Back when Resident Evil 2 was first announced for the GameCube, many assumed that it would be remade to take advantage of the GCN’s hardware; much like the first Resident Evil was. Unfortunately, Resident Evil 2 (along with Resident Evil 3) was announced to be a strait port from the previous version. This may have been a let down, but it was better than no RE2 at all. I, Sam Sauber, will be taking a look at just how this game stacks up to the rest of the GCN software out there.

Alright, there’s no joking here; the game looks extremely dated. The low polygonal character models and blurry textures graphically just don’t stack up to most of today’s games. Now, that being said, the game looked magnificent for its time, it’s just that what may have looked good then, doesn’t look all that great five years later. The two-dimensional backgrounds don’t even come close to the realism that is portrayed in the backgrounds of the Resident Evil remake. On top of that, the characters’ physical animations look a bit corny and badly executed. Honest to goodness, the game looks like the Playstation original. Although the game’s graphics don’t make you look away in horror, they just make you chuckle at the technology of yesteryear. Another BIG problem I had is that they did not remove the “door sequences” in the game. For those of you who have never played a Resident Evil title, the “door sequences” are where you go into a first person mode and move through a door (or up a ladder/stairs). The reason for this sequence is to let the game load the next room. The only problem with that is: GameCube can load these rooms extremely fast; they could’ve easily been removed. This was a big mistake by Capcom; I really thought that the sequence would be removed. Thankfully, the game has a few CG cut scenes that are pretty cool to view. One of the main things in the Resident Evil series is instill fear into the player. Luckily, even with the dated graphics, the game still has its share of sudden scares.

You can venture through the game in one of two stories. You can either go with Claire Redfield’s story, or with Leon Kennedy’s story. Both stories have their fare share of variations; some larger than others. Essentially, Leon’s story is a little more difficult than Claire’s, but they both have their advantages & disadvantages. Aside from the character you choose, you may also choose the “easy mode” if you find the game too hard to get through on normal. Easy mode gives you an uncanny amount of ammo when compared to the amount of ammo you receive in the normal mode. Essentially in Resident Evil 2, you travel around various areas gunning down zombies with a variety of weapons and solving puzzles to advance to a new area. The weapons are sometimes hard to aim because of the awkward control scheme, but there are still a lot of cool weapons that please you when gunning down a few undead monsters. The puzzles on the other hand, are sometimes very well though out and executed, and sometimes they aren’t. A few of the puzzles require you to use a great amount of wits, while other puzzles you can just rush through without much thinking at all. Overall though, the puzzles and weapons are satisfying. Items are sometimes a hassle though, because you are limited to only carrying 6-8 items at one time. You must use an “item trunk” to store the items you aren’t currently using. One drawback with this feature is that with two weapons, ammo, and health spray, you don’t have a whole lot of room for anything else. This leads to running around searching for item trunks for frequent item switching. Even for a port, the game has quite a few spooky things in it, and an interesting story to keep you interested in finishing the game.

In my opinion, this is where the heart and soul of this game ends up. The variety of eerie music just makes for an excellent sounding game. I love walking into a new room hearing the music change, then walking slow expecting something big to happen. The sound of the guns are realistic, although the zombie groans don’t sound as spooky as the RE Remake’s zombie groans. Either way, the sound in this game was designed to scare you, and it does just that.

CLOSING COMMENTS
Resident Evil 2 remains to be one of the best in the series. That being said, releasing a five-year-old game at a retail price of $39.00 is not the best idea in the world. If RE2 was offered for $15.00 then I would definitely recommend you pick it up. Unfortunately, The game is tremendously overpriced so I cannot recommend you purchase it. If you own a Playstation, head to a used games store where you can buy the original for around 10 bucks.