Twice Bitten

RESIDENT EVIL 2 RETURNS THE SERIES TO ITS ROOTS, REWORKING A 20-YEAR-OLD CLASSIC AND BRINGING SURVIVAL HORROR BACK TO ITS BEST. OXM GOT HANDS-ON AND FOUND IT SCARILY FAMILIAR…

- Chris Burke

It’s been 20 years since this writer was last in Racoon City’s sprawling police station. It was another time, another console. Returning to it now is as if the years have melted away. Of course, usually what happens when you revisit old games is that you realise you’ve remembered it through a rose-tinted filter, but not this time. Resident Evil 2’s even better than you remember.

That’s because, of course, survival horror innovator Capcom has chosen to revisit its classic second Resident Evil game, updating its visuals and mechanics for 2018. Gone are the fixed camera angles and the blockier, pixelly graphics in favour of the now familiar Resident Evil 4-style, over-the-shoulder action camera, and Xbox One X-enhanced sharply realistic character models, backgrounds and effects. It’s a treat for the eyes and thumbs alright, but it’s also a game that pays serious fan-service by changing very little else.

Younger gamers might find some of the game’s 20-year-old ideas other-worldly. Firstly, there’s the ’90s setting with quaint concepts such as saving your progress with typewriters, rolls of film that need developing in a dark room, and complete lack of smart phones. There are also the fundamentals of the game mechanics – devised, ingeniously at the time, out of technical constraints and limitations on the size of the play area possible, but retained faithfully and somehow still made to feel fresh here.