Resident Evil 2 Review

Remakes and Remasters aren’t a new idea. Many great games and a few not so great games have gotten one of these two treatments in the past. Resident Evil 2 wasn’t one that most people were begging for, but it was a good choice. Arguably one of the best of the Resident Evil franchise, Resident Evil 2 has been a long time favorite of fans of the horror genre of games. It embraced its limitations using pitch black environments and limiting sounds to maximize the processing power of the systems it was on and make what you could see and hear be even more clear and creepy. They also changed the way zombies were represented in video game, making them a horde of almost unkillable bullet sponges instead of one or two shot target practice dummies. Forcing the player to think about how to escape and manage their resources instead of facing them head on. Not to say there weren’t the occasional solo zombies deserving of an entire clip to the head. 

The remake of Resident Evil 2 is one of the most faithful recreations of a video game I have ever played. Even though the game has been remade from the ground up, the gameplay mechanics and systems are all intact as they were in the original, the only major difference being the graphics. Speaking of the graphics, get ready for some gore. The zombies are falling apart, and when they attack they take chunks out of their victims. The scenery is equally gory, with people hanging from chandeliers in pieces, or strewn about with limbs missing. In combat, your weapons will cripple zombies, making them crawl and stumble towards you until you put them out of their misery. 

The puzzles and challenges of the original are also intact, which to some may seem tedious especially if you have a good memory. However with the visual improvements, many of the solutions seem just a little more satisfying. This is also true of pretty much all the high points in the story, not to mention the boss fights. The pure difficulty made them exciting in the original but now, the bosses are legitimately terrifying. 

All in all, if you were a fan of the original Resident Evil 2, and nothing has quite scratched that itch for you, this is a great game to pick up. If you never played the original, this is a perfect chance to play a piece of history without having to suffer the limitations of the previous console generations. 

Resident Evil 2 is available on Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC.