The era of the Nintendo GameCube was a wonderful time for the “Resident Evil” series. For the first time, all of the series’ main games were available on a single console. Not only that, but the first game received a tremendous overhaul with lush new graphics, updated gameplay, and the return of a subplot that was removed from the original release. Then came the new games, “Resident Evil 0” and the wildly successful “Resident Evil 4.” But this all happened 14 years ago, so why am I talking about it now? Well, earlier this year Capcom released “Resident Evil: Origins Collection” which features HD remasters of that 2002 remake of the original “Resident Evil” and “Resident Evil 0.” They were amazing games at the time, so let’s see just how well they hold up.

If you’re reading this, then you probably already know the plot of “Resident Evil” but let’s go ahead and give you a recap just in case. A town in the midwest called Raccoon City is struck by a series of strange murders. An elite police force called the S.T.A.R.S. (Special Tactics And Rescue Squad) follows the trail of these murders to an abandoned mansion in the woods. There they find that the murders are actually zombie attacks, and that the zombies are the result of a virus created by a pharmaceutical company bent on world domination. As I typed that out I realized how weird it sounds but trust me, it works in context. “Resident Evil 0” is where things start getting really strange. In that one, you take on the role of Rebecca Chambers. a minor character from the first game (a member of the S.T.A.R.S. Less-experienced Bravo Team), approximately 24 hours before the first game begins. In this 24 hours, Rebecca teams up with an escaped military prisoner (on his way to be executed for murdering 23 people) and works her way through another abandoned mansion in the woods while learning about the origins of the evil Umbrella Corporation and the zombie-creating T-Virus. Also there’s a guy in a white robe who controls leeches by singing. It’s an odd one, to say the least. While the stories of the games may be a little weird, they both succeed so well in creating atmosphere that the oddness of the stories just kind of falls by the wayside.

As far as the graphics go, it’s honestly pretty hard to believe that these games are 14 years old. Not only do they look better than most other games from the time, they still look better than a lot of modern games. The games use pre-rendered backgrounds in order to get things to look a lot better than they would if they’d had to be rendered in real-time by the original systems. This also allowed the designers to make the few bits that are rendered in real-time, the moving parts if you will, to take a lot more of the processing power so that they would look great too. So yeah, the games still look absolutely beautiful, which is essential to that heavy tone that the games are going for. The monster design is also just absolutely brilliant, from the obvious zombies and giant insects to the truly bizarre things like the leech queen in “Resident Evil 0.” I do, however, have one problem with the graphics. See, they added something to the update of “Resident Evil” that is just entirely out of place. What is it? Well, someone apparently decided that series mainstay and all around badass Jill Valentine needed to be sexier, so now her boobs jiggle when she walks. This wasn’t in the original GameCube version, and it doesn’t happen to Rebecca in the updated version of “0.” It’s just so entirely out of place. It’s a small thing, to be sure, but it is a crack in the serious, heavy tone of the game.

The sound is kind of a mixed bag. The music and the sound-effects are all just absolutely spot on. However, the series does have a reputation for cheesy voice-acting, and oh is that ever on display here. In fact, it’s kind of gotten retroactively worse as the industry standard for voice-acting has gotten better over the years. There is a certain charm in that, though. That aside though, the music is great at setting up the tone of the game, and there’s plenty of great little things like hearing the rainfall and thunder when you’re in a room with a window to the outside. Sure, it’s obvious, but again, these games are 14 years old, and that attention to detail was not at all standard back then.

“Resident Evil” plays exactly like every other horror game because pretty much every other horror game is influenced by “Resident Evil.” You collect keys, solve trivially easy puzzles, shoot monsters, etc. “Resident Evil 0” is again, a little odd, in that you have two player characters you switch between on the fly. This makes opens up the door for some far more interesting puzzles, but that option isn’t taken as often as it should be. “0” also gets rid of the item boxes (baiscally a place to store things that wouldn’t fit in your inventory) and instead forces players to leave items on the ground, which leads to some annoyingly long backtracks to try and figure out where, for instance, you put all that spare shotgun ammo, or a key you hadn’t needed in an hour. Sure, it’s more realistic, but I’d rather just have the boxes.

While neither game in it is perfect, “Resident Evil: Origins Collection” is an absolute must for any fan of horror games. “Resident Evil” is even better than you remember, and “Resident Evil 0” is even weirder than you remember.