One Avocadoan’s journey delving into the realm of survival horror.

(Oh, hey, it’s my 200^th post/thread on the Avocado! Anyway…)

The original Resident Evil 2 was released in 1998, only two years after the first game. When it comes to the remakes, though, the gap isn’t quite so small. Resident Evil 2 Remake (also referred to as RE2make) came out in 2019, seventeen years after the remake of the first game (also known as REmake). A remake of the second Resident Evil was originally planned for production after the release of REmake but was cancelled to allow resources to be focused on Resident Evil 4; it wasn’t until 2015 that a revival of the project was finally announced. 

Now, seventeen years is quite a bit of time in the gaming industry. Graphics improved significantly over that time period, greatly lessening the need for techniques like pre-rendered backgrounds and fixed camera angles. These days, the only survival horror games making use of them anymore seem to be indie games going for a retro aesthetic. Resident Evil 2 Remake attempts to the toe the line by combining a new perspective with other old-school genre mechanics. Did it end up being a successful update of the original Resident Evil formula, and does it hold up well on its own? Not to spoil anything, but my answer to both questions is a pretty emphatic ‘yes’.

As with REmake, RE2make gives you the choice between two player characters. This time, you must choose between Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield. From what I understand they are more mechanically similar to each other than Jill and Chris were in REmake (although with access to different weapons) but diverge in certain plot beats of their respective stories. I ended up going with Leon because I’ve heard he plays a larger role in later games; I intend to play through Claire’s story at some point but I tend to get burned out when playing the same game twice in a row, even if there are differences across the playthroughs.

Anyway, the story begins with Leon stopping at a gas station on the edge of Raccoon City a couple of months after the events of the first game. Leon was supposed to start his new job as an officer with the Raccoon City Police Department (RPD) a week earlier, but he received a strange phone call from his superior telling him to stay away. Having heard nothing more since then, he’s decided to check out what is going on at the RPD. Unfortunately for him, the gas station is infested with zombies and his escape is nearly cut off before he is saved at the last second by Claire. The two of them steal an idling police car and race off to the city proper. Along the way, Claire explains that she is looking for her brother, Chris Redfield (one of the player characters from the first game). Upon arriving in downtown Raccoon City, the pair find the streets choked with abandoned vehicles and roaming zombies. The two of them are soon separated by a careening semi-truck and an explosion and agree to rendezvous at the RPD headquarters – where they hope, against all hope, to find some help.

A significant chunk of the game occurs in RPD HQ, and it is such a fantastic place to explore. A note somewhere indicates that the building used to be an art museum before being converted to its current use, which helps to explain its gorgeous architecture. The first area you enter as Leon is the main hall, and the developers really went all out with the improved graphics to make sure that the player gets a grand first impression. The soaring ceiling, the polished marble columns and surfaces, the goddess statue standing triumphantly above it all. Other areas of the building are more damaged or cloaked in darkness, but they still manage to maintain pieces of that broken, almost ironic grandeur. From a level design perspective, a police headquarters building like this provides many great opportunities for the puzzle-solving that is central to the survival horror genre and to the Resident Evil series in particular. From interrogation rooms to cell blocks to offices to the armory (and even a library), there are so many different nooks and crannies where you can find objects or pieces of information needed to progress in other locations. It all works together to give the entire place a puzzle-box feel, much like the mansion from the first Resident Evil.

Avoiding too many spoilers, there are two more major areas after the RPD. I wasn’t as much of a fan of the second main area. It lacked the visual appeal of the RPD HQ and proved to be more frustrating than fun with some particularly annoying enemies. Luckily the third and final area was something of a rebound, with more of a distinctive aesthetic and some tricky puzzle-solving. I particularly liked the greenhouse section of this area, which was creepier and tenser than I was expecting. Those ivy zombies…*shudder*.

By going with an over-the-shoulder camera rather than fixed camera angles, the game does lose one of the great tension-builders of REmake (and presumably the original three games). In REmake you frequently could not see beyond the area right around the door upon entering a room. The only way to change the angle of the camera and see more is to move forward – straight into the unknown. This was made even more heart-pounding through the sound design, with moans and creaks indicating the presence of enemies that you aren’t able to locate yet. With an over-the-shoulder camera in RE2make, however, we see whatever Leon (or Claire) sees when entering a new space. To get a good look around, all you need to do is turn slightly to one side or the other and voila. The developers try to mitigate this by deliberately hampering the player’s view with dark lighting, fog, dust, or debris, and they do a pretty impressive job with it. Even with the more mobile camera it can be hard to tell right away just how many enemies are present in a room and how close they are. Still, though, I can’t help but feel that a little something was lost with the transition.

Despite the change in perspective, there is quite a bit of old-school Resident Evil goodness to be found. The dark and oppressive atmosphere created by setting the whole thing at night is on point. The puzzles are plentiful and generally similar to what you’d see in REmake, challenging enough to take some time to figure out but not so much so that you’re spending hours running in circles. Item boxes are used to store and transfer excess items that you can’t fit in your inventory, typewriters are used for saving progress, and save rooms act as little oases free from danger. Seeing all these elements in a more modern presentation (compared to REmake) feels almost like it verges on the uncanny valley, and I don’t mean that as a criticism.

The resource management aspects of the game do seem to suffer a bit in comparison to other survival horror games I’ve played (namely REmake and Signalis), though. You start out with eight inventory slots, like Jill in REmake, but you are actually able to expand that number over the course of the game; by the end I had twenty inventory slots, a more than two-fold increase. Item boxes are also easier to find. RE2make has nearly twice as many item boxes as REmake (sixteen vs. nine), but I finished the game in two fewer hours. These two factors meant that, especially by the second half of RE2make, I rarely felt like I was running low on space (at least not for long). Ammo also seemed more abundant, such that I frequently had more than sixty – sometimes even more than eighty – handgun bullets on hand. The larger inventory meant that I was able to carry more weapons and their assorted ammo at any given time as well.

Another notable resource management change is the lack of ink ribbons when playing at any difficulty besides hardcore. Unlike in REmake, in RE2make on standard difficulty you can save at a typewriter as many times as you want without the risk of accidently locking yourself out of saving at a critical moment later. This is more akin to the other modern survival horror games I’ve played, so really it’s REmake that is more of the odd one out when it comes to my experience with the genre. Still, it was a feature that I felt added quite a bit to the formula, and I would have liked to have seen it again without having to set everything to the hardest difficulty level.

While the game isn’t quite as successful as REmake at using its gameplay mechanics to create tension, this is counteracted somewhat by the enemies, which I generally found tougher to deal with. The normal zombies seem a lot more mobile and aggressive than in REmake and harder to get away from. In Crow Country and Signalis, enemies are restricted to the room you encounter them in; in REmake there are a few instances where zombies can open doors to follow you, but from what I understand that is limited to specific doors and zombies. In RE2make, on the other hand, it seemed as though virtually any zombie could open most doors in the RPD. I would escape from a room containing three zombies into a hallway, and then mere moments later I would hear the door rattle and open and two of the zombies would come shuffling out after me. It puts a lot of pressure on the player to either use up ammo taking them out or constantly keep moving. The zombies also seem more resilient to weapons fire than in REmake, and their increased mobility combined with the manual aiming makes it easier to miss. The good thing is that they don’t revive and become Crimson Heads once killed. Speaking of which, I also found the Lickers more nerve-wracking to deal with than the Crimson Heads in REmake. Although it is possible to sneak past the Lickers if you are quiet enough, once they get their sights on you they will not let you go. Add to that how tank-y they are and how disgusting they look, and they really are a formidable foe.

No discussion of RE2make would be complete without discussing the elephant in the room. I am speaking, of course, about Mr. X. Mr. X is a Tyrant – essentially the most powerful and intelligent class of zombies created by the Umbrella Corporation – and became something of a breakout star for the game. Part of that is his strangely dapper appearance (complete with a black trench coat and fedora), which is a definite step up from the images I’ve seen of him from the original game. But perhaps the larger factor is just how straight-up terrifying he is.

Although hinted at earlier, you first encounter Mr. X midway through exploring the RPD. There’s no cutscene to introduce him or warn you to run, he just shoves aside some wreckage at the end of a dark hallway and immediately begins to stalk toward you. From that point forward, he relentlessly hunts you throughout the building. There’s no way to kill him or permanently stop him; certain more powerful weapons can briefly stagger him, but that’s it. All you can do is try to lose him. He’s not particularly fast, you can easily outrun him along a clear path. The problem is that he doesn’t need to stop to navigate obstacles, deal with enemies, or try to solve puzzles. Attempting to do any of those things once he’s locked onto you is nearly impossible. Pretty much the best thing do at that point is to sprint to one of the save rooms – some of the only places he can’t enter. (Note that the main hall, despite having a typewriter and item box, does not count as a save room; I learned that the hard way.)

Mr. X adds so much anxiety to the game in a way that I just love (but others might find a little overwhelming). Never knowing when he’s going to show up and what might alert him to your location really pushes the player to strategize about the best way to meet their objectives fast and forces them to have multiple potential escape routes on hand. Whenever he is near your location, you’ll hear his booming footsteps and his ominous, unnerving theme, but even then you’ll frequently be unable to tell which direction he is coming from until it is nearly too late. I find that to be a very unsettling touch that leaves you constantly on edge. What really fascinates me is that people who have managed to separate the camera from Claire/Leon have shown that, once he’s lost track of you, Mr. X will actually search the entire building for you – even parts that aren’t fully loaded at that particular point in time. He doesn’t just spawn/de-spawn whenever the game needs him to. That’s just so wonderfully creepy to me. I also really like how he comes across more like a brawler than your average zombie. When he catches up to you, he doesn’t try to bite you or scratch you with claws; he slugs you with his fists, or he picks you up by the face and tosses you to the ground. It gives him such a great physicality that heightens his presence. He’ll even shove aside any zombies that get in his way. Without Mr. X, RE2make would be a very good game. His inclusion bumps it up to a great game in my opinion.

I’ll say that I quite liked the characters as well, especially compared to the more one-dimensional cast of REmake. I particularly enjoyed Leon’s portrayal as an out-of-his-depth rookie who nonetheless wants to do everything he can to save people. He’s naive and kind of gullible, unlike the back-flipping action hero I’ve heard he becomes in later games or the veteran officers from REmake, but he’s able to hold his own when he needs to. He has some great chemistry with Claire and Ada as well. (It should also be noted that the voice acting is miles ahead of REmake).

Resident Evil 2 Remake doesn’t quite match the pure dread evoked by the Resident Evil HD Remaster (although Mr. X makes it close), but it is a blast to play, a great update of the original formula, and an excellent entry in the survival horror genre.

Survival horror and adjacent games I hope to cover (in no particular order) – Resident Evil HD Remaster, Resident Evil 2 Remake, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (original), Resident Evil 4 (original), Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Resident Evil: Village, Silent Hill 2 Remake, Silent Hill 4: The Room, Silent Hill f, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Amnesia: Rebirth, Tormented Souls, Alien Isolation, Yomawari: Midnight Shadows, The Evil Within, The Evil Within 2, Alisa, Dead Space (2008), Alone in the Dark 1, Alone in the Dark 2, Alone in the Dark 3, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, Curse: Eye of Isis, Dino Crisis, Darkwood, ObsCure, Cold Fear, Lempo, Stasis, Stasis Bone Totem, System Shock 1 and 2, Metro 2033, Look Outside, Fear the Spotlight, Heartworm, Little Goody Two-Shoes, SOMA

My Current Survival Horror Ranking:

1. Resident Evil (HD Remaster) (9.5/10)
2. Signalis (9/10)
3. Resident Evil 2 Remake (9/10)
4. Crow Country (8.5/10)

Up Next: Silent Hill f

Header image courtesy Eurogamer.