Resident Evil 2

The Good
How often does a sequel capture the splendour of the original? This first sequel in the long running horror gaming series lets you control not one, but a variety of characters in multiple scenarios and a few sub-games, which add to the already intense, nail biting plot. This was one of the first games I really dived into, and I rarely feel that way with any other game outside of this universe. Leon, Claire and Ada have got to be the most intriguing video game characters of all time. The hidden goodies made me want to play it again and again. My only gripe with that is that it obviously makes the game too easy for ya.

The Bad
It wasn't as hard as the original. A lot of it felt like a retread. But there was never a dull moment. It kept my interest all the way.

The Bottom Line
It is one of the greatest games you will ever play. If you like the horror movies of yesteryear, this is one game you won't want to miss.

The Good
Picture this- you sit down to watch a movie. A horror movie. The third in an incredible series. It is called "Day of the Dead". You pop it in, press play, and grab a handful of tasty (but a bit too salty) popcorn. The first scene involves some people on the outskirts of a Floridian city with a megaphone calling out to any human survivors. The zombies here this and in a second a rather large army of zombies has clogged the streets trying to get to these tasty humans. You think to yourself "Damn, that is really cool. I hope the movie takes place in the city." Unfortunately it doesn't. Although the movie is still good, you feel let down. This game lets you live that wonderful scene for hours of the most crap-your-pants scary suspense you will ever feel in a game. The controls are the same basic Resident Evil style, simple and easy to use. The game is long and provides amazing CGIs for the player to feast their eyes on. The secret modes are no easy to combine and are a blast to play (one even adds a secret bit to the plot from Umbrella's side of things).

The Bad
Wasn't much. The only thing you can really gripe about this game is the continuity. In order to complete the game and be able to see all the CGIs, you need to beat scenarios 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B. This means you see the game through the eyes of Claire and Leon is two different situations. Good right? In theory right if they dictated which character you start out with and then switch it halfway through the game. Instead you can start with either character. This means you need to beat it with Claire starting and Leon starting in order to beat all four scenarios (when you beat 1A, Claire's starting scenario, you get access to 2B, Leon's alt. scenario and vice versa). This means you will play a journey with Claire starting by the gun shop in 1A and Leon starting by the gun shop in 1B. Being as you need to play all four scenarios to unlock the entire final video, this means that the continuity gets screwed up (well, who was thrown by the gun show in the very beginning?! Leon or Claire!? Make up your mind Capcom!). Other than this, it is really a great game and second in the series only to Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Oh ya, and it is too hard to unlock the secret Tofu mode. That is too great an option to never get to experience.

The Bottom Line
After a car accident in a zombie infested city, two new friends- Claire, the brother of Chris from the first game, and Leon, a cop on him way to his first day at the Raccon City Police Department, are separated. You must fight your way through the claustophobic urban atmosphere to reunite and survive this hellish plague. Maybe along the way you will make some new friends and find out just who is responcible for this mess. But when you do find the responcible party you might just regret it...

The Good
The game has it's own, unique feeling. It is very scary and dark ... especially the B scenario. The gameplay is very good - althought shooting and moving in the same time would be nice.

Video clips are awesome, but the game itself has very blocky and pixelated graphics because the 2d backgrounds are in TV resolutions.

Sound isn't that good, but the music supports the feeling of the game nicely.

The Bad
First of all, the voice acting and other sound fx are horrible - the dialogue was bad in the first place and the voices make it even worse. The sound fx are very lame, pistols say bang and shotgun goes boom, but it doesn't sound real - and the zombie moans get annoying very fast.

The game is also pretty short, althought it has many "secret" features. Also, the game difficulty levels are wreid, "easy" is way too easy, "normal" is too easy and "hard" is near to impossible.

Also, the great feeling of the game is broken by little mistakes - cop officer says "here, take this keycard" and waves his empty hand at you - and you get the keycard. Also, the enviroment is very unrealistic and the puzzles are really annoying. When was the last time you saw a lock that used chess pieces as keys?

The Bottom Line
Basically a simple action adventure game, but it has that SOMETHING that makes it stand out as THE survival horror game. In my opinion it's the best game in it's genre - and a good game anyway. Give it a try.

The Good
Resident Evil 2 took the best material from its predecessor, whipped up a fresh new story, and plugged it all in with some amazing new ideas. It works quite well, and if you liked the first one, the second one will knock your eyes out.

It's not entirely the same. The first game took place in a mansion in the woods... a much more claustrophobic setting. THIS one takes place all over the CITY, although much of the first half of the game is confined to the zombie-infested police station.

This game, like the first one, offers you the chance to play it as one of two different characters -- cop Leon or biker chick Claire -- which, in many ways, makes it two different games. Furthermore, once you've played once as Leon and then the second time as Claire, if you save the game, and then play again as Leon, you will find that the plot has developed some SUBSTANTIAL changes... which carry over into the second play as Claire... which basically means you're getting FOUR similar-but-different games here...

The Bad
The voice acting, again, is horrible. Odd puzzles that didn't seem too out of place in a weird mansion in the woods don't quite work, logically, in an urban police station. What's the deal with the secrets hidden inside statues? For that matter, how many statues do you normally find in an urban police station? Once again, make sure you have that gamepad peripheral handy to hook up to your PC. It's a Playstation port, and that means control problems...

The Bottom Line
Third-person survival horror zombie shootout in the apocalyptic streets of Raccoon City! Go to it!

The Good
For me, this is another BIG slap on the face. I was in general holding grudge against Resident Evil series no matter I'm a fan of horror-survival genre and have most of top ones in my collection. This one I wanted to add just to fulfill the horror-survival game collection more than for a fact I believed it to be a good game. Well, I gotta tell you something, it has hit me hard, and this slap I won't forget that easily.

The reason I considered this game so 'crappy' before is 'cos I never liked zombies in general, how they act and even how they look like, you might say. Thus other horror-survival with monsters, or simple badguys I considered only decent ones. It appeared that Resident Evil 2 gave me such a story and elaboration on the things that it seems more real that the townfolk of Raccoon City could've become zombies than any other monsters had their realism embroided in the other horror-survival games.

This game is rather short, as all horror-survival games are, you might say, but that's what makes them so good I suppose. They don't bother you too much with how to solve this puzzle and how to pass this boss. They require certain level of cleverness from you, yet they don't bedazzle you with their stupidity of design and lack of imagination. And utterly they win every prize when it comes to their stories.

Now, what I though when I started this game is that I will play Leon and Claire as in one story after another, however, instead of that, you get to play simultaneous stories of them both. Exactly what Half-Life and Alone in the Dark IV had, only they had that much more perfected with no gaps and lacks in design. I'll elaborate that lack of RE2 stories in the next section.

Some people (if not most) have complained about voice-acting. I dunno why, I find it rather nice and well chosen voices for each of the characters. And speech goes smoothly and with a flow like a normal conversations. As for the cinematics, the character detail is rather below the standard, especially for the year the game came out, but all the rest looks dashing, from the police car chase to the surroundings, buildings and other vehicles. Music is aboveall one of the finest to find in the horror-survival game. Not the best, but one of the finest never-the-less.

Probably one of the best thing is that you have (I dunno if that was later release, but on my PC con-version of this game I had japanese and european game selection) japanese port to select which when on easy gives you unlimited ammo for a machine gun with which you start the game, gattling gun and a rocket launcher. That's kinda neat, but the rest of the weapons you must find as you progress along. Creatures are very well designed and the whole atmosphere looks eerie and real, yet not as horrifying as for example that one of Silent Hill.

And hey, actions scenes rock!

The Bad
Well, I dunno how come they could make such a flaw with conversion, and only partially. Ya see, movie scenes when you play as Leon do not match with the sound, hence you hear the sound of like 5 seconds ahead happening. When you play as Claire, the videos are fine, though. As for the video quality itself, like I mentioned, it is superb except that of the characters. Seems they didn't want to bother to increase number of polygons for some reason. But that's probably 'cos they wanted to concentrate on the game itself and make longer cinematics. The whole game is really great, and it's strange how it happens on such a small place, almost 80% of the game is literally placed inside the police station, no matter which character you choose to play with.

Mentioning this, the stories of Claire and Leon do not go swell together. When you play as Leon you do certain puzzles, and when you play as Claire, you do the exactly same puzzles yet you find other characters and things like Leon left them. It is not well balanced that way wise, in fact, it is very bad combined together. Now, in Half-Life it's perfect, yet all three characters there don't much cross over each other's territory. However, in The New Nightmare, both characters have their own story and play simultaneous on exactly same place, yet everything is so perfectly merged together that you can literally say every time "hey, I remember doing this when I was playing another character, how kewl". If only they paid attention to that in Resident Evil 2, it would've been much better to follow.

The Bottom Line
Okay, okay, I see now why you all guys consider this game to be a resurrection of a horror-survival genre. And I see now that what I liked so much in other games are enhanced things which this game provided already. However, I never played long enough AITD trilogy to see if they already had what this one had, 'cos otherwise, farewell originality. Bottomline, if you don't like bad stories, and if you like only well designed and interesting horror-survival games, then look no further, this one will give you what you want. Even though it won't take you more than 3-4 hours per character if you're experienced enough with these kind of games.

The Good
I was looking forward to this game, because I liked the first one. It was cool being in Resident Evil again with a new location to wander around in but it just was too similar to part 1. Capcom didn't decide to revamp any of the areas of part 1 which flawed it. I love the music in this game though, as well as part 1. They do well there. RE2 was a definitely worth a rent or 2 or 3 but I didn't think it was worth a buy.

The Bad
Inventory system still sucked, the player control was still difficult. The view still sometimes left you blind-fighting with a monster out of the view, very frustrating. I thought there was still a lack of ammo. Saving system was identical to RE1, which was not a good thing. The resolution on the PC version was terrible, very grainy and you couldn't adjust it. I thought the PS1 version had much better graphics.

The Bottom Line
Pretty fun, worth renting (back when it was released, probably could find it for 5 bucks now though) Worth owning now days but not back then. Fun for RE fans.