Kevin C. Wong

Resident Evil 2 (2019) [/]

Resident Evil 2 was just released for Mac and iOS. This is the remastered 2019 version of the 1998 game, ported over to Mac. On Mac you need an Apple Silicon Mac with macOS 13+ and it's a 22 GB download. The first 30 minutes is free and then you have to in-app $40 ($10 on sale until Jan 08 2025) for the full game.

In RE2 you play Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield, although one at a time. There is a part A and part B to the story and each part you can play Leon or Claire and I assume they keep meeting up and getting split apart, though you also can have other companions. Raccoon City has fallen to a zombie virus so the characters enter an overrun city and have to somehow escape.

On first start it was in window mode and I could full screen with maximize button. Turns out mouse mode does not work well. The cursor is visible and won't move past window boundary which means when you're turning you'll stop when the cursor hits a boundary. Then you have to jiggle the mouse around to temporarily get full range of motion back. I feel it would be unworkable during a zombie attack.

I switched to my Xbox controller and that works fine.

Graphics are less good than I expected. Game play is 3rd person perspective, wander around, pickup and interact with objects, solve puzzles, shoot or stab zombies. It's not meant to be an FPS rapid movement shooter.

The demo part you start with Leon an do the tutorial in a gas station mini-mart (where you meet Claire for a bit though only as cut-scenes) then a section where you explore part of the police station and get attacked by zombies. It was 45 minutes including configuring and figuring out the controls and switching to a controller.

Even at $10 I'm not sure I'd buy it. A bit too horror for me. And I do have a lot of games I've never played.