After more than 20 years since its original release, Resident Evil 2 is back after being rebuilt from the ground up. Benefiting from Capcom’s in-house RE Engine as well as a multitude of contemporary upgrades, Resident Evil 2 feels like a wholly new game as opposed to a remake of a game two decades old and is better for it.
Resident Evil 2
Developer: CAPCOM Co., Ltd.
Price: $59.99
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One (reviewed)
MonsterVine purchased a Xbox One code for review
First and foremost I must reveal that I have never experienced the original Resident Evil 2 and in fact the only true experience I have with the series is Resident Evil 7: Biohazard when I reviewed it back in 2017. As such this review won’t contain many direct comparisons between the 1998 and 2019 iterations of Resident Evil 2. From what I can gather, the largest change from the original appears to be a change in perspective, going from static camera angles and tank controls to a more modern, behind-the-shoulder perspective.
Resident Evil 2 takes place a few months after the events of the original Resident Evil, which followed Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine as they investigated strange cannibalistic murders in a mansion just outside of Raccoon City, USA as a part of the special forces unit of the Racoon City Police Department (R.P.D) known as S.T.A.R.S. Resident Evil 2 follows Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy as they head into Raccoon City, each for their own reasons, and happen to meet at a gas station after a horrific zombie outbreak in the city.
Resident Evil 2 is unique in that there are several variants of the campaign. Players can decide who they want to play as, Claire or Leon, in their own takes on the story. Claire is seemingly a badass biker who clearly knows how to handle herself in a fight who is searching for her brother Chris who hasn’t checked in with Claire in a while. Leon is a new recruit of the R.P.D who was mysteriously told a week ago not to come in to work until further notice. Each character’s story starts and ends in largely the same way but their suite of weapons, dialogue, supporting cast and mid-sections of the story differ significantly making for alternate, if not familiar, takes on the Raccoon City outbreak. Similarly, each character has a “2nd run” version of their respective campaigns with additional layers added to boss fights, mixed up puzzles and item placements and a few slight story alterations. Each variation of the story has a different rating system where players can earn C, B, A or S ranks depending on completion time.
For my initial playthrough I selected Leon Kennedy as my protagonist, although I was sure to play through both. Resident Evil 2 starts off rather small in scope after a simple pit stop at a gas station quickly turns into the discovery of a zombified man attacking a store clerk and a fellow police officer in the back. I immediately felt the analog and utterly creepy tone of the game set in as the zombie, having just finished off the other cop, lurched towards me at a slow but still relatively urgent pace. With an already limited cache of ammunition for my simple sidearm I stood steady and landed a few well-placed shots into the zombie’s face, sending him to the ground with a thud. The door to the background through which I’d entered was suddenly blocked, supposedly by the injured store clerk I’d passed on the way in, so I had to pass the deceased cop and zombie to retrieve a key to another door, and the zombie stood back up. I was completely shocked and the reality of my situation began to set in. After downing the zombie and rushing out in hopes to avoid it standing back up yet again, I ran into a horde of zombies and a woman in red named Claire, who seemed equally capable in handling the situation. Long story short we made it into Raccoon City together but were split up, with the eventual goal to reach the R.P.D police station to make sense of things.
After arriving in the seemingly empty police station, things felt rather open ended. There was a save station in the form of a typewriter and a item storage container, which allows for the storage and retrieval of any number of items from several similar containers around the various areas of the game. Shortly after my arrival at the R.P.D it became clear that things had gone horribly wrong and it was not the safe space it had been made out to be.
From here, the full scope of the game takes shape. There are various different rooms of the police station across multiple floors, but many are locked or otherwise inaccessible. Through exploration, item collection and puzzle solving eventually more of the police station becomes accessible. This gradual sense of progression through solving almost geographical puzzles of how to gain access to new areas felt almost Metroidvania in nature, and as I collected more items and puzzles more and more of the map opened up and things became more and more connected.
A core tenant to Resident Evil 2 comes from the utter lack of resources like ammunition and healing items. Item placements are completely static and scripted in Resident Evil 2 meaning that once a resource is gone it’s gone until you can find more of it. This makes each and every item in the game desirable, and leads to some of the most interesting parts of the game. Every encounter with zombies becomes a calculation of risk/reward. Do I have enough ammunition to take this guy out? Is there a way I can complete my objective without doing that? Is it safe to bypass him, or does that risk me taking damage? Should I heal myself now, even though I’m not in a critical state yet? Being new to the series, I found myself frequently dry as a bone, making many encounters much more intense than they could have been and required a significant amount of critical thinking and unorthodox solutions. This could be exhilarating or frustrating depending on who you are as a player but I personally found the challenge and tension thrilling.
Inventory management isn’t limited to simply saving items and being frugal with their use. Both protagonists have limited inventory space, starting the game with only 8 inventory spaces. Most items in the game take up single squares of inventory space, but occasionally puzzle items or larger weapons will take up more space. This adds yet another layer to resource management as players need to analyze what they need in their inventory at the moment, how to make those items fit, what they can keep in the storage containers and how they’ll get to and from storage areas. To make things even more difficult, objects and items critical to the story take up inventory space. Thankfully, Resident Evil 2 makes things easy with an intuitive combination system allowing bullets to stack and various herbs to combine to form single, more potent health items, as well as incremental, but completely optional, inventory size boosts.
At various points in the story, such as escaping the police station, players will solve simple yet satisfying puzzles. Each and every puzzle was intuitive, but also challenging. Each one has seemingly obvious hints and guides but all feel equally complex, making solving them incredibly satisfying. I even found myself pulling out a piece of paper at some point, writing out the order of buttons pressed to help my solving of a portable safe code, something I haven’t had the joy of doing for years. One of my favorite puzzles involved learning the first letter of the first names of each member of the police department to unlock a desk, rewarding me with a very nice upgrade to my sidearm. There are various puzzles such as this in the game, ranging from padlocked lockers to picture-based treasure hunts and more. What felt really nice is that most of these puzzles are completely optional and unique, and reward incredibly useful items such as 2-space inventory upgrades or even entirely new and powerful weapons at times. One aspect of the Resident Evil series that I really loved was the blending of item management and puzzle solving. Every item in the game can be further observed in the inventory, allowing players to spin items around or interact with items in ways that may not have seemed obvious at first, such as hidden switches on items of hidden text on the bottom of an item.
Speaking of weapons, the combat and weaponry in Resident Evil 2 felt incredibly tactile, satisfying and punishing. Unlike some entries in the Resident Evil series players can move and fire their weapons, but only extremely slow and at a pretty severe cost to accuracy. This was an intuitive and fair compromise between the older, static combat of earlier entries and the more action-oriented Resident Evil 6. Every enemy is extremely rugged, and although often slow, can be surprisingly difficult to hit between the dark corridors and their inhuman movements. Seemingly expired bodies are hardly ever safe to pass by, often being inactive zombies or only temporarily defeated ones. Weapons feel heavy and lived in. Aiming takes time, each shot has a realistic amount of recoil and every enemy is dangerous. Between low-resources and a tight inventory combat is always a calculated risk, which further increases the satisfaction in winning a difficult fight. Furthermore, because many weapons and weapon upgrades are both significant upgrades and completely optional, I found myself almost forming a relationship with or understanding of each weapon. For example, after a solving a lengthy and intriguing size-puzzle I unlocked a .50 caliber handgun. The ammo for this weapon was expensive to craft and was rarely found in the world, but this magnum was an absolute powerhouse. Each upgrade to the weapon vastly improved its effectiveness, and I felt much safer with such a strong back-up plan as it were. Although there are less than a dozen different weapons between Claire and Leon the lineup feels earned, unique and incredibly satisfying to use.
Some cheesy dialogue and rushed character development aside, the plot of Resident Evil 2 is equal parts interesting and terrifying. What initially starts as an investigation into what’s going on in Raccoon City, motivations develop and diverge for both Claire and Leon. Because of the tension of low resources, tight and dark areas, a small arsenal and a lack of understanding the initial moments of the game are pretty damn creepy. Just as soon as the map opens up and things become a bit more comfortable something throws a wrench in the works. This sense of gradually increasing safety and its subsequent fall happens a few times throughout the game in the form of boss fights or a change in scenery, but none hit so hard as in introduction of the Tyrant, otherwise known as Mr. X.
The Tyrant is an immovable object, an 8-foot-tall titan with the sole objective of ending you. Once introduced, Mr. X becomes a constant threat in the R.P.D, roaming the halls with incredibly loud footfalls hunting the player. When I was unlucky enough to cross paths with Mr. X the music, along with my heart, began to pound as he strutted towards me. Unable to do anything, my only course of action was to run, attempt to stun him somehow, or hide. There was a moment when I was critically injured and out of almost all my ammunition, cowering in a safe room. I could hear Mr. X pacing the wooden halls just outside, but with no indication that he would leave anytime soon, I began to plan my next move. Never has a game replicated the absolute desperation that I felt at this moment. I studied my map, figuring out where I should go next and for what reason. I remembered a health herb that I couldn’t pick up earlier across the police station, but I knew I had to pass Mr. X to get there. Without ammunition and with a Tyrant hot on my heels, I couldn’t exactly stop to shoot at anything in my way. What came next was a mad-dash from point A to point B that I’d planned for how quickly and safely I could get there, I grabbed the healing herb and ran to the nearest safe room, effectively avoiding confrontation and improving my chances of survival. I experienced various moments like this throughout my time with Resident Evil 2 that are unmatched in the survival horror genre.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention just how phenomenal this game feels and looks. I played Resident Evil 2 on my Xbox One X and it’s clear that the RE Engine can achieve some of the best visuals out there for the system. Rain, blood, clothing and weapons all look incredibly realistic. Cutscenes were stunning, and every animation felt like a pinnacle achievement in video game visuals. The lighting, which is imperative to any horror experience, was extremely impressive and absolutely added to the atmosphere.
The Final Word
Resident Evil 2 is equal parts terrifying, satisfying and interesting. There are tons of reasons to play through the various campaigns again, despite their slightly disappointing similarities. There’s never a boring moment in Resident Evil 2, making for a survival experience that’s just as horrifying as it is fun.
MonsterVine Review Score: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
