Resident Evil 2 (2019) — Raccoon City Redux

It was easy to be skeptical of how the Resident Evil 2 remake would turn out when Capcom first announced it, thanks to the changes made within the company since the first remake released in 2002. In fact, there have been several different Resident Evil experiences since then, with survival horror and survival action titles — the latter of which went seriously over the top in some installments. The styles couldn’t be further apart, and there were still questions about whether Capcom still employed talent capable of creating an experience on par with the original remake despite Resident Evil 7 mostly doing the same, albeit in first-person.

Even with the switch to an over-the-shoulder camera style, which gives it an ostensible commonality with the action-based games, the team knew what they were doing all along. The RE2 remake takes the best elements from previous horror and action-based RE games and incorporates them into a faithful reinterpretation of the original game, while providing necessary mechanical modernizations for a 2019 video game. That’s not to say it doesn’t have some stumbles, but the positives far outweigh the negatives.

Capcom described the remake as an expanded experience over the original prior to its release, and the earliest hours show how the locations were part of that effort. It recreates scenes and environments from the original while keeping the circa 1998 setting, but everything is given a more realistic feel. The trek from the streets of Raccoon City to the Racoon Police Department (RPD) is shorter this time around, but the outdoor locations actually resemble those of a midwestern urban American city this time, contrary to the original game’s oddly tight streets and alleyways. Despite the changes, it doesn’t take away from the familiarity factor involved.

The scenario keeps the same basic concept of the original. It features Leon Scott Kennedy and Claire Redfield as playable characters, a rookie police officer heading to his disastrous first day on the force, and a college student searching for her brother Chris, respectively. Little did both of them know they were heading into a zombie apocalypse, in a city with little human life left. Several good changes are made to the story and script to remove the cheesiness from the 90s original, similar to the first game’s remake, alongside making the city feel more believable. All this works in tandem to provide a more horrifying atmosphere, divorced from the played-out jump scares from the old games.

There are story changes I wasn’t a fan of, though. Leon and Claire make less contact than in the original, an alteration presumably made to increase the level of solitude. But this means they share less story details with each other, leading to some plot threads making less sense. The A and B “zapping” scenarios (which Capcom initially claimed wouldn’t be included in this game), where the actions the player takes as one character in the first scenario played affect the other, don’t make logical sense this time. Still, there are more good changes than bad, especially with the presentation.

The over-the-shoulder view takes more from Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5, and characters shoot within a third-person view, both of which are significant changes from the older games’ fixed camera angles. But again, it keeps the survival horror gameplay, meaning there are no contextual melee attacks.

I enjoyed how intimidating even normal zombies are, which shows how they were able to take over a gigantic city and get the best of both police officers and armed militiamen; that’s despite some of them taking a while to go down, depending on how beneficial the weapon damage RNG is to the player. Zombies can go down in one lucky hit, but in others can take ten shots to stay down. And that’s not even getting into advanced enemies like Lickers. Ammo is also limited, meaning it hurts when you miss an enemy and waste a shot from any gun, and knives degrade. It’s challenging in the sense that it forces players to relearn how to play Resident Evil 2 and to manage their resources well, but not to an unfair degree.

Even basic exploration becomes tense when the “Mr. X” Tyrant starts appearing. Unlike the original game, he’s invincible this time, and chases the player throughout the RPD. He was a hassle whenever I tried to find where to go next, and especially when I was solving puzzles in rooms he could barge into; but he became easier to deal with once I figured out how to efficiently outrun him, and once I’d memorized the station’s layout. He also can’t get into every room. It’s a little worse on the B scenario, since he appears earlier, but he’s not quite as tough to dodge thanks to being familiar with how he works. Eventually, you learn to deal with your new houseguest, though it’s not like this game doesn’t have surprises to keep you from becoming complacent.

The game isn’t quite as good when the player loses control of Leon and Claire. Ada Wong’s short section is underwhelming and a little frustrating, with her pitiful defense and the poorly-lit area she needs to explore. Sherry Birkin’s section is okay, though. The boss battles also leave much to be desired, and many of them are fought against the same enemy. But these are only minor blemishes on the overall experience.

The development team designed the entire game for players to avoid getting too comfortable, since the best survival horror games keep players on their toes. It also knows how to instill fear through uncertainty, since several rooms throughout the game don’t have any power going to them thanks to zombies and other creatures cutting power or light switches for them. This makes it tough to see in rooms, creating the feeling that anything could leap out at you from anywhere inside that you can’t see at first. As that sentence implies, this doesn’t happen all the time, but the mere thought of it is enough to make you proceed carefully. After stumbling for years, it’s nice that Capcom remembered how to implement good atmosphere in RE games between RE7 and this title.

Nearly all the returning voices were changed for this game, thanks to the decision to use non-union voice actors. But the new cast did a good job, and all of them manage to sound and act naturally, fitting the characters a survival horror game better than the voices that accompanied them as they performed super-heroic feats in the survival action games.

I enjoyed the soundtrack too, whenever I could hear it. The best horror games use either silence or ambient themes, meaning the more melodic themes from the original Resident Evil 2 are seldom played — if they’re used at all. I missed hearing Ada’s Theme in any cutscene, for instance, which doesn’t even play with the old soundtrack DLC. At the very least, the music could have been constantly playing while in safe rooms, but that’s a minor complaint.

There are a few small issues, but the Resident Evil 2 remake is a superb recreation of the original game. It implements some elements from the newer games to make it more palatable for a modern audience, and each one benefits the experience rather than hindering it. For the first time in a while, I’m looking forward to the future of the Resident Evil series, in the form of the likely-inevitable remake of Resident Evil 3 and the next mainline installment.