This time last year, Capcom was reacquainting us with the brilliant Resident Evil 4 via a Wii Edition release that refreshed and, overall, improved on the original game. This year's sort-of repeat performance, with Resident Evil Zero as Capcom's subject, isn't worse than RE4: Wii Edition just because of the difference in quality of source material-- it also suffers because Capcom has seemingly forgotten to remake the game to take advantage of the Wii and/or its control options.


To be fair to the developer, this Wii version of Resident Evil Zero isn't advertised as a "Wii Edition" like RE4: WE was -- it's just plain old Biohazard Zero printed on the packaging -- but it does smack of pointlessness to bring a GameCube game to the Wii and not do anything interesting with the conversion opportunities.


"Wow, your butt is firm. You must totally work out."


So, specifically what hasn't Capcom done? Most obviously, it hasn't really embraced the Wii Remote. Yes, you can use the Remote in tandem with the Nunchuk to work your way through the game, but only their digital buttons and analogue stick are functional: motion controls are completely absent from this production, so there's no point in plugging your Remote into the Wii Zapper holster unless you want to make-believe you're still playing Umbrella Chronicles.

Where Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition was done a great service by the transferral of its targeting and shooting to the Remote sensor and the use of an over-the-shoulder view, RE0 doesn't present such opportunities because it's all stuck in an awkward third-person perspective, played from the viewpoint of the series' (pre-Resident Evil 4) old-fashioned fixed cameras and set in pre-rendered environments.


"Take back what you said about my crap haircut. Now!"


It would have taken Capcom some significant reworking of the game's structure to create an opportunity for the implementation of proper Wii Remote weapon control, which is probably why the Big C didn't bother. To compensate for this, we're given a choice of controller options including use of the Classic Controller, the Wii Remote and Nunchuk as a kind of split joypad (just like the RE4: Wii Edition setup, only without the ability to use the Remote as a pointer) and, ironically, the GameCube Controller. Plug in a Wireless Wavebird and you might as well be playing the GameCube version -- which just highlights the curious pointlessness of this Wii release.

Here's something else Capcom hasn't done: anything about the graphics. Resident Evil Zero on Wii looks virtually identical to the GameCube original. This isn't a criticism as such, because the game still appears moderately pretty six years on from its debut, but it does unfortunately mean that there's no 16:9 mode (resulting in black bars down the sides of your widescreen display) and no visual enhancements to speak of either. At least the game runs in progressive scan at 480p, but then, so did the GameCube version.

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