The best remake in the catalog
Resident Evil 2, how to remake a 1998 game without betraying it
- Critic score
- 91
- Player rating
- 4.8/5
- Main story
- 8.9 h
- Genre
- Adventure, Action
Most remakes refresh the textures. This one rebuilt the entire game while preserving exactly what made the original frightening.
The plot is unchanged from 1998. Raccoon City is ravaged by a virus; two characters try to get out. Leon Kennedy, a policeman on his first day, and Claire Redfield, looking for her brother. Each has a campaign, their own encounters and their own route through the city.
The heaviest change is the camera. The original used fixed shots and pre-rendered backdrops, with rough aiming that was part of the tension. The remake moves to an over-the-shoulder view with precise shooting. On paper that should have made the game easier; in practice, seeing the enemy come at you proved more distressing than guessing at it off-screen.
The police station remains one of the great pieces of architecture in games. It is a closed space you learn by heart, where every unlocked door reconfigures your routes, and whose shortcuts you end up knowing better than the characters do. That economy of space — few places, many connections — is what survival horror does best.
Added to it is a pursuer who tracks you through the building without a script. He cannot be killed, only pushed back for a few minutes, and he hears your footsteps. His presence turns inventory management, already tight, into constant calculation under pressure.
About ten hours per campaign, and both are worth doing: the routes overlap without repeating. It sits in the Classics Catalog, so it requires a Premium subscription.