Resident Evil 2’s Famitsu Review Gives Glowing Praise

With its release date in sight, we should start to see reviews for the Resident Evil 2 remake pouring in before too long. As is traditional with Japanese games, Famitsu have been given the earliest access to the game of any publication, and they certainly like what they played.

If you’re unfamiliar with the way Famitsu do things, they assign four reviewers to a game and then ask them to score it out of ten with the tally then being combined — the maximum is 40.

Thanks to Nintendo Everything, we know that Famitsu rated the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Resident Evil 2 9/9/10/9 for a combined score of 37 out of 40.

This puts it slightly below the 39/40 that the original Resident Evil remake on the Gamecube received way back when, as well as Resident Evil Revelations for 3DS, and, perhaps most surprisingly, Resident Evil 6.

Such a review score is a good indication of how the Resident Evil 2 remake is shaping up, which already looks like being the year’s standout horror game. The remake cuts no corners and uses the RE Engine (last seen in Resi 7) to deliver a considerable technical upgrade on the original game, to put it lightly.

If Resident Evil 2 is a success for Capcom, it will be fascinating to see what direction the franchise takes from here. Resident Evil 7 (which incidentally received 36/40 from Famitsu) shifted things to a first-person perspective and returned things to horror rather than action whereas the remake feels more like Resident Evil 7 crossed with 4, so who knows what direction is next.

Resident Evil 2 launches for PC, PS4, and Xbox One on January 25th and is probably the first big release of 2019 in a year packed with them.