Resident Evil 2

A report card that borders on dominant

Boil every hour of it down to numbers and Resident Evil 2 turns in a near-dominant report card. A Metacritic of 89, an OpenCritic top-critic average of 92 with a 97 percent recommendation rate, and a 97 percent positive rating across more than a hundred and forty thousand Steam reviews. The press was almost unanimous: Game Informer handed it a 9.5 and called it flatly "the best Resident Evil game ever made," IGN gave it a 9 and named it a new benchmark for remakes, Famitsu landed on 37/40, and Campfire at home gave it 9.2. Metacritic even ranked it among the highest-rated games of all of 2019.

The trophies followed — Ultimate Game of the Year and Best Audio at the 2019 Golden Joysticks, an Award for Excellence at the Japan Game Awards, and nominations for Game of the Year and several technical categories at The Game Awards. What is striking is the consistency: international critics and domestic outlets, hardened series veterans and total newcomers, all converged on roughly the same verdict. That kind of cross-region, cross-audience agreement is rare, and it tells you something the raw average cannot. None of it is luck; it is the return owed to survival design polished to the edge of severity.

Who it is for, and who should walk away

A high score, though, does not make it for everyone. This is a game with a point of view, and you owe yourself an honest read before buying. If you relish the slow tightening of the nerves through shortage and pressure — rationing fire, plotting routes, palms sweating as an unkillable pursuer presses you through a maze — then it is all but tailor-made for you, and it will hand you one of the purest survival-horror experiences in years.

Flip it around, though. If what you want is the clean release of firepower, if you cannot stand pacing the same building over and over and counting two bullets like a miser, or if the prospect of replaying a near-identical second campaign drains your enthusiasm on sight, it will most likely disappoint you. Its pleasures are built on restraint and on backtracking — the two things action-shooter players tire of fastest.

There is no shame in being the second kind of player. This game is not trying to be a power fantasy, and it will not bend to become one for you. Working out which side of that line you stand on, honestly, matters more than any score on the box — it is the difference between one of the best nights you will spend with a controller and an exercise in mounting frustration.

The cornerstone of a revival

Set it back in its historical spot and the game means far more than "a good one." Just before it, Resident Evil had stumbled through the action-heavy misstep of Resident Evil 6 — direction wavering, reputation slipping. It was this remake, with its pairing of a return to survival-horror roots and a modern presentation in the RE Engine, that steadied the comeback and set the template for what came after. The later Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 4 remakes all inherited the over-the-shoulder survival framework it established. Without this game's success, Capcom's whole remake program might never have flowered.

The hardest thing to copy is exactly what it nailed: turning an ordinary police station into a vertical maze, then using an unkillable pursuer to twist quiet puzzle-solving into breathless flight. That chemistry — spatial pressure plus an invincible threat — remains a height the genre keeps imitating and rarely reaching. It has its cracks, and the awkwardness of its multi-perspective story never quite goes away, but they do not outweigh the whole. Years on, it still stands right where it landed, reminding everyone of a simple truth: a truly successful remake makes the old players afraid again, and makes the new ones afraid for the first time.