Resident Evil 2

My review of the first Resident Evil game basically complained about the insane level of difficulty required to beat it- even with the easier character, the easiest setting, and strictly following a shortest-route walkthrough, the game was tough. I ended the review mentioning that I have seen the sequel, Resident Evil 2, on some top all-time games lists and hoped for the best. Well, my prayers have been answered- RE2 was awesome. The game has a similar setting- a huge mansion-like police station followed by an underground Umbrella Corporation lab, compared with the original's huge mansion-like, um, mansion followed by an underground Umbrella Corporation lab. You also get to play as a few different characters, and of course I opted for Leon Kennedy- the badass everyman from Resident Evil 4. The biggest improvement here, however, are the enemies themselves. In the first installment, most zombies took plenty of shots to kill and would frequently come back to life. This made exploration a pain- most of the time I tried to run through rooms and avoid wasting my precious ammo, because what was the point? In Resident Evil 2, the zombies you kill stay dead (for the most part) and thus you can take all the time you want to explore, figure out puzzles, and plan your next move. Big improvement. This made the game easier, certainly, but much more fun overall. I never even had to turn to a walkthrough! Some of the old missteps are still here- the graphics are terrible (this was a straight port of a PS1 game), the plot and voice-overs are cheesy, and the bad camera is still just as bad. But that didn't matter much to me, I had a blast. Resident Evil 2 lived up to the hype of being one of the high points of the series, and has me excited to finish the rest of them- only RE3, Zero (the prequel), and Code: Veronica remain, and I'm sure I'll get to all of them eventually.