VIDEO GAME REVIEW : RESIDENT EVIL 2 (2019)

What is it about the Resident Evil series and remakes, eh? In a genre saturated with limp and lilly-livered, half-hearted, concieved by board-room, written-by-committee reboots, re-imaginings and other vague epithets for uninspired cash-ins, one would expect any attempt to dive back into the “survival horror” phenomena of the late 1990s/early 2000s to be doomed from the outset.
 
And yet, as Capcom's remake of the original Resident Evil demonstrates, occasionally, when the stars are right, when the auguries are kind, a species of the same magic occurs and the opportunity  sell video games  by the bucket load goes through the roof. 
 
Resident Evil is always going to be a part of horror canon in video games. Beyond that, even: part of the mythology and tradition of the genre. For most of us that were fortunate enough to grow up with video games as a medium, to have evolved as they evolved, Resident Evil was one of the many moments in which we realised the state of play has changed. For the first time in our young lives, we realised that video games were capable of more; that they could affect us in the same manner as film or literature, that we could be as terrified, disgusted, appalled, engaged with their narrative and aesthetics as in any other medium.
 
The sequel, Resident Evil 2, solidifed and capitalised upon that, delivering a far more expansive, experimental experience that shifted tone from Night of the Living Dead to something somewhere between Dawn of the Dead and The Thing (with more than one or two nods to David Cronenberg for good measure). For many, it still stands as a favourite of the entire franchise: a high watermark, despite its obvious limitations and deficiencies in the present day climate.
 
For years, we have been clamouring, begging, waiting with baited breath, for Capcom to work the same magic with it as they did the original. For years, we have been denied; not a whisper, not a rumour, not a breath of possibility.
 
Until late 2018, when Capcom exploded the internet and reduced us to deliriously excited thirteen year olds again with not only confirmation of the remake but footage and images from what appeared to be an almost complete game.
 
For my part, excitement was tinged by a note of caution. Yes, it was wonderful to see familiar environments, characters and various undead gribblies rendered in such beautiful, up-to-date graphics. Yes, it was extremely pleasurable to be caught up in the swell of positivity surrounding the game.
 
However, was it really possible that Capcom could work the same magic twice? 

​ 
The last instalment of the Resident Evil franchise, Resident Evil 7: Bio Hazard, suggested that the company had indeed been listening to what its established fanbase want from the series, dragging it sharply away from the corny, action-horror titles that bedevilled its latter years and which almost dissolved what love even its hardcore fans maintained.
 
However, was it possible to create a game so necessarily “retro” in terms of its structure, mechanics and storyline yet simultaneously make it palatable to present day sensibilities?
 
A sincere dilemma. If the game wasn't close enough to the original, it risked alienating or arousing the ire of its established fans. If it cleaved too closely to its “survival horror” roots without introducing enough to remove it from that experience, then it ran the risk of being crude, clunky and unsophisticated (not to mention lacking in any and all surprise).
 
You can therefore understand my apprehension when I first sat down to play the game; an experience I decided to share via my YouTube channel (links below) so that I might have some record of my immediate emotional responses.
 
Damn, Capcom. Just damn.
 
I don't quite know how they do it, at this point: when most of the monolithic, traditional video game companies are collapsing on themselves amongst mires of toxic work practice, legal scandals, a profound lack of understanding concerning their own consumer bases etc, Capcom is the outlier: they not only have their fingers buried firmly in the pulse of their intended market, they also maintain an ability to understand what makes their products work that is rare and enviable in mainstream video gaming.
 
Resident Evil 2 doesn't just do what the remake of the original did; it surpasses that as profoundly as it surpasses the PS1 game on which it is based:
 
The balance of old and new, the traditional fan-pleasing elements that have been re-jigged to make them simultaneously nostalgic and surprising, with factors that are entirely novel is sublime. Absolutely sublime: Capcom have managed to create an experience that is simultaneously familiar and cutting edge; an action horror game that marries the mechanics of the old and the new in such a way as to reveal fresh appreciation for both.
 
First of all, the game looks incredible. At this stage in the current video games console generation, it's difficult to impress through sheer aesthetics. 

​This game looks sublime. The environments, the character models, the various zombies, monsters and abominations all seethe with the most unbelievable detail. Whilst you'll be moving too fast and through corridors that are far too dark to notice it most of the time, both characters and monsters are affected by environmental elements such as rain, smoke, fire etc. Early on, when the player characters (either Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield, depending on who the player chooses) find themselves outside in the pelting rain, glistening moisture pools in the recesses of their clothing, droplets bead in their hair and on their weapons. Wounds they have sustained remain as scars or marks on their bodies, along with stains and tears in their clothing.
 
This factor escalates the further you progress in the game, both characters becoming notably more tattered and besmirched the deeper into Raccoon City they delve.
 
The various species of monster and abomination to be found throughout the environments boast similar qualities: shoot a zombie in the face or chest, the wounds will remain, no matter how far away you progress from them. The models also boast degrees of detail whereby players can shoot off limbs or parts of limbs, surgically taking them apart or crippling them, which is not only aesthetically incredible but also lends a surprising amount of depth to combat.
 
Environments are stunningly recreated, both familiar rooms and corridors and entirely new arenas, the sheer level of detail so achingly beautiful, it's almost a shame that the player will be sprawling through most of them in a dazed and confused panic.
 
As in the original game, environment is all important here: the game's story is fairly sparse, adding in a few new elements and refining others but generally relying more on atmosphere and tension than overt narrative to carry the day.
 
From the escalating dereliction of the Raccoon City Police Department to the infested and grotesque sewer systems below, the game goes out of its way to make every setting as fraught and oppressive as it can be. Combined with an incidental score that is nigh perfect, every step of the game is dripping in sheer ethos, in dread, paranoia and mounting terror.
 
A new feature that helps to emphasise this beyond any dream or possibility of the original game is one cribbed from Resident Evil 7, whose engine this game pushes to the Nth degree:
 
The flash light.
 
Various areas within the game lack lighting, meaning that the player has to rely on the extremely focused and narrow illumination provided by the character's flashlight. This renders areas that might otherwise be fairly mundane exercises in heart-stopping terror, the flashlight beam playing over things that the player's eye interprets as monsters or zombies in waiting, causing them to panic and blunder into the pack of G-Virus infested creatures just waiting around the next corner.
 
The various beasties from the original are all re-imagined here, some, such as the iconic Licker, retaining much of their original designs and natures (enhanced by some wonderful new environmental mechanics relating to their blindness and reliance on sound) whilst others are more profoundly repurposed:
 
What was a unique boss encounter in the original game, the Cronenbergian “Birkin Spawn,” is here a more distressing but less unique enemy; a species of creature that has infested the sewers beneath Raccoon City and which looms shapelessly from the filth to grab the player, its flower-like mouth-parts blossoming to vomit toxic bile and parasitic worms. Likewise, the plant-creatures from the underground labs have been re-imagined as a specific form of zombie; human carcasses that have been infested with G-Virus mutated plants, making them some of the most unique and abstruse enemies in the game.
 
But perhaps most notable -outside of the named “boss” entities the player encounters- are the zombies themselves.
 
Far from simply recreating the slouching, head-shot vulnerable entities of the original game or even the re-jigged species encountered in the Resident Evil 1 remake, Capcom have gone back to the drawing board with their iconic monsters, subtly re-designing the way they behave and operate to make them as threatening as can be:
 
Whereas in previous Resi titles, a good headshot or a sufficient amount of damage would be enough to put most zombies out for good (significantly diminishing their threat as the games progressed), here, that simply isn't so:
 
It's going to be something of a surprise for many players familiar with this series when they come upon their first congregation of undead, assuming blithely that they know how to deal with them, only to find the old tricks not working. It's possible to pump round after round, magazine after magazine into these bastards and they won't go down. Even when they do, most get back up again in a matter of moments, no matter how traumatically wounded they are.
 
This is not like previous games where it's possible to “clear” corridors and make areas safe by simply eliminating the zombies and monsters they contain:
 
There is a far more fraught and legitimate “survival horror” element to these encounters, in that the player must determine between wasting valuable ammunition (which is phenomenally rare) or risking being caught whilst dodging past the zombies and thereby placing themselves in a more precarious situation health-wise. Given the general scarcity of ammunition, this is entirely deliberate: the new way in which Capcom want players to approach each situation: there's a tactical element to combat in this game that is simply absent in previous instalments, a level of consideration that one would most certainly not expect from the B-movie stylings of this particular franchise.
 
This also has the added factor of making the common or garden zombies threatening again.
 
One of the most pronounced changes in this version of the game is the level of tension. Whilst the original was indeed a master at fraying the player's nerves, leaving them poised on the edge of their seats whilst opening the next door, turning the next corner, here, that factor is conflated to the power of N: the sheer number of zombies in certain areas is intimidating, as are the ways in which they can now follow the player through doors and also pour in from the outside through unbarred windows.
 
Whereas the original game had areas that could be rendered “safe zones,” that isn't necessarily true here: familiar areas or those that are revisited too much will become newly infested as zombies approach the police station from outside, pouring through smashed windows or flung open doors.
 

​ 
Perhaps the most terrifying element of the game comes in the form of a familiar enemy from the previous games, but which only occurred in the tertiary “B” scenarios for each character:
 
The biological super-weapon and assassin that is “Mr. X.”
 
Here as in the original, Mr. X is a gigantic, trench-coat wearing behemoth sent in by the Umbrella Corporation to dispose of any survivors or witnesses to the tragedy fast claiming Raccoon City. An invulnerable, silent and expressionless monstrosity, Mr. X occurs at particular points throughout the game's many campaigns, stalking the player through areas previously assumed to be safe, following them based on movement, sound and vibration.
 
Whereas most monsters in the game are pre-determined, spawning in at particular areas, Mr. X is dynamic: an entity that exists whether you as the player are present or not. As such, he can be anywhere after he initially occurs:
 
The player will lose track of him after scrabbling away through the corridors and stairwells of the police station, hearing only vague echoes of his footsteps. Evetually, even these recede, leaving the player in a state of simultaneous tension and relief. Then, they'll open a door and head cautiously down the next corridor only for X to emerge around the corner, moving with such predatory economy, such monolithic malice, the only option is to panic, turn tail and scrabble back to whatever safe spaces or hidey holes they can recall.
 
And forget any tactics you might think carry over from the original game; no amount of wasted ammunition will put this monster down for good; the most you can hope is to delay him for seconds before he heals, gets back up and resumes his chase. 

​ 
In and of himself, X isn't terribly dangerous to the player: he's quite slow and plodding, his skull-pulping attacks are cleanly telegraphed and easy to avoid.
 
But that does nothing to dilute the raw panic he inspires simply by the fact of his presence. That he can occur almost anywhere, invading areas that the player might assume safe, enhances this factor to the point whereby the sight of him emerging through a door several sizes too small for him is enough to inspire screams of pure terror.
 
This is where the game's sound design truly comes into its own: the original Resi games were revolutionary in their use of sound and music to enhance atmosphere. Here, that tradition has been noted and run with, the various environments the player encounters all boasting their own stunning incidental music as well as sound effects that make the player feel truly immersed in this decaying, zombie-infested disaster area.
 
Many enemies, the zombies included, utilise sound to determine their actions: fire off shots, and zombies will immediately turn and lurch your way. The aforementioned Lickers boast a brilliant new dynamic in which they are blind, relying on sound to zero in on their targets: whilst they might inspire a panicked player to start unloading shotgun shells into the dark, a far more efficient tactic when one hears their tell-tale rasping breaths and hissing chitters is to stop, slow down and simply creep past them.
 
Mr. X epitomises and encapsulates these qualities: not only does he have his own heart-thumping incidental music, it's possible to hear him clomping through the walls and floors of the police station as he seeks you out. Keen-eared players may even use this element to determine where he is at any given time and plan their routes to avoid him. But the most sincere effect of this is fear. Fear of being stalked, of knowing that this invulnerable, remorseless, unreasoning killing engine is slowly tracking you down and will inevitably show up when you are at your most desperate, hemmed in by hordes of the living dead, down to your last few shells or magazines. 

 
This is before we even begin to comment on the superlatve reimaginings of fan favourite monsters like William Birkin, a constantly-mutating, Cronenbergian nightmare who is here, if anything, even more revoltingly brilliant than he was in the original.
 
Flaws? All forgivable, given just how stand-out, jaw-droppingly stunning the rest of the game is. Interestingly, most of the game's major issues derive from its source material: as in the original, the story is a little underbaked for both characters (though efforts have been made to expand upon this and lend things a little more pathos). The player characters also react in B-movie, fairly glib manners to scenes of atrocity and utter abomination (again, a matter of the game's heritage and a wider flaw of the Resi series in general).
 
It's also far, far more difficult than the original, with the natural limitations upon ammunition and healing items of a “survival horror” game ramped up to sometimes insane degrees (certainly in the B scenarios for each character, which naturally assume you've already played the A scenarios and are therefore somewhat familiar with the game's layout). There were times when the lack of ammunition and the sheer number of enemies I had to negotiate had me in despair, but then, that is “survival horror;” the key emotion it is designed to evoke.
 
And here, it does so beautifully, in a game whose original incarnation is two decades old.
 
 
If you would like to see me scream and panic whilst attempting to negotiate this game, consider checking out my “let's play” at the following: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_3YQW0lAL2Ok23qr4MTG2juSQllvo4dT
​