minor inconvenience. At certain
points in the game this merciless,
invincible killing machine will hunt
you around the station with grim
persistence. You can track his
movements by listening to the heavy
thud of his footsteps, but other than
blinding him with a flashbang,
evasion is your only real option. He’s
also attracted to gunfire, which adds
further weight to decisions involving
fighting regular zombies. Do you
waste ammunition and risk alerting
the Tyrant?
The way he walks slowly towards
you, unflinching and emotionless, is
genuinely unsettling – especially
when he suddenly appears at the end
of a long corridor. And he’s always
lurking near items you need to
progress, which is brilliantly cruel.
But I would have liked more ways to
interact with the Tyrant, because
eventually these run-ins start to feel
rather one-note, and the fear can
mutate into frustration. Even the
ability to throw something to distract
him would have made these sections
a bit more interesting, but as it
stands the concept feels
disappointingly underdeveloped.
Similar to Resident Evil 4, the
difficulty of the game adapts as you
play. How it actually works is
obscured, but whatever’s going on
behind the scenes, the
balancing is quite
masterful. For the
entire nine hours it
took me to finish my
first run as Leon, I felt
constantly on the verge
of catastrophic failure. I
always had a handful of
bullets, little or no
health items and I kept wondering if
I’d backed myself into an inescapable
rut. But I’d always scrape through,
and it’s hugely impressive how the
game managed to maintain this
sensation of knife-edge tension from
start to finish.
The good news is that if you
sacrifice ammo to clear out an area,
it’ll stay clear. More zombies can spill
through open windows, but you can
block these up with wooden boards.
This gives you some breathing room,
especially when you’re being chased
by the Tyrant. The last thing you
need is zombies clawing at you when
you’re trying to run to safety.
Counter-weapons can also tip the
balance. If you have a grenade or a
combat knife in your inventory and
something grabs you while you’re
89
A tense, challenging and
beautiful remake of a
classic, with enough new
ideas to make it feel
excitingly new.VERDICTThe game isn’t
completely
relentless in its
attempts to
sabotage youFAN SERVICEClassicResichecklist
INK RIBBONS
Butonlyonthehardcoredifficultysetting.Savesarefreeinthe
othermodes,butsavetoooftenanditaffectsyourrank.ITEM BOXES
Theyworkthesamewaytheyalwayshave,lettingyoumagically
accessyourstockpileofitemsfrommultiplelocations.BONUS MODES
TheFourthSurvivorandTheTofuSurvivor,starringHunkanda
blockoftofurespectively,areunlockableintheremake.LOADING DOORS
You don’t have to watch a door slowly opening every time you
moveintoanewroom:it’sallcompletelyseamlessnow.FIXED CAMERA ANGLES
The whole game is third-person, similar toResident Evil 4,but
thatdoesn’tmakeexploringtheRPDbuildinganylesstense.ORIGINAL MUSIC
Theremakehasitsownnewscore,butifyoubuythe‘Deluxe
Edition’yougettheoptiontoreplaceitwiththeclassictunes.low on health, you’ll avoid death:
stabbing them with the blade or
shoving a grenade in their mouth. So
the game isn’t completely relentless
in its attempts to sabotage you, but
for every inch it gives you, it takes
one right back.
It’s never really that scary, though.
Unnerving, tense, and sometimes
overwhelmingly stressful, sure, but
there’s nothing
particularly
psychological about it.
But that was always
Resident Evil’s thing:
zombie dogs crashing
through windows
rather than the
psychosexual mind-
beasts of Silent Hill.
Still, Resident Evil 7 had some
effectively eerie moments, and I
would have liked some of that to
make its way into this remake. If you
can’t deal with the stress, there is an
‘assisted’ difficulty option that adds
generous auto-aim and makes a small
amount of health regenerate
automatically. But, honestly, the game
just isn’t very exciting when your
item box is heaving with an
abundance of spare shotgun shells
and green herbs.SECOND WIND
When you finish your first
playthrough, you’ve really only
seen half of what the game has
to offer. The second run uses the
same locations and has many of
the same story beats, but the puzzlesare different, enemy types and
locations are mixed up, and you take
a different route through each of the
game’s three major locations. What I
love about this so-called ‘B’ scenario
is how the game uses your knowledge
of the setting against you. Walking
into the RPD main hall as Claire, a
protected haven for Leon, and seeing
zombies in there was a fun
subversion. It’s just a shame the
intensity of the Tyrant is amped up to
such a preposterous degree. He’s
constantly looming over your
shoulder, which I ultimately found a
bit annoying.
As a longtime fan of the original
Resident Evil 2, I enjoyed the
remake’s many self-aware attempts to
clarify some of the more abstract
stuff in the game – such as why a
sewer system is powered by plugs
shaped like chess pieces, or why a
police station would theme its keys
and locks around playing card suits.
There are other cute references to
the old games to find, but they’re
pretty subtle and don’t feel forced.
This could have easily been a game
targeted squarely at fans, but if this
was your first Resident Evil you
would get your head around
everything in minutes – another
example of how refreshingly simple
the remake is. The story is really no
more complicated than: zombies
everywhere, get to safety. Which
makes even the pared-down
narrative of RE7 seem complex.
Some of the voice acting and
writing are pretty bad, and not ‘fun
bad’ like in the old PlayStation games:
just regular bad. The second act,
which takes place in a dingy sewer, is
a little slow. And I was glad when the
section where you play as Ada Wong,
solving hacking puzzles while the
Tyrant stalks you, was over. But
otherwise, this is pretty much the
ultimate refinement of the classic
Resi formula – but with the added joy
of RE4’s dynamic over-the-shoulder
combat. The result is a game that is
among the best in the series, and a
thrilling survival horror experience in
its own right. It’s not as surprising as
RE7, but as an evolution, and a
celebration, of classic Resident Evil,
you couldn’t ask for much more.Resident Evil 2
REVIEW