Survival of Horror: Resident Evil 2 (1998)
With a new smash hit on their hands, Capcom knew they had to strike while the iron was hot. Resident Evil was a large success for the company, and a sequel was in the works almost immediately. In the spirit of the first game, the team for Resident Evil 2 started at the top with freshman talent, this time with one Hideki Kamiya. Much like Shinji Mikami, Kamiya wasn’t exactly fond of horror games, making him the prime candidate to direct one. Just as he had been chosen for this reason a few years prior, Mikami selected Kamiya.
The young programmer had never directed a game before. This, along with several development woes, would lead Resident Evil 2 to be completely scrapped and restarted at near-completion due to the game simply not stacking up. Even Kamiya himself says this version, dubbed Resident Evil 1.5 by fans of the series, is crap to him. Yikes. Undeterred, however, Kamiya and his team pushed through and development of this new iteration of the game went much smoother by comparison.
The delay of the game, originally scheduled for May 1997, was a huge shock to players. Nowadays, game delays are common and often very long. Look no further than the recent delays of Marvel’s Avengers, DOOM Eternal, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Cyberpunk 2077 for example! Back in the 90s, however, a delay of 8 months was staggering. When you consider that the game was supposed to release 14 months after the original, tacking on another eight to it was a stunner. As such, players had more time to get hyped for the upcoming release. Their expectations for the game rose higher and higher. There was a lot to live up to, given the critical smash that preceded it. It wouldn’t be until very early in 1998 that gamers would get their hands on Resident Evil 2. Hype had reached critical mass. The game promised to be bigger, better, and scarier than the original. Could it live up to the task?
It sure did. The game was a sales explosion for Capcom, selling 5 million copies with its initial release. This was nearly double the original’s sales, which needed two re-releases to catch up to that alone. Critics fell in love with the series all over again, thrilled to step into the streets of Raccoon City. Leon and Claire became instant classic characters in the series, right alongside Jill and Chris from the first game.
It’s now been 22 years since Capcom released Resident Evil 2 and 22 years on, I think it’s time for another look at the game. I’m not going to try and clickbait you here and ask “does it still hold up? Keep reading and find out!!” It does. It’s fantastic. Regardless, I want to peek at the game again and see if I can figure out why I love it so much. It’s not a perfect game, and we’ll be getting into that. For now, let’s step into the definitely, absolutely very safe halls of the Raccoon Police Department and get right into the thick of it!
This is part of an on-going series. Be sure to check out the other entries in Survival of Horror!
Resident Evil 2 — January 21, 1998 (PS1, N64, PC, DC, GC)
Platform used for review: PS1 original, 1998
Warning: This review will spoil the entirety of this game!
Story
“But the Umbrella Corporation’s experiments were far from finished…”
While the original game took place on the evening of July 24th, 1998, Resident Evil 2 picks up several months later. The intro cutscene informs us that the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members from the Mansion Incident were unsuccessful in convincing anybody of what happened in the mountains. They knew that Umbrella had conducted horrible experiments, but unfortunately all the evidence went up in flames. Naturally, nobody believed them. Unfortunately, the quiet Raccoon City would soon wish they had listened to Jill, Chris, Rebecca, Barry and Brad.
Several months passed and on September 29th, a rookie police officer is on his way to the city for his first day of work. Having just been dumped the previous night, poor Leon Scott Kennedy went on a bit of a bender and woke up late. Realizing his mistake, he hurries off toward Raccoon City, unaware that he was driving into a nightmare.
At the same time, a concerned sister rides her motorcycle toward the city. Chris hadn’t contacted his younger sister in quite some time, so Claire Redfield took it upon herself to go find him. Unfortunately, things go south extremely fast. She enters the city and checks out a local diner around the same time that Leon sees a body in the road and stops his car to investigate. They both find horrific sights; Leon sees a crowd of zombies shuffle out from alleys and the body at his feet tries to bite his ankle! He starts to open fire and runs off to escape the oncoming horde.
Meanwhile, Claire comes across one of these zombies chewing on another body. Terrified, she attempts to escape, but the monsters are crowding the front door she entered from. She sees a rear exit and bolts for the door, only to meet face-to-face with a police officer aiming at her. However, Leon aims for the monster chasing her and fires, putting it down and saving her. The two then decide to take refuge in the police station nearby, knowing that it’s safer than the streets.
Sadly, nobody thinks to check the backseat of the car and a zombie attacks them, causing Leon to swerve and crash the vehicle at an intersection, killing the zombie. Thankfully, they’re both okay… until they notice a tanker truck barreling down the street, piloted by a zombified driver. Forced to escape the vehicle, the two are separated by a large explosion from the truck that engulfs the street in flames. Vowing to meet up at the station, the two set off into the most terrifying night of their lives.
Much like the first game, Resident Evil 2 diverges at this point. You select your character at the beginning, and can play through the game with its various differences. However, this entry promised to be bigger, so they took the concept one step further. In the original, you selected Chris or Jill and played through their version of the story. In this adventure, however, you have four scenarios. Whoever you start with, you play their A scenario. When you finish it, you play the other character’s B scenario, detailing what they were doing during that time. This has some story ramifications, but mostly it’s relegated to gameplay, so we’ll get to it a bit later!
One way or another, both characters end up at the Raccoon Police Department. Whoever thought that it would be safe should be smacked across the face! It’s just as dangerous inside as it is out in the streets. Zombies and other horrific monsters roam the halls, eager to gnaw on anything that’s still alive. Whoever you play as in the A scenario comes across a dying police officer, Marvin Branagh. He explains that the Umbrella Corporation is behind the city’s downfall, informing them that they should’ve believed the S.T.A.R.S. while there was still time. The cop orders them to escape and save anyone else in the building before forcing you out of the room and locking the door. The two then navigate the dangerous station, each coming across different situations.
Over the course of the game, Claire meets the creepy and unhinged chief of police, Brian Irons. We later learn that he’s in Umbrella’s pocket, which is why the R.P.D. did nothing to help the S.T.A.R.S. Instead, he discredits them and makes them look like fools to everyone else. Along her journey, Claire also runs into a 12-year-old girl named Sherry Birkin, who came to the station after her mother tells her it’s safer. She claims that a horrible monster is chasing after her, and Claire takes it upon herself to protect her.
Leon, meanwhile, meets a mysterious woman in a red dress while investigating the parking garage. Ada Wong came to the city to look for her boyfriend John, and things obviously went terribly wrong from there. Together, they meet a journalist in the jail cells. Ben Bertolucci has locked himself in the cell, claiming it’s much safer than the rest of the station. He has dirt on Umbrella, proof that they’re doing horrible experiments. When you return to him a bit later, however, something terrible happens. Ben has been assaulted by a giant monster, and as he tries to talk, his body is torn asunder and a horrific creature erupts from his split corpse, slithering off into the darkness. Whatever is roaming these halls is incredibly dangerous.
Eventually, Claire and Sherry escape into the sewers after finding that the same body horror has befallen chief Irons, while Leon and Ada enter from a different path. Depending on who you play as, you find Annette, a scientist who’s paranoid that spies are coming to steal her and her husband’s work. She reveals that the monster that killed Ben and Brian is none other than William Birkin, her husband and Sherry’s father. A botched attempt by Umbrella soldiers to steal the G-Virus that William created ended with him full of bullet holes. As they escaped, William injected himself with one last hidden vial of the virus, transforming him into a terrible creature.
This is what caused Raccoon City to fall into ruin. Rats lapped up some of the virus and carried it through the sewers, spreading it across the city. All this death is because of a mad scientist, and a corrupt corporation trying to steal his work! With this revelation, Annette runs off to find her daughter, who was separated from Claire soon after entering the sewers. Claire runs in another direction and finds Sherry, who claims her stomach hurts.
Eventually, everyone ends up descending a large elevator in a train yard and finds themselves in a large underground lab. Ada is injured from a fight with William, while Sherry has one of his G-Embryos growing inside her. Leon goes to find an escape while Claire tries to find Annette and cure Sherry. Claire creates the vaccine in the lab while Leon finds a dying Annette and the G-Virus. Ada indeed reveals herself to be a spy and attempts to steal the virus before Annette shoots her and she falls to her supposed death down a large shaft in the center of the lab.
After the self-destruct sequence activates, Leon, Claire and Sherry all escape via an underground train leading out of the lab. The ever-mutating William shows up again, a giant blob that’s threatening to destroy the entire train. They manage to blow him up once and for all and escape the city, free at last as they survive the nightmare.
I know that was a lot to take in, but I just wanted to show off how different each character’s story is in Resident Evil 2. That isn’t even the entire story, though. The B scenarios for each character have a few story differences too, but that’d just make this section even longer. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of moving parts in the story. The original Resident Evil had some differences between characters, but Resident Evil 2 makes the differences even more pronounced. It’s interesting to see how Annette changes depending on who finds her, for instance.
If Ada confronts Annette, she’s a snotty person who won’t give up her creation. When Claire speaks to her about Sherry, she’s instead much softer and more worried. Resident Evil 2 is peppered with these minor differences while there are the more obvious ones as well. For instance, Claire never meets Ada while Leon never finds Chief Irons. Entire plot threads are exclusive to each character, which falls more in line with Barry and Rebecca’s plots from the first game.
Resident Evil 2 is surprisingly short when you play through one scenario, but it makes up for this with the four different scenarios (two As and two Bs). While one A/B is similar to the other, it’s still a neat addition that lets you play either story however you want. Few games dabbled with two different campaigns like this back in the day, so it was nice to see the first game’s experiment expanded further.
I love the story told here. Resident Evil 2 focuses even harder on corporate espionage and corruption than the first game. Annette, William and Umbrella intertwine to wipe out the population of an entire city. Ada is part of this as well, working for a competitor trying to get the G-Virus. On the flip side, it’s also a personal tale of tragic family drama. Sherry is a lonely child, constantly abandoned at home while her parents feverishly work on their projects. Their work ends up killing them, leaving an already-isolated girl even more alone. Claire is the first person to show her genuine compassion in a long time, helping her overcome this horrible nightmare in her life.
There are many moving parts to the game, and they all connect together great. It manages to tell two distinct stories that feel cohesive even if they never intersect. Resident Evil 2 isn’t the most impressive story out there, of course; it’s still got classic 90s cheese throughout. However, this time around it’s got higher stakes on several different scales. It manages to balance it all very well!
Graphics
“First day on the job. Great, huh?”
Taking a page from the first title, Resident Evil 2 continues the trend of using pre-rendered backgrounds. When it comes to apocalyptic-level events like this, the visuals are so important; you have to sell the situation to the player if you want them to be afraid. Knowing this, the development team worked especially hard to bring the dying Raccoon City to life. From the very first in-game screen, littered with flames, cars, and desolate storefronts, you can tell that Capcom meant business.
The backgrounds are magnitudes more detailed than the original game. The streets are a chaotic mess of wrecked vehicles, bodies, and fire. The R.P.D. is completely trashed, with boarded up windows and rooms cluttered with upturned chairs, desks and other office supplies scattered everywhere. The lab is downright gross; supposedly high-tech, it’s now overgrown with plants and vines. Some areas are pristine and show what the laboratory should look like, but others are in total ruin.
Resident Evil 2 tries to use its environments to tell a story, and it works effectively. You can piece together how the city was brought to its knees as you walk through these spectacularly destroyed areas. Look at some of the rooms in the R.P.D. and you’ll understand the panic that set in as monsters slowly overran the police force. Even the labs show how quickly things got out of hand once people weren’t around to keep their experiments in check. The game never has to explain these things to you, instead allowing you to draw your own conclusions from what you can see.
In addition to the environments, Resident Evil 2 boasts other improvements as well. In-game models are far more detailed this time around, with Leon and Claire having more elaborate outfits than Jill or Chris did. The textures are a lot better all around, with zombies looking even more tattered and disheveled than before. These graphical increases also help with displaying the body horror of one of the series’ most grotesque monsters: William Birkin himself. Watching him transform and mutate in real time was awe-inspiring back in 1998, and even today it’s impressive (and gross)!
By the same metric, the FMV cutscenes are a little less impressive nowadays. Unlike the original game, Resident Evil 2 opted not to use live-action actors for the intros and endings. Instead, they use CG models, which was the right move in my opinion. As ridiculous and entertaining as it was in the original, this game wanted to be taken more seriously and the tone of those live-action scenes would’ve muddied the atmosphere. Having said that, the CG is about as good as you could get in 1998. That is, it looked great 22 years ago. It’s not exactly a looker in 2020, but that’s not the game’s fault and I don’t hold that against it. It was still the correct choice to go with CG in order to build bombastic scenes that I doubt would’ve fit the budget Capcom had otherwise.
Overall, then, the game looks great. The backgrounds hold up for being highly detailed, as are the in-game models. The FMV cutscenes have aged the worst of the graphical elements, as they often tend to do. That said, they’re still good for what 1998 had to offer! Resident Evil 2 has fantastic art direction that holds up well all these years later using what were, at the time, state-of-the-art graphics.
Sound
“Disturbing stuff.”
No, the VAs don’t sound like robots attempting to sound human this time.
I know, it’s a hard pill to swallow. I decided to lay it down and rip the Band-Aid off. Sad though it may be, the characters in Resident Evil 2 sound much closer to actual human speech than the original. Who am I kidding, though? That’s great. Alyson Court and Paul Haddad turn in great performances as Claire and Leon, while Sally Cahill is great as the sultry Ada Wong. The voice acting is much improved this time around; we should be celebrating!
That doesn’t mean there aren’t stilted lines throughout the game. This was still 1990s Capcom, after all. Due likely to the voice direction, once again strange line deliveries bleed through to the final product. In some interactions with Sherry, Claire comes off less like a caring college student and more like someone trying to get a child in a windowless van. These are isolated events, but nevertheless it’s hilarious when it happens. Hearing Claire with a monotone “What’s the matter? Don’t you trust me…?” is absurdly off-putting compared to how she is throughout the rest of the game. Leon gets a few of these as well. For the most part, he has fine line delivery. When he’s trying to sound like he’s been shot, though, it’s delicious Resident Evil™ grade-A ham. Chief Irons, same thing; he’s not in the game much, but man does he throw a dollop of ooey gooey melted cheese on top of the whole package when he speaks. It’s great and, to be honest, I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Thankfully, the music remains as good as ever. Fresh off of composing the first game, Masami Ueda returned to compose a majority of Resident Evil 2. He worked with a couple other people, namely Shusaku Uchiyama and Syun Nishigaki, however by and large this game was Ueda’s work. Much like the first game, the sound team seemed to strongly understand the tone that the game was reaching for. It’s little surprise, given his work on the first game, that Ueda impresses yet again in this department!
Resident Evil 2’s soundtrack is able to set the mood of each scene with each of its tracks. It knows when to kick tension up and when to have moments of reprieve. Just a few highlights from the tracklist:
Aptly titled, “Raccoon City” is the first track you hear as you step away from the burning wreckage of the police vehicle. Stranded in the streets of the city, surrounded by ravenous zombies, the track uses a sinister bassline and loud brass to give the scene an epic, yet ominous tone. It’s the start of an adventure, but it’s not that kind of adventure. It’s a struggle for survival and you’re getting thrown into the deep end right at the start. It’s also the first time you’ll hear a certain musical motif that’s repeated throughout Resident Evil 2.
“Leon With Claire” plays when the two protagonists meet up in the S.T.A.R.S. office within the Raccoon Police Department. Earlier, Claire mentions that she’s looking for her brother, Chris. Leon reads a diary and discovers that Chris is long gone from the city. This melody plays as they discuss their need to escape. It’s a bittersweet little track, instilling a feeling of melancholy with strings and brass to represent Claire not finding Chris, while piano is used in a slightly more upbeat way that sounds a little like relief that he’s (supposedly) safe.
This is one of Resident Evil 2’s most atmospheric tracks, if not one of the most in the entire series. As you come across a run-down factory building, you hear this haunting and eerie track start playing. As you walk outside, you see the worn-down building and a train car all by its lonesome. Bathed in the light of a full moon, the scene is oddly unsettling with “The Marshalling Yard (2nd Half)” added to it. It feels like you’re stepping into the unknown as you make preparations to descend the giant elevator into Umbrella’s underground lab.
Speaking of that motif from earlier, this is probably the track most people remember from Resident Evil 2. “The Second Malformation of G” is the boss fight music for when you fight William Birkin’s G2 form. You can hear the same motif from the very beginning of the game front and center as you face down a wretched mutating creature. Trapped on the very same elevator mentioned in the previous track, the brass and percussion kick into high gear to give the impression of a truly powerful foe staring you down as you barely scrape by with your insurmountably poor odds of survival. As William becomes more monster than human, his descent is reflected in the three “Malformations of G”, tying into the musical motif of the game beautifully.
So, with better VA, still the same unintentionally funny dialogue, and a gorgeous soundtrack, Resident Evil 2 outpaces its predecessor handily in this category. It’s dripping with a thick atmosphere that’s perfectly counteracted with the often ridiculous line delivery and iffy takes that only 90s localization could provide. It manages to skirt beneath the legendarily bad status of the original game, instead remaining good enough that it doesn’t detract from the overall tone of the game. …Too much.
Gameplay
“Running off like that was reckless and stupid!”
In attempting to build up from the groundwork laid by its predecessor, Resident Evil 2 aimed to improve the existing gameplay and add new features into the mix as well. Kamiya’s love of action games may have helped in this regard, as I can easily see some of the game’s mechanics and pacing being a result of this preference.
For starters, Kamiya sought to improve the pace of general gameplay. The first game was both deliberately-paced and methodical. It was a puzzle box to be slowly unraveled over time as you took in the atmosphere of the Spencer Estate. Even at running speeds, characters navigated the mansion slower than you’d think. In contrast, Resident Evil 2 is downright frenetic. Movement speed is increased in order to match the chaotic energy of the game’s atmosphere. The most obvious example of this is, weirdly enough, when using stairs. In the original, Jill and Chris would use stairs almost leisurely. Claire and Leon bolt up and down them as you’d expect someone running from monsters to do!
This pace improvement extends even to the level design. The various areas of the first game are designed in such a way that it encourages you to tackle certain objectives in any order you choose, or to backtrack once you’ve gotten certain keys. It helps to build a map in the player’s head as they go through rooms and criss-cross through the environments multiple times. Conversely, with Resident Evil 2 it feels much more streamlined overall in order to keep the player pushing forward. Instead of zipping around the police station back and forth, the general path keeps Leon and Claire moving to new locations instead. This works for the game’s quick pace, but it does cause one problem for me.
To be honest, I found myself having to investigate the in-game map far more than in the original since there was very little backtracking compared to the first game. This by itself isn’t terrible, but it is indicative of the game not having me learn the layout of the map like the first game did. However, this is made worse when I discovered that, in the original PS1 version of the game, there’s no dedicated map button! I had to open my inventory and navigate to the map manually every time I needed to use it. It’s a minor annoyance, but do it 20 times and it all stacks up to be an issue.
Another minor problem: where the original game took the option out in order to sell more rentals by increasing the game difficulty, Resident Evil 2 reinserts auto-aim into the game. That’s a good thing! However, it took me about an hour of gameplay to realize it was even an option. The default is the same as the first game: manual aiming. While I decided to fiddle around with the controls to see if there was a map button (and as I found out above, there isn’t!), I discovered that Option C is the exact same as Option A for controls… except it had auto-aim enabled. It’s an improvement over its predecessor in that regard but had I not had the map issue, I’d have never realized this anyway, which is an issue in and of itself.
Aside from those control problems, Resident Evil 2 has a solid gameplay loop. As with the first game, you pick between the two protagonists at the start and play through their version of the story. Unlike the first game, however, it connects the stories together via the A/B scenario system. The game is a bit shorter than the original when playing one scenario, but the game is meant to be played at least twice to get the full story. You get to see what the other character was up to during the A scenario, which is really cool. As I stated above, this actually has more gameplay ramifications than anything, as it incorporates the “zapping” system.
The development team implemented the zapping system as a way to make the game feel more cohesive between playthroughs. When doing certain things in an A scenario, you can affect what happens later on in the B scenario. There are various examples of this used in different and interesting ways. The most famous one that players likely remember is the SMG/side pack conundrum in the basement weapons locker. As the A scenario character, you can take an SMG which is a powerful two-slot gun, or a side pack, which increases your inventory capacity by two slots. You can take both, or you can take neither! Whichever you choose, the game remembers this choice and in the B scenario, whatever you left for that character will remain.
Zapping is used in many ways. Using an anti-bioweapon gas in the labs in an A scenario will weaken enemies, but the prolonged exposure will strengthen them in the B scenario. As such, it’s best to wait until B scenario to activate the gas. If you kill the giant alligator boss with the canister in A, then it will be gone in B. If not, it’ll still be there for the B character to fight! If you beat an A scenario in an alternate outfit, then the character will be wearing it in B scenario. There’s even a special easter egg room in the lab that you can only access if you register your fingerprint in both scenarios and use them on a special door!
In the end, zapping isn’t a huge part of the game, but it’s used just enough and in varied enough ways to stick in my mind. It’s used in situations as minor as the window shutter usage and as major as the side pack and SMG. It helps the two scenarios coalesce into a whole story, which is awesome. However, there’s something else that the B scenario introduces that sets it apart quite a bit from the A scenario…
The T-103 model Tyrant is a series of creatures dropped into the city by Umbrella to kill any survivors. Umbrella doesn’t want people telling anyone what they saw, so they deploy these hulking beasts to silence all people they find. Unfortunately, one of these creatures is dropped into the R.P.D. and finds… you. You never encounter this gargantuan monster in the A scenario, which is a nice surprise when it shows up. Well, nice for variety at least, not so much for the character!
Mr. X, as he’s colloquially known, will show up in various rooms throughout the game to harass and attempt to kill the player. You can either attempt to shoot him down to gain some ammo, or you can have an actual brain and run for your life. He’s extremely slow, and won’t follow you through any rooms. Actually, in all honesty… Mr. X is kind of a non-issue. He looks intimidating, but that’s about all he does. It’s a cool addition that does help the B scenario feel more fresh, but he shows up a scant few times and when he does, he’s hilariously easy to dodge. I think his inclusion is overall a positive thing from a creative standpoint, but I’d be lying if I said he feels like anything except a superfluous afterthought in terms of gameplay.
Scenario differences aside, each character also has their own differences in gameplay. Leon and Claire each visit a couple unique areas over the course of the game and they each get several exclusive weapons. There are also certain sections of the game where players control the secondary character for a short period of time; you control Ada in Leon’s scenarios and Sherry in Claire’s. These parts are extremely short, but nevertheless they are there so I felt the need to mention them!
The weapons each character can get range from unique to downright ridiculous. Over the course of his playthrough in addition to his handgun, Leon can get a shotgun, a magnum and a flamethrower. Pretty impressive, right? Well, even more impressive are the optional upgrades he can get. If you’re clever enough, you can find upgrades for nearly all his weapons. His handgun will then fire in a three-round burst (which you can toggle on and off), his shotgun becomes a super shotgun that can obliterate zombies with one shot, and the magnum turns into one of the most powerful weapons in the entire game, if not the most powerful behind the rocket launcher. I ended the fight with Mr. X with only three bullets from this gun before the rocket launcher showed up to finish the job.
On Claire’s end, she gets the more out-there weapons. While her weapons don’t get any upgrades, she does still get a little bit of customization. Alongside her handgun, Claire can pick up a bowgun, a grenade launcher with three ammo types, and an experimental weapon called the Spark Shot. The bowgun fires three bolts at a time, and to be honest… it’s useless. I think I used it on some dogs in the basement one time just to say I used it, but it got benched really fast. Also, the Spark Shot is really only useful against one boss, otherwise it has no extra ammo and also gets shelved. The grenade launcher, on the other hand, is fantastic. You can load in normal grenade rounds as well as flame and acid rounds, like the first game.
However, the utility of Resident Evil 2’s grenade launcher makes the original’s look like garbage by comparison. The game inundates you with enough ammo to tear down a whole city block, encouraging you to bomb your way through anything that dares attempt to stop you. I can’t describe how great this grenade launcher is. Man, I love that freaking thing. That said, it’s really the only great weapon Claire gets, which is a shame. I wish the Spark Shot or the bowgun had more use, because her one weapon completely overshadows everything else she has, unlike Leon whose weapons are more varied on the whole. I know you all think I forgot about a certain weapon Claire can get, but I didn’t! I’ll be getting to it in the next section!
That just about covers all the gameplay stuff. Resident Evil 2 is mostly great in this department, with lots of creativity being put into the A/B scenarios and the zapping system. Mr. X showing up in B scenario is a welcome inclusion, and the variety of weapons for each character is really cool. The pace of the game is mostly personal preference whether you like it more than the original, but it’s hard to deny that it feels good to zip around rooms like you’re actually trying to escape zombie hordes. That said, the lack of a map button in the original version is a shame, because the game’s pace hardly lets you get a grip on map layouts and if you’re like me, you’ll be consulting the map way more than the original. Mr. X, while his inclusion is cool, ends up being about as threatening as your average zombie. The variety of weapons is great, but Leon gets all good weapons while Claire is given an incredible one, a mediocre one with a single use case, and a terrible waste of space called the bowgun. When it’s all said and done, Resident Evil 2’s gameplay is great, but not without its faults.
Extras/Replay Value
“Nobody’s going to leave my town! Everyone’s gonna die!!”
Much like its predecessor, Resident Evil 2 has several different ways to keep the player engaged once they’ve managed to survive the nightmare. Of course, you have the almighty Infinite Rocket Launcher to rend your foes limb from limb, which is always satisfying. Beating an A scenario with an A or B rank in under 2.5 hours is how you get this beauty. However, Hideki Kamiya wasn’t content with just one unlockable superweapon. If you beat a B scenario in under 3 hours with an A or B rank, you unlock an infinite ammo version of the SMG from the police station basement. Pretty neat, right? Well, if you beat that same scenario in under 2.5 hours, you unlock its big brother: the infinite Gatling Gun! It’s so satisfying to run around shredding monsters to bits with this.
However, even when you first start the game, you can dip into its extras. If you manage to make it from the city streets to the front yard of the police department without attempting to pick up a single item, you’ll find S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team pilot Brad Vickers as a zombie! He’s really strong, so I recommend jumping into the police station to pick up some extra handgun ammo; once he’s spawned in, he stays there which allows you to come back when you’re better-stocked. Upon putting him down, you can take the Special Key from his body. This key opens a locker in one of the save rooms in the police station, and depending on your character, you get different results.
As Leon, opening this locker grants access to two alternate outfits. In one, he dons a biker jacket and jeans, and the other is a more casual R.P.D. outfit with a baseball cap, tank top and baggy pants. While wearing either outfit, his aiming pose with his handgun changes. Instead of the normal aiming, he does a street-style killshot pose, and it even slightly increases his rate of fire. On the other hand, Claire gets only one alternate costume: another biker outfit with a bandana and cowboy boots. However, she also gets an exclusive weapon: the Colt S.A.A. This revolver uses normal handgun bullets and only fires six shots at a time, but it’s more powerful than her normal handgun and she fires it extremely fast by fanning the hammer. This is a large improvement over her original handgun, in my opinion, as it can take zombies down much faster.
Just a fun little sidenote about the special key: Unlocking it in an A scenario automatically makes Brad spawn in the other character’s B scenario. This way you can pick up items all you want in B scenario, go out to the R.P.D. front yard and find Brad again to unlock the special key. Zapping continues to be a neat addition!
Aside from that, there are two other special unlockables within the original version of Resident Evil 2. If you complete an A/B scenario set with an A rank on at least one of the two scenarios, you unlock The 4th Survivor. This minigame centers on HUNK, one of the Umbrella soldiers sent to recover the G-Virus from William Birkin. He wakes up in the sewer after being assaulted by the mutated Birkin and must make it to his extraction point at the R.P.D. helipad with the sample of the G-Virus that he has. This mode is fairly short; clocking in at 5–10 minutes, it’s over fast. That is, if you survive; The 4th Survivor is extremely hard, with each room packed to the brim with monsters trying to kill you. You have a fairly hefty arsenal, but only two minor healing items, so you have to make the most of it. This mode was directed by a man named Kazuhiro Aoyama, who will be reappearing in this franchise retrospective very soon…
There’s one other thing in Resident Evil 2 though, and it sounds ridiculous. If you beat a single scenario six times and save your game, you’ll unlock… The Tofu Survivor. It’s the exact same as The 4th Survivor, but you play as a giant sentient block of tofu wearing Jill Valentine’s S.T.A.R.S. beret. That, and he only gets a knife with which to defend himself (itself?) I swear to you I am not making this up. This isn’t some lame April Fool’s joke about unlocking Akuma in the game, this is the real deal!
Did you think Resident Evil 2 needed more content? Well, someone at Capcom did because with re-releases, more and more stuff was crammed into this poor game. The DualShock version of the game came with a new minigame called Extreme Battle. In this mode, you can select your difficulty level of 1, 2 or 3. Starting in the Umbrella labs, you’re tasked with finding four Anti-Virus bombs in the R.P.D. and setting them on the train from the game’s end in order to clear out all the monsters in the area.
You can choose between Leon and Claire, and beating Level 1 unlocks Ada for the game. If you can beat Level 2, you unlock Chris Redfield from the first Resident Evil! Each character has their own loadout, and can find items and ammo in the world as they explore. Leon can even find his gun upgrades while searching various areas! These environments are packed with enemies that aren’t normally there in the main game, though. On higher difficulties, you may even find bosses roaming around! This mode is a lot of fun and quite meaty; the game gives you ink ribbons to save your progress depending on your difficulty level (5 for level 1, 3 for level 2, only 1 for level 3). It’s a really fun additional mode and adds a bit of life to the game.
Ohoho, we’re not done yet! In the PC and Dreamcast ports, players also got a taste of some utter craziness. Beating the game on the exclusive Expert mode unlocks Nightmare mode, a difficulty that will either test your mettle or make you tear your hair out. Ammo and health items are wildly scarce and enemies do insane amounts of damage; a Licker can take you from Fine to Danger in a single hit! This is only for the most dedicated of Resident Evil 2 fans, so beware!
Finally, I left the most interesting case of extras for last. Let’s talk about impossible ports. That seems to be the catchphrase nowadays, especially with the Nintendo Switch. Ports are appearing on the console, full versions of games that nobody thought could run on a handheld. What if I told you, however, that The Witcher III or DOOM Eternal weren’t the most impressive “impossible ports” to exist? That it was, in fact, another Nintendo console that became home to one of the most impressive programming feats in all of gaming?
In 1999, Capcom hired a little-known developer named Angel Studios to port Resident Evil 2 to the Nintendo 64. This was a gargantuan task; squeezing two CDs’ worth of data onto a single 64MB cartridge? Impossible. Inconceivable. You’re crazy if you even try. Nobody could fit upwards of 1.2GB of data on a cart that small.
Except somehow, they really did it. They ported the entire game over. All four scenarios. All the dialogue. All the music (at a higher bitrate than the PS1 version, too!). All the FMVs. Well… most of the FMVs. Despite their best efforts, there was still just barely too much content to stuff into the cart. With a bit of creativity, Angel Studios managed to work out a solution: two FMVs in the game are quite long and are nearly identical with only one line of dialogue different between them. These two FMVs are when either Ada or Claire is talking to Annette Birkin about the G-Virus, so they decided to just use one FMV for both scenarios (as the character models don’t actually show up in the cutscenes). It fooled me for quite some time; I didn’t notice until years later that they reused the same FMV!
With that tiny cut, Angel Studios managed to fit the entire four scenarios of Resident Evil 2 onto one cart, and somehow managed to be the only version of the game with exclusive features not found in any other version! For starters, there are toggles for the amount of blood you want and the blood color of your choice. There’s also an item randomizer mode, which randomizes the non-critical items in the game to extend the replay value. The two most interesting exclusive features, however, are the EX files and the option for an alternate control scheme.
16 EX files were added into this version of the game. As you might expect, these were special additional files that gave more insight to Resident Evil 2’s events before and while everything fell to pieces in the city. More than that, though, they’re used to connect Resident Evil 2 with various other games. For instance, some files link to Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, like Brad’s Note. Hell, some of these files are actually lifted from the game and put into this one. One file in particular, Rebecca’s Report, references the plot of the then N64-exclusive in-development project Resident Evil 0. Several files mention the events of the original game, and one even makes direct reference to Resident Evil CODE: Veronica, which hadn’t even been released yet and which was exclusive to a different console altogether. These different connections are a cool addition to the game and help flesh the series out a bit more.
The alternate control scheme is another neat addition, even if I didn’t use it while playing the N64 version. Does anyone remember when the remaster of the Resident Evil remake came out in 2015? One of the new features was an option for a different control scheme. Instead of tank controls, you could move the character in any direction that you pointed the control stick. Some people liked the change, others didn’t. It was a controversial new addition to the series, but here’s the thing: it wasn’t a new one. Angel Studios implemented this very same control scheme as an option 15 years earlier in their port of Resident Evil 2! Quite the forethought that this small group of developers had.
As you can see, Resident Evil 2 is wholly unique in the series when it comes to additional content. Various versions have all sorts of unique and exclusive content, with the N64 version being the most impressive in that regard (and even impressive in the sense that it exists at all). It’s a game that’s stuffed to the brim wherever you decide to play it. As for Angel Studios, where are they now after that tech wizardry? Well, they rebranded a few years later after being purchased by another company. You may know them better as a little studio called Rockstar San Diego, of Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto V fame. Forgot to mention that tiny detail, didn’t I?
Conclusion
“I will always remember you. Goodbye, Ada.”
What else is there to say? Resident Evil 2 is excellent, there’s no doubt about it. Twice in a row, the series was directed by first-time game directors and twice in a row they’ve knocked it out of the park. Kamiya and his dedicated team worked themselves like crazy to get the game into a workable state, even tearing it all down and restarting under intense public pressure with a game delay.
That pressure pushed out a diamond of fun gameplay, great characters, beautiful environments and fantastic music. It’s a very well-crafted game that’s built on being replayable and easier to hop into than the first game. It’s fast-paced and isn’t afraid to go all the way with its grotesque body horror.
This diamond has some flaws, though, as most diamonds do; smaller issues like the initial lack of a map button can be bothersome, while the lack of useful weapons (and general weapon balance) on Claire’s side of things is more egregious. It’s hardly a dealbreaker for the game, but it’s worth noting for any potential players.
Resident Evil 2 is beloved as one of the series’ best entries, and it’s not hard to see why. Everything, as promised, is bigger. It’s crazier, scarier, more intense. It has a few issues here and there, but the sum is greater than the parts by a long shot in this case. It’s an all-time classic even to this day. Leon and Claire’s adventure in Raccoon City is highly memorable to many players, myself included.
But with a city of 100,000 residents, surely someone else must have an adventure of their own that’s worth discussing during this dark period in the city’s history…