As long as I can remember, horror has been the one genre of books, movies, and video games I’ve been avoiding like the plague. Occasionally I might play a game like Castlevania which contains a veritable bestiary of ghosts, werewolves, vampires, and other classic horror movie monsters, but such works aren’t primarily concerned with scaring you. That being said, one of my acquaintances who loves horror told me he also avoided the genre for years as well until he played Resident Evil. After that my curiosity got the better of me and I picked up the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 on New Years Eve with a little Steam credit I received as a gift. I never thought in a million years I’d be up at midnight on New Year’s Day engrossed in a game about a zombie apocalypse, but here we are.

Resident Evil 2 takes place two months after the first Resident Evil with the zombie virus from the Spencer Mansion now overtaking nearby Raccoon City. The main story follows two protagonists, Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield, who the player chooses between at the start of the game. Leon is a rookie police officer headed into Raccoon City for his first day on the job. Claire is a college student looking for her brother Chris, one of the protagonists from the first Resident Evil. The story changes quite a bit depending on who you choose to play as so it’s worth playing the game at least twice to see both versions of events. That being said, this is still a remake of a game from 1998 so the plot is still at best a campy b-movie in spite of the actors’ and directors’ attempts to make things feel more serious. Definitely enjoyable, but not high art by any stretch of the imagination.

The game’s music is not particularly memorable, but it complements the gameplay really well. Most of the time there’s no music at all, just environmental ambience subtly building tension as the player moves from room to room. When the music does start playing it is intense and uncomfortable because you’ve probably caught the attention of zombies so it’s time for fight or flight to kick in. Normally I’d declare the music a net positive at this point and move on, but we still have the soundtrack from 1998 to consider which was full of memorable songs. In this regard the music unfortunately goes from solid to disappointing, definitely explains why Capcom is selling the original soundtrack as DLC for the remake.

Not all is lost for the remake’s presentation as to no one’s surprise the visuals have received substantial improvements. The environments are full of detail that help sell the idea that Raccoon City has become a living nightmare. There are makeshift barricades in every dark hallway and ransacked offices are stained with blood and littered with corpses (some of which may or may not wake up to eat you). Furthermore, the player characters and zombies will visibly accumulate wounds when they take damage so the detailed graphics serve a practical function by removing the need for a cluttered user interface. I’m sure much like the original the remake’s visual appeal will diminish over time as new technology allows for even better looking games, but in the Year of Our Lord 2025 the remake still looks great.

The most apparent change between the original Resident Evil 2 and the remake is the game’s camera and controls, replacing fixed angles and tank controls with much more intuitive over the shoulder third-person shooting. Further changes made for the player’s convenience include unlimited progress saving on the standard difficulty, enemies intentionally ignoring non-player characters during the occasional escort mission, and putting brightly colored objects like yellow tape near other objects in the environment that the player can take advantage of. I singled out these changes because despite my lack of experience in horror games, I was able to tell when the game was making concessions in the difficulty in order to keep me from becoming too frustrated. Whether or not that’s a good or bad thing will probably change from person to person, but for my money’s worth I feel pretty mixed about.

This is not to say the game lacks challenge, far from it. Even the most basic enemies in the game can take a lot of punishment and since there’s a finite amount of ammunition and healing items in the game you have to make every shot count if you don’t want to end up as dinner for the zombies. Furthermore, your character can only carry so many items at once so there’s a constant back and forth between traveling light so you can pick up new items, some of which you’ll need to solve puzzles and open doors, or stocking up so you won’t be caught off guard if attacked. The game’s greatest challenge however, is a monster called The Tyrant (colloquially known as Mr. X on the internet) who is practically invincible and moves from room to room hunting the player in real time. Needless to say whenever I heard Mr. X’s heavy footsteps nearby my first instinct was to run for the nearest safe haven as quickly as possible.

If you want a real test of skill however, the bonus Ghost Survivors mode is what you’re looking for. Ghost Survivors is an arcade style gauntlet where the player is tasked with navigating hordes of monsters to reach an extraction point as fast as possible with a limited selection of items to work with. This is a great mode for learning how to exploit enemy behaviors, a skill you’ll need if you want to achieve the coveted S-Rank in the main story and unlock special items. I suspect most casual players won’t find much appeal in the Ghost Survivors, but it still adds extra replay value to the game so it’s a good addition nonetheless.

From the Catholic perspective, Resident Evil 2 lacks much in the way of spiritual themes despite being about undead monsters due to its zombies being a product of science fiction rather than the supernatural. In light of this the most obvious moral of the story is the dangers of scientific hubris. Science is a wonderful tool for explaining the world around us, but science alone cannot explain what we should do with the knowledge it provides. This reality is best expressed in Resident Evil through the character of William Burkin who doesn’t seem to care about the fact he’s creating a deadly bioweapon, he simply believes because he discovered the G-Virus he has a right to control and perfect it. If Dr. Burkin grounded himself in some sort of moral code, preferably that of Jesus Christ and His Church, he might have realized controlling the G-Virus was a fool’s errand and avoided such conflict before it had the chance to spiral so far out of control.

Resident Evil 2 did the impossible by getting me hooked on horror games and I do recommend it as a good starting point for the genre. It’s not the pinnacle of what Resident Evil has to offer, but it’s still a fun time in spite of its flaws. Allow me to end this review by thanking the people that helped make it a reality. The gift card I used to purchase the game was given to me by Catholic Game Reviews’s head honcho Catoons, so please consider donating to the CGR Patreon to support all the cool stuff he’s doing. Additionally, I wouldn’t have decided to pick up a horror game in the first place without a little encouragement from “uHa” so I would be very grateful if my readers could give him a follow on his Twitch channel uHATE2SEEit. Thank you all, God bless, and don’t forget to save your progress at the nearest typewriter.

About TheGoodHoms