Resident Evil 2 (1998 / 2019)
So, dipping our toes into the Resident Evil franchise a while back, I will try to do at least the first couple of games and get them out of the way, especially since, well, with their remakes being very recent, I might actually pick them up on Steam and play through them. Originally released in 1998, Resident Evil 2 is a more action-packed sequel to the more atmospheric horror of the first Resident Evil... but is also very fondly remembered and would define a lot of the franchise going forward.
Most interestingly, though, is the general escalation that the numbered Resident Evil games all have. And the full change from making the tone of the franchise to be survival and more towards 'action-packed, adrenaline-pumping' horror. It carved a niche on its own, really -- I don't think the franchise pioneered zombie-shooting games, but it sure defined it. And, well, turns out audiences like being in a cool action shooter against zombies as you survive and scavenge for ammunition, before fighting increasingly powerful monsters.
With the exception of the oddity that is VII, Resident Evil 2 takes the logical escalation in terms of stakes and the sheer amount of bio-technological horror. The first game took place in a mansion with a secret underground facility. The sequel, meanwhile, releases the T-Virus on the entirety of Raccoon City, turning the entire city into essentially zombie-land. As with the first game, you have two protagonists to pick from and they will each have their own routes that both end up showing the full RE2 story from different sides, and they'll ultimately combine together into the full, cohesive whole. And, as with the first game, Resident Evil 2 was remade very recently in 2019 (which I played!), albeit with a fair amount more changes compared to the remake of the first game.
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The Story:
As usual, I'll be focusing more on talking about the monsters, but a short blurb about the main story is necessary to kind of understand the background of what's going on. When the T-Virus hit Raccoon City, both Leon and Claire end up trying to escape the city. Rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield, sister of the first game's protagonist Chris, ends up meeting each other when they get besieged by zombies outside of Raccoon City. When they arrive into the city proper they get separated and have to make their way into the massive, sprawling police department which had been used as a shelter during the several days leading up to Leon and Claire's arrival. The two attempt to survive the night as they make allies and lose them in the police station, attempting to decipher the strange mechanisms built into the police department building as well as navigate the many zombie-infested corridors.
The exact specifics of what happens and who unlocks what depends on which campaign you play first (choosing either Leon or Claire has their own separate pathways, but also which one you play first also makes certain events go differently) but ultimately, they meet several key characters. Leon meets investigator lady Ada Wong; while Claire meets a confused and scared little girl Sherry Birkin. While fighting the living dead and mutant creatures such as the Lickers, they find themselves stalked by several mysterious powerful beings. The enigmatic "Mr. X", a hooded and cloaked giant unstoppable man, as well as a mysterious crazed scientist called William Birkin, who progressively mutates more and more grotesquely as Claire and Leon encounter William Birkin throughout their journey. Claire faces off and kills the evil police chief Irons, who, not only being in cahoots with Umbrella all along, is also a demented serial killer. They also learn that it's not just the T-Virus zombies causing havoc, but that there are also creatures roaming the sewers created by a far more advanced bio-weapon called the G-virus.
As the pathways of the characters intersect with each other (and as the player gets the 'full picture' through the two campaigns) and the pathways of the characters go from the city's sewers to a massive Umbrella facility beneath the city, and it's revealed that Sherry's father William Birkin was the Umbrella scientist masterminding the G-Virus. William Birkin, afraid that the larger Umbrella Corporation would take the G-Virus away from him, had unleashed the virus into Raccoon City and transformed himself into a malformed creature, "G", driven by an impulse to hunt down his daughter. Sherry is also infected with an embryo of the G-virus, and the four main characters have to go through an Umbrella underground facility in order to cure Sherry.
Leon, meanwhile, finds out from William's wife Annette that the Birkins had a falling out with Umbrella, and during a confrontation with Umbrella commandos, William was shot and ended up injecting himself with the G-virus and rampages, in the process causing the contamination of both T and G virus into Raccoon City. William Birkin, mutated and mindless, kills his wife Annette, but not before she reveals the way to create vaccine to save her daughter to Claire. Ada Wong is revealed to be after the G-virus because she's an agent for another corporation, but she ends up falling in love with Leon, and seemingly sacrifices herself in battle against the Tyrant. Leon and Claire manage to get the vaccine, cure Sherry... and depending on the path taken, take out both the Super-Tyrant and the final mutation of Birkin.
A bit more complex than the first game (and the details change a bit depending on the original-vs-remake or the path you decide to do first), perhaps, but, again, it really does build up on the lore, and keeping the focus down to a half-dozen important characters (and I do admittedly leave out some details -- I do intend to play the game at some point in the future) does help to both show the larger scale of this game (it's a whole city!) while keeping the story focused. Without further ado...
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Zombie
Zombies return, big surprise. In Resident Evil 2 they have more models, though, including female zombies, as well as policeman zombies (because part of the game takes place in a police station) and I'm sure the 2019 remake has way more zombie variants compared to the original PlayStation 1 capabilities. They're otherwise... well, they're zombies. In some of the laboratorium levels you can also meet stronger, naked, stitched-together 'Modified Zombie' variants. Being a 'zombie survival' game at its core, zombies (or an equivalent) needed to appear in every installment as the 'common enemy', and... and honestly, it does get old after a while, although at least the first three games made efficient use of the zombies with the general atmosphere of the surroundings, particularly in the remake. This is just the second game, though, so we won't really be critical that the zombie-shooting game has, y'know, basic zombies.
Pale Head (and friends)
We get an interesting variant that doesn't exist in the original 1998 RE2 in the remake, though, the Pale Head. Similar to the Crimson Head, the Pale Head is a regular zombie that ends up being mutated to become a stronger variant... and hoo boy, the Pale Head sure looks nasty, huh? Sickly white skin, tattered flesh, a head that seems to be so malformed that their eyes are just gone or seemingly reduced to vestigial bumps... pretty spooky, but even spookier is their special ability to straight-up just rapidly regenerate from any damage that doesn't use a specific type of ammunition (or rather, Regenerador style, since this is a wholesale reference to an identical-looking enemy in RE4). Very spooky, and the fact that it looks more like a cadaver than the fresher, rotting regular zombies is pretty unsettling. Two other variants, the "Poison Zombie" and "A-Gear" zombies, which are respectively zombies with poison clouds and heavy-duty body armour respectively. All of these, I believe, only show up in some of the DLC or side-mission components.
...which is really kind of weird. The original 1998 Resident Evil 2 had these 'Enhanced Zombies' which look like creepy naked people in the laboratory segment, implied heavily to be escaped experiments. The remake went through all the trouble of creating that brand-new Pale Head model... but only uses it in a couple of DLC-exclusive scenarios? It's weird.
Zombie Dog, Giant Spider, Crow, Cockroach
Functionally, these guys are basically similar to the Cerberus of the first game, although the creation is a bit different -- the Cerberus is created intentionally as a bioweapon, while the zombie dogs are just regular dogs that eat T-Virus infected meat and get turned into, well, zombie dogs. Both are still half-rotten Doberman dogs that will gnaw your face off, though. They are mean motherfuckers.
Crows are also the same thing as the first game, although they get dropped entirely by the remake. Ditto for the Giant Spiders, which are also dropped by the remake. Like the 'Zombie Dog', these Giant Spiders are explicitly noted to be different from the (mechanically identical) Webspinner from the first game because they are regular mutated animals instead of being designed as a bioweapon. It's really kind of a shame that they dropped a lot of these -- I get that they wanted to keep the main police station segment of the game be gritty dark horror, but really, a bunch of these random enemies wouldn't feel too out of place in the sewers and the Umbrella base, would they?
Also, we've got the Cockroach, or the 'Giant Cockroach'... and, okay, being a creature famous for being able to survive ridiculous amounts of punishment, I guess them not being changed much by the T-virus makes sense? Being a 'giant' cockroach in this case means that it's around the size of a rat, which is nowhere as impressive as the giant spiders and the giant wasps in the franchise. The cockroaches are big enough to eat rats and are a minor enemy in the original RE2. They still show up in the remake with their unnatural size, but just as ambience.
Giant Moth
The Giant Moth is another casualty of the remake, another one deemed 'too unrealistic' in a game where a virus can turn people into zombies and mutate them into flesh-blob beasts. Yeah, okay, sure, if you want to be joyless! Come on, I just want to shoot and kill Mothra Junior here! Being based on the Gypsy Moth, I really do like the artwork of the moth having made its room in some office, sticking its globs of silk and web on the ceiling and around some dude's office chair. The Moth is encountered in a computer room in the Umbrella base, another implied 'escaped experiment', and ends up utilizing the air conditioning system of the building as a way to stalk and hunt its prey. You only meet one and end up torching both mini-Mothra and his giant batch of eggs, so she would probably count as a mini-boss if she wasn't apparently so easy to deal with.
Giant Alligator
You go through a sewer and of course, since it's an American sewer, you get the obligatory alligator boss fight. The original RE2 alligator looks honestly like one of those mundane animals that just don't get changed too much by the T-virus, but the remake gave it such a gloriously nasty look, being far more mottled and mutated looking. I'm not sure if it's just covered with moss and other sewer gunk, or if its flesh is turning into rotting gunk as it decays from the virus. Either way, a very nasty looking crocodile that looks a fair bit more threatening than a regular one. Honestly, just look at that 3D model. It's so gross in all the best ways ever. And I thought I was going to just brush over this thing as 'yep, giant zombie animal, we've seen this before'.
Speaking of which, giant is the correct description. Leon or Claire very handily fits within the dinosaur-sized alligator's mouth! He's sort of a mini-boss, albeit you don't fight it so much as play a minigame to avoid it. Both the moth and alligator are actually minibosses you meet a bit later in the journey, but with these Resident Evil monster reviews, I do want to go through the 'mutated regular animals' first before going into the real weirdos.
Licker
And here we go with the more diverse-looking mutant zombie BOW's! And we'll kick things off with the mascot of RE2 -- and one would argue as one of the mascots of the franchise in general alongside next game's Nemesis -- the Licker! The Licker is basically what happens when the 'reawakening' of the T-virus inside a zombie gets blown to its full course. While sometimes you just get Crimson Heads or Pale Heads, at rare times the mutations get drastic enough that you get an extremely mutated creature like the Licker. And hoo boy, what a gloriously nasty-looking ghoul the Licker is! Exposed muscle everywhere, giant blade-like claws, an exposed brain, no eyes and that eponymous giant lashing tongue that's powerful enough to pierce body armour... I feel like the Licker would look a lot sillier (or not silly enough) if he's missing just any one of these features. If he had regular eyes instead of a brain-head, or if the tongue was a non-bladed tongue... I dunno. The tongue-and-brain combo is just that something about this design that looks just ridiculous enough to make it not feel too same-y with the other 'cool monsters' of the franchise. As you can see here, they did go through a lot of drafts before finding the right balance of whimsy and gritty in order to create something very iconic.
In the events of RE2, apparently the large amount of human test subject exposed to the T-virus caused the birth of a bunch of these Lickers, who would soon congregate around their own territory and form a colony. In addition to its tongue, the Licker's most iconic ability is its preference to scuttle on walls and ceilings, which is how your character will iconically meet his or her first Licker. Just look at that glorious screenshot from the 2019 remake! The remake's Licker ramps up the 'flayed man' vibe while still keeping the design surprisingly extremely faithful to the original, and I do really like just how... low to the ground the Licker seems to be, its posture splaying out its limbs as it crawls on the ground. Oh, and another iconic feature that both original and remake Licker has? They're actually blind. Extremely sensitive to sound, sure, but if you move juuuust slowly enough, you can even bypass them entirely. With other monsters like zombies around, though this might not be possible. A very awesome flayed ghoul man.
Again, if we're honestly being properly realistic, it's a bit odd how those giant bony claws allow the Lickers to perfectly stick on walls and ceilings, or a tongue mutation allows it to basically wield the tongue with enough strength to pierce metal... but don't think too much about it, just enjoy the cool exposed-brain zombie ghoul with a giant spear-tongue. Very cool, and easily one of my favourites from the game.
Evolved Licker
I don't think this guy ever got an official name and I've seen it be called "Evolved Licker", "Modified Licker", "Mutated Licker" and other things. They appeared n the Umbrella Lab segment only in the original game, you find out that the Lickers there have big-ass giant claws instead of hands. I really don't have much to say here, it does add a fair bit of variety but it's not too different from regular Lickers other than looking just a bit meaner. I like the variety, but I must say that I prefer the original Licker with clawed hands a lot more than this one. I kinda wished that we did get an 'enhanced' Licker in the remake in some way. More variety is better than less variety, after all, but I can understand the reason why they cut this out, to keep 'The Licker' as being the iconic symbol that it was in RE:2.
Ivy (a.k.a. Plant 43)
Okay, this one is cool. Originally I just dismissed this as 'oh, it's just a smaller, single-stem version of Plant 42, cool, I like plant monsters'. That is, until I actually take a good look at the design and realize that both artworks shows Ivy here shambling on a vaguely humanoid body with two clear defined legs and a hunchbacks, and those bud-like flowers form 'arms' and the huge mouth-like flower is, well, the head. It's so cool that Ivy actually has a humanoid form but is so plant-like that it actually did fool me into thinking that it's just a cluster of plant vines surrounding a carnivorous flower. The multi-petal plant maw is also very cool, for sure. As with many other creatures here, Ivy's other name, Plant 43, tells us that this is basically a creature evolved from what Umbrella could gain from Plant 42 from the first game. Your RE1 protagonists may have blown up the mama plant, but the legacy lives on because Umbrella just wouldn't leave shit alone!
The game's lore actually goes into detail how these plant-men stimulates the movements of water in its body to resemble muscles in animals, and needs to reproduce with others of its species using the flowers on its arms. Certainly a very cool plant-man monster, and I am honestly pretty impressed at how much of a plant-creature this still looks like -- a lot more spooky than if it was just a giant flower like Plant 42 or if it's just a humanoid made up of plants like the Swamp Thing. This 'not quite one or the other' vibe just turns it into such a nastier monster than it otherwise would be.
Ivy Zombie
Plant 43 is yet another casualty of the RE2's remake wanting to make the game more realistic... but at least they get replaced and reimagined instead of being exorcised completely like the moth or the spiders. This time around, "Plant 43" is the mother flower that has taken over an entire room by itself,, similar to its predecessor Plant 42 -- although not actually fought and is just the source of the new Ivy zombies. It's more of an obstacle with a name than anything. Plant 43 has taken over a huge part of the underground Umbrella facility of NEST, and in addition to vines, it's created the Ivy Zombies, basically these vine-infested zombies that replaces the shambling Plant 43's of the original RE2. These plant zombies admittedly have a very cool model, with a mutated vertical mouth, vines wrapping all around the corpse and some random seed pods here and there. And even moreso than regular zombies, they are notoriously undying unless you happen to pick up their weakness, the flamethrower... which is only accessible for one of the two characters. Otherwise you'll have to shoot the tumours. Uniquely, unless you actually burn the creature to a black crisp, they will invariably get up again and again. Oh, and when you get killed by an Ivy zombie, turns out that the yonic mouth isn't even the Ivy Zombie's full mouth. The entire head splits apart into a giant sideways venus flytraps to devour yours.
And... I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, I really like the original RE2's creepy shambling plant-man. On the other hand, ivy fang-face over there is also pretty cool and having a huge 'central' giant plant bulb ties it as an evolved Plant 42 a lot better, and the Ivy zombies are pretty cool. At least when they removed the original Ivy, we got a compromise -- which is something I can't say for many of the losses in RE3's remake. I guess in my ideal version of RE2 you'd have all three versions of Plant 43 wandering around, I suppose.
G-Young
So the main difference is that Resident Evil 2 also features the "G-Virus", an abbreviation of Golgotha Virus -- a very kickass name. The game stresses how much more devastating the G-Virus is, because it will mutate its hosts far, far beyond being just an enhanced version of itself... but to turn them into completely hideous flesh-beasts able to even reproduce asexually via parasitism (because Alien). The G-Virus is also able to repair dead cells, seemingly resurrecting dead flesh, making G-creatures a fair bit more dangerous. These G-Young (or G-Larvae) originally resembled like blind tadpoles with skinny baby arms, but got revamped into a very alien-looking bug-tadpole thing with a single eye and (although it's hard to see in-game) a creepy human mouth screaming below the tadpole body. I'm not sure which I like better, the blind amphibian or the Zerg friend.
The Alien inspiration is clearly there, by the way, because the very first time you get a hint about these G-creatures is early in the sewers when one of the G-Larvae bursts out of a character's chest... and that there are a bunch of these corpses with their chests and abdomens blown up. Interestingly, it's noted that the G-Larva explicitly try to seek out the blood relatives of the original host (hence, Sherry Birkin being a huge plot device). Which adds to the creepy stalker vibe, but also makes sense. If their original host's DNA is clearly suitable to bond with the G-virus, clearly their blood relatives have a high chance to do so too, right?
G-Adult
In absence of a compatible host, the G-larva turns them into these creatures, the G-Adults (before the remake gave them an official name, they are sometimes called "G-Mutants" or "G-Spawn"). It's really interesting just how different they look, although they're all hulking flesh-beasts that will also hurl their parasitic young at you. That original artwork perhaps has a head and neck that's just a mite too phallic and giant gangly arms. It's slightly hard to see, but I do like that its arms and legs are mismatched in size, and like all G-mutants, the G-Adult has a giant orange eye tucked onto the side of his body -- it's just hidden in all these artwork by the flesh of its shoulder. You got to shoot it to make it show its eye. The original RE2 design is limited and just turns him into a giant hulking flesh-monster with a blobby arm and there's only one of him as a mini-boss, although the artwork and this concept sketch really shows how wretched the G-Adult is meant to be.
The RE2 remake goes a different direction, making it less ridged or feel like a complete creature, and really make it feel like a hideous, blobby cancerous mass that just burst out of some unfortunate person. That face with the lower jaw able to split apart is cool, but the simply threatening, pillar-like giant left arm is both pathetic and threatening. Meanwhile, and it's a bit hard to look at this angle, its giant lumpy left foot trails behind like a giant slug tail behind it. I approve. And its still-phallic head can open up like petals of a flower (or petals of a Las Plagas parasite, if we can call forward a couple of games) to unleash a second petal-flower mouth within that the G-Adult spits out its itty-bitty babies. The artwork and the remake model really communicates that how while these G-Adults are kind of failures and abominations... they still have the capability to fuck you up.
In the remake, you meet an entire colony of them in the sewers (apparently Birkin had a lot of failures), they really do a great job at having the G-Adult mutants just splooge and slide around out of the mounds of trash or the little pipelines, swimming and bursting out of the water when you approach them. That actually makes sense that they would prefer an aquatic environment with their asymmetrical body. Sure, they are malformed phallic mutants living in the sewer among trash islands, but they actually seem to make it home and the remake even gives them cries that sound like whales or something.
T-00, a.k.a. T-103 "Super Tyrant'
One of the more imposing designs in the game is T-00 (or, as the fandom has universally called him, "Mr. X", although the actual games only ever call him 'Tyrant'), a giant bald pale man in a trench-coat that was sent in by Umbrella Corporation to deal with the Raccoon City situation. No, not based on the Terminator at all. In the backstory of RE2, apparently an entire squadron of these Tyrants are running around in Raccoon City, while one extremely persistent one, Mr. X, ends up having the assignment to 'deal' with our player character. And by 'deal', Mr. X really is persistent. Particularly in the remakes, where the engine is a lot improved.
See, once your character progresses enough and unlocks enough of the large map, Mr. X will suddenly show up, bursting through walls, being completely immune to anything your characters have against him. All you can do is either slow it down, or accidentally shoot off his nice head and make him break into a run at you. The Terminator-style 'implacable man' guise is sure cool. Basically, this dude will not stop. He's a dynamic enemy, and he will just be slowed down and stunned by your puny guns (and bullets are very scarce) in a matter of seconds, and then stand up and start marching towards you again. It can open doors. It can burst through walls if it really puts its heart into it. It's actually pretty dang terrifying, adding a sense of urgency to the already chaotic exercise of survival, inventory management, puzzle-solving and figuring out which plot device fits into which gateway. A very, very awesome persistent enemy for sure, and one of the (if not the) most memorable part of 2019's RE2.
In the final boss fight against him, it's revealed that the trench-coat is hiding the Tyrant's true body underneath, and he is basically an upgraded version of the mansion's Tyrant -- something that neither game actually makes clear since at no point does Leon or Claire have an opportunity to find out about RE1's bestiary, and it's a neat little Easter Egg for the players. In the original 1998 game, he really does feel like a Super Tyrant, because this creature has two giant claw-hands! Interestingly, the trench-coat also acts as the T-103-model's power limiter, which is such a hilarious anime-esque little detail.
In an interesting bit, while that original artwork shows off a far more cohesive-looking beast that looks a lot more whole and completed than its T-002 predecessor, the RE2 remake instead focuses the mutation on only one side of the body. Which... the improved graphics does make it cool, and I do appreciate that Remake's Mr. X still retains part of its burnt coat on him (and he's also on fire constantly in battle, although this screenshot doesn't show it) I think that at the end of the day I'd probably prefer him to actually be a Super Tyrant. Still, maybe they thought it'd get too close to Birkin's forms, I dunno. It does make him look more mundane, although on the other hand maybe that's what they were going on for him. And, again, when you do fight him he's also on fire.
I absolutely prefer the original design here, although to be fair, the remake wins hands down in terms of the cloaked Mr. X form. Honestly the Super Tyrant boss, as cool as it is, also is just kind of a boss fight that's just kind of there, just a zombie with one spiky arm or two spiky arms depending on the version.
William Birkin, a.k.a. "G"
Hoo boy, and here we go with "G", the recurring boss of the game, and the start of a glorious tradition of Resident Evil bosses being multi-phase ever-transforming, ever-evolving monstrosities (that, as Birkin establishes here, usually ends up as a big glob). Birkin goes through multiple transformations and multiple boss fights as your characters encounter him at various stages of his own story, and neither Leon nor Claire fight all five of his forms (his final form, I believe, is only fought as the 'true' final boss after you beat the game with Leon and Claire in any order). We've talked about dr. William Birkin up above in the synopsis and I really don't want to spoil myself too much about his story role. He sure is a mad scientist.
And it's going to be interesting to talk about William Birkin. The pictures I have lined up there are all the models of Birkin's five forms from the 1998 Resident Evil II... but some of those got significantly revised in the remake, so I'm going to talk about each form individually with their original 1998 official artwork and their 2019 models.
William Birkin: G-I
I really do like the two different styles for the 1998 artwork and the 2019 model, don't get me wrong. The 2019 model is absolutely gristly and brings in a fair bit of nastiness from details like how the mutated zombie-flesh fuses to Birkin's torso, or the jagged bony spurs jutting out of the shoulders, or how half of his face is melting off into the flesh-mass. But on the other hand the 1998 design offers such a clearer silhouette, making it clear what's going on and exaggerating some details. Anyway, the G-virus has apparently taken root mostly in Birkin's right side, manifesting most visibly in a single gigantic eye -- the same eye that other G-Virus victims like Lisa Trevor from the first game and the G-Adults from this one have. Knowing that Birkin will continue transforming into increasingly monstrous forms, I actually like that G-I keeps most of Birkin's face pale but intact... but on the other hand, story-wise he's already pretty much gone and only the G-Virus's instincts drive him now, so I suppose the remake's more hideous look is just as appropriate.
What I'm not the biggest fan of is the rather drab gray-purple colour scheme that the remake's models have whereas the originals were a bit more colourful. It gets particularly noticeable when you put the 1998 art and the 2019 models side by side. A very regrettable casualty of the modern-day gaming aesthetic's obsession with trying to make things as photorealistic as possible. At least the huge orange eye is kept very, very visible in all of Birkin's incarnations in both original and remake. That is important, the players need to know where to shoot!
William Birkin: G-2
Again, more or less the same concept, but just a different art-style and attention to detail. The entire body's mutated and the only thing that's left of Birkin's human form is really his legs. There's a bit going on here, but just look at the chest of both designs, and look at Birkin's normal human face just slowly regressing and merging into the chest. Very distinct in the 1998 artwork, although still definitely there in the model. There's also a third arm that's tucked into the chest, too, but that's more of a foreshadowing for the third form more than anything.
The right arm has certainly grown a lot, with the eyeball now pointing forwards, and the arm's fingers mutating hideously into this massive wad of flesh and blades... standard Tyrant stuff, really, and I appreciate the remake giving the giant arm a bit more variety than the Tyrants. Most importantly, though, G-II grows a new head, half-covered with flesh but there's clearly a nasty skull growing out of that stump. I guess the original G-II's Birkin head is a bit too subtle, then? I don't remember if this is the case in the original, but in the remake in addition to shooting him a bunch, you actually defeat him by whacking him with a giant container.
William Birkin: G-3
At this point Birkin's transforms into some sort of hideous demonic-looking flesh-beast. The new knob skull-head has taken over completely, and you can almost miss the remnants of Birkin's original face dissolving into the side of his body. He's got four hands, now, the two giant mutated original hands now being these almost wing-like giant claws, and two smaller hands bursting out of the torso. He's also got a second eyeball on his thigh, and a third on his back -- and as expected, you'll have to shoot these as Birkin rampages around.
And... and the remake perhaps goes a bit too much in trying to establish the 'wretched, twisted' side of the zombie mutation. Don't get me wrong, the textures are pretty cool, it looks really great in motion, and I really love the new skull-head they've got going on. But I think in making the giant wing-arms a fair bit more knobbly instead of the smoother, distinct silhouette that original G-III had, we kind of really lost something. I mean, I know, Birkin's supposed to be unstable and everything, but I thought that it was cool that for at least one part of his transformation Birkin resembles this 'perfect' looking flesh-angel. In combat, you actually have to shoot the eyes that aren't placed in the most convenient of places to expose his 'heart', which is a bunch of eyeballs themselves.
Either way, though, both G-III's look very cool, and is easily the straight-up coolest part of this five-part William Birkin creature.
William Birkin: G-4
And here we go with the two games' biggest differences in their forms. G-III's silhouette change is a bit of a shame but both designs are still essentially the same thing and in motion, it still looks good. It's really fascinating what they did with the fourth form, though. The original G-IV just sort of falls down on four limbs like some sort of hideous hound, with the two extra arms functioning as, well, new arms, while the chest and mouth just explodes into this massive amount of bone-teeth. That skull-head ends up being revealed to be the tip of a phallic projection, which is unfortunate, but I thought that it's a pretty cool showcase of Birkin's forms, which has been sequential, to be breaking down and convulsing and transforming in unpredictable means, giving us this glorious spike-mouthed hound beast. I guess this is the equivalent of the same process that turned a zombie into a Licker?
And that's not say that 2019's G-IV is a terrible design at all, not at all! It certainly communicates a zombie man breaking down and about to have all of his nasty Golgotha parts take over entirely... but the new G-IV just kind of looks like a bit of the body's bloating up and breaking down. There are a lot of cool details here, like the large claw-arms really breaking apart and the mass of intestines and eyeballs pouring out of the stomach. It's just that... it just doesn't look too different from Birkin's earlier forms, is all. It sure is more fucked-up, with the mass of eyes and teeth really looking like the mutation's going out of control, and I suppose the 'wing' arms have taken over as the G-organism's real arms. It's just that... I dunno, I felt like 'dog Birkin' is just visually more distinct and interesting. I suppose they're both foreshadowing the final 'mass' form in their own way.
G-IV does at least keep the spirit of a bestial form true, especially when you see it move and you get the closeups to its fucked-up visage. There are certainly merits to both, but I think I like the more different look of the original G-IV by far. I guess the 2019 version has the more 'organic' progression, I suppose. Honestly, I kind of like both of these; I just ike the original a bit more for being so utterly weird.
William Birkin: G-5
And here it is, our true final boss (or, rather, 'bonus' boss) of Resident Evil 2. With his mutations just going out of control, William Birkin just utterly explodes into a massive glob of flesh, bone, teeth and random organs. And... in this case, I'm not sure which one I like more. The original artwork makes it easy to point out some details beyond the massive Sarlacc bone-maw, like the still-present phallic spine-skull head, and those little remnants of human hands and legs jutting out of his side and dangling from the creature's side. This massive churning maw still ends up being the most eye-catching part of the design, though. This idea, the fact that in battle against the protagonist the whatever-virus gets blown into overdrive and the mutations and regeneration just transforms the final boss into an ambiguous flesh-glob teratoma is going to be a recurring theme in most Resident Evil games.
You also fight the G-V in a cramped subway car, and I absolutely love that forward-facing mountain-wall of flesh in the 2019 version. You only really see this form in the brief boss-fight as it tears through and starts to fill up an entire train car. The impact is sure pretty nasty as you have this giant wall of undulating wall closer and closer. The mouth is a bit more puckered and nowhere as exaggeratedly glorious as the original G-V's over-the-top rib maw, but the lighting in that picture and the realization that above the eye is Birkin's half-skull face staring at you with hollow eyes is pretty creepy. Neither picture here shows it particularly well, but the maw is actually concealing the huge eyeball from Birkin's previous forms.
Here's a bit of a spoiler -- I don't find myself really caring all that much for any of these 'tumour gone haywire' teratoma glob forms for any of the Resident Evil bosses as monster designs. It's certainly a trope, and an amazing set-piece, but as a monster they blur together after a while. G-5 Birkin is our first, though, so he gets a pass.
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Overall... a pretty fun little jaunt through Resident Evil 2! I am definitely very pleased and I think my favourite monster in this game has to be the various William Birkin mutated forms. Honestly, I thought that I wouldn't have too much to talk about here and that I'll have to merge RE2 and RE3 into a single segment, but the half-dozen new designs here like the Licker, G-mutants, Ivy and William Birkin are certainly very iconic and pretty memorable. In fact, after I wrote this review, I actually went and purchased the Steam version of Resident Evil 2 just so that I can play through this and see these creatures for myself.
Both the 1998 and 2019 versions have something to add to the table. Overall, a pretty cool little escalation and a pretty interesting bestiary, although the next game, I believe, is going to bring up something far more Umbrella-related as they finally show up with actual bioweapons. Next up... Nemmie!
