Original Publication Date: 18/1/2020

Re-published 28/06/2022

Resident Evil REmake 2

I played Resident Evil 1 Remake for the first time last year, and it quickly became one of my favourite games of all time, and I was lucky enough to play it just before the release of Resident Evil 2 Remake. I picked up, knowing that I probably wasn’t going to enjoy it as much as it’s predecessor – after all, it’s been more than a decade since Capcom hit out of the park with the original remake, and honestly, since they were an amazing developer at all. But still, I picked up Resident Evil 2 with a lot of anticipation. And whilst, yes, I didn’t like it as much as the original – I still came out knowing that Resident Evil 2 was almost definitely going to be my game of the year, with it’s amazing visuals and exploration, tense atmosphere and locations, and the most terrifying mechanic I’ve seen in recent gaming, in the form of The Tyrant.
When I wrote about Resident Evil 1, I referred to it’s main location, the Spencer Mansion, as one of the greatest locations in gaming, and I feel much of what I said there, also applies to two of RE2’s major locations, the Police Station and The Lab. The Police Station is weird, winding, and full of every kind of zombie ready to eat your character’s face. And yet, it makes sense – it used to a museum, after all. It’s major puzzles are silly, classic RE fare… yet it’s fits here far more than the stupidly insane Spencer Mansion (and I say that with the greatest respect!). Honestly, I’d probably say The Police Station is the best location in games this year. And this huge area never really feels overwhelming, either, as the game slowly doles out upgrades, keys, and story beats that slow expands your operational range and your knowledge of the situation, something they kept intact from both the original version of the game, and it’s much acclaimed predecessor. It’s a genuinely unnerving place to explore, especially with the footsteps of zombies echoing through the station, and the endless rain outside just serves to deepen the sense of isolation the characters are facing. The near total lack of music in much of the game, outside of boss fights, also do wonders to set the tone of what’s happening, making every little noise that much more terrifying, The other sections of the game, the Sewers and the Lab, are less expansive and a bit more linear in the player’s exploration, and it’s clear that the Museum was the real focus of love for the remake, and it paid off amazingly. The meat and bones of this game is it’s exploration, no doubt – the creatures you encounter are more roadblocks than anything else, and the gunplay is reflective of that.

You have to pick your battles wisely, especially if you’re playing on the higher difficulty (which I highly recommend!). Zombies will take a lot of normal ammunition before going down, so until you get heavy hitters like the Shotgun or heavier weaponry, you have to take it slow and plan out your routes. On higher difficulty, it can be near impossible to wipe everything out, leading me to have some pretty tense situations of charging down corridors, avoiding zombies, Lickers, and Tyrant himself to get to a key or another important item. Some of the best moments of the game were when I was low on ammo, moving as silently as I could down a corridor to avoid fighting two seperate Lickers. In some ways, planning to save ammo or other resources is more fun than actually fighting the zombies – it gives a level of depth to the management of the game that just simply makes it more fun and exciting than just laying a dozen or so bullet into a zombie and hope it goes down. Boss fights are a bit more of the bullet sponge type, but they are all without exception incredibly exciting affairs, pitting Claire or Leon against a foe that can ruin them in a single blow. Some of them really require you to take a strategy, shoot certain weak points or dance out of dangerous positions, but most of all they are a joy to play, and I really felt the game could’ve done with another one or two at key moments that weren’t the same character, as pretty much all the boss fights, sans one, are against the infected being G.

One thing is certain with this game, however – Resident Evil has never looked this good. The character models are world design have reached a frighteningly amazing level of photorealism. The way the characters are depicted and act makes the game feel a bit more grounded and realistic than they were in the original game, which I feel works for the game a lot more. Little animations of the players using items for puzzles really creates a sensation of satisfaction at solving them. But most of all, Leon and Claire, especially, look incredible and are probably among the most well rendered and best looking characters in recent gaming memory. Everything looks good in this game, for better or worse – and by worse, I mean the gore. This is a gross game, and I say that in the best way. Shooting zombies is a rank affair, with limbs going off, flesh wounds being exposed, and skin being torn apart when Leon or Claire is overwhelmed. It’s honestly disgusting, but in a sense of, yeah, this is how things would be if you were in a gunfight with the zombie. The locations of the game look superb as well, with a staggering amount of detail put in to just about everything, and it just generally feeling like a very ‘real’ location, except for maybe the Lab, which is a bit more of a silly, fun science fiction location than anything else. But, it does succeed in creating a very ‘sterile’, scary environment that puts you on edge, because at that point of the game, you really have no idea what it’s going to throw at you – and considering what they do throw at you in that section of the game, that’s a smart mindset to have.

The story itself is pretty classic RE fare – a couple of characters are trapped in a horrifying situation, and have to do whatever they can to get out, maybe stopping some virus in the process, and that’s all here. And it’s fine, almost relaxing in a way. There really aren’t too many surprises here, but it’s all such 90’s shlock that it’s almost entertainingly silly, though it does lead to being a little at-odds with it’s very realistic and serious gameplay elements. It’s all interesting enough to pull you through, but it’s never the reason why I was pushing through with the game. The dual perspectives, however, are pretty cool overall, and I felt there was enough difference between the two to be worth the two playthroughs. The relationship between Claire and Sherry was genuinely pretty heartwarming, whilst I felt sorry for how much Leon really got his ass kicked or saved, to point it was honestly hilarious how out of his depth Leon is throughout the game. Claire’s story is a bit more hopeful, due to helping out Sherry, whilst Leon’s showcases the consequences of Racoon City’s fall a bit better, especially in his conversations with his fellow police officer. Overall, the story is just fine, but at the end of the day, Resident Evil has never had great stories, and RE2 does nothing truly revolutionary, even in it’s new content.

No single element, however, inspires more anxiety and terror in Resident Evil 2 then the Tyrant, better known as Mr. X. The Tyrant makes it appearance almost out of nowhere, and from that moment on, for the rest of your time in the Police Station, he will be hunting you down, his footsteps resounding across the Police Station no matter where you are. It’s terrifying, knowing he’s outside a room you’re hiding in, knowing you’ll have to either try and get past him, or a squad of Lickers the other way. Even past the Police Station, The Tyrant will pop up to make your life as terrible as possible; I have a very memorable experience of getting out of the PS Garage, stepping out into the pouring rain, wondering if I was truly free… Only to be hit in the back of the head by Tyrant’s huge fist. He’s an incredible addition to the game across both playthrough that’s mixes everything up, and makes me positively horrified about what Cpacom are going to do with Nemesis in Resident Evil 3 Remake, considering he’s essentially a more dangerous Tyrant. If I had to complain about one thing regarding Tyrant, it’s that on multiple playthroughs for collectables or S ranks, he can just be more a bother then an actual threat, since you’re just wanting him to be out of the way so you can solve a puzzle or some such. But this does little to downplay how simply incredible his addition has been to the game overall, and a huge part of why I feel this is the best game of the year.

One set of segments I didn’t really enjoy were the ‘additional character’ segments you play in Claire and Leon’s storylines, which is as Sherry in the Orphanage, and Ada in the Sewers, respectively. They aren’t awful by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re very linear in their own ways, and don’t really do anything that interesting overall; Sherry simply avoids the Police Chief for a good fifteen minutes, which is tense unless you mess up and have to sit around waiting for him to go through the motions, whilst Ada meanders through the sewers with a boring gadget. I can’t really hold much against them since they’re so short, but during both my second runs of Claire and Leon’s story, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and just truck through their painfully linear segments that stick out like a sore thumb.

And speaking of Sewers, I will admit that that section of the game is by far the weakest in an already very strong game; it never reaches rock bottom status, but outside of my first run as Claire, I really dreaded slogging through this section of the game. It’s full of giant bog monsters that suck to fight, and suck more to look at, a silly chess-based puzzle that is both peak Resident Evil silliness and annoyance, and being laid out in such a way that makes it very easy to get turned around, stuck in areas that make you have to take the long way back to get back on track, or are just really bland to look at.
The game also does a lot to keep you with the game for far longer than just playing through each route with each character; there are ‘S’ ranks to get, collectables to find, and a plethora of extra modes to try out. Chief among these are a sort of ‘wave defense’ mode, where you’re fighting a small army of zombies in a rather confined space, and the well loved 4th Survivor, which is my personal favourite. 4th Survivor puts the player in the role of HUNK, an Umbrella operative that is heavily armed and well equipped with healing – being tasked with fighting your way from the end of the sewers to the start of the Police Station by the longest route, fighting dozens of zombies, G-Infected, Plant creatures and Tyrant himself to get out in the fastest time possible. It’s hard, it’s brutal, but it’s also Resident Evil 2 at its most exciting. It took me nearly a dozen tries to break through the siege and get to the end of the 4th Survivor, but every run was incredible, and I learned a little more about the route and strategies needed to survive. I highly recommend you push through it’s difficulty and really have fun with the mode. Also included as free DLC are a couple of alternate stories with side-characters seen in RE2, and whilst they all try new things with RE2’s formula, none of them really land that well, and serve as more frustrating than fun, but are still absolutely worth trying out at least once if you want to spend more time with RE2, and it’s just gravy on top of the wealth of content RE2 provides to the player who wants to keep going in Racoon City.

Resident Evil 2 is, without a doubt, the best new game I played in 2019. Packed with beautiful visuals, a fun and bombastic story, terrifying encounters and some of the best locations in gaming this year, Resident Evil 2 is a game that showcases how to update a game without taking away it’s core. Another game in Capcom’s return to the top of the gaming world, RE2 is a masterclass in gaming, and I am frothing at the mouth for the Resident Evil remake only a few short months away. You’ll walk away from this game with a new appreciation for the art of remaking games… and wondering if that creak downstairs is just the cat, or a certain giant man striding towards you…