I often tell people I love horror, and I do. I certainly subject myself to it enough, whether it’s through Stephen King books or American Horror Story or any horror anime I can get my grubby hands on. But I’ve never been able to quite lay my finger on why I love horror. There is a joy in being frightened, but where does it come from? I believe that the true draw of horror is that the genre is based around discovering things that are unknown. Every horror movie is also a mystery movie, even if it’s a bad one. A lot of times the capital-U Unknown isn’t resolved by the end of the story, and that’s great. That leaves the Unknown as an all powerful entity. If you know something, you can fight it. What is Unknown is unkillable, and that is fascinating. The terror in Resident Evil 2 does not lie in the jump scares or the grotesque monsters, of which there are plenty. It lies in the Unknowable, the unkillable, the unsolvable, the incomprehensible. I cannot make sense of what I have seen over the course of these past 15 hours, despite my tedious detective work. And I couldn’t be happier about that.
Resident Evil 2 is comprised of two somewhat different stories. Choosing your character is essentially splitting the timeline, and you play through both scenarios, one as college student Claire Redfield and the other as young hot rookie cop Leon Kennedy. Their stories intersect with each other in a weird way, but they’re not two sides of the same story. The themes of each story are quite different, too. Leon’s story is a police thriller that features an investigation into a gigantic corporation’s shady activities. Claire’s story is a story of motherhood, and strongly follows the theme of finding your own family. I will not spoil anything from the story past the opening of the game.
RE2 is a puzzle/survival horror game. Resident Evil actually is responsible for popularizing survival horror games back in the 90s, and helped lead to renewed interest in zombies in pop culture that we saw going into the 2000s. I’ll be honest, I was completely unfamiliar with the franchise until now. I never played any of the games or saw the movies, didn’t know who Jill Valentine was, didn’t even know the franchise was about a zombie outbreak. After seeing all the Game of the Year praise a remake got in 2019, I thought to myself “this must be a pretty damn good remake then.” And it is.
I was not sold on this game in its first hour. I kept thinking “where’s the thing that makes this a game of the year contender?” I chose Claire to play as because she seemed confident and cool while Leon looked like the lost 8th member of BTS. Traversing the police station, collecting weird items, finding dead ends and dead friends scattered this way and that. I basically was in a state of being jump scared every 10 seconds by a zombie I thought was dead, always being low on ammo, and busting my brain trying to solve these 1998-ass puzzles.
And then suddenly I found the rhythm. A long string of Aah! moments cascaded forth! If I open the box and use the jewel to open the other box, then use that picture to decipher the statue puzzle and get the scepter, then I’ll have the key that’s printed on the back of it and can use it for the vault lock that’s stopping me from getting the goddess coin! The dopamine rush that comes with feeling yourself to be really intelligent hit hard, and I suddenly got what the game was about: it’s just a scary puzzle game. There’s nothing I’m missing. Put simply, scary puzzle game good.
The enemies are wonderfully grotesque. I have a rather high tolerance for gore but my big weakness in horror is people that have been forcefully mutated into monsters. So you can imagine I had to do a little soul-searching with RE2, a game that is exclusively about people that have been forcefully mutated into monsters. I have no problem with zombies, and quickly became relieved when I saw them. I know zombies, they’re not scary. Shoot them in the head, like every other piece of zombie media for the last hundred years. What I don’t know are the lickers, the ivy, the BOWs. I don’t know what the hell G is. And I haven’t the faintest idea what Mr. X is. Spoilers in the next paragraph, skip ahead if you don’t want to see.
I would like to talk about Mr. X for a moment. Mr. X is a large, broad shouldered, blue faced indestructible dad wearing a trench coat and a fedora. Once he appears in the police station, he continually stalks you for the duration of that area (probably about an hour or so of gameplay). He cannot be hurt, he cannot die. He does not speak, has no emotions, and walks exactly half as fast as you can run, never changing speed. It is absolutely terrifying. I was so scared of what was going to happen when he caught me. Would he break my neck? Eat me? Maybe a fade to black? No, it’s much worse. When Mr. X catches you, he punches you. Hard. I don’t know why it’s worse, but I do NOT want to get punched by the big stone man in the fedora. I just don’t. Do you? No, you don’t. Don’t get punched. He is the best and worst part of this game all at the same time and has been an inspiration to me. I recently featured him in the Dungeons and Dragons game I DM and my players are losing their goddamn minds.
RE2 is one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen, like ever. Beyond the basic stuff like textures and animations, the lighting is so… purposeful. The angle of every light that reaches every room is precisely calculated to maximize your fear. Directional lighting is a much bigger factor than we realize while playing games, but just keep an eye out when you play through this game. The music is not a top 10 of all time or anything, but it is sufficiently scary for sure. Mr. X’s Theme is the real standout. Hearing it as he slams open the door to the next room while you cower under the desk… Jesus Christ. Perfect horror.
There a few characters besides the main two that I won’t spoil the story of, but I really came to love Sherry and hate Ada. Like I mentioned before, Leon’s story is more the story of the Umbrella Corporation, what they did, why they did it, and how it started the apocalypse. Claire’s story is that of family, how people hold together and fall apart when all is lost. You’ll find that each of them feels different to play as, even if it feels like you’re playing the same game again. Claire gets a grenade launcher and Leon gets a shotgun, so they actually handle quite differently. The crafting is simple and as such lends itself to being fun. I find gunpowder, I immediately combine it with my one other gunpowder to make bullets. Easy, fast, and doesn’t kill the momentum of the scares. I played as Claire first and I found her story to be much more interesting than Leon’s, but I’m sure that’s a matter of preference. Remember to either play a 2nd run to get the true ending, or just look it up on Youtube when you finish your first runs. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Calling Resident Evil 2 a remake is almost disservice to the love, care, and passion that was obviously poured into this project. You will have a hard time finding another game with this amount of polish that doesn’t have Mario in it. It’s not the scariest game I’ve ever played, not by a long shot, but it does deliver the best scares that I’ve experienced. Mr. X, while overall not a huge part of the game, sticks in my mind as one of the most memorable video game villains I’ve ever faced off against, and the other creatures created by the Umbrella Corporation are the stuff of nightmares. The lighting, camera angling, pacing, and sound design come together to push you to the edge of suspense. The unrelenting bombardment of having the Unknown loom over you for 15 hours is something that cannot be replicated through a movie or TV. This is absolutely one of the best games of 2019. If you have the stomach for it, I must insist that you strap on your glock, dive into the sewer, and pray that something can truly deliver us from this evil.
Resident Evil 2 is comprised of two somewhat different stories. Choosing your character is essentially splitting the timeline, and you play through both scenarios, one as college student Claire Redfield and the other as young hot rookie cop Leon Kennedy. Their stories intersect with each other in a weird way, but they’re not two sides of the same story. The themes of each story are quite different, too. Leon’s story is a police thriller that features an investigation into a gigantic corporation’s shady activities. Claire’s story is a story of motherhood, and strongly follows the theme of finding your own family. I will not spoil anything from the story past the opening of the game.
RE2 is a puzzle/survival horror game. Resident Evil actually is responsible for popularizing survival horror games back in the 90s, and helped lead to renewed interest in zombies in pop culture that we saw going into the 2000s. I’ll be honest, I was completely unfamiliar with the franchise until now. I never played any of the games or saw the movies, didn’t know who Jill Valentine was, didn’t even know the franchise was about a zombie outbreak. After seeing all the Game of the Year praise a remake got in 2019, I thought to myself “this must be a pretty damn good remake then.” And it is.
I was not sold on this game in its first hour. I kept thinking “where’s the thing that makes this a game of the year contender?” I chose Claire to play as because she seemed confident and cool while Leon looked like the lost 8th member of BTS. Traversing the police station, collecting weird items, finding dead ends and dead friends scattered this way and that. I basically was in a state of being jump scared every 10 seconds by a zombie I thought was dead, always being low on ammo, and busting my brain trying to solve these 1998-ass puzzles.
And then suddenly I found the rhythm. A long string of Aah! moments cascaded forth! If I open the box and use the jewel to open the other box, then use that picture to decipher the statue puzzle and get the scepter, then I’ll have the key that’s printed on the back of it and can use it for the vault lock that’s stopping me from getting the goddess coin! The dopamine rush that comes with feeling yourself to be really intelligent hit hard, and I suddenly got what the game was about: it’s just a scary puzzle game. There’s nothing I’m missing. Put simply, scary puzzle game good.
The enemies are wonderfully grotesque. I have a rather high tolerance for gore but my big weakness in horror is people that have been forcefully mutated into monsters. So you can imagine I had to do a little soul-searching with RE2, a game that is exclusively about people that have been forcefully mutated into monsters. I have no problem with zombies, and quickly became relieved when I saw them. I know zombies, they’re not scary. Shoot them in the head, like every other piece of zombie media for the last hundred years. What I don’t know are the lickers, the ivy, the BOWs. I don’t know what the hell G is. And I haven’t the faintest idea what Mr. X is. Spoilers in the next paragraph, skip ahead if you don’t want to see.
I would like to talk about Mr. X for a moment. Mr. X is a large, broad shouldered, blue faced indestructible dad wearing a trench coat and a fedora. Once he appears in the police station, he continually stalks you for the duration of that area (probably about an hour or so of gameplay). He cannot be hurt, he cannot die. He does not speak, has no emotions, and walks exactly half as fast as you can run, never changing speed. It is absolutely terrifying. I was so scared of what was going to happen when he caught me. Would he break my neck? Eat me? Maybe a fade to black? No, it’s much worse. When Mr. X catches you, he punches you. Hard. I don’t know why it’s worse, but I do NOT want to get punched by the big stone man in the fedora. I just don’t. Do you? No, you don’t. Don’t get punched. He is the best and worst part of this game all at the same time and has been an inspiration to me. I recently featured him in the Dungeons and Dragons game I DM and my players are losing their goddamn minds.
RE2 is one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen, like ever. Beyond the basic stuff like textures and animations, the lighting is so… purposeful. The angle of every light that reaches every room is precisely calculated to maximize your fear. Directional lighting is a much bigger factor than we realize while playing games, but just keep an eye out when you play through this game. The music is not a top 10 of all time or anything, but it is sufficiently scary for sure. Mr. X’s Theme is the real standout. Hearing it as he slams open the door to the next room while you cower under the desk… Jesus Christ. Perfect horror.
There a few characters besides the main two that I won’t spoil the story of, but I really came to love Sherry and hate Ada. Like I mentioned before, Leon’s story is more the story of the Umbrella Corporation, what they did, why they did it, and how it started the apocalypse. Claire’s story is that of family, how people hold together and fall apart when all is lost. You’ll find that each of them feels different to play as, even if it feels like you’re playing the same game again. Claire gets a grenade launcher and Leon gets a shotgun, so they actually handle quite differently. The crafting is simple and as such lends itself to being fun. I find gunpowder, I immediately combine it with my one other gunpowder to make bullets. Easy, fast, and doesn’t kill the momentum of the scares. I played as Claire first and I found her story to be much more interesting than Leon’s, but I’m sure that’s a matter of preference. Remember to either play a 2nd run to get the true ending, or just look it up on Youtube when you finish your first runs. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Calling Resident Evil 2 a remake is almost disservice to the love, care, and passion that was obviously poured into this project. You will have a hard time finding another game with this amount of polish that doesn’t have Mario in it. It’s not the scariest game I’ve ever played, not by a long shot, but it does deliver the best scares that I’ve experienced. Mr. X, while overall not a huge part of the game, sticks in my mind as one of the most memorable video game villains I’ve ever faced off against, and the other creatures created by the Umbrella Corporation are the stuff of nightmares. The lighting, camera angling, pacing, and sound design come together to push you to the edge of suspense. The unrelenting bombardment of having the Unknown loom over you for 15 hours is something that cannot be replicated through a movie or TV. This is absolutely one of the best games of 2019. If you have the stomach for it, I must insist that you strap on your glock, dive into the sewer, and pray that something can truly deliver us from this evil.