sympathetic antagonist in Lisa Trevor.

As for the gameplay elements, everything from the controls to the puzzle-solving feels smoother and more refined. Of course, some people are always going to have a distaste for the tank controls and the fixed camera angles, but if you can jive with those conceits, this is probably the aesthetic peak of that approach. Atmospheric, creepy, and tense, REmake is a great place to start for those looking to get into the ‘classic’ Resident Evil games.