Reviews
[Review] ‘Resident Evil 2’ is the Perfect Remake of a Survival Horror Classic
A long-awaited remake of a survival horror classic shuffles into view, was it worth the wait? See what we think in our Resident Evil 2 review.
Resident Evil is widely considered the granddaddy of the survival horror genre but it wasn’t until Capcom released a sequel in 1998 that it went from breakout hit to worldwide phenomenon. With 3D gaming still very much in its infancy, Resident Evil 2 touched down at the perfect time, combining traditional action and adventure with a grotesque level of gore rarely seen before.
Since then, it’s fair to say that the franchise has had its ups and downs. For every solid sequel or spin-off, there have been some major missteps as well as games that only existed to keep the brand name alive in between those meatier mainline installments.
Although seen as the weakest entry in the series, Resident Evil 6 still sold over 8.7 million copies, becoming Capcom’s third best-selling game. However, critics were beginning to tire of Capcom attempts at making the franchise more action orientated, becoming more and more of a flashy blockbuster showpiece with little consideration of what made those original game such stand-out classics.
Resident Evil 7 was certainly a turning point and although it had pitfalls of its own, Capcom was able to put its flagship franchise back on track, reanimating that familiar Resi formula we fell in love with all those years ago. If those lessons hadn’t be learned, we dread to think how Resident Evil 2 might have turned out.
Thankfully, this is the remake that Capcom had promised its fans: a deftly crafted tribute to the 1998 sequel, built from the ground up with just the right amount of modernization. The way it has gone about recreating a genre-defining masterpiece is incredibly faithful and while certain parts of the game have been rejigged to better suit the needs and expectations of modern gamers, nothing here has been desecrated or painted over just for the sake of it.
A huge part of Resident Evil 2’s success was its setting. We’ll always have a soft spot for the Spencer Mansion though there’s something about Raccoon City – seeing its urban sprawl overrun and descend into chaos – that has always been more evocative. Even when Capcom immediately went for a double dip with Resident Evil 3 Nemesis, the city still felt incredibly fresh, large swathes of its urban expanse yet to be explored.
With that said, much of your time with Resident Evil 2 is spent in the Raccoon City police station – arguably one of the most iconic buildings in video game history. It’s an ingeniously constructed example of level design, a maze-like puzzle box that loops back on itself as you unlock doors, and unearth hidden passageways.
What works so well about this remake is how Capcom quite clearly fought the temptation to give the original game a complete do-over. Having to decipher cryptic clues, spending prolonged periods scavenging for key items, and backtracking across the map can be just as frustrating as it was back in 1998. While these moments could easily have been ripped out or streamlined, Capcom kept those bits in, only smoothing over some of the game’s roughest, most archaic edges. As a result, Resident Evil 2 retains that same quality that it did more than two decades ago.
The core foundation is still in place but those changes the developers have made are extremely welcome and essential in propelling the game into the present day and still make it relevant.
The most notable change, of course, is the complete visual overhaul. Here we see Capcom flexing the same “RE Engine” tech that powered its last installment in the series. Character models are more lifelike than ever thanks to vast improvements in facial animation, especially when it comes to Leon, Claire, Ada, and the game’s small cluster of key supporting characters.
The enemies you come up against have also been reimagined in splendid, horrific detail. Zombies twitch and shamble, quickening their pace when in close proximity. The way they react to being shot is a tiny technical marvel that perfectly mimics the nineties original. Hitting your target square-on will cause them to stumble while aiming for arms and legs will cause them grossly slough away.
You’ll be surprised at the number of headshots it takes to put down a zombie for good. Even then, as you come back to revisit areas you’ve previously cleared, they’ll often be repopulated. Another nice little touch this remake adds is by having zombies try and barge their way into the police station, forcing players to board up windows or instead face even more enemies.
This all serves a purpose, enshrining the remake as a proper survival horror game and not just some zombie-filled shooting gallery. The team at Capcom are akin to evil geniuses in the way they constantly try to manipulate players, creating scenarios where you really have to stop and think about conserving items and ammunition. You’ll soon learn that outrunning zombies, or firing off a glancing shot, is actually more effective than trying to permanently eliminate them.
Even the most carefully laid plans can end up going awry as you fall into traps and eat into your reserves. There are also intermittent boss to be wary of too, but even if you’re completely unprepared for them, Resident Evil 2 spews up *just* enough items to scrape through. It’s a game that genuinely revels in the stress and unease it burdens the player with, ready to twist that knife at the most inconvenient of moments. Nothing about this is new, however – that’s exactly how those original games in the series were built.
Luckily, these tough spots are no longer compounded by some of Resi 2’s outdated design tropes. Much like the series’ most recent installments, players are treated to an over-the-shoulder view, being able to move and shoot at the same time, tank controls be damned. This also means that fixed camera angles are gone too – a casualty only the most zealous of purists will lament.
One modernization you may not notice at first is the removal of loading screens. Those tense door-opening sequences Resi became known for certainly have a fear-inducing nostalgia factor though being able to seamlessly explore the RCPD station and surrounding areas without interruption is a huge time saver.
There are some extra nuggets of content hidden away here and there, though expect Resident Evil 2 to clock in at a similar runtime compared to the 1998 original. A single playthrough should last six to eight hours though can be done in less. Meanwhile, those who want to wring every morsel from the game may take twice as long with multiple runs needed to uncover its numerous endings. Being able to play as either Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield naturally adds some of the replayability from the original game, offering two different, albeit overlapping, perspectives of the same main story.
Resident Evil 2 – while not a perfect game – is the perfect remake. Capcom has lovingly rebirthed a horror icon here, preserving that core DNA without infecting it through needless add-ons or alterations. There are certain aspects that will definitely grate and feel weirdly archaic though these are clearly an intentional part of Capcom’s grand design. Whether you’ve been waiting all these years to revisit Raccoon City or happen to be a curious first-timer, Resident Evil 2 is an essential must-have slice of video game horror, kicking off 2019 in style.
Resident Evil 2 review code provided for PS4 by the publisher.
Resident Evil 2 is out January 25 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Reviews
‘Unhinged’ Review: Netflix’s Interactive Horror Thriller Is Short But Serviceable Gaming Fare
Netflix has such a strange history in gaming. I wouldn’t be surprised if most people don’t even know that there are free mobile games you can access through the service. Many of them are adaptations of their TV series, like “Too Hot to Handle” or “Squid Game”, while some are mobile versions of existing games, like Into the Breach or Hades.
In addition to mobile games, they’ve also created interactive movie experiences where you use your remote to select narrative options at branching points. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was a fairly successful version of this, but my sentimental favorite was the one where WWE’s New Day had to escape a murder house boobytrapped by The Undertaker. Even if some of these made a bit of a splash, it seems it never really hit with mainstream audiences the way their shows do.
One of the studios they purchased while trying to break into the game space was Night School Studio, the creators of the spooky narrative series Oxenfree. This struck me as a particularly smart acquisition, as this type of narrative game seems like something that would feel at home under the Netflix umbrella. While they did release Oxenfree II while owned by the streaming giant, it was released on traditional platforms, which led me to wonder when their first Netflix exclusive would show up.
While they did produce a game called Thronglets, a mobile version of a plot element from an episode of “Black Mirror”, the recently released Unhinged seems to be one of the highest profile Netflix games in a long time.
Unhinged is a first-person, narrative-driven thriller starring Zoë Kravitz, Sadie Sink, and Troy Baker. This 30-minute experience, played on your TV through the standard Netflix app, is controlled by your phone, using some clever tricks to make the whole thing feel more immersive. It’s a neat variation on the “interactive movie” subgenre, with a tiny bit of point-and-click adventure game DNA thrown in for good measure, but it doesn’t exactly offer you as many options as something like Until Dawn.
Kravitz plays Ava, a woman who is hunkering down in her apartment complex during a dangerous hurricane. As she talks with her friend Claire, who lives in a neighboring building, about possibly leaving to find shelter elsewhere, she finds herself in a desperate chase with a crazed killer that stalks her through the halls of the building. It’s a decent setup for a very contained story, but I wish there was a little more meat on the bones. The voice acting is great, but there’s not really a ton of characterization for the two leads, and the killer was a bit “generic psycho” for my taste. There’s some implied backstory with other tenants in the building, but it’s not enough to make me feel like there’s a web of relationships that would give the story more emotional weight.
To play the game, you open up your Netflix app wherever you usually watch, then select the game. This will bring up a QR code, which you’ll scan on your phone, prompting you to download a controller app that will sync up to the game. The majority of the way you’ll interact is by pointing at the screen like a Wiimote, which selects on-screen options for Ava and shines her flashlight around the environment.
While this does give it the feel of an FMV game, Unhinged is rendered in a photorealistic graphics style, and while not quite to the level of something like P.T., it does the trick of drawing you into the action. You’re still put on a pretty strict path while moving around, which is done automatically when you select a direction, but moving your phone gives you the ability to look around your environment, even if only slightly.
The real immersive part of the game is the fact that your phone also acts as Ava’s phone. The plot is frequently moved forward by calls and text messages that you answer as you would on your own cellular device. As sound blasts out of your phone, it does put you in the shoes of the main character, momentarily worrying you that the sound of the call or text is going to alert your on-screen stalker. This part of Unhinged truly takes advantage of the format to draw you deeper into the story, though unfortunately it’s so effective that I wished the game found even more ways to use it.
There are a couple clever moments that make for unique ways of delivering twists or doing extremely light puzzle solving, but most of the time it’s just used to allow your friend to give you instructions on how to move the narrative forward.
All these mechanics come together to give the illusion of tension without actually fully delivering on it. When you get to a situation where you’re under pressure, a timer bar will appear on the top of the screen, indicating how long you have to get to safety. It’s a fine gimmick, but it comes off as a little hard to gauge. Since you don’t have direct control over your character, all your actions are very heavily animated, and sometimes your choice ends up taking longer than you think it will not because of the idea behind the choice, but because of the length of the animation. Fortunately, if you die, you’ll just pick back up at a checkpoint right before the choice, and you’ll even be treated with a voiceover discussion between police officers examining the crime scene, describing how you died.
So in theory, there is tension, counting down as the killer gets closer and closer to reaching you, but what you’re actually doing almost never feels like it’s testing you in any meaningful way. Actual choices come up very infrequently, making most of your interaction with the game world just scanning your pointer across the screen looking for an interaction point to progress, hoping the animation doesn’t take up too much time before the timer runs out. I didn’t hit a ton of friction points with it, and there’s even a Story Mode if you want to take out all possibility of death, but I found myself wishing there were more ways to affect the world around me. The phone calls and texts felt really fun and clever, but the rest of the gameplay just didn’t match that, making me wish there was more emphasis on the unique interaction model rather than the more traditional one.
Even though the mechanics aren’t necessarily pushing the tension as hard as they could be, the actual content of Unhinged’s story contains some pretty brutal situations. The villain isn’t the most unique or fleshed out, but he’s responsible for some gruesome moments that raised the stakes to make the game feel more intense. It makes your fight for survival feel that much more desperate, so even if you’re just highlighting icons on the screen, it feels more visceral thanks to what Ava is witnessing.
While I appreciate the game being lean and mean, I wish it was just a little bit longer. Thirty minutes is a pretty short runtime, and it doesn’t feel like the story for Unhinged has the time to come up with something that really sets it apart from other stories of its kind. The focus on the hurricane at the beginning made me think that was going to be more integral to the plot, but it didn’t really do much aside from explaining why the apartment complex was so empty. Thrillers like this live or die on how memorable their killer is, and there wasn’t anything really clever or unique about him. If this game doubled its runtime to the length of a standard Netflix show, it might have given them more room to build character relationships that made the action more meaningful, or at least given it a bit more personality of its own.
Night School Studio is on to something with the format of Unhinged. The combination of on screen and on phone prompts makes the game feel more immersive, drawing you in even when the narrative itself doesn’t feel fully formed or unique. The short runtime is both a help and a hindrance, keeping the pacing tight at the cost of adding any depth to the proceedings. This feels like a great first draft, and I hope that Night School is given the freedom to continue experimenting with the model, as the level of polish shown here was promising.
Even with its flaws, if you’ve already got a Netflix subscription, there’s no reason not to sit down for half an hour to check out Unhinged. If you can keep your expectations in check, it’s a nasty little thrillride that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Unhinged is streaming now on Netflix.
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