As a survival horror game, Resident Evil 2 features the same basic gameplay mechanics as its predecessor, Resident Evil. The player explores a fictional city while solving puzzles and fighting monsters. The game's two protagonists may be equipped with firearms, but limited ammunition adds a tactical element to weapon use. On the status screen, the player can check the condition of the protagonists, use medicine to heal their wounds, and assign weapons. The characters' current health can also be determined by their posture and movement speed. For example, a character will hold their stomach in pain if wounded, and will limp slowly if on the verge of death. The protagonists may carry a limited number of items, and must store others in boxes placed throughout the game world, where they may later be retrieved. Each protagonist is joined by a support partner during the course of the story. These characters accompany the player in certain scenes, and occasionally become playable. Certain rooms contain typewriters that the player may use to save the game. However, each save expends one of a limited number of ink ribbons, which the player must collect in the game world. The graphics of Resident Evil 2 are composed of real-time generated – and thus movable – polygonal character and item models, superimposed over pre-rendered backgrounds that are viewed from fixed camera angles. The game uses tank controls, meaning that pressing up moves the character in the direction they face, down reverses them, and left and right rotates them, regardless of the perspective of the camera.
The main addition over the preceding game is the "Zapping System", by which each of the two playable characters are confronted with different puzzles and storylines in their respective scenarios. After finishing the "A" scenario with one protagonist, a "B" scenario, in which the events are depicted from the other character's perspective, is unlocked. The player has the option of starting the "A" scenario with either of the two protagonists, resulting in a total of four different scenarios. Actions taken during the first playthrough affect the second. For example, the availability of certain items may be altered. After each game, the player receives a ranking based on the total time taken to complete the scenario, and on the number of saves and special healing items used. Depending on the player's accomplishments, bonus weapons and costumes may be unlocked as a reward. The original version of Resident Evil 2 contains two stand-alone minigames: "The 4th Survivor" and "The To-fu Survivor". In both of these minigames, the player must reach the goal while fighting every enemy along the way with only the default item loadout. All later versions (except the Nintendo 64 version) add a third minigame, "Extreme Battle", which consists of four playable characters and three stages.
Plot
On September 29, 1998, two months after the events of the first Resident Evil, most citizens of the Midwestern American mountain community Raccoon City have been transformed into zombies by the T-virus, a biological weapon secretly developed by the pharmaceutical company Umbrella. Leon S. Kennedy, a police officer on his first day of duty, and Claire Redfield, a college student looking for her brother Chris, make their way to the Raccoon Police Department. They discover that most of the police force have been killed, and that Chris has left town to investigate Umbrella's headquarters in Europe. They split up to look for survivors and find a way out of the city. While searching for an escape route, Claire meets a little girl, Sherry Birkin, who is on the run from an unknown creature, and Leon encounters Ada Wong, who claims to be looking for her boyfriend John, an Umbrella researcher.
Raccoon City police chief Brian Irons had been bribed by Umbrella to hide evidence of the company's experiments in the outskirts of the city. He also concealed their development of the new G-virus, an agent capable of mutating a human into the ultimate bioweapon. Leon has multiple encounters with a Tyrant monster air-dropped into the Raccoon Police Department by Umbrella to seek the G-virus. Irons tries to murder Claire but is killed by a G-virus mutant in the police department. Thereupon, Claire and Sherry escape through the sewers and become separated. After splitting up with Leon, Ada comes upon Sherry and picks up a golden pendant the girl loses while running away. Further into the sewers, Ada reluctantly teams up with Leon again, after he insists on his duty to protect her. They encounter a middle-aged woman who fires at Ada, but Leon dives between them and takes a bullet himself. Ada ignores the unconscious Leon and follows the woman, who reveals herself to be Sherry's mother Annette and the wife of William Birkin, the Umbrella scientist who created the G-virus. In an attempt to protect his life's work from special agents sent by the Umbrella headquarters, he injected himself with the virus, which turned him into the malformed creature, "G" and is now chasing Sherry. Annette recognizes her daughter's pendant and attempts to take it from Ada. A fight ensues, during which Annette is thrown over a railing. Ada learns that the golden locket contains a sample of the G-virus, and later – taken over by her emotions – returns to Leon, tending to his bullet wound.
