The Haunted Hoard: Resident Evil 2 (Xbox Series X)

Games in the survival horror genre often emphasize being careful with resources and picking your battles, so when I learned that Resident Evil 2’s 2019 remake was being well received by the gaming public, I wondered if the survival horror elements had remained in tact. Some changes to suit modern sensibilities seemed like reasonable adjustment of course. Free aim over fixed camera encounters and no limits on how many times you can save outside of a harder difficulty don’t disrupt the horror experience much and make it easier to get into, but what really impressed was the game still sticking to its guns quite heavily when it came to ammo scarcity and enemies who really test your ability to manage danger. Resident Evil 2’s remake didn’t aim to be a crowd-pleaser by sanding itself down, allowing it to create some truly pulse-pounding and unnerving moments as you can better relate to the two characters who find themselves in this dire survival scenario.

 

Resident Evil 2 features two storylines to play, one featuring Claire Redfield heading to Raccoon City to check in on her brother who works with the local police while Leon Kennedy instead was meant to start his first day as a rookie cop. Both quickly find out Raccoon City has been overrun with the undead though, a virus turning citizens into zombies who attack anyone they can get their hands on. Both will end up at the Raccoon City Police Department where they soon begin to learn more about what caused this viral outbreak, and their plots do diverge on who they meet along the way. Claire ends up establishing a sisterly bond with the young girl Sherry Birkin whose family has ties to the viral outbreak while Leon instead encounters the agent Ada Wong here to try and claim a sample of this new virus. Both end up invested in protecting this new close ally while trying to safely get out of the city and you are meant to play both stories to encounter a true final boss and wrap things up.

While the narrative makes use of notes well and sparingly to get details across while integrating more vital reveals into the course of events, the game encouraging a second playthrough can feel a bit odd once you begin to see how events play out. There are differences to be found in the two story routes outside of cutscenes, Leon and Claire able to access different areas in the police department, accessing them in different orders, and facing a few unique boss monsters, but they also have an unusually high overlap in activities. If it was a simple as doors you unlocked with one character being locked again when seeing the supposedly consecutively occurring adventure it could be easy to write off, but the two characters do have a few intersection points like an identical boss battle that wrecks the area it occurs in and characters meeting different fates. Rather than feeling like alternate perspectives on the same event it’s more like playing different possibilities, but smart changes like changing the solutions to major puzzles while keeping elements like codes to lockers for extra goodies consistent means it’s easier to get rolling on the second story despite some inevitable time spent exploring familiar spaces.

 

While the second story you play will inevitably be a bit easier as you’re familiar with the game, Resident Evil 2 manages some impressive work with making even the simplest zombies you encounter an appreciable threat. When starting out especially, you will feel the limitations of what your character has on hand and can carry in general. Healing items, weapons, ammunition, and even keys all must fit into your restrictive inventory, and while you can offload some of it in safe rooms, you will still find you are both aching for more space to carry items and yet finding yourself potentially coming up short if you’re careless with what you have. A normal zombie isn’t easily dispensed with a single bullet to the head here. In fact, an unassuming zombie might surprise you after shot after shot to the face fails to make them stop coming towards you. At other times though, there can be a sudden surge of relief as you watch that head explode with a single hit, that being the only way you can really know for sure that enemy is no longer a threat. At times you can seemingly take them out and go on your way, only to retrace your steps in your exploration and find that zombie back up and eager to take a bit out of you. You could have tried to finish the job by attacking them after they were knocked down and still earlier, but that uses up resources, even your knife having durability to account for. With the story so often emphasizing that it feels like these undead never stay dead, it feels easy to relate to the characters as you’re always nervously watching a body to see if it will get back up to bite you. You might start thinking of alternate options like shooting out a zombie’s leg so he can only crawl about, making him easy to walk around, but there are is a much greater danger stalking you for a good deal of your time in both stories, Mr. X adding an increased sense of paranoia and peril as you explore.

The Raccoon City Police Department is definitely where Resident Evil 2 shows off its genius best, an intricate location that requires you to cover ground repeatedly already making you consider how permanently you want to deal with the standard zombies roaming the halls. Once a museum now converted into a police department, you can believably mix an elaborate layout with a multi-story library and artifacts while also having areas more aligned to police duties like offices, an armory, and even a kennel for the K-9 unit. However, the need to utilize the museum puzzles to open up more vital locations in the RCPD also means you’ll be traveling around a great deal, and this is where Mr. X thrives. This hulking imposing undead brute moves with singular purpose to try and attack you, and you can’t even kill him, only briefly incapacitate him at great cost to your reserves. Normally, zombies might be able to follow you between rooms but rather slowly and they can lose interest. Mr. X will continue his single-minded march undaunted by most any barrier, only a safe room where you can save your game really granting you reprieve. Trying to find your openings to sneak around without catching his attention or having to run in a frantic panic when he manages to find you give the exploration another layer of tension and terror, and he can further mix with a few other unique monsters like Lickers. Lickers are gnarly creatures whose whole bodies are red exposed muscle with a brain that has covered their own eyes, meaning they mostly sense the player through sound. If you walk too quickly, they’ll hear your footsteps and attack with their extending piercing tongue or huge claws, and since they can take a beating or require use of your better weapons to quickly kill, you often want to slip past them slowly and carefully instead. This smart approach is immediately complicated if Mr. X is in the area though, earlier decisions compounding and desperate struggles to survive can quickly lead to chaos for even the most careful of players.

 

The game will eventually move on from the police department to new locations like the sewer that don’t try to be quite as intricate or nerve-wracking but the game doesn’t lose its edge when it comes to surprises or enemies who keep you on pins and needles. It can definitely feel a bit frustrating initially when it feels like even the common zombies can be tough to deal with, but Resident Evil 2 keeps its more unique and demanding monsters for key moments or situations so no encounter is really meant to be too easy. You are going to feel the same fear these characters are meant to be experiencing each time a former human comes shambling towards them eager to bite into their flesh, although surprisingly some of the few times you’re allowed to really feel powerful are against the boss monsters as the game tries to make sure you’re not without ways to hold your own in the fight. Despite the tension, reliable save rooms and moments of calmer puzzle solving do help give you a break so you’re not overly frazzled by the many threats to your life, but there is a proper sense of dread in setting out into the unknown and the focus on preparedness can be satisfying when you’re able to cleanly clear out a room of undead or devastating when your attempts to be careful lead instead to wasting resources just to escape alive.

 

Some extra modes do exist to play after you’ve conquered your preferred order for the two tales, and they do shift around the horror in some interesting and effective ways. The 4th Survivor mode focuses in on HUNK, a mercenary with a similar objective to Ada in that he wants to get out of the city alive with a sample of the virus. However, his efforts are opposed by a great deal more dangers, familiar locations now packed to the gills with so many zombies and monsters you can’t hope to kill them all. You are given plenty of resources for this shorter adventure, but the focus is a lot more on pushing through and still using your weapons sparingly to make an escape against all odds. The Ghost Survivors is a set of slower paced escape stories that are more alternate histories for some ill-fated characters from the main adventure, and these are meant to be quick runs for your life in some regards but also do allow you to gain new resources, although many are held in backpacks by the undead so conflict is required much more than with HUNK. These do feel like the extra modes they are, not overly long and barely having any focus on careful exploration or puzzle solving, but the can keep the danger and horror in tact in their own ways, making them a nice way to get more out of Resident Evil 2 even after you’ve seen how Claire and Leon handle their similar situations.

THE VERDICT: Resident Evil 2 has a superb understanding of how to keep danger ever-present without making you feel helpless. The constant concern any undead you haven’t definitively dealt with can come back to literally bite you when under pressure from something like Mr. X’s dogged pursuit means even basic encounters have a layer of unease and tension. Pointing your pistol at an unmoving body fearing you may need to expend more precious ammo can be nerve-wracking, but you can hold your own in the end and there are moments to decompress so you don’t become too terrified to continue on. Finely tuned survival horror is on display throughout this remake that didn’t feel it needed to compromise itself to earn fans, and that makes it one of the best examples of the genre to date because of it.

 

And so, I give Resident Evil 2 for Xbox Series X…

A FANTASTIC rating. Some elements like an Assisted Mode and autosaves can ease up on Resident Evil 2’s difficulty if the player needs a bit of a push to overcome the game’s commitment to survival horror, and perhaps that is one reason why the game didn’t feel the need to strip away the incredible tension it can so expertly build in for its standard mode. You know you need to aim carefully in Resident Evil 2 to land the kind of hits that can incapacitate or kill a zombie so it won’t be a nuisance, but in the heat of the moment you might slip up and waste ammo as you let the fear get to you. At the same time, Resident Evil 2 won’t leave you high and dry so long as you can keep it together often enough and make some tough decisions on when you want to use something like Leon’s shotgun or a hand grenade to clear out a problem. Resident Evil 2 incentivizes exploration and optional puzzles by rewarding you with more goodies, yet they can also lead to you venturing into dangerous territory that could have been avoided otherwise or put you at odds with the roaming threat that is Mr. X. You are making key decisions in order to survive this horrible situation and because you are routinely reminded of how badly things can go, you also celebrate your wins or strokes of luck far more than if you had breezed through the action. There are few little areas for improvement, character faces can look off in some cutscenes and some more divergence across the two stories should have been attempted if it’s going to encourage playing them both back to back, but it’s actually rather easy to dive in for that second run because you have a good mix of a proper understanding of what lies ahead but unexpected new elements so you can’t fully get complacent.

 

While the Raccoon City Police Department is definitely the crown jewel of this experience, Resident Evil 2 remains tense and compelling even after it has moved on from its best tools for suspense. This remake had a sharp eye for the ways modern gaming can improve the story and action of the original but used those to further enrich the older ideas for danger and horror that shine even brighter in this more accessible format.