Mr X has turned out to be the breakout star of Resident Evil 2's remake, and how could he not? He's gigantic, he wears a silly hat, and he's got a ludicrously long coat—plus, of course, he spends a not-insignificant portion of Resident Evil 2 implacably stalking the player, never missing an opportunity to punch Leon or Claire really hard.

Twitter's reaction to Mr X has been... really something. Not surprisingly, there are a fair few variants on 'X Gon' Give It To Ya', and I have reluctantly laughed at every single one of them. All of them tap into the fright the player feels whenever he turns up, or make fun of his silly coat. 

Here's what Andy said about his encounters with Mr X in his review. "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." 

Special thanks to GamesRadar's Rachel Weber, who originally uncovered a number of these.

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.