Resident Evil 2

"A truly dark game that surpasses everything that its predecessor boasted, 'Resident Evil 2' is an excellent game that continues the horror..."

Synopsis
Capcom is one of the Game Company kings, and is truly a force to be reckoned with. Capcom never relents when it comes to producing high-quality games, going from the Street Fighter series to the now popular Resident Evil series. Capcom can thank many of its renowned games for its success, and Resident Evil 2 just may be the game that heightened the success that Resident Evil (1) already accomplished.

As many already know, the Resident Evil series is a dark and masterfully done horror story that strikes true fear into gamers... well... not true fear, but true shock would be more the word. You might as well put extra-spring on the springs of your couch, as you might as well practice jumping for the numerous 'Boos!' that appear... and you'll have to react fast to run away from whatever terrors threaten you! A truly dark game that surpasses everything that its predecessor boasted, 'Resident Evil 2' is an excellent game that continues the horror that Resident Evil started!

Gameplay Elements:
The overall gameplay revolves around one thing... living! This game is not about being the hero of a damsel... but more so being the hero of your own bloody life! It's all a matter of life and death... survival is the key. Keeping that in mind, I warn you that this game is not for younger gamers as blood becomes a frequent occurance in this game. First is first, your own kind has been infested by a virus that turns them into mindless zombies... zombies that starve for flesh. As you are the only one that is living, along with your partner, you must learn to overcome certain dangers, and an overwhelming number of threats.

First off, the main setting... Raccoon City Police Department. The one place where you wished to call refuge is now being swarmed by the zombies that you once called friends. It's horribly disgusting, but no amount of conversation will ever get through them. So here's your options: Shoot, Run or Die.

Shooting them slowly becomes the most reassuring factor, as no harm will come your way once heads are blown off. To shoot, you would need... believe it or not, some weaponry. The weaponry collection is quite impressive, ranging from the miniscule pistol to the large and powerful grenade launcher. Unfortunately, ammo becomes an issue, as shooting enemies will slowly degenerate your ammo supply. Ammo is scarce and never regenerate, so shooting freely is out of the question. Therefore, shooting zombies becomes a risky situation, as every bullet, every grenade, every shotgun shell counts for that much! Running is another option. Running is great, as you can... well... run! Running away is usually a good option because zombies are slow and cumbersome. Thus, there are factors that make running useless, such as narrow halls which will force you to be taken a chunk or two from the zombies. Unfortunately for you, health is a limited amount too, as you can only take so many teeth marks from mutant freaks. Health becomes an important factor that can be regenerated through herbs. Herbs are, just like ammo, rather scarce and do no regenerate. Therefore, you cannot run freely either. Isn't Capcom so generous? That leaves you with the other option: to die... but it's best to leave that option to your own imagination, as you will frequent that option several times on your first run-through.

It may seem like you have already been disabled with enough horrific challenges, but it doesn't stop there. Two other elements affect gameplay immensely: your stock reserves, and your magic box. Sounds strange, but those two are exactly what you just read. Your stock is how much you carry, as you can only carry a certain amount of items. Therefore, you cannot be enriched by every ammo, herb and gun in the game through one run-through. You must store them in the magic box. This box is a chest that magically transports all your items to your storage, of which are distributed in various places of the game. These areas become your save points, where you find refuge, stock items, save and feel... less frightened. The magic box becomes important to your survival, as it is the only way you can get items you have picked up earlier, but have stored for later use.

Another element of gameplay is the Ink Ribbon. The ink ribbon lets you enter save places and save your progress until you face the inevitable... death. It seems as if Capcom wanted you to believe that your character was typing his/her tale of death before actually dying. But then again, that seems to be my wandering imagination again.

The biggest flaw is the flaw that made Resident Evil so famous. The quirky controls! These controls are extremely confusing for first-time players, and they WILL die because of it. The basic rule is that forward is your character's forward, not the game screen's forward. This means, if your character is facing right on the game screen, you'd have to press up to have him/her move right, instead of actually pressing right to have her move to the right. Much confusion... and much death, but after awhile, a person will get the hang of it through various 'continues' and 'restarts'. Charming indeed how Capcom has you wailing in frustration after those one too many fatal zombie bites.

Resident Evil 2 has exceptional gameplay that masters all elements of shock and jolts of fear. You'll be jumping when dogs fly out the window, ready to tear into your flesh. You'll be jumping when Lickers jump from the ceiling, ready to engulf your head. You'll be jumping when you realize that the slaughtered woman you walked by was actually a zombie biting on your leg. Despite the frustrating learning curve in terms of controlling your character, you'll jump... BOO! 8/10

Visual Presentation:
In a word, extremely beautiful. Darkness has never been so realistic! Resident Evil 2 can easily resemble the town or city you live it, and it can easily be a truly frightening experience. Resident Evil 2 does that very well in terms of design, setup and realism. Throughout the evaluation of the visual presentation, these three become the most noticeable things in the game!

Design of the characters, the zombies, the monsters, the dogs, the ravens, the lickers, the mutants, the sn- I'll stop! The designs of these models are various and very frightening, realistic and oh-so well done. There are many varieties of zombies and some of the textures of these creatures almost feels as if you are looking at slimy, grimy and sticky skin! Ew, no? Well, that's just how well the design is in Resident Evil 2. Characters are remarkable, as you will be controlling either a police officer (Leon) or a biker chick (Claire). Amusing how they stereotyped the male as blue and the female as pink. Anyway, the characters are much better done than the predecessor, and shadings, textures and the like are improved drastically. The fact that they still run like robots remains to be questioned, however. In truth, bodies are life-like, nicely done and very much graphic!

Setup becomes an important part of Resident Evil 2. What exactly is Setup? The way Capcom has integrated the architecture designs. You'll notice little things such as connecting rooms and places where you'll go 'Ohhhh! That's where it leads!'. Little things such as those make for extremely impressive setup. You'll notice that the place is very convincing in terms of putting things into proportion, and the architecture is precise enough to lay out a map on size and area of the place. Because Resident Evil 2 has so many rooms to unlock, Setup becomes a very interesting factor to the visual presentation, that you'll be discovering where things lead frequently.

Lastly, realism in general is top-notch. You'll be finding out that dark places are more frightening than imagined. Glass smashed on the floor will make you wonder what happened, and the charred remains of the diaries of the dead will make shivers wriggle up your spine. All in all, the realism usually resorts to the disaster that ensued before you appeared. You'll begin to imagine what in the world happened before you arrived, and how the mess became so drastic and horrific.

To sum up, Resident Evil 2 really doesn't have many glaring flaws graphically. That doesn't mean there isn't any room for improvement, mind you. Although some monsters such as the lickers give some very disgusting skin textures, the zombies are rather... dumbed down after the 67th encounter. The design slowly becomes wearisome and you slowly notice that the sixty other zombies you killed just may have been identical siblings. But these little things are only nitpicking, and are easily overlooked when looking at the big picture. 9/10

Audio Presentation:
To successfully create a gloomy environment, one must have exceptional sound quality. Capcom does this rather well, using clashed noises, bizzare sound effects, moaning, screaming, dissonance and many other sounds that are not at all pleasant. But this only drastically increases the quality of Resident Evil 2, and it truly becomes a noticeable quality.

The music is, once again, simply dissonant. Strange strikes of the strings and then a little flair from the piano can be heard, and then sudden drums stopping the overall climax. Silence... and then another slow-paced rumble of dissonant instruments clash and then the overall tension only increases. SMASH! Glass breaks, and the strings squeal in high-pitch as the basic tempo speeds up at an alarming rate. You'll be frantically running away from whatever threat that lunges at you, and they WILL be lunging frequently! Keep in mind, the only actually memorable tunes would be fighting against mutations and bosses. Actual themes of the game will mostly encourage fear, and you won't be humming to any of these tunes anytime soon. Sound effects are basic moans, sudden smashing glass, the cries of your pathetic character, sloshing devour sounds and many others. In other words, the overall collection is a very messy one (the good messy...).

The largest flaw in this department is the voice acting. The voice acting is relatively decent, and far better than the first one, but mind you, it is extremely unconvincing. You will not feel for your characters with these types of voices, but they will suffice, as you'll be running away more than listening to these sarcastic voice-actors.

The audio is good, and contains the fright that makes gamers come back for more. The sound is probably one of the primary reasons you'll feel what you are feeling, and on that note, Resident Evil 2 has a variety of frightening noises, dissonant sounds and an overall texture of fright that will have you jumping in alarm... or grimacing at some of the overly dramatic voices. Whichever you choose, you'll be enjoying it! 9/10

Story and Composition:
The story starts off innocently. It is night, and depending on which character you choose, a car/motorcycle zooms quickly past a dented sign that says 'Welcome to Raccoon City'. Cut to dark and empty streets. You walk out of your vehicle, and look out at the streets. That's when things start getting immediately bizarre. Eventually, your character will meet the alternate character and the story picks off quickly. You have discovered that various people want to eat you, only to later discover that they are zombies. This becomes a race against time, and eventually chaos breaks loose, everything goes haywire and you lose your partner. Alas, you are all alone, and thus, begins your one-night stand of terror. Are you ready?

Claire Redfield, the charismatic sister of the previous installment's male star goes in search for her brother. Leon Kennedy, a rookie cop that wishes to excel in his job, only to discover rampant and strange things far beyond his control. These two take on the mysteries of the main man behind the chaos, and they realize that it is something that they cannot control. The only thing they can do is survive, and find information on the dark past. This story is great, no matter how you look at it. The plot may not be as deep, but prying through files and things throughout the game will tell you some dark secrets about what goes around in this city... far more than you can tell.

Very well done, and the overall fright is due to the good storyline. However, the depth of your characters will not be as heightened as the overall plot due to the quick-pacing action. This, therefore, makes the story and composition suffer some. 8/10

Replayability and Extras:
This is where Resident Evil 2 shines. Through this adventure, you have two selectable characters, Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy. With this, you will be experiencing some dark and horrific events and cutscenes. The excellent thing about this, is that depending on the character you choose, the overall outcome of the story will be slightly different in terms of how characters are met, what happens to them and how they survive or die. Your encounters with Leon will be MUCH different if you played him after playing Claire and when you played him before playing Claire. This becomes very much the same with Claire as well.

Other extras include secret alternate costumes, some secret files and the secret characters, Hunk and Tofu. Yes, you can play with a giant soybean food item that carries a knife through the rest of his voyage. Very funny, very cool, and very hard to get. Nevertheless, extras are extras and Resident Evil 2 is loaded with it. You'll NEED to replay the game to unlock some of the better secrets. Therefore, Resident Evil 2 ranks very high in this criteria. 10/10

Conclusion
The tale of zombies will forever be carved into our memories as some of the best scares of gaming history. Rivalry being Silent Hill, both games create ambience and fright. While Silent Hill bases its fright more on psychological fear, Resident Evil bases its frights more on jolts and jumps. Nevertheless, Resident Evil is one of the scarier games that gamers will play, and despite some bad voice acting, some quirky controls and such, Resident Evil 2 is probably the best improvement in the series.

With so many extras, replays and the overall ambience and darkness, Resident Evil 2 just may be a worthy purchase. Renting or buying, Resident Evil 2 has value, and it should not be missed by anybody who enjoys the survival horror type theme that gamers just may take a liking to!

How it all adds up!
(average is determined through the importance of the criteria)
Gameplay Elements: 8/10
Visual Presentation: 9/10
Audio Presentation: 9/10
Story and Composition: 8/10
Replayability and Extras: 10/10
Final Score: 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/11/02, Updated 02/09/03