RESIDENT EVIL 2
Turn in your badge Leon Kennedy, ‘cause the undead army doesn’t even respect the law
Tackling scary zombies in an abandoned mansion is one thing, but what would happen if a zombie outbreak actually took over a city? Set two months after the first game, this sequel seeks to answer just that, moving the action from the Spencer mansion to Raccoon City, focusing mainly on the Raccoon City Police Department and the paths taken by new recruit Leon Kennedy, and Claire Redfield, who’s looking for her missing brother Chris (from the first game). The crisscrossing routes make Leon and Claire’s stories feel distinct, and things are different depending on which you finish first. The more discrete storylines, new characters, and grander setting really helped to move Resident Evil from a scary haunted house into a much bigger and more complex universe. While ultimately it is quite confined to the RPD and surrounding areas, you really get a sense of a city in chaos, and tragedy on an unprecedented scale.
THINK BEFORE YOU INK
Mechanically Resident Evil 2 plays much like its predecessor. It’s a tense survival horror experience in which you must juggle inventory space and make careful use of things like healing items and ammo. Navigating menus can be tricky in itself, as you can only check your health properly from there, having to go off visual cues like how your character is holding themself as they walk instead of knowing exactly how you’re doing. The beats of its gameplay are very much the same as the first game’s – the tank controls, the limited-use Ink Ribbon save items, the prerendered backgrounds, the mixture of puzzles and tricky combat.
What truly makes Resident Evil 2 great is how it took the things that worked in the first game and polished them into something that could work as a series. The story is much more cinematic, with some bigger, more bombastic elements throughout that get you completely hooked on where the story might go next – things like the recurring Tyrant and G enemies that take encounters with mutated monsters up a notch. Whereas the first Resident Evil made you fall in love with exploring the Spencer mansion, RE2 made you fall in love with Resi as a series. It made you realise how much you wanted to explore how the ongoing nefarious acts of the Umbrella Corporation affected people – and proved Resi had plenty of life in it beyond these two games.