If you're wondering how to find the shotgun in Resident Evil 2 Remake and the Weapons Locker Key Card, we'll take you through it. You'll find the W-870 Shotgun in a weapons locker in the Safety Deposit Room on 1F of the RPD building, which becomes reachable pretty early on. The lockers there contain other items that you'll need to access from the terminal with the two missing keys—but the shotgun is the main item of interest in the early part of the game. It's in a weapons cabinet at the back of the Safety Deposit Room, opposite the entrance. You can't open it without the keycard. 

Here's the room's location for reference:

You'll need to head to the Fire Escape on the far east side of the building, accessible from the first floor—you'll know you're there because it takes you outdoors. Take the staircase at the Fire Escape to the second floor, then walk through the corridor leading to the left until you find the Art Room on 2F. Enter. You'll find the Weapons Locker Key Card. Here's the location of the Art Room so you can't miss it: 

Alternatively, if you haven't got the shotgun yet but do have the Spade Key, you can reach the Art Room through the locked door in the Waiting Room, accessible from the second floor of the main hall. The Weapons Locker Key Card looks like this:

From here, it's a simple matter of running back to the Safety Deposit Room and using the key card. You'll get the shotgun and some ammo for your trouble. Now you're ready to deploy some serious firepower in the Resident Evil 2 Remake.

This isn't a scene-for-scene remake. You can close that GameFAQs walkthrough from 1998 because it won't help you. Resident Evil 2: Remake is not the same game as Resident Evil 2. Sure, the environments are largely similar and you'll recognise certain items and puzzles, but Remake remixes these ingredients to create entirely new puzzles, cutscenes, and boss encounters.

But that's actually a great thing—especially if you've already played through the original Resident Evil 2. RE2: Remake still contains everything that made the original great, but refines it to feel modern and exciting again. It confidently walks that tight line between familiar and new. You'll be ambushed by a fan-favourite boss but then have to adapt to new challenges to overcome it.

Ammo isn't as plentiful as you think, so save it

When you first start exploring the Raccoon City Police Department building, you'll quickly start to stockpile more ammo than you need in the moment. Having so many bullets to spare will make you want to take out every enemy you encounter, but that would be a huge mistake. There's a finite amount of ammo to be found in the police station, and zombies have randomised health that means they can sometimes take up to six or more shots to go down. What's worse is that they won't always stay dead, tempting you to waste even more ammo. More zombies will wander into the police station too. If you're not careful, you'll eventually find yourself running dry on all your weapons. That can make the second half of the police station a very difficult situation, so don't get cocky in the first hour or two. Save your bullets for when you absolutely have to use them.

Use the map and understand how it works

After a few hours spent in Resident Evil 2's different locations, you'll quickly start to build a mental map of the rooms and adjoining hallways. But learn to reference your map frequently. For one, items you walk close to are automatically highlighted on the map, which is helpful if you're running from an enemy and miss that green herb tucked away on a shelf. Another useful feature is that rooms are colour coded to tell you whether you've found every item and completed every puzzle within them. If a room is blue, you can move on. But if the room is red (and you've already grabbed every item), there's a puzzle there that you can still solve, or a locker to open. Later levels are especially labyrinth-like and can sometimes have very dangerous enemies you want to avoid altogether. Keeping track of those areas on the map and finding detours to avoid them is crucial, so check the map often to stay aware of your surroundings.

The Tyrant is attracted to gunfire

At certain points of the game Leon and Claire are hunted by the mysterious Tyrant, or Mr. X as he's sometimes referred to. This hulking great mutant is an unstoppable force, literally, and will shrug off gunfire and explosive damage alike. So your only option is to run away, weaving in and out of rooms to get around him. But one thing the game doesn't tell you is that the Tyrant will head towards any gunfire he hears. So if you're shooting at zombies, he'll start heading in your direction. This adds an extra layer of tactics (and tension) to the game, because it's often worth just running past zombies rather than alerting the Tyrant to your current location. If you are ever cornered by him, a thrown flashbang grenade will blind him for a few precious seconds. 

Always keep a counter-weapon on you

I've lost count of the number of times counter-weapons have saved my life. If an enemy grabs you and your health is low, chances are you'll die helplessly. But if you have a combat knife, a flashbang, or a grenade in your inventory, you'll be able to counter their attack and break free. Shove a grenade in their mouth and it'll explode after a few seconds; or you can shoot it for an early detonation. And if you kill the zombie you stabbed with your knife you can retrieve it; although the knife will be damaged and eventually break. Later in the game there are enemies that can kill you instantly if they grab you, so always keep a grenade or knife handy to counteract this. 

Don't destroy items to clear up space

Inventory space is very limited early on, which can be a headache when you don't have any space for that special key you need or that bit of ammo. Because you can't put stuff down once you've picked it up, you might be tempted to destroy unused items, like wooden boards or counter-weapons such as flashbang grenades, but that's a big mistake. Resident Evil 2 is tough, and you're going to want to use everything to your advantage. If you don't have the space for an item, you're better off making the trip back to a safe area and storing unwanted goods in your item box and then doubling back to pick it up rather than destroying something. Key items that have served their purpose get a red tick, which indicates you can safely destroy them. 

Boarding up windows is actually super useful 

One of the things I regret about my first playthrough was frequently destroying wooden boards to make space for other items. Early on, it seemed pointless to board up broken windows in the police station. I later realized how dumb that was. Zombies from outside will continually wander inside through broken windows, so it's better to take the time to use every board and block off broken windows to keep that from happening. Otherwise, certain sections of the police station can become crowded with zombies that are nearly impossible to avoid. Broken windows that can be boarded up are marked on the map as a small white rectangle, so it's a good idea to stockpile a bunch of boards, then go around the station sealing as many up as you can.

Examine everything you pick up

Veteran Resident Evil players will know that when you pick something up, the first thing you should always do is examine it. Click on the item in your inventory and hit 'examine' and you'll be able to spin its 3D model around. Not only will this give you more information about said item, such as specifying which door a key opens, but there are hidden secrets to uncover too. Twirl the object around and if you see an interaction point, that means there's something you can activate. This might be opening a box or a personal safe, or triggering a hidden mechanism to reveal a secret.

Don't ignore all those safes and lockers

Scattered throughout the game are safes and lockers, which are helpfully marked on the map when you discover them. You might not think finding the hidden code to unlock them is worth the hassle, but in almost every instance the items within are enormously useful. It might be some priceless magnum ammo for the Lightning Hawk, or weapon parts to upgrade your guns. So before you leave a location behind, make sure you've opened all these valuable treasure caches. Even something like a handful of magnum bullets can make all the difference in a boss battle down the line. And as we noted earlier, if a room is red on the map there's still something to find there, which is a nice visual reminder of which areas still have loot left to plunder.

Resident Evil 2 Remake is getting very favourable reviews, especially from us: Andy called it a "tense, challenging, and beautiful remake of a classic survival horror game". But it does have one glaring problem, and that's its flagrant lack of chunky, eerily robotic-looking 1990s polygons. Apparently that will change, though.

As the image above suggests, ye olde skins for both Leon and Claire are currently available for Japanese PS4 owners, though apparently they'll roll out free for everyone on March 22. According to a user on Resetera (who also provided the gif below), the news was announced during a RE2 launch party in Japan last night, so there's no guarantee these skins will reach Western regions. Why wouldn't they, though?

Here's a pic of the Leon skin in action – for the short gif, click over here. 

One of the most remarkable things about this Resident Evil 2 remake is that it makes zombies—the slow, shambling, groaning kind—exciting again. The undead in this game are incredible, horrible things: shuffling lumps of bloody meat who batter down doors, tumble through broken windows, and lunge hungrily from the shadows. They're physical and clumsy and an absolute joy to kill—if you have the ammunition to spare.

Shoot a leg off and they keep coming, dragging themselves along the floor, reaching at you with pale, clawing hands. Turn a corner, and as your flashlight beam catches their glassy white eyes they screech and trudge towards you, arms outstretched, jaws slung with glistening blood. They don't sprint or explode or sprout thrashing parasites like they do in newer Resident Evil games. They just moan and lurch and grab, and there's something enjoyably back-to-basics about that—a feeling that echoes through every claustrophobic hallway of this confident remake.

After the subversive, rule-breaking Resident Evil 7, with its grimy Southern Gothic aesthetic and intimate first-person horror, Resident Evil 2 is a return to a more familiar style of game. It's a remake, but it's never a slave to the source material, adding or cleverly remixing enough elements to make it feel brand new. You can still play as two characters—Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield—and a few fan favourite bosses and locations have been recreated. But even moments of fan service are given some kind of interesting twist or fresh angle, which is, honestly, not what I expected from this remake at all.

The grand, imposing Raccoon City Police Department was always a great setting, but the shift to three dimensions makes it magnificent. While the original game relied on fixed camera angles and the distant moan of unseen zombies to build fear, the remake uses light, shadow, and layout to get under your skin. Some parts of the station have been plunged into darkness, forcing you to pick through the gloom with a flashlight. The building itself is a labyrinth of blind corners, shadowy recesses, and warren-like corridors, creating a constant feeling of apprehension and unease.

The station is essentially a giant box of puzzles, and an absence of objective markers, beyond a few marked points of interest, means you have to draft a mental map as you play. At first most of the building is locked up tight, or obstacles such as the burning wreck of a crashed helicopter block the way forward. But as you explore you find items that let you delve deeper, and slowly but surely the maze of halls, offices, atriums, and stairwells starts to feel familiar. I also like how dead zombies stay put, even after reloading a save, as I'd often use their corpses as a kind of macabre breadcrumb trail.

But navigating the station and deciphering its many riddles and puzzles is only half the battle. The zombies, as much fun as they are to scrap with, can take a hell of a beating. Their health seems to be randomised, meaning that you can empty ten bullets into one and it'll keep crawling after you, while another will be put down permanently by just a few shots. And whichever dice roll governs the chance of an explosive headshot is weirdly stingy. This makes the zombies unpredictable and tenacious, as zombies should rightly be. But it also teaches you a hard lesson that every bullet in this remake is precious, and if you can slip past an enemy rather than killing it, you probably should.

Then there's the Tyrant, a hulking great mutant in a trench coat (and a hat, which you can shoot off) for whom gunfire is little more than a minor inconvenience. At certain points in the game this merciless, invincible killing machine will hunt you around the station with grim persistence. You can track his movements by listening to the heavy thud of his footsteps, but other than blinding him with a flashbang, evasion is your only real option. He's also attracted to gunfire, which adds further weight to decisions involving fighting regular zombies. Do you waste ammo and risk alerting the Tyrant?

The way he walks slowly towards you, unflinching and emotionless, is genuinely unsettling—especially when he suddenly appears at the end of a long corridor. And he's always lurking near items you need to progress, which is brilliantly cruel. But I would have liked more ways to interact with him, because eventually these run-ins start to feel rather one-note, and the fear can mutate into frustration. Even the ability to throw something to distract him would have made these sections more interesting, but as it stands the concept feels underdeveloped.

Similar to Resident Evil 4, the difficulty of the game adapts as you play. How it actually works is obscured, but whatever's going on behind the scenes, the balancing is quite masterful. For the entire nine hours it took me to finish my first run as Leon, I felt constantly on the verge of catastrophic failure. I always had a handful of bullets, little or no health items, and I kept wondering if I'd backed myself into an inescapable rut. But I'd always scrape through, and it's hugely impressive how the game managed to maintain this knife-edge tension from start to finish.

The good news is that if you sacrifice ammo to clear an area, it'll stay clear. More zombies can spill through open windows, but you can block these up with wooden boards. This gives you some breathing room, especially when you're being chased by the Tyrant. The last thing you need is zombies clawing at you when you're trying to run to safety. Counter-weapons can also tip the balance. If you have a grenade or a combat knife in your inventory and something grabs you while you're low on health, you'll avoid death: stabbing them with the blade or shoving a grenade in their mouth. So the game isn't completely relentless in its attempts to sabotage you, but for every inch it gives you, it rudely snatches one right back.

It's never really that scary, though. Unnerving, tense, and sometimes overwhelmingly stressful, sure, but there's nothing particularly understated or psychological about it. But that was always Resident Evil's thing: zombie dogs crashing loudly through windows rather than the psycho-sexual mind-beasts of Silent Hill. Still, Resident Evil 7 had some effectively surreal, eerie moments, and I would have liked some of that to make its way into this remake. If you can't deal with the stress, there is an 'assisted' difficulty option that adds generous auto-aim and makes a small amount of health regenerate automatically. But, honestly, the game just isn't very exciting when your item box is heaving with an abundance of spare shotgun shells and healing herbs.

When you finish your first playthrough, you've really only seen half of what the game has to offer. The second uses the same locations and has many of the same story beats, but the puzzles are different, enemy types and locations are mixed up, and you take a different route through each of the game's three major locations. What I love about this so-called 'B' scenario is how the game uses your knowledge of the setting against you. Walking into the RPD main hall as Claire, a protected haven for Leon, and seeing zombies in there was a fun subversion. It's just a shame the intensity of the Tyrant is amped up to such a preposterous degree. He's constantly looming over your shoulder, which I ultimately found a bit annoying.

As a longtime fan of the original Resident Evil 2, I enjoyed the remake's many self-aware attempts to clarify some of the more abstract stuff in the game—such as why a sewer system is powered by plugs shaped like chess pieces, or why a police station would inexplicably theme its keys and locks around playing card suits. There are other cute references to the old games to find as well, but they're pretty subtle and don't feel forced. This could have easily been a game targeted squarely at diehard fans, but if this is your first Resident Evil you could get your head around everything in minutes—another example of how refreshingly simple the remake is. The story is really no more complicated than: zombies everywhere, get to safety. Which makes even the relatively pared-down narrative of Resident Evil 7 seem overly complex.

Some of the voice acting and writing are pretty bad, and not 'fun bad' like in the old PlayStation games: just regular bad. The second act, which takes place in a dingy sewer, slows the action down to a crawl. And I was glad when the section where you play as Ada Wong, solving hacking puzzles while the Tyrant stalks you, was over. But otherwise, this is pretty much the ultimate refinement of the classic Resident Evil formula—but with the added intensity of RE4's slick, dynamic over-the-shoulder combat. The result is a game that is comfortably among the best in the series, and a thrilling survival horror experience in its own right. It's not as surprising as RE7, but as an evolution, and a celebration, of vintage Resident Evil, you couldn't ask for much more.

Resident Evil 2 Remake’s one-shot demo has been downloaded over three million times, according to Capcom. That’s a lot of people fighting their way through Raccoon City. But only a quarter of the people using the Resident Evil.Net stat tracking feature have actually finished the 30-minute misadventure. 

Of the three million or so demo players, 2,440,739 use Resident Evil.Net to track their game progress and other stats, and of them, only 26 percent have actually made it through the whole demo. It's an interesting tool just to see who's playing the game around the world—at 574,321, North America unsurprisingly comprises the largest number of players.

It’s a relatively small number of people who have actually beat the demo. Perhaps our skills has atrophied a wee bit since 1998? Not me, though. I’ve always been terrible at Resident Evil 2. Or maybe it’s just too spooky, so halfway through people are throwing down the controller and hiding under the covers. I can certainly sympathise.

Other players can’t get enough of it. The one-shot restriction can be bypassed, it turns out, so players have been speedrunning the demo, making multiple attempts to shave down their time.   

The Resident Evil 2 Remake demo will vanish on January 31, not long after the game launches on January 25, so if you want to take it for a test drive, you’ll need to do so very soon.