Capcom's Resident Evil 2 Remake stats have been updated with a bunch of data from the first few days of the game's release. This doesn't capture everyone's experience with the game—just those who enabled sharing their play data with RE NET at the start—but it offers a pretty decent snapshot of the player base. The headline stat: 79 percent of players chose Leon S Kennedy for their first playthrough, while the other 21 percent opted for Claire Redfield. In Claire's defence, she is listed second on the menu when you start the game.
In total, 1.985 million have so far played as Leon, while 1.05 million have played as Claire. 584,004 players have cleared the game as Leon, while 336,408 have done so as Claire. Some of the other starts are arbitrary, but fun nonetheless: 132 million zombies have been killed at the time of writing, which, as Capcom notes, is over twice the population of the UK, and more than the population of Japan.
Handguns have been used 861 million times in the game, which says a lot about how tough those zombies are to take down with bullets (or the average player's accuracy). Capcom also lists which items have been discarded the most throughout the game: subweapons like grenades and knives make up 33 percent of the almost 17 million items that players have tossed away, while herbs follow at 26 percent. Maybe I'm just overly cautious, but I'd never throw away either of those items in a game where you're always challenged with limited resources.
The Tyrant, meanwhile, subject of many jokes on Twitter for his size, ludicrous hat and absurd coat, has stalked players across 7.6 million kilometres. Somehow Capcom has measured that players have spent over 53 years in total trying to solve puzzles.
You can log in and check your own stats, too, by clicking the Overview tab on the stats page and connecting your Steam account.
Free DLC is coming to Resident Evil 2 Remake starting in February, Capcom has confirmed. The Ghost Survivors is a trio of ‘what if’ stories following three other survivors of the Raccoon City outbreak. Leon and Claire aren’t the only people doing exciting things amid the zombie apocalypse.
No Time to Mourn, Runaway and Forgotten Soldier explore the survivor stories of the gunshop owner, the mayor’s daughter and the soldier, respectively. The first, No Time to Mourn, is due out on February 15.
Capcom has a mixed reputation when it comes to DLC. The Street Fighter series is particularly bad for it, but Monster Hunter: World, on the other hand, has enjoyed a whole year on PS4 and six months on PC of free updates and events, full new outfits, weapons and challenges. Hopefully, Resident Evil 2 will be more like the latter.
I don’t have any illusions that I’ll be finished with Leon and Claire’s stories before the DLC starts appearing. Resident Evil 2 isn’t a long game, unless you play it in 30 minute slices because that’s all your timid heart can handle. As I confessed in last week’s highs and lows, I’m much better at being zombie chow than a zombie slayer.
If you’re already hungry for another remake, Capcom hasn’t announced plans for Resident Evil 3, but the publisher is apparently open to it. Speaking to Game Watch (via Dualshockers), producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi said Capcom remade Resident Evil 2 after years of fans asking for it, so they’ll need to ask for its successor just as emphatically.
Capcom’s remake of Resident Evil 2 appears to be doing well for itself on PC, already boasting more than three times the number of players of the previous mainline entry in the series, Resident Evil 7.
As captured on Reddit, the remake has a current all-time peak of 74,227, which is almost four times the 20,449 players that Resident Evil 7 managed over two years ago. Some success can probably be attributed to the much-discussed 'one shot' timed demo, which showed off how damn nice it looks on PC.
Monster Hunter: World still eclipses Resident Evil's popularity on PC, though: a peak of over 300,000 players enjoyed that one at launch. For reference, UK boxed console sales of Resident Evil 2 are apparently 18 percent lower than Resident Evil 7's launch—though that dip could be attributed to a number of factors, like console players becoming more comfortable ordering digitally.
On PC, these figures seem to show the series is in excellent health. Who would have thought making a first-class remake of one of the best horror games of all time would be a smart business decision? If you want to find out just how smart, check out Andy Kelly’s review of Resident Evil 2 here.
As is Resident Evil tradition, the magnum, or Lightning Hawk, is the most powerful handgun in the game, and an absolute beast against its many hideous bosses. But you'll have to jump through a few hoops to get it.
After you pick up the Spade Key, head to the library on the second floor of the police station. To the immediate right of the entrance that leads to the main hall is a small reading table with a Red Book on it. Pick up the book.
Exit to the main hall and, staying on the second floor, go through the door on the opposite side, which leads to the art room. Here you'll find a statue with an Arm next to it. Pick up the Arm and combine the Red Book with it, then use the combined object on the statue.
The statue will activate and release a Scepter. Examine it and you'll receive a Red Jewel. Now go to the interrogation room on the first floor of the station, where you'll find a Bejewelled Box. Combine this with the Red Jewel.
Inside you'll find a S.T.A.R.S. Badge. Examine this in your inventory and spin it around until you see an interaction point. Interact with it and the badge will become a USB Dongle Key. This can then be used on the computer in the S.T.A.R.S. office on the second floor to unlock the magnum.
The Resident Evil 2 remake launches tomorrow, and if you plan on playing it, AMD has a new GPU driver package you should download. That's assuming you own a Radeon graphics card, of course.
AMD's Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.1.2 driver package just dropped, and it includes performance optimizations for a few different games. They include the aforementioned RE2 remake, plus Tropic 6 and Anthem (Early Access).
According to AMD, the 19.1.2 driver release boosts performance in Anthem at 1080p by up to 7 percent on the Radeon RX 580, compared to the 19.1.1 driver package. That is the only specific performance sample AMD mentions in the release notes.
In addition to a handful of game optimizations, AMD also fixed several issues. They include:
Some displays may experience a black screen on reboot until the display is power cycled.
A toast message may intermittently popup incorrectly suggesting that a new driver upgrade is available.
Rocket League may experience flickering or erratic refresh rates when Radeon FreeSync is enabled.
Custom installations of Radeon Software may sometimes fail to install Radeon Settings.
Radeon Settings may experience an application crash when Upgrade Advisor is refreshed by the user multiple times.
Users may not be able to upgrade to an optional driver if the latest recommended driver was installed by AMD Link.
If you want the locker codes, safe codes, and to get inside those pesky portable safes in Resident Evil 2: Remake, you’re going to have to do a lot of exploring. But let’s face it: Resident Evil 2 is spooky and I’d understand if you’d rather not go scouring blood-soaked hallways looking for a tourist pamphlet with a series of numbers hastily jotted along the back. Rather than backtrack and risk a nasty encounter with a licker or, even worse, the Tyrant, why not just use this guide instead?
No one has to know.
We'll update this article if we find any more locked containers in any of Resident Evil's four separate campaigns, but this should be enough to cover you for the first two playthroughs.
One of the first set of locks you’ll encounter is in the West Office, where a "Welcome Leon" sign is hanging. In this room, you’ll find Leon’s desk that has two locks keeping it shut. To open it, you’ll need to input the first letter of each of your would-be coworker’s first name. To figure this out, you can look at the sets of three desks on each side of Leon’s desk. On the right side of south-facing desks, you’ll find name plaques for three officers. They are Marvin Branagh (M), Rita Phillips (R), and George Scott (G).
So the combination for the first Leon’s desk lock is MRG.
On the north-side desks, only two of the plaques can be seen. They are Elliot Edward (E) and David Ford (D). You need the first name, but it’s nowhere to be found. Fortunately, you can just brute force the lock by trying every option.
The combination for that second Leon’s desk lock is NED.
Unlocking Leon's desk will get you an extended magazine for Leon's pistol or a speed reloader for Claire's revolver.
There are three lockers to be found in the rest of Resident Evil 2: Remake. Here are the required combinations to unlock each of them:
Raccoon City Police Station 2nd floor shower room locker code: CAP
Raccoon City Police Station 3rd floor locker (by the stairs) code: DCM
Sewers Control Room locker code: SZF
Each of these lockers provides a different type of ammunition, which is very useful so don't ignore them.
Resident Evil 2: Remake safe codes
Also found in three areas in Resident Evil 2: Remake are safes that require special combinations to unlock. They follow a pattern of turning the dial left, right, left to reach the required numbers and then pressed the 'accept' button to open the safe. Here are their required combinations:
1st Floor, west office safe combination: left 9, right 15, left 7 (rewards hip pouch)
2nd Floor, east wing waiting room safe combination: left 6, right 2, left 11 (muzzle break for Leon, extended mag for Claire)
Treatment pool room safe combination: left 2, right 12, left 8 (shotgun upgrade for Leon, hip pouch for Claire)
Resident Evil 2: Remake portable safes
Unfortunately, there is no universal codes for the portable safes. Each one is randomized, but they're easy to figure out with a little trial and error. Each button illuminates a green light on the dial, with the goal of pushing each button in order going counter-clockwise. You can start with any button, but you want to complete a full circle in order.
So, the best way to do this is to pick any button and start pushing keys to figure out the next one in that sequence. Keep doing that until you're able to complete a full rotation without pressing the wrong button and the safe will open.
The reward for opening both of these safes are the replacement keys you can insert into the keypad located on the 1st floor safety deposit room. Now that these replacement keys are in place, you can use them to open a number of locked containers to get a hip pouch and some handy healing items.
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.
As an evolution, and a celebration, of vintage Resident Evil, you couldn't ask for much more
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.
