This is hands down the most visually impressive title available for the to date (even though the content is both horrifying and disgusting in its beauty). You’ll notice the place come to life with swinging chandeliers, reflections in mirrors, and bugs that scatter when you enter the room. The character models are so detailed that they look like actual human beings, complete with subtleties such as eyelashes, hair thickness, and shape… especially Jill’s shape… wow. The animation of everything will convince you that used actual specimens for motion capture. With the exception of the two main characters (more on that in a moment), everything moves exactly the way it should. Zombies lumber along like the hollow shells of humanity that they are, sharks swim, bees fly, and (eeuushh) spiders crawl exactly the way you think they should… if they were mutated into giant sized versions of themselves with a lot of pent-up aggression. There are, of course, many creatures (and many completely new ones) that bear no resmblance to anything in the land of reality, and yet they advance, swipe, and bite at you with a completely fluid, naturalistic look. It’s truly awe-inspiring.

The main characters have had an animation “face lift” as well, with several new frames added to their rotation and walking. The camera is still at a fixed angle, and moves only when its supposed to, so yes, players will still find themselves shooting at enemies they can’t see, as veterans of the series are used to doing. The whole graphical package is designed to convey a single emotion… fear. The latter titles in the series have strayed quite a bit from what is actually frightening, and gone for a more action-oriented approach, but here, on the GameCube, we’re back to the land of George Romero, zombies, dogs, hunters, spiders, snakes, and a mansion that serves as the title’s most frightening character of all. Prepare to lose sleep.

The sound mix delivers some of the best stuff that the GameCube is capable of. While not quite Dolby Pro-Logic II, and nowhere near the 5.1 discrete joy of Dolby Digital/DTS, it is a considerable offering with tense, atmospheric music, disgustingly appropriate sound effects (there are dozens just for walking over different types of ground alone, and I challenge anyone not to wince at the melon-busting noise of a zombie’s head being blown off), and, of course, the trademark so-bad-it’s-good dialogue. Has the dialogue been improved in this version? Yes. Is it Shakespeare? Hell no. At least the “master of unlocking” is no more.