The original characters do not return here. Instead we have Leon Kennedy, a rookie cop unfortunate enough to have his first day coincide with a city-wide virus outbreak, and Claire Redfield, who happens to be Chris Redfield's sister. She's in town to find her brother after news of the mansion incident spread.
As the streets are crawling with the dead, they both have to head to the Raccoon City police station after being separated by an accident. You can choose to play as either Leon or Claire, and the separate versions were originally split onto two different discs. I had always played as Claire, but with the PSN version having been released, I decided to complete Leon's storyline for the first time.
Upon reaching the police station you'll discover that it's not a safe haven. There's plenty of blood on the floor and all but one of the officers is zombified. The station certainly isn't like the average one, and the chief ensured that there was plenty of strange art and puzzles.
The backgrounds are once again pre-rendered, and they are very nice indeed. The environments become grander as you stray into stranger parts of the police station, eventually morphing into sewers, autopsy rooms and laboratories. What's a laboratory doing in a police station? Well, you'll have to find out.
Finding room for items isn't quite as stressful as in the game's predecessor, and you'll later find a pack to give you some extra pockets. It can be difficult to find out when you need to bring something with you, but you usually don't have to backtrack too far to find an item box. While retaining a great deal of challenge, the game doesn't seem to present any opportunities to run out of ammunition or to be defeated. If you're not overzealous at saving your progress, you're also unlikely to run out of ink ribbons.
But this doesn't mean you won't be apprehensive about encounters with the new monsters. Zombies are the least of your worries.
During the game, Leon meets the now infamous Ada Wong, and Claire meets a girl called Sherry. There are brief opportunities to take control of these side characters, to reach areas that your primary one can't.
Resident Evil 2 is quite vastly different to the first game, but with the reassuring similarities we've come to love. It's definitely not more of the same, but there are plenty of familiar touches you'll appreciate. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
The soundtrack is of course, as usual, a fondly-remembered masterpiece:
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