Resident Evil 2

Resident Evil 2 is a third-person survival horror game which features the same basic gameplay as its predecessor, Resident Evil. The game offers a choice of two protagonists, rookie police officer Leon S. Kennedy or college student Claire Redfield, as they survive a zombie outbreak in the Raccoon City, a fictional town in the Midwestern Arklay Mountains. The player explores while fighting monsters and solving puzzles. While the player characters may be equipped with firearms, limited ammunition adds a tactical element to combat, forcing the player to choose between engaging or evading encounters.

The game uses tank controls, meaning that pressing up moves the character forward, down reverses, and left and right rotates, independently of the camera perspective. On the status screen, the player can check the condition of the player character, view a map of the area, re-read obtained files, and equip or combine items. The characters' health can also be determined by their posture and movement speed. For example, a character will hold their stomach in pain if wounded, and will limp slowly if on the verge of death.

Depending on which order the scenarios are played in, the player experiences one of two courses of events which mutually contradict each other. This plot summary covers only the path followed by playing the Claire A and Leon B scenarios, which was suggested by Capcom to be the canon version of events.

On September 30, 1998, two months after the events of the first Resident Evil, most citizens of the Midwestern American mountain community of Raccoon City have been transformed into zombies by the T-virus, a biological weapon secretly developed by the pharmaceutical company Umbrella. Leon S. D.) officer on his first day of duty, meets Claire Redfield, a college student looking for her brother Chris.

Development of Resident Evil 2 began one month after the completion of its predecessor in early 1996. Resident Evil 2 was developed by a group of about 45 people that later became part of Capcom Production Studio 4. Director Hideki Kamiya led the team, which was composed of newer Capcom employees and over half of the staff from the original Resident Evil. In the initial stages of development, producer Shinji Mikami often had creative disagreements with Kamiya, and tried to influence the team with his own direction.

He eventually withdrew into an overseeing role as producer, and only demanded to be shown the latest build once monthly. Development cost more than $1 million.

Resident Evil 2 received critical acclaim upon release. Its original PlayStation release holds an average aggregate score of 93% at GameRankings based on 25 reviews, and 89 out of 100 points at Metacritic for both the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 versions based on 13 reviews. The majority of reviews praised Resident Evil 2 for its atmosphere, setting, graphics, audio, and overall gameplay, but criticized its controls, voice acting, and certain gameplay elements.[b]

Computer and Video Games magazine's Steve Key and Alex Huhtahla praised the gameplay, puzzles, horror, graphics, audio, and the scenario system's replay factor. Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine's four reviewers agreed it was better than the original game, and said almost everything about the sequel is "flawless", including the gameplay, graphics, layout, level of detail, sound, frightful atmosphere, suspenseful story, and scenario system. They criticized the controls and menu system, but said the controls were an improvement over the original. The game tied with the PlayStation version of Point Blank for their "Game of the Month".

Lucas M. Thomas of IGN considered Resident Evil 2 to be the "trendsetter" for modern zombie media by popularizing the imagery of zombie hordes filling city streets. Resident Evil 2 appears in the British sitcom Spaced in the episode "Art", in which a character hallucinates that he is fighting a zombie invasion. Spaced director Edgar Wright cited this episode inspired by Resident Evil 2 as the basis for his zombie comedy film Shaun of the Dead (2004). Gabe Newell of Valve Corporation was inspired by Resident Evil 2 to take "creepiness and horror" seriously when developing Half-Life.

Resident Evil 2 is the basis of several licensed works and later games. P." and "A New Chapter of Evil", which were released in the first and second issues of Resident Evil: The Official Comic Book Magazine in March and June 1998. The 60-issue Hong Kong comics Biohazard 2 was published weekly from February 1998 to April 1999.