Resident Evil Origins Collection

Genre: Compilation / Graphic Adventure / Horror

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Resident Evil Origins Collection is a Compilation that includes the two games in the Resident Evil series that take place chronologically the earliest in the series’ timeline: Resident Evil, and its prequel, Resident Evil 0. Resident Evil was first released on the PlayStation in 1996 and is credited for codifying the “Survival Horror” genre. It was later remade for the GameCube in 2002 before getting an HD remaster on other platforms. Resident Evil 0 was released later in 2002 on the GameCube and shares a lot of similarities with the game it is a prequel to, with this game also being remastered and ported to other platforms. The two games would both be brought to the Nintendo Switch in 2017 and can be purchased separately on the Nintendo eShop, or together in this retail compilation.

Here is what I thought of each game in this collection:

Game	Genre	# of Players	Grade
Resident Evil	Graphic Adventure / Horror	1, Online Leaderboards	C+
tl;dr Resident Evil is an HD remaster of the GameCube remake of the formative “Survival Horror” game, and in terms of its visuals and presentation, it’s still impressive even to this day. What is not impressive, however, is the horribly awkward controls and frustrating game design elements that were derided even in the original PlayStation release, and are even less welcome over 20 years later. This is still an impressive, landmark game, but it’s not especially fun to play by today’s standards.
Resident Evil 0	Graphic Adventure / Horror	1	C-
tl;dr Resident Evil 0 is a Horror game that follows in the footsteps of the remake of the first Resident Evil game with a story that takes place before the events of that game. While this is a decent port, ultimately this game isn’t anywhere near as iconic as the first Resident Evil, the visuals aren’t as impressive, and the gameplay has all of the flaws of that game and then some. The result is a game that only series fans should bother with.

Both of these games look great even today (Resident Evil even more than Resident Evil 0), featuring a resolution of 1080p in docked mode and 720p in handheld mode, with a rock-solid 30FPS framerate. And Resident Evil at least is still to this day one of the most iconic games in its genre. However, I’m not going to sugarcoat it – both games suffer from terrible controls and an archaic design that makes them a pain to play.

It gets worse, too. If you’re buying the retail release of these games, get ready to make room for a 13.5GB digital download, because only Resident Evil is actually on the physical cartridge – Resident Evil 0 requires a download to play.

And yet even more bad news – this collection was originally released with an absurd $60 price tag, although in the time since its release it has gone down in price at retailers that still sell it to a somewhat more reasonable $40.

So what we have here is a physical release that still requires a massive amount of memory space due to only half of its games being on the cartridge, with that release having been overpriced right out of the gate, and with this compilation including two games that look great but play very poorly by today’s standards. As a result, I can only recommend Resident Evil Origins Collection to the most die-hard fans of the series.

tl;dr – Resident Evil Origins Collection is a Compilation that includes Resident Evil and Resident Evil 0, two games that still look phenomenal today, but with gameplay that has aged extremely poorly. What’s more, the physical collection they find themselves in is overpriced and requires a 13.5GB download to play Resident Evil 0. There is so much wrong with this package that it is actually worse than the sum of its parts and the only people who will find it worthwhile are the series’ biggest fans… who are also likely to be the ones most disappointed by it.

Grade: D+

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