Resident Evil 2 (1988)

A few days ago I wrote about how I recently decide to just poke away at games without actually feeling any rush to focus on a single game completely. But of course, sometimes a game just grips me from beginning to end, and I have to commit, because it’s just that cool.

I have lots of memories of watching speedruns, challenges, reviews and retrospectives of the Resident Evil games, I have to say I’m just not sure where the interest for the series came from, I never had a friend with a console who played them, and they never figured in the list of games I’d emulate when I got introduced to that world.

It wasn’t until I had my PSP and realized that I could play PS1 games on it, that an interest on the franchise developed, so I got them for the system. This was the case for Resident Evil 2, a game that I actually tried out years ago, even mentioning it as one of the many games I just left abandoned when I tried playing it on my PSP, as other titles simply stole my attention from it.

I was seriously kind of enamoured with the lore of the franchise, and I had an interest on Zombie movies, like George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead films, I think Parasite Eve played a role as well at the time, since I even read the novel back in 2020.

The point is, despite it all, I never gave the games a fair shot until now.

Resident Evil 2 was picked for February in the Low Key Game Club from the TWG Discord—which is also the reason I played Jet Lancer and Soul Reaver—and for some reason it just felt like the perfect time to actually play this title and survive through Raccoon City myself.

Story

The story of this game is presented in a great way, letting you experience two different points of view and two alternate stories. While playing as two different characters in the game.

Leon Kennedy is a rookie cop who got a job to work in Raccoon City’s Police Department, where as Claire Redfield is currently looking for his brother, Chris—one of the protagonists from the first game—who is currently missing, but worked as an agent in the STARS division of the police.

Each character will see different moments of a single narrative, and there are moments where you’ll encounter and see the effects of what the other character did on their side.

These characters meet while trying to survive the zombies running rampant in the city. However, they end up separated in the chaos, and the game lets you choose who to play as. The characters planned to meet at the Police Station, so now you have to find your way there, where the adventure truly begins.

As the story progresses, you will find reports and documents detailing the events prior to the game, unlock doors, solve puzzles and survive against enemies that want to eat your brains. You will also meet new characters as you venture deeper into the police station, and even meet companions during certain parts of the story that you’ll get to control as well, slowly uncovering the truth behind the virus spreading through Raccoon City.

Gameplay

The gameplay that makes the original trilogy so special—and controversial among new players who want to get into them—are the tank controls and the fixed camera angles. These two features limit both movement and vision, and while they can be hard to get used to at first, they are essential to the original experience, and they don’t really take much effort to understand, after half and hour or so of playtime.

This is the franchise that coined the term survival horror, and these limitations and lack of agency challenge the player as they try to survive and explore the environments of the game. The limited ammo and items you can carry with you, means you’ll have to be strategic about the path you follow as you try to make progress.

Of course, multiple rooms will be overrun by zombies, and other enemies like the lickers, or worse. However, enemies don’t respawn, which makes killing them worth it to make traversal and backtracking easier.

When it comes to horror, it really isn’t that scary, yes, the atmosphere is amazing, but it’s kinda campy and other than some jump scares, it really won’t mess with your mind that much.

All of the Police Station is a giant escape room, and it is where the game shines most, as it is basically a sort of Metroidvania.

The game features no interface during gameplay, something that heightens the cinematic camera angles. You can know your health based on the character animation while standing and walking. You can find herbs, ammo and other items scattered in the game to help you out. There’s a menu you can access to see your items, combine them, and check them for clues, there is a section to access files and documents you’ve collected, as well as a map screen, which shows the doors available to you and the color of the key needed to unlock them.

Saving your progress is limited too. You can only save in specific rooms with a typewriter, and you need ink ribbons to use it, occupying an extra item slot too. Save too often and you’ll run out of ribbons, putting your progress in danger until you find more of them. You can also find item boxes in some save rooms where you can store items and access them in other item boxes in the game, very handy to free up your storage.

I honestly think this game is designed masterfully. It makes you feel powerless at first, and you are scared of the dangers around each turn of the camera, but if you explore more and take risks here and there, you can be rewarded with more resources and weapon upgrades, which are useful against stronger enemies and bosses later in the game.

There are bosses, but they just sponges that require you to shoot them with your strongest weapon and nothing more, making them kinda meh, and unfortunately they will deal tons of damage, so a lot of healing items are required as well. The bosses go through different transformations and are definitely cool to see the first time, but the boss battle design isn’t great.

The game is also very replayable, thanks to the different scenarios you can play, and the unlockable modes it features. The game featurs the zapping system. A fantastic mechanic that let’s you perform actions that affect the other character’s scenario, for example, you can take a weapon as Leon which will become unavailable on Claire’s side.

Each scenario changes the route, features very different puzzles and also exclusive bosses and characters you meet on them, it’s really amazing stuff that expands the game while reusing some assets.

In my case, I only went through the Leon A and Claire B scenario, but the story plays out differently if you do Claire first. I will probably replay this game at some point starting with her, just because it is that fun.

Art & Music

The amount of work that went into these games is just incredible. As stated before, the game features fixed camera angles, making use of incredibly detailed prerrendered backgrounds that allow for the game to look extremely nice. The areas of the game, especially in the police station, really feel like a place that went through a lot, as everything looks messy and real, with most rooms being rather memorable, even if they can feel a bit croweded sometimes. Everything blends in perfectly.

It is important to note, that these graphics were made for the PS1, at a 240p resolution, and they don’t look nearly as well as they would on a proper CRT display, like was common at the time, and that often blended things together, smoothing out the pixels beautifully. The images shown in this review are edited with some blur and a filter to mimmick the effect.

There are some great fan projects out there that upscale those backgrounds for the bigger displays, such as RESHDP, but I think they all look way too smooth and shiny compared to the gritty look of the original art. I feel like using a CRT filter is the best way to play these if you don’t have a proper display.

I played the game on my Anbernic RG35XX SP, which features a 480p 3.5 inch display, and given the display size and pixel density, I had a fantastic time enjoying the game on the go without complains.

Besides the backgrounds, the character models of the playable characters and enemies alike feature a ton of detail, we see faces, although not many expressions, and the model textures change as the story continues.

The music of course is also amazing, I played most of the game wearing earphones, and the atmosphere was awesome and very terrifying. There are many tracks in the game that fit very well, like the beautiful yet melancholic melody that plays when reaching a safe room, or a character theme playing when you meet them . Other themes build up the tension or get you hyped up during a boss fight or action sequences, and everything just works.

Audio is actually a core part of the gameplay, as it often signals enemies that can’t be seen on screen due to the camera angle, so staying alert is very helpful to avoid getting scared by a zombie popping up around the corner. Gunshots, steps sounds varying due to the floor surface and the like are very well done, so much detail has gone into this, it’s unreal for the time.

This game also features voice acting for everything, there’s actually no subtitles for them, which is a little annoying at least on the PS1 version. Still, the voices are iconic at this point, even if the delivery is cheesy and a bit over the top, it works really well and I found it really enjoyable and it kept me invested on these characters quite a lot. Don’t expect something on the level of Soul Reaver, but it fits the vibes of watching an old campy horror film and it’s perfect from that perspective.

Overall thoughts

The good

• The background art and character models look amazing.
• The map design for the police station is very good.
• Cinematic camera angles and sounds that keep you on your toes.
• Scattered in files and documents that is intersesting to read and find clues.
• More than enough resources to complete the game if you manage items well.
• Short playtime and lots of replayability.
• Great side characters

The bad

• Bosses are average bullet sponges and not cleverly designed.
• Sometimes the camera angle will be messy, when hit by enemies or due to weapon recoil.
• Item management is part of the deal, but backtracking to organize it can be annoying.
• The game gets more linear as it goes on, this is good for me but maybe not you.
• Poison status is a thing that exists, although it’s not common.
• The puzzles are not as complex as other classic RE games, I didn’t mind though.
• Turning around completely with tank controls is a pain, fixed until Resident Evil 3
• It’s not really that scary, don’t expect to be traumatized or anything, just jumpscared.

Some tips and reminders

• There is more ammo and healing items that you may expect, just explore and clear out rooms with zombies freely, you’ll get all you need.
• Since the backgrounds are prerrendered, most interactable objects stand out quite a bit, keep an eye on things out of place.
• Overall you can just inspect every corner of a room and there can be a variety of messages or at least fun texts to describe things
• You can usually find the big weapons at least twice, so if you can’t carry (or decide not to) carry a certain weapon, you can often find it later, or you can do without it anyway.
• It’s great to feel the weight of your own actions, don’t just reload a save if you feel like you did bad, try to keep going and you may surprise yourself.
• Or you can just be lazy like me and use save states because you worry too much, you’ll end up with plenty of extra ammo in the end, by the way.

Finishing words

The game is currently on sale until March 3, 2026, excusively available for PC on GOG, you can even get the whole original trilogy there, in case you want to give them a go! I’ll stick with my emulation handhelds though.

Everything this game tries to do, is done perfectly well. Maybe the difficulty is not as high if you have already played other survival horror games like Signalis, as the item and ammo is actually plenty, but what makes it difficult is not being familiar with how these games should be played—exploring every nook and cranny to trigger as many checks as possible.

Also, yes, the bosses are not great. After experiencing the immaculate boss design of Soul Reaver, these bullet sponges that deal a bunch of damage and can make you lose a bunch of progress really didn’t do it for me, they were just a matter of healing items and ammo rather than actual skill.

Other than that, I really loved everything about this game. I played it on my commutes to work, like 20 or 40 minutes at a time, and I always managed to do some good progress and find something new to explore in those sessions. Even if it was not a game with portability in mind, it really lends itself well to it perfectly, at least thanks to the autosave and resume feature of my device when closing its lid.

The game holds up and is perfectly playable today, and very close to taking a position in my personal Top 25 Games, something I didn’t expect to happen so quickly, especially with a title I had abandoned before. Highly recommended!

This is day 23 of #100DaysToOffload