Resident Evil 2

"Their worst nightmare has just begun... again"

In the first Resident Evil, bizarre incidents occure on the outskirts of Raccoon Forest: mysterious creatures were spotted and eaten corpses were found. The Raccoon Police Department decides to send in a unit of their special forces team S.T.A.R.S. (Special Tactics And Resque Squad). On July 25th, they stumble across a huge mansion that is filled with zombies and monsters. It seems that the “T-Virus”, developed by Umbrella, caused all this. After a lot of plot developments, which I won’t spoil, the mansion is destroyed and there are only a few survivors of the “mansion incident.”

Resident Evil 2 takes place a few weeks later. The virus has broken out in Raccoon City, and soon the entire city is crawling with zombies and monsters. On the night of September 29th, Claire Redfield motorbikes into the infested town. She is looking for her brother Chris, one of the few survivors of the mansion incident. Little does she know what will happen to here. Not to far away, rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy drives into town for his first day of work. Leon and Claire meet each other when they try to avoid the countless zombies and decide to go to the Police Station, where it will be safe. But it’s not, the police station is also invested with monsters and they will have to struggle to survive.

Resident Evil is by far the most complicated RE story-wise. You can play the game either as Claire or as Leon and they both have a A and a B scenario, so you have 4 different scenarios. Playing different scenarios means that you’ll visit different locations, or in a different order and the story unfolds in a different way.
The gameplay hasn’t changed much, you still control Leon or Claire from a third person view with static backgrounds. The gameplay involves shooting monsters with all kinds of weapons, solving puzzles you wouldn’t normally find in a police station and watching cut-scenes. This game is also the scarriest RE on the DC, but it’s not as scary as most people tell you. RE 2 definitely has some of the most disgusting creatures, and some bosses keep coming back to haunt you. And there are of course the “jump scares.” Every now and then when you least expect it, a monster will jump through a window and (this will sound like a cliché) it happens when you don’t expect it.
The graphics are unfortunately poor. Capcom didn’t do much accept porting it to the DC, which means that the backgrounds are still nice, but the characters are very clunky. The FMV sequences are also very poor, visually that is they still are fun to watch and entertaining but they seem to be a little out of focus with lousy brightness. The RE 3 FMV’s are much better. Although the graphics are very poor, you’ll eventually get used to it and accept the fact that not every DC game can have that yummie-yummie eye candy.
The sound is on overall pretty good. The weapons have good sound effects and the classic moaning of the zombies still do the job. The voice acting isn’t exactly Hollywood material, but it’ll do.

Capcom was nice enough to have some extra’s added to the game. Die hard RE gamers can unlock a few battle games after completing the game with a high ranking. Something which I think is very cool is the Gallery Mode. In this option, you can see pictures, rough sketches and 3D models of the monsters and people you’ve encountered during the game.

Good:

+ Great story
+ The good old RE feel
+ Gallery Mode

Bad

- Poor graphics

GRAPHICS: 6
SOUND: 8
GAMEPLAY: 9
CONTROLS: 8
REPLAY VALUE: High
DIFFICULTY: Medium

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/21/02, Updated 11/24/02