Resident Evil 2
PC, PS4, Xbox One
When is a remake not a remake? Capcom’s lavish refit feels at times like one of Umbrella Corps’ dubious experiments: intertwined with the DNA of the original game you’ll detect strands of 2002’s REmake and Resident Evil 4, and that’s just for starters. It retains the same two playable characters (newly-qualified police officer Leon S Kennedy, having the worst first day ever; and student Claire Redfield, in zombie-infested Raccoon City looking for brother Chris) and follows a similar story for both. Otherwise, this rarely feels like an old game made shiny and new so much as a very contemporary kind of survival horror that happens to be based on an 21-yearold game. Still, for all that it loses a little of its identity in the switch to an over-the-shoulder camera, this is a consistently exciting action game that, barring a slight middle-act wobble, has the strongest pacing of any Resident Evil this side of Mikami’s magnum opus.
It’s a strange feeling at first – thrillingly new, yet shot through with moments of déjà vu. Those are rarely down to fuzzy memories of the original so much as the dawning sensation that Resident Evil might be slowly mutating into the games it originally inspired. If you played The Evil Within and its sequel, in particular, you’ll feel the whiff of familiarity which takes a little of the shine off an outstanding visual makeover. It riffs on Dead Space’s tactical dismemberment, too, in that you can now shoot off a zombie’s limbs. Target the arms and you’ll limit their reach, but aiming lower is a better bet: a couple of pistol rounds is enough to send them sprawling forward, leaving them with one leg that now stops at the knee. Even in such a pitiful state, they’ll lunge forward to gnaw at your ankle, unless you take time to finish them off. Then again, given ammo is in short supply, that might not be the wisest idea.
In other words, zombies are a threat to be taken seriously once more. It’s not the extra gristle and sinew that makes them horrifying, but their tenacity. They can withstand a good few headshots before collapsing, and they don’t always stay down, rising unexpectedly on a return visit to a room you thought was safe – unless you ensure their heads are, well, no longer intact. Others will launch themselves through windows, though their entry can be blocked by nailing up wooden boards. Either way, trying to kill them all will only leave you desperately short of firepower for anything tougher. Staggering them usually suffices, but then running past is risky. Corridors are a perfectly awful width: there’s a little more room to manoeuvre than you had two decades ago, but that just means you’re more likely to chance a dash through those tempting gaps.
Then, just as you’re getting used to dealing with them, new threats arrive – or old ones given a fresh coat of paint, at least. The terrifying Lickers aren’t quite as imposing now Leon and Claire’s top halves fill the screen, yet they’re quick and vicious enough to send you into a panic, as you waste the shotgun ammo you were keeping back for the next boss while frantically backtracking to stay out of range of their claws. And then there’s the relentless Mr X, who periodically storms through doors and smashes through walls, striding towards you like a trenchcoated Terminator – albeit one that can be avoided by continually circling furniture, or humiliated by shooting off its fedora. Still, he’ll punish the moments of complacency when you veer down a cul-de-sac, while his pursuits can easily cause you to stumble into a zombie you hadn’t finished off. Occasionally, he’s more of an irritation, getting in the way of completing the game’s bizarre puzzles. These, too, have changed, though they’re in keeping with the series’ off-kilter logic. Most involve more busywork and backtracking than deduction, particularly given the limited inventory space that forces you to make snap decisions on what you can afford to leave behind. But that’s often the point: like all the best horror, it’s about pushing you somewhere you’d rather not be. Though unpleasant, the Raccoon City Police Department building is a marvel of design. This remains a brilliantly conceived and deviously intricate puzzle box, one that sends you down winding, sometimes counterintuitive paths that join up in devilishly clever fashion. For all that it loses some of the original’s sense of theatre in how its shocks are staged, it consistently finds ways to compensate, whether it’s leaving zombies waiting around blind corners for careless players, or simply by dimming the lights and limiting you to negotiate your environment with a feeble torch beam. It is, in short, one of the classic horror settings.
As with the Spencer Mansion, it’s unfortunate that it’s not deemed enough to sustain the entire game, since the underground areas that follow aren’t nearly so memorable. And a brief section where you take control of Ada Wong, armed with an electronic scanner to trigger hidden mechanisms, is a change of pace that probably made more sense on the design document (Claire’s alternative is far better). Any lulls are quickly forgotten once you reach Umbrella’s lab, its pristine white walls smeared in viscera, the action building to a climax as entertaining as it is operatically silly.
It’s a pity the performances don’t match the escalating absurdity: the voice acting is adequate, but the B-movie charm of the original’s bad dialogue and stilted delivery is all but absent. Such inconsistencies are perhaps to be expected of a game that makes a conscious effort to blend old and new. But if it’s not as efficient a remake as, well, REmake, that hardly matters. When this enthralling hybrid is delivering blood by the bucketload and thrills by the dozen, you won’t exactly be thinking about what it isn’t.
Like all the best horror, it’s about pushing you somewhere you’d rather not be