Resident Evil 2

The Raccoon City police station glows in the pinkish light of emergency lamps, the corridors are full of corpses that are not quite dead yet — and you have only a handful of bullets. Resident Evil 2 is, for many, the pinnacle of the classic survival horror era, a game that took everything good from the first installment and expanded it into a grander, more refined experience.

The key innovation was the so-called zapping system: you play the game once as rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy and a second time as Claire Redfield, searching for her brother. Each character has their own scenario (A and B), with your actions in the first playthrough shaping the world in the second — locked doors, collected items, enemy placement. Two discs, four variants of the playthrough, and a strong incentive to play again.

The gameplay rests on the genre's proven pillars: fixed cameras building tension through the framing of each shot, tank controls, a limited inventory, saving via typewriters and ink ribbons, and the constant pressure of scarce ammunition. The game masterfully alternates moments of calm with insidious scares, whether it is dogs crashing through corridor windows or the monstrous mutations of the T-virus experiment. The atmosphere of a city destroyed under the onslaught of the infection is among the best rendered in the entire medium.

Resident Evil 2 was created at Capcom and directed by Hideki Kamiya (later the creator of Devil May Cry and Bayonetta), with production overseen by Shinji Mikami, the father of the whole series. An interesting fact is that the original version of the game was roughly half finished, but the team scrapped it as inadequate — this discarded form is known to fans today as Resident Evil 1.5.

From both a commercial and critical standpoint it was an enormous success, one of the best-selling titles on the PlayStation and a work that defined what survival horror should look like. In 2019 an acclaimed remake on a modern engine was released, introducing the game to a new generation and earning enthusiastic reviews as well as game-of-the-year nominations.

Why play it: Because it is a textbook survival horror with a brilliant dual scenario and an atmosphere that weighs on you even decades later.