Resident Evil 2

"A great game, but no reason to buy new"

The basic 411 here is that if you have it for Playstation 1, there is no reason to buy it again, there is nothing new about this game really, if you dont have it for Playstation read on.

I loved this game on PSX, and have completed it to date around 14 times, so there was a lot of anticipation on this release (For me anyway) to give us gamers something that the PSX version did not. Sadly this has not happened, and we have ended up with essentially an emulated version of the classic PSX game, this is not to say that it is bad, merely that it isnt anything we couldnt have had 5 years ago.

Gameplay: - Nothing much to say here, if youve ever played any survival horror game then you basically know what to expect from this title. The fixed camera angles make another appearance, whether this is good or bad i am undecided, they add more scare factor, but make it difficult to anticipate when the next licker is going to get up in yo face ;).

Controls again are standard survival horror fare, and should provide no problems.

Sound: - This i expected to be a high point of the new release, with no improved graphics i thought they would at least re-master the sound to take advantage of the GCN's superior aural systems, this has not been the case, most sounds are identical to the original, and the only one that is significantly different is that of the moaning zombies, which sounds significantly more feeble this time around.

Graphics: - The game scores horribly here, mainly because there has been NO optimisation for the new hardware, this is frankly unforgivable, and is one of the main reasons this game scores so low in my opinion. If you think these graphics are acceptable for a NEW game, welcome to 5 years ago, population: you!

Overall: - This game is a truely lazy update, there is nothing to make it worth buying for the GCN rather than the PSX, either way is just as good. That said, there is plenty of reason to buy this game for either system, it may be a lazy conversion, but the original was one of the best PSX titles ever, this game is still great, but it could have been so much greater. If you want the best RE2 however, get a working version of ePSXe, set textures to maximum and play the PSX version through it, you will get far superior graphics to this version, and at no cost if you already own the PSX game.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/19/03, Updated 05/19/03