Resident Evil 2 was released in 1998 and takes place two months after the mansion incident of the first game. The outbreak has now spread into the city and mutants run amok. The remaining STARS members, it's explained, tried to tell people the truth but apparently, absolutely nobody believed them. Our story begins when a young rookie cop on his first day, Leon S. Kennedy and a young biker chick, Claire Redfield, drive into town only to find that zombies have taken over.
Fun Fact: According to later games, Raccoon City was under military blockade and quarantine so it's a mystery how our heroes were able to casually drive into town and how helicopters flew in and out like it was nothing.
Leon and Claire bump into each other. Given the circumstances, they head towards the police station, where coincidentally, the whole plot takes place. They thought they'd be safe. Wrong. The police station had been completely overrun and worse, had no bathrooms.
The basic mechanics of the game are the same as the first. You run around solving puzzles and killing monsters that get in your way. Ammunition isn't as scarce as before but still, it's a bad idea to waste it. Apparently, whoever redesigned the police station must have been some kind of nutcase. Doors are locked according to playing card suits so you need the heart key or club key or what have you. You gotta put the unicorn medal in the thing, put the chess plugs into the thingie to turn on the generator and all sorts of bullshit. Even when it's not about the puzzle,s the layout makes no sense. Why are the prisoner holding cells so close to the damn armory and parking lot? It would also seem that seventy percent of all floor space are just freaking hallways.
Fun Fact: According to the later games, the police station used to be a museum but really, that's no excuse.
RE2 makes use of what the creator's called a "zapping system". Just like the first, the player can choose weather to play as Leon or Claire. This is called playthrough A and is just about the same for both characters. However, after you finished with your first run, you could play the other character you didn't pick and run playthrough B where you play "the other side" and the story changes dramatically with the choices you made in A affecting the playthrough of B. It sounds good but the choices made in A don't really impact B to a large degree. It did add replayability to the game with the player wanting to play a Leon A Claire B or Claire A Leon B run.
RE2 also featured minigames! There was "The 4th Survivor" where you played as the mercenary "HUNK", who is quite possibly the most badass character in Resident Evil ever, as he battles through the sewers to the police station roof for chopper evac. There was "Tofu Survivor" where you played as... a literal block of tofu, Tofu who is quite possibly the most ridiculous character in Resident Evil ever, as he/she? battles through the sewers to the police station roof for chopper evac.
There was also "Extreme Battle Mode" where you played as various characters including those of the previous game and had to fight through a set map with difficult monster layouts and limited ammo.
HUNK is my favorite character in Resident Evil. In game, he's already a badass having survived the virus outbreak and countless other horrors in the Umbrella Lab. He's called "Mr.Death" because he's the fucking master of death and always comes back from any mission alive no matter how dangerous. HUNK is just his code name and his real identity is unknown. What does HUNK mean? I dunno but I think it might be "Hero Ubermensch Non-Killable". I'm glad Capcom haven't ruined him yet in the sequels.
Fun Fact: According to later games, Raccoon City was under military blockade and quarantine so it's a mystery how our heroes were able to casually drive into town and how helicopters flew in and out like it was nothing.
Leon and Claire bump into each other. Given the circumstances, they head towards the police station, where coincidentally, the whole plot takes place. They thought they'd be safe. Wrong. The police station had been completely overrun and worse, had no bathrooms.
The basic mechanics of the game are the same as the first. You run around solving puzzles and killing monsters that get in your way. Ammunition isn't as scarce as before but still, it's a bad idea to waste it. Apparently, whoever redesigned the police station must have been some kind of nutcase. Doors are locked according to playing card suits so you need the heart key or club key or what have you. You gotta put the unicorn medal in the thing, put the chess plugs into the thingie to turn on the generator and all sorts of bullshit. Even when it's not about the puzzle,s the layout makes no sense. Why are the prisoner holding cells so close to the damn armory and parking lot? It would also seem that seventy percent of all floor space are just freaking hallways.
Fun Fact: According to the later games, the police station used to be a museum but really, that's no excuse.
RE2 makes use of what the creator's called a "zapping system". Just like the first, the player can choose weather to play as Leon or Claire. This is called playthrough A and is just about the same for both characters. However, after you finished with your first run, you could play the other character you didn't pick and run playthrough B where you play "the other side" and the story changes dramatically with the choices you made in A affecting the playthrough of B. It sounds good but the choices made in A don't really impact B to a large degree. It did add replayability to the game with the player wanting to play a Leon A Claire B or Claire A Leon B run.
RE2 also featured minigames! There was "The 4th Survivor" where you played as the mercenary "HUNK", who is quite possibly the most badass character in Resident Evil ever, as he battles through the sewers to the police station roof for chopper evac. There was "Tofu Survivor" where you played as... a literal block of tofu, Tofu who is quite possibly the most ridiculous character in Resident Evil ever, as he/she? battles through the sewers to the police station roof for chopper evac.
There was also "Extreme Battle Mode" where you played as various characters including those of the previous game and had to fight through a set map with difficult monster layouts and limited ammo.
HUNK is my favorite character in Resident Evil. In game, he's already a badass having survived the virus outbreak and countless other horrors in the Umbrella Lab. He's called "Mr.Death" because he's the fucking master of death and always comes back from any mission alive no matter how dangerous. HUNK is just his code name and his real identity is unknown. What does HUNK mean? I dunno but I think it might be "Hero Ubermensch Non-Killable". I'm glad Capcom haven't ruined him yet in the sequels.
The story flows differently depending on what character you chose and what playthrough you're doing but here's the summary. Leon and Claire are trapped in the police station and are looking for a way out. Leon meets Ada, a suspicious, sultry and sexy woman dressed in red who may or may not be an ally while Claire meets Sherry, a useless little girl who drops a plot trinket. Then this happens!A bunch of Umbrella Corp. mercenaries crash through the laboratory of some Umbrella scientist named William Birkin and demand he hand over the "G-Virus". It didn't go so well. (But HUNK escaped with the goods naturally)Why Umbrella would need to send a team to their own laboratory to attack one of their own employees isn't explained. Maybe William didn't want to share. Whatever, he's a monster now and he then proceeds to kill all the characters no longer important to the plot.
It turns out, Umbrella is behind literally EVERYTHING. The psychopath, rapist Police Chief, Brian Irons, who operated a goddamn torture chamber under his office, had been bribed by Umbrella to cover up the STARS investigation. William kills him before Irons can kill the player because Irons already gave his exposition and serves no more purpose to the story. Also the player runs into a news reporter in the holding cells named Ben or something. William kills him because who cares? I wonder how a lumbering mutant like William jumps around the police station without even once running into the character.
Fun Fact: The outbreak in Raccoon City was a T-virus outbreak. The G-virus doesn't appear to have any way of spreading except a direct injection of the pure stuff. The rats in the sewer aren't really important.
Stuff happens which is mostly pointless filler. Sherry is William's daughter who has a G-virus sample hidden in her pendant. Ada is a spy sent by shadowy figure to obtain a G-virus sample. Ada takes Sherry's pendant but Annette, Williams wife, fights her for it and shoots her. Leon saves Ada by taking a bullet for her. Ada treats his wound because she's a spy with a heart of gold after all. (Awwww!) Later on, she sacrifices her life for Leon (or did she?) but not before confessing her love for him despite only knowing him for less than an hour. And that's pretty much Leon's story. Meanwhile, in Claire's story, William impregnates his daughter.
Wait, what!?
Don't worry there's no pedophilia. He just injects her with an embryo a la Alien. It's not shown exactly HOW he did it but just in case the player starts thinking about the unfortunate implications, the game inexplicably throws a giant crocodile boss to distract us. Later on, we meet Annette again who was wounded by her rampaging husband. She tells us how to cure Sherry and Claire manages to cure the little girl of everything except the horrible psychological trauma of being impregnated by your own mutant father.
After Sherry gets cured and Ada's sacrifices her life, all plot threads are tied together for now. Both characters meet up at a conveniently located escape train. Hey! You know what that means!? It's time for a final boss battle complete with self-destruct sequence countdown! A final fight ensues against the now severely mutated William and our heroes are on the ropes. Suddenly, in Leon's scenario at least, an Ada-shaped shadowy figure drops a rocket launcher from the rafters. Ka-boom! William is dead, they escape, let's wrap this up and go home.
Fun Fact: Written on Claire's vest is "Made in Heaven", a reference to Queen. Leon's outfit bears a resemblance to Peter and Roger's outfits in Dawn of the Dead.
The important part is that Leon, Claire, Sherry, Ada and HUNK survive. Ada and HUNK both escape with a G-virus sample. There's also a high chance Tofu made it out alive as well.
To it's credit, the voice acting in this game is much better than the first but that's not saying much.
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