A successor to the old Alone In the Dark games, the original Resident Evil on playstation and PC is a hugely iconic third-person survival horror in which you find yourself running around a creepy gothic mansion infested with zombies, solving puzzles, carefully conserving your limited ammo and er, eating pot plants in order to stay alive (okay, so technically they're herbs).

The Gamecube remake is very faithful to the original, with a very similar atmosphere and art direction, full of creepy rooms and ominous, creaking starcases, whilst shambling zombies and rabid, undead dogs lurk around every corner. The zombies are brilliantly done, looking and sounding pretty damn scary, with excellent animation to boot. Ammo is scarce, as before, but there is a twist to the game mechanics here- once you have put a zombie down, you now need to douse the body with kerosine and burn it, else it will come back as a faster, tougher 'Rage' zombie (unless you blow off the head with a well-aimed shotgun/pistol round, that is). There are also one-use 'Defensive' items this time around, and these are pretty cool as well. WHen a zombie lunges at you, hammering the buttons will cause your character to stab the zombie in the eye with a ceremonial dagger, or stick a flash grenade in its mouth, that can then be detonated by shooting it.

The controls are clunky as before, but then that was always part of the charm of the original game, whilst the (all-new) puzzles are pretty taxing, if a little too obscure on occasion. The only real flaw is the inventory system- you can only carry a small number of items, which is fine, but you cant drop items, except in a special trunk, making for a lot of tedious extra legwork and unneccessary micromanagement.

The game still looks beautiful, especially the stunning pre-rendered backgrounds, and whilst the dramatically skewed camera angles do sometimes make for irritating combat moments, this again adds to the tension, such as when a zombie lumbers intor view right up cose, as you try and get a lock on it from behind, your view of your character temporarily obscured. The sound and music are superb as well, and the game feels highly polished all round. The story is well-done too: cheesy but immersive and scary all the same, whilst many scenes from the original are back here as well, including the part in which a zombified scientist bursts from a closet behind you whilst you are immersed in his increasingly incoherent diary. Definitely worth a look for fans of thsi kind of survival horror- it hasnt aged a bit.