Resident Evil 2 First Impressions: Is it Resident Evil-y enough?

We played the “Resident Evil 2” 1-shot demo with the hope that it was the game we were hoping it was, but did it meet our hopes?

On Friday, Capcom released the 1-shot Resident Evil 2 demo and expectations were really high. As someone who has been playing the Resident Evil games since their initial release in the ’90s, I was looking to see if the newest installment to the horror-survival games would not only be scary with nauseatingly real graphics, but if the game would have that something that was intrinsically “Resident Evil.” If you don’t know what I mean, play the first three Resident Evil games and you will understand the theme that I mean. So, based on the 30 minutes that we played, does it hold up?

Resident Evil 2 1-shot demo: Image courtesy of Capcom

Hell YES it does! THIS is the Resident Evil game that longtime fans of the franchise have been waiting for. Although Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was truly terrifying, its atmosphere and environment made a scarier game but it lacked that RE feel until MAYBE on the ship on the end. RE games have an eerie, experimental, secretive, and lonely feeling.

Mind you, I am focusing this more on the first three games because RE4 changes the formula quite a bit. But in the first three, especially Resident Evil 2 and Nemesis, you are in this huge city and it is silent save for the moans of the the dying and undead. In RE1, you have this feeling like you shouldn’t be there, that the house is quiet but there is always something there. RE7 did a good job of replicating the reeling that there is always something watching you but it was missing something.

The new Resident Evil 2 seems like it is the game that Capcom wanted to make in 1998 but the technology just wasn’t quite there and didn’t do the game justice. The graphics are stunning and can we talking about the light and shadows?? In the demo, there was a moment where I was standing at the top of the stairs in one of the side wings of the RPD and my flashlight was causing shadows to dance and making it look like there were zombies everywhere. I had just killed a zombie on the stairs and I hear the guttural growl of another and I cannot see where it is coming from. I stood there panning my flashlight in circles in a panic searching for the source of the sound and THAT is Resident Evil. That panic and fear that there’s something around the corner that you just can’t see but you can hear is the feeling that RE7 was missing somehow.

I love Leon S. Kennedy. He is one of my favorite characters in the franchise and I loved how they finally made him look like a very young rookie cop. The character models that they used for all of the faces we know are love are stunning and I love every single one of them, which we were able to see in the trailer at the end of the demo. I literally screamed when Hunk and Tofu were revealed.

I can only say that I hope that they remake a RE game with Albert Wesker. I know that the first game was remastered but I want one of THESE with my boy Wesker in it. The game mechanics and inventory system are the same as RE7 which the addition of a more traditional heart monitor as the health bar.

Another awesome aspect is the layout of the police station. There are places in the layout we played that were different because of the technological limitations of the ’90s, but there was a lot of the layout that was the same and able to be navigated without the map by someone who has played the original game repeatedly. They kept just enough of the original to hit you hard in the face with the nostalgia stick. This game takes you back to the RPD you know and love but with different puzzles, sick as hell graphics and more realistic characters. The entire demo had us holding our breath for 30 minutes as we rounded corners expecting something to jump out.