Resident Evil 2 on Switch 2 Is My New Favorite Way to Play Capcom's Horror Masterpiece

I might even finish it this time

I've tried playing Resident Evil 2 remake many times over the years and have never quite managed to finish the thing. It's good — very good — and I enjoy it. But there's just something about its narrow corridors and the threat of an undead monster popping out of a locker that keeps me from coming back to it. I've been playing Capcom's Switch 2 port of it lately, though, and I might finally make it to the end this time. The port is exquisite, and horrors on an 8-inch screen are much easier for my nerves to handle than big-screen frights.

Resident Evil 2 remake picks up just as the events of the original Resident Evil draw to a close. Leon Kennedy is headed down to Raccoon City to start his new job as a police officer, and Claire Redfield is searching for her brother Chris (one of the first game's protagonists). After a few near-fatal encounters with zombies along the way, they arrive in the city. Then their car explodes, and a bigger truck explodes, and the city's on fire and full of zombies, so they get separated. It's impossible to save the city, so the only thing they can do is try to find a way out.

For all the explosive action at the game's start, Resident Evil 2 remake is classic Resident Evil through and through. There's little tinkering to the original game's story in this remake, unlike with Resident Evil 4, and the basics of what you're doing are the same as well. You're working with limited inventory room in cramped spaces with a number of puzzles that's frankly unreasonable for any public service building. A single zombie can send you to a gruesome game over screen, and running away from your foes is often the wisest course of action. They don't pop with a few shots like in Resident Evil 4, nor do Leon or Claire have handy melee attacks to finish off staggered foes. With time comes wisdom, I suppose, and also roundhouse kicks.

Anyway, it means Resident Evil 2 is constantly balancing tension — which item to take and what to leave, whether you should heal or save your restoratives for later, if it's worth leaving a zombie alive (or… whatever they are?) when you risk having to take them and their friends down later. It handles that balance impeccably, never letting you be completely safe despite the growing lethality of your arsenal. Every victory is hard-won, even if it's just opening a door or finding enough ammo to keep you from feeling completely desperate. Things get a bit too stressful when the gigantic Mr X shows up and chases you around the police station. The big guy just does not stop, but I suppose it's an appropriate escalation given when it happens in Leon's and Claire's separate stories. Even if my nerves disapprove.

The Switch 2 version looks fantastic even in handheld mode. There's little of the frizz you get from the Switch 2 ports of Final Fantasy 7 Remake or even the Resident Evil 4 remake, and the framerate is smooth and stable. That's kind of the bare minimum you'd hope for from a port of a 2019 game made for last-gen consoles, but the Switch 2 version has one edge over the likes of Steam Deck and the Asus ROG Ally: HDR. It makes the lighting in Resident Evil 2 on Switch 2 so much better than on other handhelds, where the color palette is slightly more washed out and everything has a slight glare regardless of your brightness settings.

The only slight difference I noticed between playing in handheld and docked mode is that the shadows in handheld look slightly blurrier. It's not an issue unique to Switch 2. I've noticed the same unusual effect on the Ally's lower performance settings, where light tends to play oddly around the edges of certain reflections and shadows. But it's one of those things you only notice if you're looking for it. When you're zooming past zombies, you probably aren't stopping to appreciate the finer points of how light and darkness intersect on some bloodstained tile flooring.

Whether excellent performance is enough to recommend this version really just depends on your preferences. If you own it on another handheld device, the deeper blacks and other color boosts HDR offers, plus the option to play portable or docked, are basically the only difference. If you've never played Resident Evil 2 remake, though, and you love survival horror, this should definitely be on your radar.