Resident Evil 2

Here it is, everyone. The fucking PINNACLE of survival horror. If you want into survival horror, this or Silent Hill 2 will hook you in and never let you leave. I'm honestly at a loss for words onto how to describe this game to you. It's fucking RESIDENT EVIL. Remember that big ass mansion you were in? Fuck that, here you're in a massive police station as the police rookie Leon Kennedy (remember folks this was a time when he wasn't overrated!). You also have a choice to play as Chris Redfield's sister, Claire, if you have the appropriate disc.

The enemies and bosses here are pretty fucking awesome. This is the first appearance of the Licker, even thinking about that fuck spooks me. This police station, too, has an underground laboratory, which in my opinion is the best part of this game. Why does a science laboratory make for such a spooky setting? Get this game, seriously, buy it anyway you can. Nintendo 64, PlayStation, PlayStation Network, GameCube, fuck, I don't care. Get this game anyway you can.

The level design ultimately comes out a bit too linear to really take advantage of the survival horror framework where every enemy left alive can kill you later and you have to play intelligently, and most of the big roadblocks can be solved just by dumping ammo into them, of which you have quite a bit no matter the scenario you play. Despite this, it's still one of the most tense games in the series, with a lot of great moments both big and small to really sell the experience. This is the game that made RE into a blockbuster franchise overnight, but they used that AAA money very, very well. The enemy designs are fantastic, the figure 8 layout of the police station can still be very topsy-turvy even if the key item locations are very dead-set on leading you in one direction, health is scarce enough to keep the gameplay loop engaging, and all the little setpiece moments along the way are still some of the best in the series. Every notable encounter with a licker is top tier.

Having played this after the remake, though, I was slightly disappointed by the scenario system, at least in hindsight. It's not like the B scenarios here are that much more compatible with the A scenarios than in the remake, although it does give better short bursts of storytelling and justifies the idea of replaying the game several times to see every nook and cranny, not to mention being able to fight different bosses. The lack of separate diary entries per scenario does drag the atmosphere down a notch, and overall the system feels a bit more half-baked than it should, considering the excellence in execution of most everything else the game has to offer, but this is still one of the best games in the series, and must have felt like a seismic leap forward in 1998.

Um dos poucos jogos que me fizeram zerá-lo duas vezes seguidas. Um maravilhoso equilíbrio entre terror e ação que fundamentou o que significa Resident Evil.

É deliciosamente galhofa - não além do ponto - e por isso transborda personalidade. Além disso, tem algumas das ambientações mais marcantes da série.

Resident Evil 2 is perhaps one of the best examples of a "good sequel." Where other companies may have been tempted to do the exact same shit as the original Resident Evil [バイオハザード], but in a police station rather than a mansion, Hideki Kamiya and crew built upon the foundations of the original, creating something evocative of the first game, but still distinctly fresh and different.

The game's structural beats expect you to have played its predecessor. You already know about the T-virus and the basic zombies, but also the Hunters, Chimeras, and T-002 Tyrant. These latter creatures hit you much later into Chris and Jill's exploration of the Spencer grounds. So you would not expect Leon to run into a new Licker as early as it happens. There are further "twists," such as the fight against G2 having considerably less fanfare before it than the first game's Tyrant fights, on top of occurring earlier in this game (we do have the fight foreshadowed with previous information). Especially new for this game, but which will become a series staple from here on: the G3 morphs into G4 immediately upon its defeat, and you are thrust into a tougher boss fight with no time to rest. And perhaps the game's biggest spin on a past mechanic: the game handles its two playable characters by filling the "B" route with loads of different shit from the "A" route, including entirely different boss fights. You also get to play as the buddy characters for a brief time, expanding on the brief Rebecca role from RE1.

The zombies function more or less the same as in the past game, just with perhaps denser numbers. They come in a small handful of varieties: cop zombie, regular dude zombie, regular chick zombie (whom I've always half-jokingly saw as "arrested hooker zombie"), then the nude fellas in the lab at the end (but I've never been able to tell if they regenerate like in the first game). We soon meet the Licker, who functions in a similar role as the Hunter of the previous game: these guys can fuck you up hard. The trick is that they're blind, and seek you by sound, so you have to walk slowly around them (I can't recall if they're drawn to gunfire, since I always immediately open fire when they're in close enough range). Off the top of my head, I don't recall a File in the game explaining that the Lickers are blind, and I actually never knew that until the remade Resident Evil 2 came out, but they still definitely play like they are blind. The lore behind the Lickers is that they've begun mutating from the T-virus, with their musculature expanding and ripping through their skin, and their finger bones growing into powerful claws. The later Resident Evil [バイオハザード] remake would introduce "Crimson Heads" as the "missing link" between regular zombies and Lickers. The first Resident Evil film explains its Licker as a human injected directly with the T-virus, which kinda-sorta "works" with the lore, as we mostly see zombies created indirectly by viral spread, and the dudes actively experimented upon with the virus were Tyrants. Lickers have Tyrant-like claws. It checks out. Anyway, the next new critter we see is the G-embryo, a spin on the Alien "Chestburster," who soon grows into the G-adult boss, who can then vomit more G-embryos (which it's assumed you kill before they grow). The concept behind this creature is pretty neat, as it shows the major difference between T- and G-viruses, with the latter's purpose being the birth of a more overt monstrosity than the comparatively simpler T monsters (who are mostly "zombie dog," "angry crow," "hungry shark," "giant snake," "giant spider"). Unfortunately, the G-virus's application is quite limited in this game: we often run into someone who's been directly injected with the virus, and we fight the aforementioned G-adult earlier, but we do not see as many G-monsters as we might like to (the remake Resident Evil 2 gives us more G-adults in place of the boss fight, but they all act the same as one another). In the obligatory lab area, we meet Lickers who have evolved a step further (though they play largely the same), which is pretty neat, though it's mostly just an extension of the regenerating naked zombos from the first game. We get a new monster-plant, Plant 43, but we don't get to fight it; instead, we have some humanoid plant guys, the new Ivy monster, who are inferred to have spawned from the big plant covering the majority of the lab. In a neat twist, you can hit a switch to release anti-B.O.W. gas to prevent the regular Ivies from spawning, which causes Poison Ivies to spawn in the B route. There's also a giant moth, building on the giant snake and spiders of the last game. In a minor twist, its "boss fight" is incredibly easy, as the moth is only mildly territorial, and basically just attacks you to protect itself and its babies, unlike literally every other monster that wants to fucking kill you for fun. And perhaps the most fun thing, the sewer is inhabited by a giant alligator, making for a pretty tense little fight/setpiece, though the consequence is that it kinda-sorta raises one's expectations upon encountering the moth later. For more significant bosses, we have the ever-evolving G, who has five (5!) different forms, as well as the not-very-mutated T-103 Tyrant (dubbed "Mr. X" by fans), who follows us in the B route in a series of scripted encounters before the final encounter has him transform (and grow claws!), putting him on a level more vicious than the original Tyrant, if not a little less elaborate than G.

At the end of the day, my belief is that the primary element that could make this the #1 greatest survival-horror game of all time is the variety between all four possible routes, as well as the twelve Extreme Battles (three difficulties times four load-outs), and the two other bonus modes. There's just so much replayability. RE1 is still my personal favorite of the series, and the first Silent Hill my favorite in the genre overall, but it would be too contrarian to undermine this game's brilliance.

I don't really know what I can say about this game. I'm still guaranteed to dust it off and complete it once a year, and I love this game just as much now as I did when 13 year old me first played it, so I don't believe I can be objective about it. I can only assume modern gamers would be turned away due to the graphics and tank controls, but I would say there's a labor of love and an overall charm here that you simply don't see with most modern games. For my money, the OST is the best of the series, and this game has a certain X-factor that you'd be hard-pressed to put your finger on that makes it a standout within the original trilogy, and a standout among its time. It's truly astounding to witness the leap in quality from RE1 to this. I know most people would say REMake perfected the formula, and perhaps they're right, but along with perhaps its remake, I would say this is my favorite of the series, and my favorite game of all time. It's not a flawless game (the boss fights aren't anything to write home about, the voice acting is terrible, and there are undoubted crows feet that present themselves when talking about a game that's over 20 years old), but the overall experience comes together in a way that allows me to ignore them.

The real turning point for the Resident Evil franchise. Even if RE3 had the most blatant elements for calling it actual action-horror, RE2 becomes way more manageable compared to the first game in terms of dealing with the perils around the rotting, cursed corridors. It makes you feel like a killing machine - a vulnerable one, offcourse, but nowhere near as asfixiating as roaming through the Spencer mansion.

The setting is more attractive than RE1 though - its quite brilliant, taking all the Romero anxieties into one game. While the concept of a mansion of horrors was seemingly fusioned with a sci-fi edge, it's not as cool as a zombie-infested city. While RE2 is not an apocalypse simulator, it does knock closer to home when the undead are taking a whole police station: the institution supposed to protect civilians, beaten by a virulent force. The whole Umbrella ultracapitalistic conspiracy is just the icing of the cake.

It's kind of a shame for me the game is made a bit easier. It's weird to say this, but RE2 is a lot more fun, and because of this, less scary for me. The first Resident Evil was rough for those living their first survival horror. The boxy rooms were not filled with a lot of ammo, which made the first half of the game incredibly tense. You really have to save stuff and get your shit together. This game has more ammo and gives you the shotgun with no "puzzle" or obstacle in-between. There's a lot more zombies to deal with, but the game gives you pleeenty of bullets to deal with them and then some.

The puzzles are more flexible and taxing than the first game, yet they are a lot less absurd so you can solve them right away. The police station is not as entangled and, while you can clearly see the carnage the animated bodies brought, it's not remotely as scary nor claustrophobic. With some exceptions offcourse - the parking lot is so fucking creepy.

The A+B scenario novelty is really cool, although not THAT cool, but it does flow flawlesly and helps to make the adventure feel bigger. Mr. X (Tyrant T-103), while menacing enough in the first encounters, is nowhere near as frightening as people make him out to be. If you have the herbs to spare (and you are not looking for speedrunning) or you are quite good with positioning, he's not a big threat at all. At least it helped creating the better monster, Nemesis. The treatment he got in the Remake was really necessary - even if I hate they added it into both campaigns.

The soundtrack -the whole game really- is a lot more Hollywood-esque cinematic, and develops characters a lot better than the first iteration. It sucks that you can't skip cutscenes though, and sometimes those can be quite long, so don't lose in the wrong place or you'll have to watch it all again. The levels post-sewer are... just ok though. The lab, while bigger and with its own highlights (the Moth), is half rehash, half uninteresting, and the plant mobs are so fucking dumb; they look like From software enemies, they don't fit at all with the art direction.

It does look quite better, controls better and has a more grounded plot, so you actually care about what's happening with the innards of Umbrella movements and Raccoon City. However, the haunted house/gothic/body horror cross-statement the first release made started to get lost into what we consider as "modern Resident Evil". It's a classic for the systems - a classic I don't see as fondly as the majority does.