Resident Evil 2 is a survival horror remake with heavy emphasis on puzzles and navigating maze like environments. It is a remake of the original Resident Evil 2 from 1998, but I've never played the original, so cannot make any comparisons.
the game consists of 2 playable characters; Leon or Claire, both of whom get their own version of the story as it is intended the player play through the game with both characters to get the whole experience, though i only played through once as Leon.
Resident Evil 2 mostly takes place in the Racoon City Police station and the surrounding areas as the T-Virus has broken out and spread to the civilians of Racoon City. Players take control of either Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield as they delve deeper into the police station to figure out what happened and stop the outbreak. The police station is a great location for this game and is a character itself, and really represents one big puzzle as you need to figure out how to navigate the areas and gain access to all the areas that are locked at first. After escaping the police station, you realise just how widespread the problem is, and start to follow the breadcrumbs of evidence that point to Umbrella as the ones who caused the zombie outbreak.
Being a survival horror game, there are actually quite a few scary moments throughout the story, be they jump scares or just uneasy feelings made through the very atmospheric environments.
Leon was a compelling protagonist being a rookie cop that has no idea what is going on, making him more relatable in the situation. It was good to see him become braver and harden up as the game progressed.
The gameplay was very nice in Resident Evil 2. Being an over the shoulder shooter, the mechanics were very tight but still has some weight that is required in a horror game. the gunplay is good and shooting zombies is very satisfying, especially when their heads explode. throughout the game, there is a constant theme of playing cat and mouse with enemies that show up multiple times, the main one being Mr. X, who actually shows up in the police station and dynamically chases the player throughout the whole police station which made for some tense moments.
On standard mode, I think the game gives the player a little too much health and ammo, as I never ran out of either at any point. The game also has a decent amount of backtracking due to the nature of how the environments are navigated, but it isn't too bad and was interesting to see how all the areas link up together.
Resident Evil 2 was a great survival horror experience with a lot of replayability, due to offering 4 unique runs, which I may come back to in the future.